Transforming Leadership: The Power of Trust with Dr. Yoram Solomon

What if promoting the wrong people into leadership roles sabotages your organization's success? Join us as we unravel this and other pressing issues with Dr. Yoram Solomon, a thought leader with 19 books and over 400 articles on trust in leadership. In this episode of the Everlasting Fulfilment Podcast, we explore the indispensable role of trust in fostering job satisfaction and a thriving organizational culture. Dr. Solomon shares his transformative journey from focusing on innovation to uncovering the critical importance of trust, offering a fresh perspective on why leadership should be treated as a profession rather than a mere promotion.

Dr. Solomon and Nico van de Venne dive into the complexities of trust within corporate hierarchies, shedding light on phenomena like CEO disease and founderitis. They expose the significant trust gap between executives and their employees and customers through compelling real-life examples and revealing survey data. By emphasizing attributes like trustworthiness over mere hard work, they present a nuanced understanding of what truly matters in leadership. The episode also delves into employee autonomy and creativity dynamics, supported by data illustrating how trust can bridge organizational divides and empower teams to achieve remarkable outcomes.

Discover how leading figures like Elon Musk leverage trust to drive innovation and success. We'll share riveting stories of leaders who entrusted their team members with significant responsibilities, such as a general manager giving full pricing authority to a salesperson and the subsequent positive results. Personal anecdotes highlight the multifaceted nature of trust, showing that it must be tailored to individual relationships. This episode contains valuable lessons on cultivating an empowered organizational culture that thrives on trust, innovation, and mutual respect. Tune in to learn how to build your organisation's trustworthy and innovative environment.

Guest website: https://www.yoramsolomon.com
Guest Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoramsolomon

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:00 The Power and Importance of Trust
• 10:24 Building Trust in Leadership Roles
• 16:51 Building Trust Through Delegation and Innovation
• 24:09 Navigating Trust in Complex Relationships
• 31:48 Empowerment and Autonomy in Leadership
• 42:01 The Cost of Leadership Obsession

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

One of the problems is that we promote the wrong people. We look at leadership as a promotion instead of a profession, and leadership has to be looked at as a profession, not a promotion. One of the reasons if you are a leader and you cannot trust your employees, you should not be a leader. Because you're not going to be a good leader, because these people are going to leave. They're not going to be productive, they're not going to be creative, they're not going to be a good leader, because these people are going to leave. They're not going to be productive, they're not going to be creative, they're not going to be effective, they're going to leave and they're not going to enjoy their work. By the way, trust and job satisfaction are correlated. 59% If you are ranked not in the bottom quartile, but the top quartile. So between the top of the bottom quartile to the bottom of the top quartile, 50% of participants, their level of job satisfaction is going to go anywhere between 59% and 62%, depending on how you ask the question.

Speaker 2: 0:55

So they're not going to enjoy. Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within In a few seconds. You just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. In today's episode, I'm your host, nico van de Venne confidant, successful CEO founders, entrepreneurs striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast with our next guest, joram Solomon.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Dr Joram Solomon is the author of the Book of Trusts. That's one book of his current 19 books that he's written and over 400 articles on trust. He's also written on innovation, culture and entrepreneurship. Yoram holds a PhD in organization and management and an MBA, a law degree and an engineering degree. I think you got bored to go to work and just started doing degrees, apparently. And management and an MBA, a law degree and an engineering degree. I think you got bored to go to work and just started doing degrees, apparently. He's also an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship, a three-time TEDx speaker, a former executive elected official and pilot. Through his keynotes, workshops and teachings, he's known for his no BS style of telling you what you need to hear and not what he thinks you want to hear, and that's what I love about you, joram. Welcome to the show. You really tell it how it is. That's the way I like it Radical truth. Just throw it out there and you, mr, trust to me. You got these. You got two sized books. That's amazing. So how are you?

Speaker 1: 2:52

I'm good. Thank you, it's great to be with you again, nico likewise.

Speaker 2: 2:56

So I said 19, but you just gave me a a little hint there on in the green room where you're doing and and book number 20. We already actually, but we're not going to tell everybody about that one.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Yeah, it is Book number 20. I love writing it.

Speaker 2: 3:15

So what's the next step? Because I would think most people would say you write a book about trust and that's it. In all honesty. There's a very big book about trust and a little book about trust, and then the rest of the books. Where does that flow come from? In writing all these books and coming out to all the different points of view and so on, how do you, I would say, how does your brain work with that? That might be a little bit extensive, but tell us, how did you come to that point?

