#237: Rachel Botsman – Trust expert on how you can earn trust with your audience

Rachel Botsman [00:00:00]:
Secrecy isn't the enemy of trust, it's deception. In the short term, it might be a financial boost, but in the long term, you're losing that far more valuable currency, which is

Jay Clouse [00:00:16]:
trust. Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. A few months ago, I started trying to learn everything I could about trust. Who do we trust? How do we make that decision? Why do people trust me? And how can I teach that to others? I believe this is the fundamental skill for creators to learn, and there seem to be very few people actually talking about it. But the one name that consistently came up time and time again was Rachel Botsman. Rachel Botsman is a leading expert on trust in the modern world. She is the author of 3 critically acclaimed books, What's Mine is Yours, Who Can You Trust, and How to Trust and Be Trusted that have been translated into 14 languages.

Jay Clouse [00:01:11]:
That last one, How to Trust and Be Trusted, is brand new and actually just released today in audio only, which is a fascinating decision that we'll also discuss later in the conversation. You can find a link to that in the show notes. Rachel is consistently recognized as a top keynote speaker, and her TED Talks have been viewed more than 5,000,000 times. If there's anyone who understands trust more than Rachel, I haven't found them yet. So this episode was really special. I love to hear what you think about this episode. Just tag me at jklaus on your social media. Or if you're listening on Spotify, go ahead, leave a comment.

Jay Clouse [00:01:46]:
I love reading them. I like responding. But that's enough for me. Let's dive in and learn from Rachel.

Rachel Botsman [00:01:58]:
I have to say, there are times when I think I'm gonna break up with trust, that it's no longer my subject anymore and I dip my toe into things like uncertainty and risk, and which you could say I like a brother or a sister to trust. But then I realized, like, there's another dimension to it that I don't understand, or there's a really important question or misconception or there's a way of helping people and expressing an idea and I just keep coming back to it. And I discover something new. I think if I was just teaching or speaking or writing, it could get not boring, but you could sound like a jukebox. But it's because I'm always looking to the past as much as the future. So I look at how trust has worked to different times. I look at it through the lens of innovation. So it's constantly evolving in terms of what I'm trying to really understand about this remarkable force that really is the social glue of our relationships.

Jay Clouse [00:03:02]:
Let's touch on that because I imagine that's the answer to why you care about it so much in the first place. So what got you interested in the subject?

Rachel Botsman [00:03:11]:
From a really, really young age, I've been fascinated by how you connect with people, like, the emotional connection of people. I, from a young age, was really fascinated by the idea of energy and why some people had certain amount of energy and presence. And, you know, I probably couldn't say I was interested in behavioral psychology, but I was. I was interested in friendships and I was interested in betrayal and loyalty and dynamics of groups. And when you think of all those things, central to those things is trust. You know, some people are interested in power. Some people are interested in leadership. But there's something even more fundamental about trust that society can't function, our lives can't happen.

Rachel Botsman [00:03:58]:
And what I discovered was that most scholars of trust are men and there hasn't really been a modern day study of trust. So that was part of the motivation was could I bring a very different perspective to something that has been quite academic and theoretical on one end or what I call like the Stephen Koffi end which is like very sellsy, right? And that there's something really important in between that I thought I could uniquely do and bring to people.

Jay Clouse [00:04:28]:
I completely agree with you. This is something that I've been trying to study a lot lately because in my space, I find that trust is fundamental to how we build businesses as content creators. And some of the feedback I get from my audience a lot of times is you have such great trust. How do you do that? And when I thought about it, my answer was like, I actually don't know. I I don't know what I'm doing to create this this bond between the people who listen to podcasts or read my work. And so I started trying to research it. And there's, like, next to nobody talking about trust as trust. It's like trust as manipulation or as persuasion.

Jay Clouse [00:05:09]:
And the more I thought about it, it's like this feels like it's literally the atomic element of how I interact with people. Why aren't we talking about this more? I started to feel like I was crazy.

Rachel Botsman [00:05:20]:
No. You're not crazy because so much of, sort of trust speak is really the language of influence and manipulation. Right? So you'll find it in, like, how do you negotiate better? Or how do you sell something to someone? And that's why you hear this language of trust being built because it's really thought of as this like power over dynamic, right? That you're gonna do something, whether you're the content creator or leader of a company, and then other people are gonna trust you. And as soon as you realize that actually trust works in completely the reverse to that, that trust is someone else's to give. That the giver of trust, your audience, they have all the power. Right? They decide whether to trust you. And you have to consistently earn that trust and it's a process. But I'd ask you, do you ever feel like you put something out and in some way or you make a decision and it's a slight breach of your audience's trust? Do you ever get that feeling?

