As The Leader Grows with Ken Joslin

Roy Reid | The Art of Trust in Leadership

• Ken Joslin

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Who said trust can't be quantified? Tune in as we sit down with Roy Reid, a top-tier authority on trust and executive communications, who unveils the transformative power of trust in leadership through his program, The Trust Transformation. Imagine a hospital that managed to significantly lower their numbers in hospital-based infections, not by a new drug or treatment method, but by simply fostering a high-trust culture. This isn't a hypothetical scenario, but a real-life example from one of Roy's clients, proving that trust can work wonders not just in a business context, but also when it comes to our health and wellbeing.

Trust is the currency of our relationships at the workplace, and it's earned in droplets but lost in gallons. With Roy's expert guidance, we explore how to build and maintain trust in professional relationships. He enlightens us on how to navigate organizational challenges, create a trust contract, and establish genuine relationships. The tale of his daughter's bracelet serves as a potent reminder that every action, big or small, plays a part in the trust equation. 

The conversation with Roy Reid doesn't end there. He equips us with strategies for cultivating an ambiance of trust and understanding, unlocking the secret to effective communication with colleagues and employees. Trust isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a must-have, being integral to successful leadership and the key to influence. So, buckle up for a journey through the realm of trust with our guest, Roy Reid. And hey, don't forget to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share a screenshot of the podcast on Instagram for a shout-out from us. This is one podcast episode you won't want to trust your instincts and miss!

Here are links if you would like to learn more about Roy.
https://www.stockworthinstitute.com/roy-reid
https://www.roywreid.com/contact-us

Welcome to the ATLG podcast I am your host Ken Joslin, former pastor turned coach & host of CREATE, the #1 Faith-based Entrepreneur conference in America. My mission is to help faith-based entrepreneurs become the best version of themselves by growing in our Core 5: Faith, Health, Relationships, Business & Finances. You can get more information as well as join our FREE Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/676347099851525

If you enjoyed the podcast, come join our FREE GSD Community of hundreds of entrepreneurs & a ton of FREE Content including CREATE Conference recordings with Ken, John Maxwell, Gary Brecka, Ed Mylett & more. growstackdrive.com/free

Speaker 1:

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of as the leader grows. I am your host, ken Jocelyn, and I have got a super amazing guest for you guys today. I am I'm excited because of the content. The talk we're going to have with my friend, roy Reed today circled around trust. Now Roy is one of the leading authorities on trust, business and executive communications. He coaches a lot of C-sweets Across a lot of businesses in America and I'm super stoked, roy. Welcome to as the leader grows. My friend Ken, thanks for having me. So the you have a football helmet behind you. I just noticed that. Who is that? What team is that? University of Central Florida, go Knights. I got you man. Ucf. They've come on the. They've come on the scene a lot in the last five years, so I'm a big fan. I got my video.

Speaker 2:

I got my Michigan pull over today because we play Saturday. Yeah, my brother-in-law is from Michigan, so we we have a family that has a great appreciation for that, that team as well. I love it, man.

Speaker 1:

Well, roy, as we get this podcast started today, take a couple minutes and tell our audience a little bit about who you are and what you've got going on, and why the trust factor, thanks, well, I've been in the communications business.

Speaker 2:

For most of my career it's about 30 years Now I've done sort of an equal layer of work on both the consulting side and the corporate side. I, in the most recent corporate role, was with Advent Health, one of the largest nonprofit faith based healthcare systems in the country, and then about a year ago I set off on my own and am now doing executive coaching and training, and I do it based on a program that I developed with a co-author, dr O'Mara Mansfield, called the trust transformation, and the idea behind the trust transformation is that we improve our results when we improve our relationships, and the key in those relationships is the transformative power of trust, and so my work is with leaders and organizations to help them come around that idea and really uncover the truth. And they come around that idea and really unpack some things about trust that they may not even be aware of. We're all confident in knowing that trusting relationships have a lot of positive benefit to it, but a lot of us haven't tapped into the idea that when we really truly trust ourselves and can develop a higher level of trust in ourselves, it impacts our health and our well-being, and that's really part of the message that I want to get out there and what I want to do in working with leaders, because it's about the whole person.

Speaker 2:

Ken, it's not just about what we do at work. It's every bit as important about what's going on inside of here in our homes, with our families, and so the trust transformation is really about how that applies in all aspects of our lives. And you asked me what's the motivation for it. Well, when I first developed the program about 15 years ago, a lot of the motivation was in working with clients who were going through a lot of crisis and issues work, and as a consultant, I wanted to be able to come in and say if you invest in trust first, you're going to have a far better recovery when a crisis occurs, because we're all going to have one, I love that you said we improve our performance when we improve our trust.