Speaker 1: 3:43

First of all, it's very easy. What you do is you write a 550-page book with close to a quarter million words, which is the book of trust. It's actually the biggest book ever written about trust. And then what you do is you start writing books that, like the first book after that was every fourth word, and then the next one is the word after every. No, I'm kidding.

Speaker 1: 4:05

My process is that's a good tactic, by the way, I didn't see. Yeah, but it's not going to be very readable. I started with I didn't start with trust. My topic was not trust. My topic you mentioned it in the introduction my topic was innovation and, more specifically, creativity, because to me, innovation is creativity plus implementation. So you have to have a great idea and you have to be able to implement it. That's how you get innovation. Creativity is a personal function, implementation is an organizational function and then you've got innovation, which is the organizational output. So this is what I started with. I did a lot of. My first book was really about that. It was bowling with the crystal ball. So this is what I started with. I did a lot of. My first book was really about that. It was Bowling with a Crystal Ball. It was about innovation. In fact, everything up to my fourth book were about innovation and creativity, and that was the point for me to understand, and this also tied to my PhD research. That came just between my third book and my fourth book.

Speaker 1: 5:07

I spent time in my PhD, my doctoral research, and what happened was that I was realizing during my research. I was realizing that innovation does not happen unless you have a culture of innovation. Culture of innovation means that supervisors give autonomy to their employees, employees are accountable and are taking risks. People within the team are holding what I call a constructive disagreement and at some point it hit me that none of those will happen if there is no trust. So I started researching the topic of trust, and it was individual research. I already had my doctoral degree, so this was just research that I did, and I started simple and I got deeper and deeper and after a while I realized that you know what I think I'm on to something. It was actually my eighth book.

Speaker 1: 6:09

When I wrote my eighth no, my seventh book, I'm sorry, my seventh book Culture Starts With you, not your Boss that I wrote about trust for the first time. So I wrote about trust for the first time and I started researching it. And that was the point where I realized if you're trying to build innovation, if you're trying to be an innovation in an innovative company, this is like building a building from the second floor. You don't start at the second floor. You don't start at the first floor. The first floor is the culture. You start at the foundation. The foundation is trust. So I started doing research about trust. I started learning what trust is. I wouldn't have pursued it if my approach to trust was the same as everybody else.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Back in 2006, before I even wrote my first book, stephen Covey, mr Covey, son of Stephen R Covey he wrote the Speed of Trust and he presented it. I listened to him, I read the book and I looked at that. I looked at every other book, I looked at research that was done and I asked myself do I look at trust differently? And I found that I do. I look at trust differently. So I started writing about trust and obviously, by the time I got to the book of trust the big book of trust I had a lot of content and I put it there. So I started really by narrowing down from innovation and productivity and effectiveness and everything else and employee engagement and all, and I started narrowing it down to the core, and the core was trust and I focused a few years on researching trust for trust's sake.

Speaker 1: 7:46

What is trust exactly? How does trust behave? What makes one person trust another person in any relationship? Once I've established that in the book of trust and by the way, you already know that book is 550 pages, almost a quarter million words. Often, when people invite me to come and speak, give keynotes. They say we're going to buy the Book of Trust for all our participants and I tell them don't get the Book of Trust. The Book of Trust is 550 pages, close to a quarter million words. This is cruel and unusual punishment. You don't do that. So they go. What do we do? Oh, fortunately I have the mini Book of trust. The mini book of trust is a shorter version.

Speaker 2: 8:28

Is that the book where you skipped a couple of words?

Speaker 1: 8:30

I mean yeah yeah, that's the, that's actually every sixth word. What I did is I shrunk it to the concepts. So the concepts, the, the implementation, the application, it's all there. And I tell people, start with the mini book of trust, of trust. If you find it compelling and you want to dig deeper, you want to get the research behind it, then get the book of trust. So at that point I've established my understanding of trust. So it was what is trust? How does trust behave? What makes one person trust another person? And how do you form because leave it there it's not enough how do you form new habits that change all the behaviors and make you trusted?

Speaker 1: 9:15

Once I've established that, now I started broadening the scope again, and this is where all the other books came out. So, for example, there's a series of mini books called Can I Trust you, and they are. How do you apply this to different roles? So to a salesperson, to a project manager, to a leader, to a team member, to a consultant? How do you apply that to specific roles? So it's the same framework, but the application is completely different roles. So it's the same framework, but the application is completely different. Now the book I'm writing is actually called the Trust Premium, because I do believe that people buy from people they trust and they're even willing to pay a premium when they buy from somebody they trust. So that has evolved in the last year and now that's going to come out in a book. So this is how you get more and more books.