Jay Clouse [00:06:21]:
Definitely in the past. And what I've realized is when I have a tinge of that feeling, it's like a compass to not do whatever that thing is. I mean, the it comes in, like, with sponsor relationships. You know, someone's like, hey, we want you to promote our product. We want you to come speak or do this thing. And I get this, like, spidey sense or this itch where I'm like, that feels wrong. And I can't articulate why. And I've been using the term integrity a lot when I talk about this.

Jay Clouse [00:06:50]:
But, yes, I feel that, and I think I've gotten better at identifying it and then using that to not do whatever the thing is.

Rachel Botsman [00:06:57]:
Yeah. And so many good trust decisions are around deciding not to do something, not to take that sponsorship, not to hire that person, not to make that investment, which I think is interesting in itself. And the only reason you can decide not to do something is because of integrity. So the way I think about integrity and why it's such a powerful compass in decision making is because of this idea of alignment. And when you truly understand as a creator what your interests are. And I think it's one of the most important things to figure out. Like people talk about audience and they talk about voice. What are your interests? What are your motives? What are your intentions for doing this? Commercially and also purpose.

Rachel Botsman [00:07:41]:
Like, how do you wanna have impact? And then you have to be really clear on how they align with the interests of your, audience. And it's when you have that misalignment, trust wobbles and breaks down. That's that feeling of, oh, I could take this sponsor and that extra bit of money, but is it really in the best interest of my listeners or my audience that I have the sponsor on the show? So it sounds so simple, but it's what you see so many people whether it's creators or large companies where trust really goes wrong is they don't have that compass. They don't really think about those interests. So, what they do with someone's data or how they decide to charge someone, these things feel like small decisions. But you're taking that interest and you're misaligning it and it's the first thing that people feel. Like, you know, when people say they can smell it, that's the thing they're picking up on.

Jay Clouse [00:08:39]:
Yeah. It feels like this ancient human skill to basically decide, is this person trustworthy? Do I trust them? And the stakes have obviously changed a lot over the centuries, millennia, whatever. But today, as you understand it, help us break down how we make that decision on an individual level. Who do we decide to give our trust to?

Rachel Botsman [00:09:01]:
Well, the beautiful thing about this is that there is a science around how we make trust decisions. This social scientist have been studying this for over 50 years. And the easiest way to describe it, I think of it as 2 parts. So you have someone's capability and you have someone's character. Capability really comes down to 2 traits that are quite easy to understand which is competence and reliability. And then on the character side, you have empathy and integrity. And the interesting thing about these traits is it's not like they're all even plain. Like, you need different amounts in different contexts.

Rachel Botsman [00:09:42]:
So, you know, if you're hiring a surgeon, you want really, really high competence. But actually, the empathy is not that important. But a teacher, you're going to want them to be much higher on empathy. And I think these traits are so relevant to creators, right? Because the competence is, this person knows what they're talking about. They have the skills, the expertise, the right kind of knowledge. The reliability is really down to consistency. So you're consistent in what you deliver both in terms of quality, you meet expectations. That's the capability side.

Rachel Botsman [00:10:19]:
And then the character side, you genuinely care about what you're creating and the impact it's having. And then we've spoken about the integrity piece. And usually, we're all weak on 1. Right? We've all got work to do on 1. But it's people that really can perform highly on those 4 traits that earn trust.

Jay Clouse [00:10:40]:
I love this framework. So you basically have 2 halves divided into ability on one side, character on the other. Underneath ability, we have competence and reliability or consistency. And under character, we have empathy and integrity. I've heard you share this framework before, which is part of the reason I was so excited to talk to you because I haven't heard frameworks on this subject. I've also heard you refer to this empathy quadrant, if we call it that, as benevolence. Can you talk about benevolence and why sometimes you might use that word versus empathy?

Rachel Botsman [00:11:13]:
People actually are really caught up with empathy right now. So you see this at work. The empathy isn't therapy. Right? Like, empathy is caring about people, but it's also this idea of support and action. It's active. So benevolence is really referring to the greater good than just the individual self. So the problem with empathy is sometimes it can be slightly self serving and narcissistic, which is why a lot of leaders say they struggle to be empathetic because the expectation is you're gonna put yourself in someone else's shoes. Whereas, benevolence is saying, I genuinely care and I know how to put the actions and the structures and the systems in place to really support this person or support this product or to hold this space between us.