Speaker 1:

Yes, sir, we improve our performance when we improve our trust. Walk us through that truth. What are some of the things you've seen in some of the businesses you've worked with? And in that, because the trust level went up, the performance level went up as well.

Speaker 2:

I'll give you a couple of examples, and I'll tell you about a client that I worked with, and then I'm going to give you a personal example as well, and from a client standpoint. I was just having lunch with a mentor of mine, a former CEO within the health system I'd worked in, and we were talking about the program and I shared with them that one of the CEOs that I was able to do some work with just in the last year had taken over a facility that had really a lot of failing numbers, a lot of low performance across the board. And about two or three months ago we got together for lunch and I asked him Tim, how's it going? What's happening at the hospital? How are things been in the months that followed our opportunity to train your team and put a trust contract in play and some other things and he said, roy, I'll give you one number to think about, and that is this Last month we had zero hospital-based infections.

Speaker 2:

Now, that's nothing to play around with and it's not a light number at all, because that's life or death. Those are things that can transform your health experience dramatically. And so when you can take a facility from being low performing in that area to near perfect in what it's doing. That's transformational, and that's what I mean when I talk about the outcomes you can get when you create a high-trust culture.

Speaker 1:

I love that. What are some of the ways you help an organization Like? You went in with this hospital and you're helping this hospital. It's huge. That's not like even a dollar figure. It's not like we produce X amount of more widgets or our ROI goes up to X. You're talking about human lives. What are some of the things you do when you go into a hospital like that and you're working with the team? What are some of the things you talk about? What are some of the exercises you do to be able to get that performance not the performance, but to be able to get that trust level at new heights?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question, but one of the first things that we have to understand is it's not about us, and as leaders, we have to take a step back and recognize that, one of the key things. Well, let me I'll tell you another story to illustrate this. My daughter, faith, is the youngest of four kids. I have 28, 25, 23, and 21. So she's my 21 year old. 15 years ago, when this program was in its infancy, I came home one Friday night. Ken and my daughter had turned our living room into a bracelet factory, and if you have kids, you know two things about that. Number one it's an OSHA violation those little beads on the floor. The only thing more deadly than that is a Lego.

Speaker 1:

Legos.

Speaker 2:

And so Faith runs to the door. She has a bracelet for me. She says daddy, will you wear it? And of course there's only one answer to give when your daughter asks that question and it's yes. And so that was Memorial Day weekend, and through the weekend I became what's technically known as show and tell. So everywhere we went she showed off the bracelet, talked about it, told people about the beads and everything else. Come Tuesday morning I've got to put on the suit, go to a client meeting. I put the bracelet on the dresser head out to work. I come home that night and the dining room is still a bracelet factory. Osha didn't get the memo. Everything's still going crazy. Kim and I are in the kitchen making dinner. Faith comes into the kitchen she's got another bracelet and I look at her and my first thought is sweetheart, I've only got so much arm to give to your cause. But what she says to me, kim, is daddy, if you didn't like the other bracelet, we wear this one.

Speaker 1:

Right through the heart.

Speaker 2:

So I went in the bedroom, I put the bracelet on and I wear it every day. This is it right here? And I do it for two reasons, and you were asking what is it that I want people to resonate with? Number one, I told her I would. But number two it reminds me that every little thing that I say or do is either contributing to or taking away from the trust that people have in me.

Speaker 2:

Trust is often this just big sweeping idea that we throw out there Word like trust or love or anything else, but it's the little things that matter. So in a workshop, what we try to do is we try to break it down into very tangible and actionable things that people can understand. And it begins first with being trustworthy, which is different than being trusted. Trusted is the goal, Trustworthy is congratulations, you've earned the right to be trusted, and that's really about trusting ourselves. And so at that point, we want them to lean into some ideas about how do you foster integrity in your relationship, how do you make sure that your attitudes where it needs to be because it may be the only thing on any given day that you have control of and are you focused on the right thing right now, and so the course sort of follows that idea.

Speaker 2:

The other lesson in the bracelet story, ken, that leaders often miss is the idea of humility, and that's that concept I mentioned earlier of it's not about me. I need to take a step back and really evaluate if I want a better relationship with that person. Am I listening to them? Am I understanding them? Like with my daughter, I saw it as a little craft project that she made that might be forgotten the next week, and to her, the bracelet was her whole world, and oftentimes we'll walk by a conversation and see it as just one more thing in our list and miss the idea that it's everything in that person's list.