Speaker 2: 10:04

Okay, yeah, I think I need to start on my first one, like I said in the green room as well, and you told me, start writing, and that's as simple as it is, indeed, and we always make ourselves a lot of excuses of not doing it, but you're hit like number 20. And if you're looking at it the way that you're saying, you evolve in the story. I must admit, while I'm doing the research on the coaching practice that I have, I found two very key words that have been coming into my, let's say my, universe. It's CEO disease and founderitis. When you're talking about it and I follow you all over the place, a little bit linkedin and all the beautiful socials, um, I see something resonating coming from what you're saying towards the people that I want to reach out to, which are ceos and successful entrepreneurs and founders, because at some point and I know this because I've experienced it with either founder that I worked for or being a founder is at some point you need to learn to trust the people that you employ as well, and it's something that it's a very strange thing that's given.

Speaker 2: 11:13

Yeah, that's normal. I'm like, no, it's not. You employ somebody because you have the idea that they are able to help you, but you're still founder and you think you know best that they are able to help you, but you're still founder and you think you know best. And that's one of the aspects of founderitis, which I found a very good word for a kind of a disease, but I wrote it somewhere. I found a name for the medication, which came down to Confident, of something like that. I'm a confident, so it was a confident medication or something like that, which was an idea and a process wherein I would aid them in the conversation in trusting first of all, of course, themselves, because that's where everything starts from within, goes without, and then in that flow, there is a point where you start trusting your environment and the people you work with. Is that something that also comes down into one of your beautiful books that more focuses on that story? Because I think that would be something very interesting either for the CEOs or the founders that are listening right now.

Speaker 1: 12:19

So several things. Actually, you're looking at it from a slightly different direction than PricewaterhouseCoopers did a study last year and they interviewed more than 500 executives in companies and they asked them do you think that your employees trust you? Do you think that your customers trust you? And 87% said customers trust us, 87% of executives. They interviewed more than 2,000 customers of those companies and when they asked the customers do you trust that company, 30% said they do. That's a 57% gap between what the CEO thinks and what the customers say. There is a gap between CEOs and employees. I don't remember the exact numbers. What I do remember that even that is a 15, smaller, but still a 15% gap. Where executives believe that their employees trust them, where the employees believe trust the executives less.

Speaker 1: 13:23

I once was asked to give this keynote to a company and we had this Zoom call. The CEO wanted to interview me before I come over, and so imagine this on the other side of the camera is a long table long desk. The CEO is at the top of the desk. Three executives are sitting closer to the camera, so everybody's facing me. I can see their faces, but they can't see the CEO can't see the faces of the other executives. He sees their backs and I asked at some point do you think? I asked the CEO do you think your employees trust you? He says of course they do. The three executives roll their eyes. I'm like if I could only record this and send you the video all three executives rolling their eyes. So I think that the first step my first TED Talk I borrowed a line from the pilot for the TV show the Newsroom and it's the first step in solving any problem is recognizing you have one. I think the first step is that CEOs need to understand that their employees don't trust them as much as they think they do. And how does that happen? But you talked about CEO trusting employees. What I found in my research was that there is a 47.4% correlation between whether the employee feels trusted, gets the autonomy I should say get the autonomy. So 47.4% between employees getting autonomy and their level of creativity. That's a pretty strong correlation. There is a 67% correlation between whether the CEO is willing to trust employees and or if he trusts them, he or she trusts them and whether they're willing to give them that autonomy. That will increase creativity by 47.4%. So there is a pretty strong correlation there.

Speaker 1: 15:29

And in one of my surveys. I asked this question. I had 363 responses. What is the most important quality for you and other people? I gave them five different qualities, six different relationships. The relationships were between a leader and employee to a leader, peer to peer, salesperson to customer, government representative to constituent and spouse to spouse. What is the most important quality? Number one 61.2% was trustworthiness. Number one it was number one in only five relationships, only five out of the six, only five. Okay, when I asked the lead and the average is 61.2 and it's still in only five.

Speaker 1: 16:15

When I asked the leader what is the most important quality for you in your employee, number one was not trustworthiness. Number one was, with 47.5%, the willingness to work hard. Number one. Number two, with 39% 8.5% less, was trustworthiness. So it reminds me of something that Henry Ford once said. He said why is it that every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with the brain attached? And when you think that this is old, this is Henry Ford. November 2022, elon Musk took over Twitter sends an email to all employees saying you have to work hard, work long hours or leave Nothing about their trustworthiness. It has to start with the leaders trusting employees before you can go to the outcomes the results, the outputs that you expect from the organization.

