Trust and Facing the Unknown (with Rachel Botsman)

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Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making better decisions.

I'm Maria Konakova, and today I am flying solo.

Nate is away, but I am so thrilled to welcome on Rachel Botsman, who is someone who I met, what is it now, Rachel, six or so years ago.

Yeah.

And we ended up having so much in common, so many interests in common.

Rachel is an amazing writer, speaker.

She was the first ever trust fellow at Oxford University's Said Business School.

An incredibly impressive woman who now has a new audio book out called How to Trust and Be Trusted.

Rachel, welcome to Risky Business and let's talk about trust.

I'm so excited to be here and I'm so excited to talk to you in particular about trust and risk because I don't often get to have this conversation.

So it's a treat.

It is.

It is a treat for me as well.

There's a question that I wanted to start off with, but before we get into that, I think we should probably lay the groundwork and give your definition of trust, because I think it's a beautiful definition and something that will set the stage nicely.

Yeah,

it's been one of the hardest challenges actually coming up with a definition that works across all the different contexts that trust functions in.

And my definition of trust is that it's a confident relationship with the unknown.

And the reason why that ties so beautifully with risk is that the greater the unknown, the greater the uncertainty, or the higher the risk in any decision, choice, or situation, the more trust that you need.

And it's

kind of the antithesis of how a lot of trust theorists think about trust, because they'll say trust is knowing exactly what to expect or knowing what the outcome is.

And that's always struck me as strange because if you know how things are going to turn out, then you don't need a whole lot of trust.

I'm happy to hear that because it is one of the important themes, right, of trust is control.

And it's something that really resonated with me as someone who studies kind of risk and has, you know, my PhD.

I studied the illusion of control, kind of the need for control, and how important it is for people to feel like they're in control of events, in control of the environment.

And so, as I was listening to your audio book, that actually was a theme that kept coming up, right?

That one of these major issues in trust is control when we have it when we don't have it how we can give it up to whom we can give it up when we give it up i'd love for you to talk a little bit more about that and about kind of the risk calculus how does that decision-making process work when it comes to trust

yeah and there's so much underneath this i don't think we often think enough about the relationship between trust and control.

So on a basic level, when you need to to control things or you need to feel like, to your point, the illusion of control, it's often a sign of lack of trust that you're not dealing with uncertainty very well.

And this can look like all kinds of things.

So during the pandemic or during a political period of turmoil, like all the time, or during a serious environmental crisis like the wildfires, the need to not just find information, but find information that makes you feel a little bit more in control.

So, oh the air quality is actually okay so I'm going to go outside.

Those things really set off our control alarms all the way through to recognizing that when you don't trust someone

you tend to become more controlling.

You tend to become a micromanager and that plays out at work.

big time,

in partnerships and relationships, but also in friendships and as a parent.

To make this real, I have two children, 13 and 11.

The 11-year-old can be trusted to do her homework.

She's the girl, and not to many gender stereotypes.

But my son,

not so much.

So he has to do it at the kitchen table with a stock clock with me watching him or working alongside him.

That's very controlling, right?

Now, if I trusted him, he could do it upstairs in his bedroom without me watching him and me not have to ask him the questions.

So control is a sign of lack of trust in ourselves, in others, in the external situation.

And I'd love your take on this, but one of the things that worries me is that in the age that we live in,

this illusion of control I think is sort of going up.

So even if you think about health monitoring,

I'm running a marathon a few months and I cannot believe how much data there is available to tell me what's going on in my body.

And all of a sudden, this quite enjoyable thing where I shouldn't really worry about the outcome.

I should just enjoy the journey.

It's like you become a control freak around this data.

And the reality is, I'm not in control as to whether I get injured.

I'm not in control whether it's hot or freezing cold on that day.

And so

I feel like this illusion of control, largely created through technology, is reducing our tolerance to friction.

And this is really a crisis in many ways because you throw people into situations not of uncertainty, just of moral friction.

They have no patience, they're intolerant.

And I think it's sort of a hidden issue that isn't being spoken about enough.

Yeah,

I think that's a really important point because you do mention in your book, but I think we are in a time where there is kind of this crisis of trust, right?

Trust in so many things, trust in institutions and expertise and in leadership and all of these different things.

But this is the other side of it.

On the other hand, like we do have this then desire to hyper monitor, which might not necessarily be the best thing.