Jay Clouse [00:12:06]:
I love that distinction because it makes me think of another phrase I've heard recently that I really like, which is the public trust. And you probably can speak to this better than I can, but my understanding of this is basically, like, culturally, how do we feel about each other in this space and kind of like the almost baseline starting point of where we're coming from from a place of trust? Is this language that you think about or talk about as well?

Rachel Botsman [00:12:29]:
It's a really astute question because not just in trust, but many sociological concepts have moved from being something that is about the collective, the we, to the individual, the me. It's where we sort of started this idea that trust is all about negotiation and how I can gain more in a relationship. And that's not how we thought about trust for a really long period of time. It was really about communities and neighborhoods and the social fabric of our lives. And I do think this individualized notion of trust and thinking about self benefit and self gain is actually the root cause of a lot of problems in society. Whether that's why leaders decide to run for office or not sure where you live, Jade, but you know, I have 2 teenage tweeny kids. And I'm always saying to the parents, we have to learn how to depend on one another more. There's not a great dependency in networks anymore.

Rachel Botsman [00:13:25]:
And, you know, I remember my grandma, like, she just used to ferry kids and pick them up and they'd always be out of house and someone. She didn't even think of it. And I think that collective notion of trust is something really important to think about how we reinstate in our lives. And it comes out in so many ways. This may sound really silly, but I was looking at the history of New Year's resolutions. And the idea that you'd make a resolution that was like, I'm gonna get fitter or I'm gonna quit something or I'm gonna change my job. That was about the self. It didn't exist.

Rachel Botsman [00:13:58]:
It was a moral obligation to someone else. So you would think about Yeah. And it's like a very modern day phenomenon that even the way we think about change and goals is this self absorbed lens. And so that individual lens on trust versus the collective lens on trust, it's a really important distinction.

Jay Clouse [00:14:19]:
My wife and I went to Copenhagen as part of our honeymoon. Yeah. And we saw just like packs of children walking to school unattended in the morning. And we live in the United States. We live in Ohio. And we just looked at each other like we would never feel comfortable doing this in Ohio. And it's because of this, like, degradation of the public trust. We don't necessarily trust our neighbor to look after our children as their own.

Jay Clouse [00:14:45]:
I do feel like here in the States, especially, we have this like extreme individualism that impacts the public trust. You know, in the space that I work in, in the online business space, there are so many actors bad actors who have poisoned the public trust and the ability to teach these different things. So this brings me to this idea of transparency because some of the feedback I get from people is, like, I love how transparent you are. And I get a sense that, okay, that's probably helping develop trust in this place where there's low public trust. But you have this perspective on transparency as not fixing trust. And I'm really interested to hear how that plays out in your mind, especially in a place of individuals operating and trying to earn trust versus companies.

Rachel Botsman [00:15:37]:
I think one of the biggest myths about trust is that transparency leads to more trust or that it's gonna fix trust issues so that when trust breaks down, the solution is to make things more transparent. What often happens is people conflate trust with openness, which is really important. So just to take a step back, the way I define trust is that it's a confident relationship with the unknown. So the very essence of trust is that it's the things that you can't see. It's the things that are really complex. It's the behind the scenes, the decisions that are not visible to people. That's where you need the most trust. And so when you start to see trust through that lens, you start to realize that transparency is not increasing trust, it's reducing the need for trust.

Rachel Botsman [00:16:27]:
If you're disclosing everything, if everything's visible, you don't need a lot of trust. It's like you think about when people put trackers on their children or when offices monitor workplace attendance. There actually acts of transparency, but they're not really trust because you know where that chart is at all times. So it's not like I'm saying transparency is a bad thing.

Jay Clouse [00:16:52]:
But I see what you're saying.

Rachel Botsman [00:16:53]:
It can backfire. Right? Because then two things happen. The person that the transparency is being imposed on them, it doesn't feel like transparency or trust to them. But then also even with your own audience, what you share and then their expectations of what they think you should share, they may not stay consistent. And you may get to a point where you're like, Hashim, you're not entitled to know that. And that's what we call the backfire effect of transparency. And it happens a lot in organizations where leaders go, I'm I'm going to be totally transparent with you. I'm going to disclose all this information.

Rachel Botsman [00:17:28]:
And 2 things happen. Either you get into this culture of compliance, so it just becomes information disclosure, or there's a mismatch in, no, you told me you're gonna be transparent, but you won't tell me what that person's bonus is. Well, I didn't mean that kind of transparency. So the key thing is to be very intentional with transparency. Essentially, when people are asking for transparency, they're trying to understand the context behind a decision. They're trying to understand why did you make that decision. And if you actually give them that, you don't need to promise full transparency.