Speaker 2: 17:18

That's a beautiful approach and very insightful, because you wouldn't think that it would be contradictory to anything that we were used to. But come to think of it, while I'm in the leadership position right now, where I'm running a pretty long project I told you about it when we met before I worked in a nuclear power plant. A lot of people know that. In the time that I've done the podcast and the thing is, and I've mentioned this before, by the way, not really.

Speaker 1: 17:44

You and I both know it's not really a nuclear power plant. It's really a facility to build atomic bombs. Oh wait, we're not supposed to. Oh, we're not supposed to talk about that.

Speaker 2: 17:53

I'll cut that out, never mind, edit, and they're only directed towards. That went a thousand paths. Yeah, yeah, who knows? My niece always asks me at Christmas time so, uncle, when are you going to start to glow so we don't have to put up the tree anymore?

Speaker 1: 18:16

And you probably answered what you mean. I'm not glowing yet. Turn off the light here Should do that next time.

Speaker 2: 18:24

Absolutely, put on one of those radiant paints or something Real radium, I'll lose my teeth. But yeah, I know what you mean by the trust, because one of the major things that I want to do with my team is I come into a meeting and it's so easy for me to say hello, guys, I'm the dumbest person here. I'm just here to make decisions and you can put me left or right, say yes or no, and that's all. Of course, I'm not the stupidest person in the room. I know exactly what's going on and I'm very much aware of what everybody's doing. But to my mind it is like saying you guys know what you're talking about. Who am I to tell you from beginning that I'm going to do this or that? No, you need to understand all their inputs and it takes time and effort and all that beautiful stuff that nobody wants, because then you see the dollar signs go through their eyes when they think about time and all that, and I'm like the time that you spend doing that could give you X amount more on the other side, because the people that are sitting there they know next time they go to a meeting, somebody is going to listen to them and then they're going to take decisions and they're not going to.

Speaker 2: 19:33

Of course, I take decisions sometimes in the meantime because it's just necessary. It's not always have the luxury of all the time that you need in the world, but it is something that has also created a like you said before a culture, and that's what I understand when you're saying with your fundamentals, the fundamental of your team is understanding each other and and giving each other the opportunity to one make mistakes, to take decisions. Three take action and commitment. There's a lot of commitment needed there, but I I started to believe in trust a lot more since I talked to you and understanding what it fundamentally hits within a person, and I remember last time where we talked, you gave me a totally different approach on trust, because it's not only about a person towards another person. There's a lot more layers there. Can you enlighten us a little bit on the subliminal layers that not everybody knows about trust because of your research? A lot about this beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: 20:37

I want to add one more thing, because you're talking about decisions, being the person in the room that makes decisions Actually, it's funny because this is what's on my computer screen right now I'm working on. I teach at SMU, I teach entrepreneurship and right now I teach a class on corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. My fourth book was called Unkilled Creativity how Corporate America Can Out-Innovate Startups. Because right now corporate America does exactly the opposite of innovating and only startups innovate. So you buy them, but then 90% of acquisitions fail. So how do you build an innovation machine? It starts with something that's called the innovation funnel. And the innovation funnel there was research done. It was back in the 1990s.

Speaker 1: 21:21

I wish there was something newer that said, for every one successful market launch of a new product or service, there were 3,000 ideas. Here's the thing how do you screen those ideas? So the topic for tomorrow's lesson is actually the innovation funnel. How do you screen those ideas? You got 3,000. Who screens those ideas? Obviously, it's the CEO, it's the manager. If you give five minutes to each one of 3,000 ideas Now, nico, is five minutes enough to evaluate an idea that can change the future of your company?

Speaker 1: 21:57

Probably not, but let's say it's five minutes. If you need to spend five minutes on each one of 3,000 ideas, you know how much you need to spend on it. 125 full days, that's not feasible. But it's not just that. I'm the CEO, I'm the general manager. I was a general manager of a hundred million dollar business unit in a very large technology company. Just like you said, nico, I'm not.

Speaker 1: 22:24

Again, I'm not going to say that I'm not the smartest person in the room. I'm not the dumbest person in the room, but I definitely don't know the technology as much as the technologists in the room and I don't know the market as much as the market people in the room. But I definitely don't know the technology as much as the technologists in the room and I don't know the market as much as the market people in the room. I don't know the specific customers as much as the salespeople in the room. They know better than me. So the question is how do I evaluate their idea if I don't know as much as they do?

Speaker 1: 22:50

So the way I look at innovation funnel and I know that we're digressing from trust, but trust relates to that, because the way to do that is by having to trust your employees you turn it around and you say, instead of you telling me what your idea is by the way, two of the worst statements that a general manager or CEO can say to their employees one is show me and I'll tell you if it's good or bad. And two, don't do that until I tell you to. So, but if you turn it around instead of you, show me your idea, how about this? How about I tell you what the boundaries are, here's how much money we can spend, here is it cannot be something that's not ethical. It cannot be this. Give me the boundaries.