I actually always tell people, you know,

stop wearing those devices.

Stop monitoring yourself.

You know, it's actually, it's not good.

It's not healthy.

And you're probably losing more than you gain, especially sleep devices.

Don't get me started.

But I think that you're pointing out something really important, which is that we are becoming in some ways less tolerant of uncertainty, less tolerant of the unknown.

And there is this relationship, you know, how tolerant you are, how much you can embrace it, and

both how much you trust and how trustworthy you are, right?

yourself.

And there's something that you said that I found really beautiful.

You said, you know, nothing new happens in the known, which I think is such a lovely thought.

So I'd love to talk a little bit about that and about how kind of, because this is something that I think a lot about, right?

How embracing risk, right?

Embracing uncertainty can actually be very liberating and can actually help you make better decisions as opposed to being afraid of it.

And I think this idea that nothing new happens in the known

is, it's so powerful to think about your own life as to how much of your life and some people really enjoy being in the space and that's fine, but it's safe and familiar and repetitive, even like when you get to a certain point in your career.

And I started to feel this way, this is relatively easy, I'm not really taking risks anymore.

And maybe that fatigue is because I'm not in the unknown enough, right?

Like, I'm going to go into a classroom, I'm going to get on stage, I'm going to write a piece, and I kind of know how it's going to turn out.

And so that takes effort and that takes work to shake that up.

So

just a personal example,

I see myself as an artist and I've always made art.

And I was like, right, I'm going to go back to this because that is a world where I don't speak that language and I have no connections and I am a beginner.

I am starting again.

I'm very much in the unknown.

And I found

that risk-taking

that it's so energizing.

Yes, it is frightening, but you just feel that capacity expanding again.

Like, it's like, it's more than the curiosity that you have when you're a child.

It's like you can hold more.

It's, you know, Keats uses that wonderful phrase of negative capability.

And I think sort of the opposite of risk-taking is, is all the positive capabilities, right?

The skills, the competence, the knowledge.

And what we're missing is that negative capability, that ability.

to hold much and to be in the unknown.

And to do that, you have to take risks.

You have to be a beginner.

You have to try new things and it's so easy to to forget that as as

especially when you get later on in life yeah no i i think that's that's crucial um and that's that's actually how i approach almost all new projects right is this something that scares me is this something where i feel uncomfortable if the answer is yes great if the answer is no you know is it really worth it right you know you and i have talked about familiarity um and that you know that was part of your part of your book on trust how familiarity breeds trust, but also, you know, it can be a false sense of security.

And I think that's true on all levels, both being, you know, doing something that's just easy and familiar and also kind of on a level of trusting someone just because they seem familiar.

It's something that makes you feel secure, but...

that's not necessarily good, right?

And that's not necessarily the correct basis on which to trust, which I think brings us to kind of one of your points, one of the lessons from your book, which is, you know,

the fact that like, who do you trust, who don't you trust is a bad question, right?

And you have to then say to do what.

Yeah.

And what, what are you actually basing this on?

And it's all it all has to do with context.

Let's talk a little bit about that.

And tell us a little bit about your nanny as well, because it's such a great illustration of a lot of these themes and brings us back to, you know, who you trust, why you trust them.

is familiarity good or bad, you know, risk, all of these things, risk versus comfort,

all of these names.

Yeah.

And also,

you know, the shift between sort of

what people say and how they say it and all these things that are happening in society right now.

And so just to sort of talk about a fundamental point, which you mentioned that is often missed, is that trust is highly contextual.

So the reason why I say it's often missed is when you look at the way people talk about trust in the media, oh, I don't trust that politician or I don't trust that platform or it's spoken about in very generalized terms.

And that is problematic because blanket trust is a very bad thing.

You don't want to be trusted to do everything.

And one of the ways to improve your own trust skills is to

understand

where you are trusted and where you're not.

And that's the trust gap.

The nanny story.

Well, I won't tell it all because it's quite long.

And so what happened was

when we were around five, my dad and my mum were very busy.

They were both entrepreneurs and they were traveling a lot to America.

We live in the UK.

And so they needed to hire a nanny to look after my brother and I.

And

they hired this woman.

I think I changed her name to Doris, so we'll stick with Doris.

Okay.

And

I'll never forget the day she walked in our house because she had had this very thick Scottish accent.