Speaker 1:

So how do you? Because it almost sounds like you're saying that You've got to slow down in order to experience it from the perspective of the other person, and that's really how you gain trust and become trustworthy.

Speaker 2:

That's one of the elements. The second attribute of a high trust relationship or culture is authenticity. Once we've established that idea of trustworthiness with ourselves, then it's incumbent upon us to build authentic and real relationships with the people that we work with and people in our family and good friends. And authenticity really includes things like having clarity of purpose and understanding, make sure that we understand each other and then respect, having high levels of respect in the relationship. Some of the best relationships you have can be the most passionate ones that you can argue and perhaps even raise your voice or yell to get through something difficult together, but you know that you're always going to let that person leave with their dignity, and that's what respect is. And so, creating that authentic relationship where you can have those real conversations, where you can develop candor in that relationship too, and not be surrounded by people that just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear, Give me a story about working with a company where you went in and the culture was there.

Speaker 1:

It was not good. It wasn't very trustworthy Actually, you're smiling already. It wasn't very trustworthy, and what were some of the things you did to help them build trust?

Speaker 2:

So there's a fairly consistent line with the organizations that come into. Some have good culture happening and some are in challenging positions. I'm working with an organization now. It's a national association. The CEO has been in the role now for about a year and they had what I'll call a consistent, strong business in terms of their execution on what they do right now.

Speaker 2:

But to put to thrive in the future they have to change their offering. They have to really sort of expand the areas in which they're willing to do and put programming in and some other things. And so the first thing is to really work with that CEO to understand what specifically is happening or not happening within the organization. Where are the challenges? What does that look like?

Speaker 2:

And then, in the training program, the biggest takeaway in terms of exercise or what comes out of the program is what we call the trust contract, and I think of it as an organization has a mission, a vision, a set of strategies and expectation and values. I want this trust contract to come right alongside of and reflect what's already articulated in those documents and ideas, but add to it. What are the specific expectations that we as a leadership team are going to bring to the table every single day to ensure that we're putting relationships first in all that we do and that we're capitalizing on this wonderful catalyst called trust with everything that we do. And so that contract becomes a tool that they can use for inspiration, accountability and correction as things go on. So in some of the companies they'll use the trust contract when we get it done as an on-boarding tool. New leader comes in, a couple of the directors take him to lunch, sit down, walk through the whole thing with him and they sign it and then send down a new copy for others to sign.

Speaker 1:

So there's an adoption process that goes into this and in a creation process, You're getting buy-in from people that, hey, we're going to be a part of building a culture. Yes, sir. Trust even before you start the process with.

Speaker 2:

That's right. That's right. So we're going to adopt the contract and then we can monitor what's happening after that, as they go forward.

Speaker 1:

I love that, I love that. So give me some examples. You walk into a company. How do you assess where a company's at in their culture, in their level of trust? That's a good question.

Speaker 2:

So one of the things that's important to understand is, when you look at what trust contributes to, most companies are already measuring a lot of things that matter retention, market share and a lot of other things and so, as we look at what we want our outcomes to be in terms of performance, in terms of engagement, in terms of what the relationship is we take a look at what the current numbers look like. What are the performance metrics that they're already measuring and then trace that back and track that back to trust, and then ask the question how can we improve, what are the specific things that need to be improved and how do the relationships in that journey make an impact on that? And starting with the team itself, then the employees in the organization and then, of course, other stakeholders that are in the area that they do work.

Speaker 1:

I love that. So once you assess, you come in and what normally is your first message, your first talk to a team? Is it the entire organization? Is it buy-in at the C-suite level or upper level management first and then it filters down to the organization?

Speaker 2:

Great question. It has to happen at the leadership level first, and so first the CEO has to buy-in and then the CEO's immediate circle of team members. So normally when I come in, the first exercise is to bring that C-suite level leadership through the training program. Training program is four hour program, usually in person. I've done some remotely. It's not as nearly as effective or nearly as engaging, obviously, but we are starting to bring programs online. So very soon we'll be able to offer this as a digital program through the Stockworth Institute where I'm at now in the studio. So we are bringing some of that together. But you train that leadership, you get that team signed off on a contract and that contract then is the governing piece for what they're going to do going forward.

Speaker 1:

And so you walk in, you meet with the C-suite team and have a conversation with them, and what does that conversation look like? Hey guys, I'm here to disrupt and help you build some trust.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sometimes you know, it's fascinating when you start this conversation. It's palpable. You know, one of the first things that we'll do in the training is we'll ask people in the room to identify three people you trust the most and why and it's amazing that consistently in nearly every program that I lead, that's a pretty emotional moment for people because they start really digging into things that get them in the gut. You talk about how trust feels and how it feels when it's lost and then you focus on identifying these three or four people in your life. It's rich.