Speaker 1: 23:43

Let me come up with something where I say we meet the boundaries, this meets your boundaries, and at that point you're really driving decision-making to the people that, again, it's not a matter of being smart, but are the most knowledgeable, are most experienced in a very specific market. So that was a side that was to touch on your point on making decisions and giving autonomy. But you asked about the layers of trust and, first of all, trust is a lot more complicated than people think and the number one thing I told you that I wouldn't have committed to the topic of trust, by the way. Did I show you my commitment to trust?

Speaker 2: 24:24

Oh, I don't think so. Oh, right Now, I remember. Yeah, I have.

Speaker 1: 24:29

Yes, I have the word trust. For you audience members who are not seeing this but listening to it I have the word trust tattooed on my arm. That is the only tattoo that I have. I swear Trust me. And it wasn't my idea, it was my young daughter's idea, by the way. She's 23 when I say young, it was a year ago. She said let's get a matching tattoo. So we both have the word trust etched on our bodies in an irrevocable way.

Speaker 1: 25:00

But I told you that my commitment to the topic of trust has not started before. I realized that I have a different perspective than anybody else, and the number one difference here is the trust is relative, and what that means is when I do my workshops or keynotes and I ask people, do you want to be trusted by everyone? Nobody raises their hand. Nobody raises their hand. When I ask, do you want to be trusted by everyone? And I ask why not? Why don't you want to be trusted by everyone? And it's not a question of want to as it is. I don't think that I you want to be trusted by everyone, and it's not a question of want to as it is. I don't think that I'm going to be trusted by everyone. Wait a minute. Why not? Because different people are different? Because one component in the trust process is personality compatibility.

Speaker 1: 25:47

Nico, you and I hit it off. Our personalities are compatible, but there are people that I'm not going to be personally compatible with and, by the way, sometimes it's something very fundamental that neither one of us is willing or capable of changing. Sometimes it's something very simple. I had a boss that every time I would try to convince her with a new idea. Let me ask you this before I tell you the rest of the story If I need to convince you, Nico, to do something, do I need to give you the bottom line first? Here's what I'm asking for, Nico, and then explain why. Or would you rather me take you through my thought process until it makes it obvious why I'm asking what I'm asking, only at the end? Which one would you prefer?

Speaker 2: 26:36

Yeah, I think the second one would give me enough info.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Interesting. I'm the opposite from you. I made the bottom line first. By the way, I'm in majority of 74% of people, you're in the minority of 17% of people. And then 9% said we don't care one way or another. Why is that important? My boss was like you.

Speaker 1: 26:59

She needed me to take her through everything and then reach the conclusion. Then the conclusion is going to be natural for her. To me, if you don't give me the bottom line, I get lost. Give me the bottom line first, so it will give me context. Then your explanation would support it.

Speaker 1: 27:20

So, knowing that I'm like that, knowing that I need the bottom line first, I would always go to her with the bottom line first. As soon as I give her the bottom line, she would get an immediate allergic reaction and it doesn't matter what I say after that, and eventually it would take days and sometimes weeks to convince her. Eventually I would be able to convince her, but it's not an effective or an efficient process. One day I asked her when I'm trying to convince you with something, what do you like, bottom line first or thought process first? She said thought process first. She was like you in the 17%. I was on the 74% that need the bottom line first and I treated her like she was like me. Once I realized that, I said every time I talk to her I need to take her through the thought process and avoid giving her the bottom line first. Nico, it worked like that. Trust is relative. The same behavior that would cause one person to trust you could cause another person to distrust you. Same behavior.

Speaker 2: 28:47

Now you know what the problem with that is is that it complicates things. But the fact that we like things to be simple has no bearing on the fact that trust is not simple. Trust is complicated and it's more important that you understand the differences between you and the other person if you want to be trusted by them than that you try to follow these eight rules of. These are the eight things you need to do to be trusted. Yeah, I can imagine the situation you're in sometimes. When explaining that, I must say there's something that I do need. It's really a need within me. It has to do with usefulness. So for me, a conversation or an action or something that somebody else needs me to do with usefulness. So for me, a conversation or an action or something that somebody else needs me to do is what's the actual gain or what's the reason? Or give me a very good reason. Don't ask me to do. I think what's the movie called Something with Castle, where a guy was moving stones from one side of the courtyard to another, and I don't see the use in that. But when they said it was a case of honor and actually sticking a new one to the boss of the prison, I understood. Okay, this has a use and that's something that I've had all my career.