And my name's Rachel.

So every time she said my name, you know, she rolled her R's.

And she had one of those really ruddy Scottish faces, like they've been for a long walk over the highlands and then they're going to have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.

And she was always baking as well.

I remember that.

But the day she walked in, she was wearing a uniform.

And the uniform she was wearing was for the Salvation Army.

And she was carrying a tambourine, which I thought was immensely exciting as a four or five-year-old.

The point was, that's why my parents hired her, because

she told my parents that she belonged to the Salvation Army.

They now realize how influential the Scottish accent was,

because, of course, there was no email, there was no video conferencing, it was all done by phone.

So those trust singles were really important.

Well, listeners will have to listen to the book to hear the whole story, but she lived with us for nine months.

And it turned out she was running a massive drugstore in North London.

And then she disappeared.

And

she used our family's Volvo, silver Volvo, as a getaway card, an armed robbery.

I mean, like,

so

I don't know where that's my fascination with trust came from, that I was like.

It's a good origin story, Rachel.

You should embrace it.

You should embrace that origin story.

But I remember thinking as a child like how and even when they found out she stolen loads of money and she told them she found it under a tree in a park this is this is one of my favorite details

yeah i remember asking my dad about this and he's like well these things can happen and i'm thinking what in Broomfield Park, like the magic faraway tree is going to be.

Have you seen the movie Fargo?

You know, sometimes you find large amounts of cash by the side of the road.

I swear.

And then they still kept it.

And she came on a holiday with us to Spain.

And this is such a random detail, but I remember she went to the Queen concert and she loved Freddie Mercury.

And they were like, whoa, she loves Queen, right?

So she must be good.

But she was not good.

She was very, very bad.

So,

yeah.

So that is a

really good example of a bad trust decision.

And I think the part that stuck in my head as to why my parents kept her was it was too much effort by someone else.

Yes.

I died when you said that.

It was, you know, it's one of these things when you said it, I was like, this is so true.

I think the way you phrased it, because I have it in quotes in my notes, is convenience trumps trust, right?

And that is, I think, such an important point because we make decisions all the time based on convenience and based on lower friction and inertia and being like, it's just too much effort to do X or Y.

When your nanny had more money, she said she found it under the same tree again, right?

This tree just happened to be a money tree and there was more money under it.

And

the fact that, you know, if you think about it logically, right?

Your father's a smart man, entrepreneur.

Like you just have to say, huh, what is going on in the brain of this incredibly intelligent person?

And it's one of these things where, you know, I've written about con artists a few books back.

And, you know, you see these patterns of smart people, people who know better, and yet they end up in these situations where they keep trusting, they keep ignoring red flags because it's convenient, right?

And

it also says something about you, right?

You don't want to be the person who left your kids with a drug dealer, right?

So it's easier to say, no, no, she really is trustworthy.

Those things aren't true, even though it's your kids, right?

And if there's any chance that this person is going to be involved in an armed robbery, get your kids the fuck out of there.

I'm sorry.

But it's just all of these

competing things, which is huge.

And, you know, it's funny.

Like, I was thinking, I love your book, The Confidence Game.

And I was thinking about, you know, one of the chapters, and I can't remember which, how you frame it.

It's not the rope, but denial.

the power of denial because it's your identity.

And that, I think it explains so many reasons why people don't quit and they don't get out of bad decisions, even when they know the client isn't trustworthy or the investment isn't good or the nanny isn't.

Like, why we can't extricate ourselves from that situations, I think, is just a fascinating human flaw.

Yeah,

it really is.

It really is.

And,

you know,

everything ended well right here.

You are.

Nice.

Yeah.

You know, the other details of the the story are fascinating and everyone should listen to it.

But yeah, it is, you know, it is a really interesting part of human nature, right?

The way that we trust how we make those decisions.

And, you know, when you said Scottish accent, right, for the nanny, this is something you and I have spoken about, which is kind of your gut feelings, your gut instincts.

Oh, I like this person based on what, right?

Why, why is that the case?

And

as I've told you, that is not a good way to make decisions.

You know, my gut sets, so we're very bad at figuring out whether the gut is correct or not.

And so asking that question, why, is crucial over and over and over.

Now, you, and can I just say, Maria, I don't know if you find this, but when I challenge, because I like to believe I'm an intuitive person, right?