Jay Clouse [00:18:01]:
Right. It's kind of impractical to promise blanket full transparency. And then if you select for where you are transparent, but out of alignment with other places where you're not being transparent, now this creates a conflict and a struggle of, well, why should I trust this transparency at all then?

Rachel Botsman [00:18:20]:
Totally. I mean, you can see this with platforms and algorithms. Right? We're gonna be transparent about our algorithms. We're not transparent enough, and I still don't really understand how they work or how they're making that kind of decision. So sometimes it can even lead to more questions and more skepticism than more trust.

Jay Clouse [00:18:35]:
Okay. So a couple of things I wanna dig into here. Your definition of trust of being a confident relationship with the unknown. For people who are listening to this, I wanna help them visualize. You have this great illustration where you show on the left hand side. This is what is known on the right hand side. This is what's unknown. Trust is the bridge between the 2 this confident relationship with the unknown.

Jay Clouse [00:18:58]:
And what you're saying is transparency, when done well, might actually make the unknown known. So it sort of removes the need for the bridge.

Rachel Botsman [00:19:08]:
Exactly. You don't need trust.

Jay Clouse [00:19:09]:
You don't need trust.

Rachel Botsman [00:19:10]:
You described it very well. So if you make things transparent, what you're actually doing is reducing the need for trust. And this is a problem because, you know, when you are faced with something unexpected in your life or uncertainty increases, people's trust tolerance has gone down. Right? So now you're like, no transparency is gonna fix this situation. Like, no one can tell you when the end of pandemic is gonna happen, just as an example. And people's tolerance for the uncertainty is reduced. And it's so important because when you you look at what's going on sort of a macro level when you zoom out, so much of life is not wired for unexpected things to happen. You want information.

Rachel Botsman [00:19:57]:
You just search for on Google or chat gbt. You wanna date. You want food. You wanna know how far away your taxi is. You don't even get lost. Right? You have GPS. And so this feeling of being in the unknown, this feeling of trusting yourself, it's actually reducing. And when you look at a lot of issues in society around people's confidence to take risk, people's confidence to even leave the house, people's confidence to meet up in person, it's in a really rapid state of decline because we've constantly been making this thing visible and transparent versus building our tolerance.

Rachel Botsman [00:20:35]:
See how to learn.

Jay Clouse [00:20:38]:
After a quick break, Rachel shares how to identify your trust gaps and why you may not be the best judge of where you fall short in building trusting relationships. So stick around. We'll be right back. And now back to my conversation with Rachel Botsman. I wanna go back to this 4 part framework you shared of competence and reliability underneath the ability umbrella and empathy and integrity underneath the character umbrella. If I feel like I'm not earning trust to the degree that I want to or think I should, It's an indication that I'm lacking in one of these four areas. How do I identify which of these four areas is lacking?

Rachel Botsman [00:21:25]:
That's a good question. You are probably not gonna be the best identifier of the trait. You might have a sense, but then I've run this exercise many times. So it's really interesting where people tend to rate their issue trait as reliability because they'll say they don't have enough time and they just can't respond to people or be consistent in the way people expect. And then when you get other people to rate you, whether that's your family or your colleagues or your audience, you see something else come back and that's the learning moment. Right? Because that's what we call the trust gap. There's a gap in how you think of yourself and how you think of yourself showing up and how an audience is perceiving you. So the one that hurts the most, apart from being lack of empathy, is competence.

Rachel Botsman [00:22:14]:
Right? Like, if you think, oh, I'm really competent in this thing and then it comes back, well, actually you're not. So you have to get other people to score you on these traits and seeing where the gap is is where the learning is and the improvement is.

Jay Clouse [00:22:28]:
How would you encourage people to do this scary, painful, vulnerable exercise? Is it as simple as sending people a 4 question survey that basically says, how would you rate my competence on a scale of 1 to 10? Or is there a more reliable way to get honest answers from people?

Rachel Botsman [00:22:45]:
This is gonna sound like a book plug, but it is one of the reasons why I wrote How to Trust and Be Trusted because people were asking me for the tools and frameworks that I use in the classroom. And one of these tools and frameworks is how you give that feedback. So How to Trust and Be Trust is an audio book that's based on these five principles of earning and giving trust. And it comes with these printed frameworks, these toolkits that you can use with other people. So you can literally mail it to other people and say, rate me. I want honest feedback. And then you just tally it up and you see where the gaps are. Some people just do it at like 5 people, some people at 10 people.