Speaker 1:

So does that kind of open it up, roy? It does. They're talking about people that they trust, and I assume not very often it's people that they're sitting at the table with. It's normally a mom or a grandparent, or my ninth grade teacher or a coach in my life or a drill instructor, somebody that poured into them, that helped them become the person that they're becoming. That's got to be able to open up their heart, to be able to then say, ah, I want that level of trust inside my workplace.

Speaker 2:

It does a couple of things. It does that it cracks that heart open a little bit, gets them seeing this as more than just one more training exercise. And then, secondly, we use it as a prompt to illustrate something really important about how trust works. So I'll ask them to identify the person and then pick one or two words that describe why you trust them so much. And then I'll ask them to share not that person's name or who they are, but the words that they come up with. And inevitably, because we're all human, those words fall into two categories Some of them are very emotional in terms of the response, and then some of them are experiential, and those are the two drivers of trust in our lives. There's an emotional connection that we make with somebody, and usually emotion shows up right out of the gates in terms of first impression, getting to know all of that stuff. But then it's over time that the experience begins to contribute to how well you trust them and how much you trust them. And so understanding that it's two drivers is critical, because a lot of us we're all wired differently. So someone who's wired on an operational level may not ever think about the emotional things, and their trust is being damaged every time they run a meeting because they don't think about the emotional side of that. So creating that awareness alone allows people to have breakthrough moments in terms of how they can change and transform their relationship.

Speaker 2:

My co-author is amazing. She's a great physician, very insightful. She's got a great heart and faith. And as we were going through this process together, I'll never forget we had just agreed that we were going to partner on this and write. I kind of laid out the foundation of the work, because I developed the guts of it early on and I said to her O'Mara, this is one of those things that we're going to talk about today, but it's going to be a few weeks and it'll kick in. And she goes what do you mean? I go it's hard to describe. You'll be in a meeting one day and something's going to happen, and then this filter is going to kick in about how to deal with something. And she goes oh, ok, that's great.

Speaker 2:

So about a month later, I'm sitting at my desk and I get a text message from Dr Mansfield and all it says is I get it now. And so I called her up, I said what happened and she described to me this relationship she had with somebody that she worked with, that every time they were in a meeting there was a conflict. They just seemed to rub each other in such a way that automatically it would just take the conversation into a nonproductive place. And it got so bad that when she would see this person coming down the hallway she'd duck in the ladies room just that kind of that visceral irritation. And so she's in a meeting. They start to get to that point and that filter drops. And what she said to me was Roy.

Speaker 2:

Suddenly I realized it wasn't just about me not trusting her, but for some reason she didn't trust me and what was I going to do about it? And she said I made an effort to go meet with her and over the course of time they went from being adversaries in everything that happened to being advocates for each other. And Dr Mansfield went on to be the chief medical officer at one of the hospitals. And what she tells people is, if I didn't have this person in my relationships as an advocate, I would have never gone from being the director of the services at this hospital to the chief medical officer here. And so it's finding those connections and how you can rewire them to become more productive in what you do.

Speaker 1:

So you say that I think this so, in her walking through that and building trust with that relationship, was her promotion or ability to get promoted because of what happened to her internally or because of the relationship?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's everything man. I mean. It's you know, and oftentimes we'll get so hung up in the work side of it that we miss the bigger piece of it. And in my own personal testimony, which I think I you know, you and I had a little bit of time to talk about, you know this program launched in 2017, but it became real to me 1,556 days ago, when I was my wife and I had a typical Friday night, went to dinner, watched a movie and, as is the case often, roy falls asleep on the couch. And at 2 o'clock in the morning I woke up with the worst chest pain I'd ever felt in my life, like someone had punched a hole right through my chest, was squeezing life out of my heart. I ran in the bedroom, woke him up, told her we need to get to the emergency room. On the way have a stroke, become completely non-responsive and by the time we get to the emergency room, she's got to get a couple of nurses to drag me in and, thank God, one of the nurses recognizes that there's no feeling in my arms and legs, which indicates it's not a heart attack, but it's what's called an acute aortic dissection, which, in layman's terms, means that my heart was splitting open right along the aorta, and for me that meant from the carotid artery all the way down to the root. So they called for a helicopter, got me down to the big tertiary care hospital where I'm in surgery for six hours and the damage was so bad that they just knew that there was no prognosis for a positive outcome, that if I survived I'd likely be nursing care for the rest of my life because of all the loss of oxygen. So I'm in the hospital for a month after being in a coma for an entire week, and when I woke up all my cognitive skills were there. There was not any long-term damage, and so I started on my road to recovery and was able to get back to work. And eventually, when I did get back to work, that's when COVID hit. So, as you might imagine, in the hospital setting you're doing all COVID all the time for two years.