And I'm still kind of figuring out what that means.

I think it means actually that I'm...

good at reading the room and I'm good at reading energy versus predicting how things are going to turn out, which I think is what people think intuition is, right?

It's more of a, I see it as more reading the state someone is in and how engaged they are with you versus what's going to happen.

And when I challenge people to say, look, it's not that intuition is a bad thing, particularly in situations where you recognize that pattern.

It's the lack of information.

So when you rely on the intuition and you just don't have enough reliable information, people hate this idea.

They're like, this flies in the face of emotional intelligence.

And this, you know, this this is going to slow down decision making.

And what do you expect that we're going to get all this information about people?

And how do we know if the information is reliable?

And I find it really interesting that it sparks something so visceral and deep in people that they rely on their intuition so heavily.

Yeah, people really don't like to hear that.

I find that, I find that as well.

And it's very funny because, you know, I play poker as well.

And there are a lot of poker players who are very mathematical, right?

Like very quantitative.

they use solver outputs it's all very you know very precise and yet when i say something like you should not trust your gut you should not trust they get so upset right because even someone's so mathematical to them it seems like there's you know this sixth sense there's something else that like that you know has to be has to be there.

And I have to say, well, sometimes your gut is right, right?

But you need to ask, like, what is it based on?

Where's the information coming from?

Do I have expertise in this?

right is this something that is just unconscious expertise or is it something that is just a feeling based on who knows what right um and it could be very good pattern recognition or it could be bullshit um but people people really do not like to hear that um and it's it's that's a i think that's such an interesting point about trust And I think it's, I'm doing this interesting thing tomorrow on Gen Z.

It's the biggest study done in the UK on how they trust and how they think about the truth.

And one of the things that's been thinking, I've been thinking about related to this is how much they,

and not just Gen Z, but rely on feelings over facts to make a decision.

And that is so much to do with sort of the invisible hand of algorithms, sort of the vertical nature of feeds, where you can find things to validate how you're feeling, not even that day, that moment, that then becomes the way you make a decision.

And that really frightens me, this idea of feeling your way through a decision versus looking for reliable information.

That's incredibly scary.

That, you know, I think that that is something that

is the opposite of what your whole book is about, about trust, right?

And the opposite of everything that I've tried to do.

Because feelings are sometimes integral to a decision, but usually they're incidental, right?

There's a whole area of psychology that talks about how poor our decision-making ability is when we rely on feelings because most of the time they have nothing to do with the decision at hand.

And there's even a term called mood as information when we use kind of the mood we're in as information when we shouldn't, right?

It's a major fallacy and it really influences decisions in a negative way.

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Let's talk about something a little bit more positive because because you interviewed some really interesting people who have used trust in really interesting ways.

And I was, you know, some very inspiring people like the Spanish teacher, Miss Rad, right, who

is, well, why don't you tell us a little bit about her and about this distinction, which I think is really, really nice that you make between earning trust and building trust.

Yeah.

Miss Rad, oh, she was, I shouldn't pick favorites, but it really was incredible.

She was the teacher of the year in Illinois.

And I think the thing that really struck me about her is that she's working in a pretty tough environment.

And she's working with, often with children that have never learned how to trust anyone.

They've never learned how to trust a teacher, a parent, a custodian, a friend.

And she feels like she's teaching them Spanish.

But actually the outcome of the year is that they've learned how to trust someone and that someone trusts them.

And there's so much to the things that she does, but what I realize when

listening to it again, first of all, everything she does is free.

Like it's not big gestures, they're really small things.

So she makes sure before the first day of term, she knows every child's first name and last name.

And

not only that, she knows their interests.

She speaks to the other teachers.

She finds out what they enjoy, where they're struggling, even where they like to sit in the classroom.

And so, you know, when they walk in, they're like, oh, this person cares.

They took the time to understand all these things.

She works on the premise that she's a giver of trust.

So they don't have, and so many teachers don't do this, right?

Like, it's like, you have to prove yourself to me.

And that proving yourself to me is such an old way of thinking about power,

which to your question is tied to this distinction between how do i build trust versus how do i earn trust when you say how do i build trust that is like um i'm going to behave in a certain way and then i expect you to follow me i expect you to do something for me versus what miss rad was demonstrating is that actually no you have to continuously earn trust

And the best way to do that is to give it first.