Rachel Botsman [00:23:23]:
I know people who have done it like 100 of people across their organization. It's also really revealing to do it at a team level. So sometimes when you have trust issues in an organization, it can be really difficult to know what to fix. And so when you actually go, oh, actually the trust issue is with sales or the trust issue is with legal, you can start to go in and be quite precise about the thing that you're trying to fix. And this is really, really important when it comes to trust because so often we talk about trust in a very generalized way. You know, I don't trust this brand. I don't trust this person. I don't trust this host.

Rachel Botsman [00:24:00]:
And you can't do anything when trust is generalized and it lacks context. So this is what these frameworks are designed to do is to enable you to figure out where these gaps are, where you can take more risks, where you need to let go and empower others. Kind of put trust into action if you like.

Jay Clouse [00:24:17]:
Yeah. I like this exercise I've seen you run before where you flash up some options on the screen and say, clap if you trust this company, this brand, this person. And you've then gone and break down, like, well, it's not that easy. It's not just about I trust person or not. It can be situationally or context dependent. I trust person to x, but maybe not to y. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Rachel Botsman [00:24:40]:
Yeah. Well, my my trust barometer, and I get people to clap for the brand they trust the most. And I might intentionally show, like, 3 tech brats. So Tesla, Amazon, Meta, and then I'll get them to boo for the leader that they think is the least trustworthy. And the interesting thing is often the brand they cap for is different from the leader that they boot for, Or sometimes it could be the same. And then like, you know, Tesla's a really interesting example, like people often will say, well, actually, Elon Musk makes great products, we trust his cars. But I don't trust him as a human being. Or Amazon, a lot of people will clap for Amazon and then you dig into it and you say, why are you clapping for Amazon? And they'll say, why, you know, if I order something online, I trust it's going to show up the next day.

Rachel Botsman [00:25:25]:
And you go, was that convenience or is that trust? And then you say, do you trust that Amazon treats all its employees well? Do you trust that it's a sustainable company? Do you trust that they pay their fair share of taxes? Do you trust that they're not a market monopoly? Whatever the question is and the answer is no, no, no, no, no. So then you're like, will you trust them in a context? And Amazon is actually it's a phenomenal brand in terms of their understanding of trust because they are very clear about what you can trust Amazon to do. And they don't even make promises in the other areas of trust, right? You don't see Amazon talking about being a green and a sustainable and a even a fair company, right? They're like, no. We deliver things on time and make it really easy to return. So some way you have to respect that. The the promise is so clear. That's their compass. Might not be ethically right, but that's why people trust them.

Jay Clouse [00:26:21]:
I love this concept of alignment. Alignment with words and actions what I'm saying what I'm doing if you can't act in a certain way don't say that you will it's kind of the takeaway from this Amazon example I'd love to hear how this plays through in your work as a writer, as a creator. You know, you're you're a lot of things. You're an author. You're a speaker. But when it comes to putting content out online to an audience who's reading your content, how do you think about earning their trust?

Rachel Botsman [00:26:52]:
I really struggle with putting out anything that is self promotional. You know, I even struggle, like, posting pictures of myself. So I've always made a distinction in my work that people they're investing in the ideas and the concepts and the way those concepts are presented. And I am part of the delivery of those concepts, whether that's the way I show up on stage or my presence, my energy. Yes. My clothes, the way I visualize things, the importance of design. But I am not the brand, if that makes sense. So you see us particularly on LinkedIn where it's a lot of stories that are self led.

Rachel Botsman [00:27:38]:
Good stories and bad stories or breakdowns. And so I am not the subject is the key thing. So there are these very clear guiding principles that I have. You know, is this valuable content to share? Is it something that is gonna allow people to pause, slow down, and think about something differently in their day? That's often a really key guiding principle. And then when it's an experience, I'm thinking as much how people are gonna feel as what they're gonna think. And that could be anything from teaching a class to giving a talk to now designing installations that when people walk in a space, what's the feeling that you're trying to create has always been a really big guiding principle. But I know I mean, I I like to think I don't think this sounds arrogant, but I think I'm right with it 99% of the time because I know my audiences. And it's actually when you're moving into new worlds and new cultures and new mediums, it's really, really hard because you intuitively don't know how people can connect with you or the content or the information.

Rachel Botsman [00:28:56]:
And I think what I've learned is not to rush that process. So learning how to work in audio and write audiobooks and radio shows, it's very different from print. Learning how to connect with an art audience, very different from an academic audience. This stuff takes time. And in some way, being new to things has taught me what people value in the things that I know how to do really, really well.