Speaker 2: 29:38

I've had bosses that never told me what I was doing or what I was doing, and I worked in IT for a long time and they have this system called change management. You probably know it. Itil beautiful process, very rigid, very bureaucratic, and I was the change manager and a lot of the guys were like wait, hold on, you're asking me to do an administrative task, so to explain to you in detail what we're going to do on a server or whatever. And we're going to have to explain that to you in detail, what we're going to do on a server or whatever, and we're going to have to explain that to you in detail. And while we're doing that, the amount of time that it takes to write that down, the job has been done like 25,000 times because it's just clicking three buttons. And in the beginning I was really struggling why are we doing this? This is just total waste of time. And my boss at some point she was like Nick, something's really wrong. What's going on? You're running around all over the place and I said I don't understand why we're doing this.

Speaker 2: 30:36

I was hired by her because I have a very outspoken character and I'm very rigid and I want to get stuff done. I get it stomp chaos, bring it down to structure. I'm a chaotic person, so I know exactly where I need to go to not be chaotic. And then she said we're doing it for our customers. We're doing it for our customers. Why aren't we doing it? I don't understand.

Speaker 2: 30:57

And she said if somebody does something and something goes wrong in out of the 10,000 times there might be something going wrong and we did not inform our customers. They might have a very big issue. We work in a data center, so there were a lot of customers involved, and it was like that simple reason gave me four years of full-blown motivation why I was the most annoying person when the whole department asking everybody to fill in documents that were so long and communications that took so long, and where they were saying this takes five minutes. Nope, don't touch it, we need to approve with customer X and so on and so on. And it's a completely different aspect when you're just saying, yeah, let's just do it. I used to be a cowboy like that and I had a couple of issues, so it simmered down.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Look at what happened. She, at some point she was a she. Right, yeah, she was a she. Yeah, we both had female bosses. Yeah, still do, actually she. Okay, now we're married I know where that I have three. I have a wife and two girls. But, okay, wow, three, yeah, I have three. I have a wife and two girls. Okay, wow, yeah, I have three bosses. I gave up all my rights and freedoms a long time ago. But to get back on topic, look at what happened. What she needed to do was not to have you present every time and spend all this time, but start by explaining what's important. Explain those boundaries. You would know what to do with those boundaries.

Speaker 1: 32:31

I have to tell you another story, and this relates to sales, and actually this story is going to be in the Trust Premium book. So I had a salesperson In our company. The salespeople didn't report directly to you. She was an account manager for Apple. Apple was one of my customers, a big customer. She was an account manager for Apple. Apple was one of my customers, a big customer. She was my account manager and the way. So she's a salesperson, I'm the general manager, I decide on pricing, I have certain latitudes on how far I can go, and especially with respect to gross margin profit, gross profit margin. And the way the game works is that the salesperson, you give the salesperson your bottom line. You negotiate with the customer. This is your bottom line. Now she goes to the customer. The customer knows that this is the game. So the customer says, okay, get down, until she says I can't go below that. When she says I can't go below that and the customer is satisfied that she can't go below that, what does he say? Bring the general manager, because I know that he can go further. Okay, by the way, one thing you never do with a salesperson you never tell them your cost, you tell them the price. You never tell them the cost because they're going to drive it down to cost. They're going to do it Absolutely. I'm being sarcastic, obviously, teresa, that was her name.

Speaker 1: 33:56

She came to my office and she said Apple needs a better price. And I said okay, fine, here is my cost. She was shocked when I told her what my cost was. I said here's my cost. Here is my three-year cost reduction plan. Here is the profit margin that if we sell below this margin, my boss is going to make my life miserable. So please don't go below this margin, my life is going to be miserable. I gave her my boundaries. Okay, fine.

Speaker 1: 34:30

She went to Apple. She had a meeting and in that meeting she got down to a certain price which, by the way, gave me a better margin and she said that's as far as I'm willing to go. What did they do? They said bring the general manager. The general manager can go below that. So I flew over to California.

Speaker 1: 34:50

I sat with them in the meeting, introductions and everything, and suddenly their project manager goes okay, let's cut to the chase. What's the bottom line price? And my answer was whatever Teresa gives you. He says wait, have you have more abilities? I gave her full empowerment to give you a price. What, whatever price? She knows what the boundaries are, she knows how the organizations work, she knows what's painful, she knows what's not painful. She will work with you on cost reduction, on future planning, but she's the one giving you the price.