And then it becomes this really powerful loop.

Yeah, I think that a lot of bosses and business leaders should listen to your lesson with Ms.

Rad, because it seems like it would really improve a lot of office cultures.

Because you do talk about this, about kind of the flip side when you do have cultures where there isn't trust, right?

Where people micromanage, where you feel like you're not being empowered.

And then people do all sorts of shit to,

you know, when they feel like that, when they're like, fine, you don't trust me.

You know, you have, you have the example of expense reports, right?

Okay, fine.

Like, how do I expense this bottle of wine?

Like, how do I figure out a way to screw you over because you don't trust me, right?

And I have actually found that.

So my next book is about cheating, but you find that when you have these kinds of things and people feel like they can cheat, right?

They feel like, and they can feel like they can do things like take.

office supplies home,

take stuff from the fridge that was bought from the office and just take it home.

And they don't feel like that's stealing, even though it is, right?

That's not why it's there for.

But they're like, well, you know, if you're, if you're not trusting me, if you're doing all of these things, then I'm going to act accordingly.

And in this classroom, you see, you know, students who misbehaved and who were problem students suddenly become leaders and really promising students because of this trust dynamic shift.

And I think that this is just such a powerful and wonderful lesson that we can use in a lot of different cultures, cultures, right?

Not just school, even though I think it's incredibly important in the classroom, but I think it's important as we think about corporate cultures all the way up.

And it's a point that I think people don't necessarily understand because sometimes they think that, well, you know, you need to kind of

urge,

you need to kind of micromanage and do these kinds of things because, well, who are they, right?

I'm the boss.

Yeah, and it's, it's, um,

it's such an obvious thing to say, but we take trust for granted until it's gone.

And then it brings out the very worst behaviors, whether that's cheating or survival.

So I had a student, she put this so well, because she was saying, like, you know, why don't we talk about trust, do we so often talk about mistrust or distrust or a lack of trust?

And then she admitted she didn't really understand the difference between those things, which is interesting in itself, mistrust, distrust, lack of trust.

But then she said, you know.

Do you know what to me, like when I've been in a in a work environment and you can just feel like someone took the plug out and the trust is seeping out that organization.

She said, Do you know, like, have you ever owned a goldfish?

And you could imagine, like, she's doing this in an MBA lecture hall.

It's about 120 students.

And I'm like, yes, I owned a goldfish and it was called Flash Gordon.

I'm trying to give her permission to tell the story here.

And she was like, your goldfish was called Flash Gordon.

I was like, could we get to the metaphor?

So then she says, you know, when you own a goldfish and you're not a particularly responsible pet owner, goldfish owner, and you don't fill the bowl up.

And gradually over time, the water goes down.

And you don't really notice the water going down until one day you come home and she did this with actions the fish is gulping like

like like it can't breathe it's suffocating and the fish is about to die and she said that's what i think happens to trust is like it just dissipates until people feel suffocated So

I think this is, it really struck me because the Edelman trust barometer just came out which I have big feelings about and Gallup at the same time the biggest trust surveys and both of them showed that the lowest the highest trust falls so the biggest difference in trust points is not in politics or media it's in employees it's like a 10 point fall in employee engagement and trust and that's that's very frightening it's huge right that you all these people disengage and not they are not behaving well and that is that is toxic for both sides of the equation that is that that is concerning um and you talk about um distrust uh right and you and you talk about i think the goldfish story is a great one you know you talk about kind of the the three d's right the the defensiveness disengagement disenchantment and how you don't always see those happening it's very easy to miss it's very easy to not have the communication infrastructure needed to kind of have

those cycles not take place.

And then you end up like a gulping goldfish and you're not quite sure how to fix it.

And then you get a consultant in there and you end up refilling the water tank without actually addressing any of the issues that made the water go down in the first place.

So, you know, maybe you refill the water, but you know, that goldfish is not going to do well.

Why wasn't anyone watching the bolt?

Why did no one care?

Why was no one nourishing these small things?

So I do think it's a really good metaphor to think about workplace culture.

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Now, you know, let's turn this positive again.

You, you've talked to people who actually have very good workplace culture, but let's start with hotel hospitality.

You talked to someone, Eoj New, right?

Who's the CEO of the Dorchester?

And he, well, tell me a little bit about him and tell me what you learned from him about trust and kind of good ways to have that rapport, because he's very good, not just at building trust, but at repairing trust.