Jay Clouse [00:29:23]:
When you're thinking about how do I wanna make people feel, where do you often land on that? I know there's there's different circumstances in different places. But in general, how do you think about the way you make people feel? What are you trying to achieve?

Rachel Botsman [00:29:37]:
So usually, it's curious. Sometimes it's challenged. Slightly different emotion there. But they gotta feel like that kind of childlike curiosity. I never thought of that, or I wanna read more of that. Like, it's like scratching something or reframing something or that slightly confused look because you've just jarred something in their brain. So, like, curiosity, definitely. Warmth is a really big one.

Rachel Botsman [00:30:03]:
I don't wanna sound ever like a corporate. I don't ever wanna sound like an academic. It's different from being relatable. Like, there's a warmth there and a humanness is really important. And then what I would describe as a feeling of vibrancy. So I think there's some content that feels like a drain, and there's some content that feels like a radiator. And I always want people to feel a sense of, not like a little energy boost, but you haven't taken something away from their day. Which is probably why I have the allergic reaction to the content which is very the mirror content about bad things that are happening in your life because I think I'm not sure that has that effect.

Rachel Botsman [00:30:48]:
I know it's really important for some people and it can be done in a really genuine way, but when it's done to, like, boost attention or your reputation, I don't think it's a good long term strategy.

Jay Clouse [00:31:00]:
There's something similar in my space that I see a lot and I found myself starting to participate in before realizing better of it, which is like this almost like performative transparency where you show, like, look how awesome I am. Look what I did. And I realized I think the emotion it was giving was envy. And it it created attention. And so it gave the, like, appearance that this was engaging successful content. But when I thought about it from the individual's perspective, I realized, like, I think this is just creating envy whether they realize it or not, and I don't think that's a positive emotion. Where does envy live in your mind? How does this relate to trust? How do you think about it?

Rachel Botsman [00:31:45]:
It's such an honest observation of yourself as well because, you know, to put stuff out there also that's kinda saying I'm on a higher platform or a higher level to you. I also don't think it's a long term strategy. I mean, most audiences will describe this feeling of allegiance. It's like it's different from trust. Like, this feeling of allegiance and loyalty because they feel like you're with them. Right? You're not over them or against them. And that's where you start to get into the deeper space of identity. And this is so important.

Rachel Botsman [00:32:19]:
Like, if you don't know that when people engage with your content, they are trying to be x. There's gonna be something missing. Right? So for some people, they engage in my community because their identity is they really wanna be a lifelong learner or they are a super performing athlete and this is really important to be part of that club. Or maybe they are really unwell and being in this community feels like caring support. It's different from purpose like understanding that identity that you bring to them. That's, I think, really key to feeling like you're with people versus over people. And I think it's the over thing that creates the envy.

Jay Clouse [00:33:05]:
Something else I observe on this point is some people whip up attention and and drive audiences based around, like, a shared identity of being anti something rather than for something. And I've realized for myself, I've decided for myself, that's not really a strategy I wanna take either because I think it attracts a more cynical anti person, which just isn't the personality I really mesh with well and wanna spend time around. But I'm curious from your perspective. Is there a trust impact on saying I am for something for something versus we are anti this, anti this?

Rachel Botsman [00:33:45]:
That's such I've never been asked that question. It's a really good question. I mean, what we know is that messaging that is against something has much higher cut through traction than messaging that is for something. It's partly I mean, not to look go look at the election, but you can see it black and white there, right? Hope is not an emotion. And so standing for something is often anchored on hope. Standing against something is often anchored on really powerful emotions, jealousy, anger, rage. And so it's very easy to go, oh, I can build an audience very quickly and a highly engaged audience and a heated audience by pushing against that thing versus standing for something. Now, the thing with the standing for something, and I think about this a lot with my work, it doesn't mean not challenging things.

Rachel Botsman [00:34:36]:
It's not like always going with the flow. It's often calling bullshit on stuff or it's saying you disagree with someone. But it's being very comfortable with that discomfort of disagreement. You can still be on that standing for something side versus standing against something.

Jay Clouse [00:34:53]:
I listened to a conversation with Derek Thompson, who great writer for The Atlantic, wrote a book called Hitmakers I think every creator should read. But he was kind of describing his definition of a cult. And he's like a cult is a group of interest that stands in opposition to the mainstream. And so in that way, cult like followings, which there's a lot of, like, talking about this in the greater space where you should build, like, a cult following. And it really feels like those audiences are built on the against something angle that's against the mainstream. Most people believe this. We believe this. But it's kind of a mix.