Speaker 1: 35:23

We went, we came out of the meeting. She had tears. She said nobody ever treated me that way. You know what she got me a better price than I would have given them If they came and they put pressure on me. She knows their products where our products got in. She knows it better than we did, better than I did. So why should I be making the decision and, by the way, I'm not trying to relieve myself from making decisions so I can say this is somebody else's fault. No, if she would sell for too low a price and the margin is going to be hurt, I'm going to hurt. It's my responsibility, but I trusted her.

Speaker 2: 36:01

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree and understand. Indeed, it's actually. I find it amazing when you get this opportunity to give people that empowerment. I have a guy who does Power BI, so he makes all the reporting and all the beautiful screens and so on. That goes up to management. And a couple of weeks ago I sent him an email. I said I'm going to be off. You got two weeks.

Speaker 2: 36:25

I want you to do a full analysis, because you're the creator of these environments, the data, what's behind it and so on. I want you to do a full analysis and come to me with that analysis and reminder is that I will not be the one using it. And he's like but hold on, you're asking me to do, but you're not going to be using it. No, I said you are going to be presenting that to management and he's an external, so he's like a project manager in a way, and normally nobody does this. It's not allowed. Basically, I said your name's going to be on the PowerPoint, it's going to be very clear that you created it, so keep that in mind. And he was like hold on, so you're gonna. Who's gonna present it? So it's gonna be somebody else, I'm not gonna present it. You're not gonna present it, but your name's gonna be on there and whatever you say we need to do, I will support you 100, 200 because the decisions that you make are based on actual floor, down to the floor, data. That says enough.

Speaker 2: 37:28

And he was like I have never in my life had anybody asked me to do something like this. I said, well, there's a first time for everything. And I just said, okay, and that was it. I have to continue. And he said, no, no questions, you're going to do this on your own and I will help you once you finish. I will help you do the transition and do the management talk. As we both know, you have to give him beautiful pictures and then some background, all that stuff. But he was so happy because he's been doing so many things to improve in the background. I wanted to push him a little bit forward, saying you got these capacities, why don't you use them? And he wants to be a leader at some day. I said this is the way you're going to have to learn to do it, because for us, we just were thrown into it. There was nobody who was going to support us.

Speaker 1: 38:15

By the way, here is an interesting point you correlated, like I said before, you correlated autonomy giving autonomy with creativity and productivity of that person. Not everyone wants or needs or desires autonomy. There was a study done in London I'm trying to remember I think it was 2014 where they were trying to figure out do people want, desire, wish they get more autonomy? 72% of people said yes, 28% of people said no. I had an experience once. I was running a research and development organization with 20 people and I was developing things myself. So there was a project I was so involved with that I didn't have time for other things. Now I was a micromanager. I gave very little autonomy. Things needed to be done exactly the way I wanted them to be, and this was the definition of a micromanager a bad leader. I was a bad leader and two of my employees were working on this project and the goal was to pass the French regulations. It was a security system. It needed to pass the French regulation NFA de paix that was the name of that regulation. Anyway, we tried once. We failed. I was way too busy to even spend time understanding the failure and I brought these two employees to my office and I said look, I don't have time for this. You have full authority and responsibility on this project. Go pass it. They started working on it, they made some changes, they understood and so on. They applied the second time and failed again, came back, made more changes, applied a third time, passed. So now we have, we achieved that regulation.

Speaker 1: 40:11

I brought them into my office to ask them about the experience because to me it was weird Wait. So they succeeded without me telling them exactly what to do. How can that happen? So I think the fortunate thing was that I asked them to my office separately, because the first one he said that was great, that was the best thing I felt, better than any other project anytime I worked here. He worked nights, he worked weekends until they passed the second one.

Speaker 1: 40:40

Unfortunately, as I said, I brought them to my office separately. The second one said Fortunately, as I said, I brought them to my office separately. The second one said you dumped it on us, you dropped a hot potato in our lap and you left us to hang. That's how he looked at exactly the same thing. So this goes back into research showed that only 72% of people would like to get autonomy. The rest don't. And again it comes back to this whole concept that I have on trust, and that is everything is relative. There is no magic bullet, there is no magic formula, there is no checklist of eight items that, if you check them, everything is good. It depends. It depends on the people, it depends on the context, it depends on the context.

Speaker 2: 41:29

It depends on the situation. Yeah, it's such a, it's a strange, but so it's a subject that's used so much and it's so strange how many different angles and inputs and perspectives. And that's about that one subject called trust. So I now understand even more why you hit the 20th book on. Well, of course, they're not all about trust, but most of them are. So thank you, joram, for giving us a little eye peek on what's in the biggest one that you're behind you there.