Yeah.

So I'm fascinated by hotels.

I don't know about you, but like, it's not I want to go into hospitality, but they just, I'm always like the theater and how they run and what goes on behind the scenes.

So

for listeners who don't know, the Deutsche Collection, it's, it's, it's some of the nicest hotels in the world, like the Bel Air and the Beverly Hills and that

really fancy one in Paris.

Their hotels are incredible.

La Maurice.

La Maurice, right.

And I did, I get to stay on one as a work project, which was a real proof.

Rachel, can I do a work project on Hotel Hospitality?

It was like an introduction.

It was so funny.

It was one of those trips where I digress, but I said to myself, I really don't want to go.

And then I got there and I was like, this is the best work trip ever because this links the story.

The way they make people feel at home and the way they recognize guests and not in like chocolate on your pillow ways,

I'd never experienced, not seen, I'd never experienced that feeling before.

And so I was like, how do they do this?

And they're so good at doing it that they run a training program where they don't just train their own staff, they train British Airways, Marks and Spend, all these companies around the world train on culture because they know how to do it.

And the thing that struck me was that, first of all, he'd worked in every single department of the hotel.

He'd even like been on the roof and repaired the air conditioners.

You know, he'd done been in the washer and not like for the day.

You know how some of the CEOs do it for an hour.

Like a rotation.

He understood the hotel like a body.

He understood.

the nervous system.

He understood the components and he knew how all of this was interconnected.

And if one thing went down, how it impacted others.

So that was just like, wow, how many leaders understand the whole ecology and cultural system of their business?

The other thing that I thought was just incredible was how much he

empowered his team to do the right thing.

And, you know, this wasn't like the missed alarm call he spoke about a lot because that's a big thing.

and that if they miss an alarm call i mean people still use alarm calls which i find strange um that the person reception has the autonomy to book another flight a business class flight without any kind of approval

regardless of the cost yeah that that was absolutely crazy i was like well yeah that is the way to remedy it right like if you make me miss my flight because you screwed up then you know and he says you know if it costs ten thousand dollars it doesn't matter right Yeah.

Now, this is an elite, I mean, this is a privilege, right?

This is an incredible hotel where people are paying an absolute fortune.

But the point of the story was that the apology has to match.

Yeah.

And I think that Eu Jan Yo

has a really good rubric for, you know,

basically, I think the, to me, the most important point of how, you know, Heat speaks about this is that trust is going to be broken, right?

Like we have this illusion that like, oh, this is a trustworthy person or this trustworthy institution, trustworthy, blah, blah, blah.

So I can trust it blanket, right?

Shit goes wrong.

Yeah.

Right.

That's life.

It happens all the time.

People are going to break your trust on an individual level and on an institutional level.

How do you respond to that?

Yeah.

How do you repair it?

How do you actually make it so that the trust doesn't go away, right?

So that it becomes stronger.

I think that that is the crucial thing here, right?

This is is not it's not like there's this beautiful thing and you can trust this and you can't trust this that is not how it works it is much more complex I think to your point what's so powerful about his story is that he says it happens like a hundred times in a day in a hotel more like he's constantly repairing trust and there is a distinction between those moments and what people would call a trust crisis you know so a trust crisis like an oil spill, Cambridge Analytica.

That's how people tend to think of trust breaking down.

And yes, of course, those things are going to hurt and there's a lot of repair to be done there.

But it's micro-moments that often, particularly if you're in a customer-centric or even just an employee-centric company, they're the things that people don't think about.

Like, how do you empower people to repair those things?

And then the other key thing tied to risk, which I thought was really key, is he doesn't want people to be risk-adverse.

He doesn't want his employees to be risk-averse.

So it's how how does he set the boundaries and be really clear about expectations so that they can play and they can delight and they can do things still following service protocol.

And I think that was just amazing to learn how they do that.

I think that that is a really crucial point.

You have to empower people to take risks because a lot of times,

you know, trust gets broken and things go wrong and people,

you know, you've created a culture where they will be punished, right?

If they, if they go and do something else.

And I think this is actually a huge organizational problem,

at least in the United States.

I don't know if it's the case in the UK as well, where businesses say, oh, you know, we love risk-taking.

You know, we want our employees to be creative and innovative and blah, blah, blah.