Jay Clouse [00:35:28]:
It's like we stand for this because we don't stand for this. And so, like, I don't think it's as easy as saying being anti something is bad, especially when it's paired with we are for this, not for this. But I do think a lot of people have taken this, like, stance of, well, if I build a common enemy and just, like, shout down at that common enemy, that will bring people towards me. And I feel like that's incomplete, I guess.

Rachel Botsman [00:35:53]:
Yeah. And especially when just projecting or pointing the finger at the common enemy means you don't really have to define yourself. But you don't really have to define what you stand for, your own identity, because your identity becomes pushing against the other person. Again, we saw that in the election. Right? Like, if you throw mud and your message focuses on someone else, you're leaving a massive vacuum around the narrative of yourself. And what we know about vacuums, particularly trust vacuums, is they will always get filled. So if you don't create that narrative about yourself, someone else will come in and create that narrative for you.

Jay Clouse [00:36:36]:
After one more break, Rachel and I talk about why her content rarely comes from a personal perspective. She has some strong opinions on this that are counter to a lot of what we're seeing on places like LinkedIn today. We also dig into how to walk the line between building trust and manipulation. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. And now please enjoy the rest of my conversation with Rachel Botsman. I wanna go back to this idea you had about your own content where you don't center yourself in it. You don't talk about yourself or your own personal stories.

Jay Clouse [00:37:12]:
But this is such a common thing right now on LinkedIn, especially it seems, but everywhere, a lot of people are like, here's a story through the lens of me. Can you expand on this more and where that starts to become, like, problematic? What's wrong with telling a story from my perspective or my hero's journey as a way to relate to you and what you're trying to do?

Rachel Botsman [00:37:34]:
I mean, I tell a lot of stories. Right? And I even tell stories about my kids, but I strip out their names. I I talk a lot about experiences or moments. So I'll share something that happened in the classroom or I'll share a behind the scenes moment. It's when I am the central character of the story all the time that I personally have an issue with. So if it was about my trust issues at work or if it was about, you know, a relationship that had blown up or that I was constantly struggling to trust myself in these new if it was constantly that narrative, I would find that really boring. But it's not saying, you know, sometimes my experience is a prompt, but I feel like it's sometimes like this Pinterest way of thinking about content. Right? Like it's like a carousel.

Rachel Botsman [00:38:26]:
And I like to think that my content is more like a library archive. That you're going into the dusty nooks and crannies and finding things from the past and

Jay Clouse [00:38:40]:
unexpected places and ugly things

Rachel Botsman [00:38:40]:
and beautiful things. And self

Jay Clouse [00:38:47]:
led

Rachel Botsman [00:38:54]:
self led content, what makes it very palatable is you can relate to it and it's really easy to digest and you don't have to work that hard. And there is a really important place for that. But I think there is a void in content that is in this more deeper curatorial takes more time to stitch these things together to really try to show to people, like, look, here's the biggest shift that you are a part of, but it's not just about you. You're a little dot in this change that is happening.

Jay Clouse [00:39:29]:
We've spent, you know, 45 minutes talking about how we can think about trust, better earn trust, how we can make people feel a certain way that's in alignment with how we want them to make them feel. Where does thought and intention turn into manipulation?

Rachel Botsman [00:39:46]:
Such a good question. It's like you have to be really careful with with audiences. You set out to do something or you tell your audience that you're doing something for one purpose. But really in the back of your mind, you have another purpose or another interest. And this is difficult, right, because you have to be commercially savvy around it. But like, oh, I'm gonna build this really powerful online community around education. Well, actually, I've just done this because I really just want a TED talk or something like that. Like that's Right.

Rachel Botsman [00:40:19]:
That's when you're manipulating, right, that audience's trust in you or selling out is another big one. So, you know, this is why, like, con artists really understand trust because you could take the principles and it's like strings that you're pulling because you know the strings to pull. But it comes back to you. You're not doing it for the right interest. You're not doing it for your audience's interest.

Jay Clouse [00:40:46]:
Okay. So if I can restate this another way, implicitly, you're saying there's a misalignment between what you're saying and what the outcome that you actually hope to happen happens. To intentionally earn trust does mean to be aware and to pull levers in a way that get people to take action. The question is, are they taking action for their own betterment? Do you have this empathy? Or are they taking action for an ulterior motive that you are actually successfully hiding.