Speaker 2:

But what I tell people is two things One mind the story of mission, medicine and miracles, because throughout that journey of having the dissection, getting to the hospital, getting to the right surgeon, there were too many perfect timing moments for it to be anything but miraculous intervention. And when you have thousands of people praying for you. There's a powerful thing happening in that realm, and then it's also part of this. My testimony is I had to really lean into that idea of trusting myself to get through that recovery, to know that I could do what I needed to do, because they tell you that it's time to go home and you don't want to leave because you don't want something to happen, right. So trusting yourself to get the care to eat right, to exercise the way you should and do those things. And you know, here I am now. I've got a business that's taken off, I've done three or four half-marathons in the process as well, and God has been amazing in terms of being able to give me a platform to share these stories.

Speaker 1:

So final question what do you do when you're dealing with a company C-suite, upper-level management and they don't want to lean into trust? They don't want to be the person that goes I'm going to do what I have to do in order to foster and cultivate a culture of trust in our company.

Speaker 2:

What do, you do with those people.

Speaker 2:

There's a couple of things that have to happen. Number one is if the CEO is not going to buy into it, it's not going to go anywhere, and if that team isn't willing to take the steps to do it, it's not going to happen, and that's unfortunate. You've got to find the right champion in the organization. You've got to find the person who's willing to say I'm going to take this step, regardless of how much time it takes, regardless of the resistance that we may see out there. That's going to have the courage to do that.

Speaker 2:

And that's one of the elements of the program is the fourth attribute that we say is part of a high trust person is the attribute of influence. And influence, as you know in your work, is the key to leadership. I mean that is what a leader has. A leader has influence and the question is what do you do with it? You know, when you have trustworthiness, when you have authenticity, when you have dependability, the things that people are sort of at the foundation what do you do with that influence? And it's the organizations that are willing to say I'm going to use this influence at the very top of the organization to create trust within the organization and with all the stakeholders, customers and audiences that we have to make it happen.

Speaker 1:

That's good, that's really good. So, because it's funny, you said those attributes, say the attributes one more time.

Speaker 2:

So the attributes that we teach to our trustworthiness authenticity, dependability and influence. So if you think about the two drivers of emotion and experience at the where the two intersect, is where you find trustworthiness Up, the emotional plane is where we lean into authenticity and along the dependability ideas is that plane of experience. And then the outlier in the sort of the upper right side of the diagram, is influence, and again, that's the leadership differential. That's what it is that makes a difference, and there's some. We have a set of corresponding ideas that go with that, and the first one is that you build trust from the inside out. You start with yourself before you can expect it from others. You take responsibility for the relationship, you engage with them. In other words, you own it, you don't rent it. It's not a transactional thing. You are a good steward with your trust and you keep your promises and communicate consistently. And it's important to do both, because even as we try to keep our promises, as humans we're going to fail from time to time. If we communicate consistently, we manage expectations.

Speaker 1:

I love that, roy. What's the best place, best way for people to connect with you?

Speaker 2:

Two things. One, Roy w readcom or stockworth Institutecom are the two places I'll provide a link for you to put in the in the show notes where somebody could actually get right to me.

Speaker 1:

And also guys Instagram Roy read APR ROI R E I D APR Roy. Thanks my friend. Final thoughts for audience today.

Speaker 2:

Listen. Thank you for the platform, ken, and looking to see you in Atlanta in January.

Speaker 1:

We are going to have a blast. If you don't know, he's talking about our create conference. Gosh, we had John Maxwell, brenda Bouchard, ed Maulette, anthony trucks, gary Brecca, erwin McMahon is Brian Covey, vic Keller, and I think it's going to be unbelievable lineup. The last three create conferences that we've done will be back in Atlanta January the 11th to the 13th Another unbelievable lineup coming to Atlanta. It's going to be three days where we spend time walking through what we call our core five faith, health, relationships, business and finances and that's what it is that value to to you.

Speaker 1:

Do me a couple of things. Number one hit that subscribe button. Leave us a five star review over on whatever podcast platform you're listening to. Second thing is, if you'll snap a screenshot shared on your Instagram page, tag me, tag my guy Roy in it. Both of us will give you a little bit of love and share it with our audience as well. And again, thank you for joining us on this episode of as the leader grows podcast. We'll see you next week with another amazing guest. To see you then.