It didn't work out.

Oh, you're fired, right?

What kind of a culture are you actually creating?

where you pay lip service to this, but you don't actually inspire that kind of behavior because people are scared they know that if you take a risk and it doesn't work out that that's not good for you yeah and it's it's something i mean i'd love to ask you this question because i've often wondered like is taking risk a privilege

yeah i think that taking risk is a privilege um because you know i've i've written about this and i've thought a lot about this you know a really nice way of thinking about it is

you know when you're looking at all of these classic biases that Danny Kahneman talked about, right?

Risk aversion, loss aversion, all of these fallacies of the human mind, right?

Where you prefer the certain outcome over the gamble, even though the gamble has a higher expected value, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

They become completely correct and not fallacious if you can't afford.

to lose, right?

If you are someone who, you know, you need this money to pay the rent, you need this money to get medicine, even though the risk might actually, the expected value might be like millions, right?

And you can get a sure thing of

however much it is, you will take the sure thing.

Or if the loss, right, if you gamble and you could potentially make a lot, but you could also lose something that's going to affect your ability to pay for your, you know, for your livelihood, you shouldn't take that gamble, right?

Because you should actually take the sure thing always.

And so you see how all of these quote unquote fallacies can be completely correct depending on who you are, what risk context you're coming from.

And so absolutely risk taking is a privilege.

It means you can afford to lose, right?

You can afford the risk of ruin.

And

some people can't.

And sometimes you don't understand why someone doesn't take a risk.

And you have to ask, well, okay, what is it about their background?

And this, I think we've come full circle to trust, right?

What is it about the trust kind of the support and everything about them that can enable them to take these sorts of risks?

And, you know, something that you end with, which I think is a good place for us to end, and this is where it's going us, is with trust leaps, right?

And confidence in the unknown.

And I think trust leaps are also a privilege.

I think so too.

So

a trust leap is whenever you take a risk to do something new or to do something differently in your life.

But actually, writing the book made me think about them really differently, because if you think about going back to wonderful Miss Rad

and it made me think, you know, trust leaps are a privilege, but they're also permission.

What made me realize is like often people go, okay, well, you need to provide security and you have to provide, that's usually financial, the way they think about it.

And what she does is she says, actually, a trust leap is when the child says the first word in Spanish, because when you speak in another language and there's a risk that everyone is going to laugh at you in that class, like that's actually taking a risk and that what she has to do is create the comfort and the security that no one's going to laugh and there's going to be no repercussions and the thing it made me think about is like when those kids say the first word and everyone sort of looks at them with admiration and then they start saying a whole sentence that's the permission piece that's what I mean by like if you think if you're listening to this going well I'm just not very good at taking risks and I really don't enjoy them and I don't even know how to take a trust leap Start really small, right?

Because it's forward momentum.

Like once you feel it and you're like, oh, no, I'm speaking a whole paragraph in front of the class.

And

I think a lot about those children when I'm trying to encourage people to take trust leaps.

They don't have to be.

enormous physical feats.

They don't have to be leaving your job and starting a new company.

They don't have to be taking a massive bet or leaving your partner or whatever it may be.

Actually, some of the most powerful trust leaps are really, really, really small where they get higher, higher, and they give you permission to discover something else about other people, about yourself, about your community, or about the world.

Look at us ending on such a powerful and positive and inspirational note.

I think that that actually is such a great message to end on, right?

That these don't have to be huge things and that everything about trust, you can start small, right?

And build on that.

And I think that that's very empowering.

And I hope that people do listen to your full audio book because I think you'll learn a lot.

I learned a lot about the nature of trust and how we can be more trustworthy and also create more trust in the world, which I think is crucially important.

Yeah.

And I can't wait to read more about cheating, which has always fascinated me.

So it's always a delight and pleasure.

And thank you for appearing in the book as well.

You did a wonderful job.

Of course.

Thank you so much for joining me.

I could always talk to you for hours, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk about trust and risk and all of it.

Let us know what you think of the show.

Reach out to us at riskybusiness at pushkin.fm.

And by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we have some bonus content for you.

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Risky Business is hosted by me, Maria Kondakova.

And by me, Nate Silver.

The show is a co-production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.

This episode was produced by Isabel Carter.

Our associate producer is Gabriel Hunter Chang.

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And our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein.

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