Rachel Botsman [00:41:17]:
Yeah. Secrecy isn't the enemy of trust. It's deception. So you can keep secrets from people, and people can still trust you. You cannot deceive people. Right? That's the manipulation part. So I asked for your information under this guys, and I didn't tell you that this is how I plan to use your information. That's manipulation, that's deception.

Rachel Botsman [00:41:38]:
It sounds so simple but it's where we've got into a lot of trouble in the online world. Even like the gift, the incentive, the sign up to the newsletter, the 15% off And I'm not honest about how much I'm gonna pound you 3 times a day through text messaging. Right? There's a deception there. There's a manipulation there. In the short term, it might be a financial boost, but in the long term, you're losing that far more valuable currency, which is trust.

Jay Clouse [00:42:07]:
Yeah. I see it as like a lie of omission that happens a lot of times where people aren't they're not lying directly. They're just sort of willfully misleading. Deception is the right word.

Rachel Botsman [00:42:20]:
Yeah. If you ever say to yourself or someone on your team, no one's ever gonna find out. Like, no one's gonna know. That is like signal number 1. Right? Like, even if no one finds out and even if no one knows, you probably shouldn't still make that decision. So affiliate links. Like, if something doesn't feel entirely right about that, the audience will tell you pretty quickly.

Jay Clouse [00:42:43]:
This is something I thought about the use of AI tools and being a creator. And now I've realized that actually this applies to, like, anything I do. But for a while, I thought, well, if my audience had perfect information about how I'm using this thing or how I'm doing this thing, would that have a positive or negative impact on their perception of me? And if the answer was negative, I just didn't do that thing. It's been useful as a compass for me. But, you know, hearing what you're saying, it's it's this idea of not embracing or not, like, leaning into deception. It's just not not deceiving people.

Rachel Botsman [00:43:19]:
And if you discover you have deceived people, that's where you have to apologize and be accountable. That loop around the acknowledgment and the apology and the accountability and what you're gonna change, that has to be really tight and pretty quick.

Jay Clouse [00:43:36]:
Okay. I guess my last question, Rachel, is you have been talking about this for, I guess, over a decade. Has there been anything you've really changed your mind on over the last few years?

Rachel Botsman [00:43:48]:
Oh, yeah. I mean, the transparency thing I changed my mind on. If you watch I can't remember which TED talk it is. I actually talk about making the world more transparent and really studying what happens in organizations. That is really key. And this one sounds so obvious, but that 99% of the time, most people wanna talk about trust when it disappears, when it breaks down. They talk about distrust and mistrust, and they they see it as the opposite side of the coin versus something that can coexist in a relationship. I don't think of them as a spectrum anymore, like a linear line.

Rachel Botsman [00:44:25]:
We've got trust on one end and distrust on the other end. Actually, there is a coexistence in really healthy relationships of trust and distrust. And that took me a long time to get my head around.

Jay Clouse [00:44:36]:
At the risk of trying to boil this down to a very short period of time, can you expand on that? How does trust and distrust coexist?

Rachel Botsman [00:44:43]:
So if you think about judges or you think about a board, what you want is a really, really high level of trust. So when they don't trust the decision or they distrust the motive of the other person, the relationship is strong enough to hold that tension and that conflict. So they can say, I think you're wrong. I disagree with you. I challenge that opinion. And the trust can hold that discomfort is number 1. And then also in really trusting relationships, you can say, look, I trust you implicitly to look after my kids, but I don't trust you with money. Mhmm.

Rachel Botsman [00:45:27]:
So there is that level of honesty about things that you don't trust that person about that requires the trust in the relationship to be able to be honest around that.

Jay Clouse [00:45:38]:
It's like a macro and a micro or even like a compartmentalization underneath the macro. I like that.

Rachel Botsman [00:45:46]:
Yes. And that's why trusting relationships are not always comfortable. You know, this idea of a comfortable culture is a very bad idea. Actually, trust enables you to be comfortable with discomfort in relationships and decisions and teams and cultures. That's what it holds and keeps people together in those moments of tension.

Jay Clouse [00:46:15]:
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and letting me know. I say it in every episode because those reviews go a long way to helping us grow the show. If you will learn more about Rachel, visit her website at rachelbotsman.com. Her new book, How to Trust and Be Trusted, is out today and available in audio only on Audible or Spotify. Those links are also in the show notes. And lastly, if you enjoyed this, you'd also enjoy my recent episode with former FBI Special Agent Robin Driek. Once again, that link is in the show notes. Thank you for listening and I'll talk to you next week.