Speaker 1: 42:01

Let me add one more thing, if you don't mind. I know we're starting to run a little longer, but considering what you do, you coach executives, and one of the keynotes topics that I talk about recently is the cost of our obsession with leadership. I think that at least here in America, we're obsessed with the word leadership. More than 90% of organizational training spending has to do with leadership, and one of the problems is that we promote the wrong people. We look at leadership as a promotion instead of a profession, and leadership has to be looked at as a profession, not a promotion.

Speaker 1: 42:42

One of the reasons if you are a leader and you cannot trust your employees, you should not be a leader, because you're not going to be a good leader, because these people are going to leave, they're not going to be productive, they're not going to be creative, they're not going to be effective, they're going to leave and they're not going to enjoy their work. By the way, trust and job satisfaction are correlated. 59% If you are ranked not in the bottom quartile but the top quartile. So between the top of the bottom quartile to the bottom of the top quartile, 50% of participants their level of job satisfaction is going to go anywhere between 59% and 62%, depending on how you ask the question. So they're not going to enjoy. And why don't you trust them? Maybe you don't trust them because we are the sum of our experiences.

Speaker 1: 43:30

My eighth law of trust is that the level of trust I have in you is the product of your trustworthiness and my trustfulness, my willingness to trust people, and we're the sum of our experiences. Maybe my experiences are such that prevent me from trusting people in general. I should not be a to trust people, and we're the sum of our experiences. Maybe my experiences are such that prevent me from trusting people in general. I should not be a leader, because leader needs to be able to trust their employees.

Speaker 1: 43:54

Sometimes the reason I don't trust them is because I was the best software programmer that ever existed, and because I was such a great software programmer, they promoted me to leadership, and now I look at everybody and they're not as good as I am. So what does that make I don't trust them? They're not going to do it as good as I do because I'm better than them. That's a hard thing to overcome unless people start looking at executives and leaders in general, or leadership in general as a profession. You need to be a good leader as a profession and not the best salesperson, the best programmer, the best developer or whatever.

Speaker 2: 44:34

Yeah, I completely agree. Um, one of the worst things that I've experienced and I've experienced it several times is promoting somebody from a team to a leadership position. Times is promoting somebody from a team to a leadership position, and it does not have to be specific about a team or just that guy knows about these things, so he knows all and get promoted. Don't do that. Get somebody else, put them in the spot, give them a better raise or whatever, put them in the money pit or whatever. But don't promote people, because most of them do not like it. And this is something I experienced as well from in a previous lifetime. I was a job coach and 75% of the people coming in they were complaining either because it was not about the pay it was never about the pay, it was their manager or their direct colleagues. And if their manager did not trust them, I absolutely agree, it comes up again. It's something that hits so far, so deep within that person that they're at a point they just want to leave, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 45:38

You lost the best individual contributor and you gained the worst manager. Oh yeah, that's a good.

Speaker 2: 45:44

Listen to this people, it helps. I think we could talk for hours about this subject, and you've already done that.

Speaker 1: 45:54

I'm free for the next three hours. Let's schedule later on. No, I'm not free. I still need to work on my class for tomorrow. Oh well, there you go.

Speaker 2: 46:05

So if people want to listen to you or have you engaged in their organization as a speaker or any other form, especially, of course, where can they find your books? Probably on your website, but tell us how are you most easily approachable and what are you currently focusing on that maybe somebody might be interested in.

Speaker 1: 46:25

The easiest is actually to reach to the CIA headquarter in Langley. They know exactly where I am and how to reach me. They always call me to know.

Speaker 2: 46:33

You've got your backup as well.

Speaker 1: 46:35

Yes, I think the easiest is just Google Yoram Solomon, y-o-r-a-m-s-o-l-o-m-o-n. You're going to get my website, which is joramsolomoncom. It's also trusthabitscom. You're going to find me on LinkedIn, facebook, instagram, twitter, youtube, anywhere you'd like. Just search for my name.

Speaker 2: 46:56

Cool, cool, great. So thanks a lot for your time. I know you're very busy. I've been looking forward to our conversations for a couple of months now and I'm very happy that you're in the category of very special guests for me, because I'm going to follow you a lot more. You give me some great tips and ideas and I would advise the listeners to do exactly the same. Follow Joram on his other interviews, because you do a lot of interviews and there's always these little nitpicks of good leadership tips and personal level, business level, all levels. It's very interesting. So thank you again for your time.

Speaker 1: 47:32

And Nico, thank you for having me, thank you for your interest in the topic of trust and I really appreciate the fact I know that you are on vacation and you took time to do this interview.

Speaker 2: 47:41

Oh, I was so happy to looking forward to it, absolutely, absolutely. And to the listeners, thank you again for listening to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast. I remember to jump from head to heart and feel the beat within. Have a great one, everybody. Bye.