Defining Trust with Tia Glave

​Dr. Darin Detwiler: Hello, this is Trust Bites presented by My Trusted Source, the solution to build trust throughout today's global food supply chain. I'm Dr. Darin Detwiler and in these next episodes, we will be diving into deep discussions with our advisory board. I am so happy to introduce one such board member, Tia Glave. Tia, welcome. Tia Glave: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Very welcome. Please tell us a little bit about yourself for those who've never met you. Tia Glave: Hello everyone. I am Tia Glave and I have been in the food industry for a little over a decade. And during that time, I've had opportunities to work with large manufacturing, small manufacturing, startup, entrepreneur companies in many different categories, including baking and dairy, pasta, and baby food. And one thing that I love doing as a part of my job, even throughout these, you know, 12 years that I've been in the industry is building capabilities in others. And I had the unique opportunity to start an organization with my partner, Jill Stuber. We created Catalyst, and Catalyst allows for me really to do what I love to do, and that's really to work with leaders and empower them to become even greater leaders. And so that's what we do at Catalyst. We help technical experts step into leadership. You know, one thing that we've seen over the years is that as technical experts, we lean on our technical knowledge. Of course we do, right? Like, we've gone through countless years of school. We've been promoted because we had these very technical, highly technical brains and we love to solve problems. But what we find is once we're promoted into a leadership role, sometimes we stumble. And that's because leadership skills are not taught in school, and a lot of times they're not taught in early career. It's really only sort of given to us once we step into a leadership role. And so what we do is help organizations prioritize their people and help their technical experts get those leadership skills so that they can be better leaders, so that they can take care of their people, so that they can help structure and push culture forward. Both Jill and myself, we are certified coaches. And so everything that we do have coaching principals involved. And that just means that we look at the whole person. And make sure that people are showing up to work as their full selves. So that they can make an even greater impact in the work that they do. All of our programs and workshops and everything that we do allows time for reflection and practice. which helps build self awareness. And so that's what I currently do in the industry and how I help support the industry. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, thank you very much. This really helps us better understand where your perspectives comes from and such great experience you bring to this board. You know, one word or concept I can see woven through everything you just said is trust. Tia Glave: Yeah. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Right? Trust amongst leaders, trust of your leaders, trust of product, trust with consumers. Let's talk a little bit about trust. How would you define trust? And I know this is a big, you know, this is a big word, but let's talk about defining trust. Tia Glave: Yeah. You know, outside of the, the true definition of trust, you know, I would say that trust really is the foundation for relationships and how we get work done. And we talk about trust a lot at Catalyst because without trust what you will find is that teams do not work well together, it's harder to make decisions, it's harder to be a great leader, right, because none of your team members are coming to you. It's harder to influence. And so trust really is the, at the center, or if you're looking at it from a pyramid, it's at the bottom, right, it's your, it's your foundation and everything is built on trust. And so when we think about it from a leadership standpoint, what we always tell people is that right now, no matter what you're doing, start building relationships with people. And it doesn't matter if you need that person right now, or you don't need that person right now, or you might need them in the future, but you have to influence later. All those things don't really matter right now. Start building those relationships. And the reason is because you are looking to build that trust. People need to understand who you are. You know, as human beings, we look for patterns and our brains almost tell us, oh, this is how Tia's going to react in this situation. This is how Darin's going to react in that situation. And the more we get to know each other and are able to predict those things, that trust starts to build. And so you need to start building relationships because you need to start building that trust. And when we think about it from an industry standpoint, that's exactly what corporations are doing. They're trying to let the consumer know, hey, this is what we're about, this is what you should expect from us, and therefore, this is what you can get from us, and therefore trust in us when it comes to. If you're looking for an organization, that's a B Corp, right? Like, you know they're gonna do social good. And so you trust that as you fuel their corporation through purchasing their products. They're going to use some of that money to help whatever initiative they're going after as a part of being a B corporation. And so that is a trust thing. Obviously I'm in food safety so a big part of trust is that you can eat the food, right? And not get sick or die from it. And so corporations have to build trust with consumers so that they'll know, okay, every time I eat X Brand I know that this corporation puts what they need to into food safety, so that me and my family and my friends do not miss if we were to consume it. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, it sounds I don't want to say it's just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but trust becomes like a foundational level upon which many other levels of activities and engagement are built, but I'm drawn back to multiple presidential administrations ago when the phrase was trust, but validate. Tia Glave: Oh, yeah. Dr. Darin Detwiler: What could happen if we blindly trust whether it's a supplier or distributor or an ingredient source, what could happen if we just blindly trust? Tia Glave: Yes, that's a great question because in food safety, we say trust, but verify. And a big piece of that, right, is that we're human and we make human mistakes. And sometimes people try to creep other priorities into what we're doing. And sometimes we need that check, right? Like, we've been there. Like, I think a great example is you know, I'm trying to eat less sweet, right? And so, you know, I'm telling myself, no, no candy, no cookies, you know, but sometimes you see something amazing and you're like, hmm, I might eat that. But if you have someone around you, trust, hey, I'm trying to be good, right, I'm trying to eat less sweet. They trust that that's what I'm doing. But they're there to also be that verification for me to say. When they see me with something, right, a piece of candy, they're saying, hey, T, I thought you were looking to cut out sweets. And it's like, oh, yes, that's right, absolutely. Like, I have someone, a part of my group, to help almost, like, support me, right, just in case I get off track. And so when we look at, like, an organization, you know, they have different people coming in, right, like, we've been a part of teams, right, where we're on the right path. And then someone comes in and tries to make something else a priority. And so if you're not a part of that team, like sometimes food safety is not a part of that operations team or that finance team or that marketing team that's having these conversations without us, it's important to verify that the conversations are still on track, that that is still a priority for that group, that they're still marching in the right direction. Because if you don't do that, then people get off track, right? Like, people get off track from their goals. Someone else threw in another great idea that happened to conflict from the goal. And so the team kind of moves towards that one. And so what we see is, is really human behavior, that people start to get off track. And so you have to verify and even validate That the things that they are doing is actually getting you to your goal and that you're actually on track for your goal. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Sure, and I'm, I'm sure we can look at many different examples of this, whereas, you know, going along with the buddy that manufactures part of your, your let's say your buns or, you Tia Glave: Mm Dr. Darin Detwiler: know, part of your ingredients, and it was certified to be allergen free for nut allergens, and then somewhere along the line, someone thought they could save 17 cents per thousand by switching to this other company, and they don't have the the same validation in terms of being allergen free, certified processing environment. I think back to the Peanut Corporation of America, where you had internal testing being done and the companies that bought the product just took for granted the paperwork there to do their own auditing, their own testing, their own validation Tia Glave: That's a big one. Dr. Darin Detwiler: you know, here you found that the QA manager was literally using liquid paper over dates and falsifying documentation. And you know, here, what's looked at as one of the largest recall. In US history pertaining to food a lot of it was, and I remember being in the courtroom, some of the defense team lawyers were saying that these companies that bought this stuff without even checking had some responsibility there and well, you can't blame them for the illegal actions of that peanut company. I have to admit, yeah, you know, you, you do have to validate and verify to truly have a trust in your source. Tia Glave: You do. And, you know, I tell organizations all the time, especially my small to medium sized brands, who's using a lot of co-packers and using a lot of, you know, different suppliers to help them create their product, is that you ultimately own that brand. That is you. That's not your co-packer. That's not your suppliers. It is you. And so when you're looking to build that trust with consumers, right, you need to make sure you completely understand what is going into your product. And that is the same for even large corporations, right? They just happen to have more resources to look into these things and to verify and validate. But it also goes for them. If you're not putting resources towards auditing facilities and taking a look at what's happening with the process, having conversations with people, you know, just even outside of looking at the COA, are you having conversations with people, someone in the actual lab to say, Hey, you know, I get these COAs, you know, every shipment, walk me through how you do this. You know, what do you typically find? What happens if you do find a positive? You know, having those conversations with people, it's also a great way to verify what's happening. And you know, I can never stress enough that it is your brand, regardless of who's making your product. And if you're not taking that full ownership of your product, then you could find yourself having an issue. And no one knows who manufactures your product, right? Like, that's not going to be on the front. Your brand is going to be on the front of the recall. And so you are the one that's going to have to deal with that. And that's who people are going to lose trust in. Not the co packer that they don't know, right? It's really going to be your brand. Dr. Darin Detwiler: And we see that too often with recalls where it's recalled this product from this grocery store. It's like, well, it's not the grocery store's fault. Perhaps, you know, it's, it's, it's, it was, you know, upstream of grocery store. But I think sometimes that if we think of trust as a river, it almost sounds like I'm getting into some kind of a, a, a Justin Timberlake song or whatever. But if tr, if trust is a river, you gotta think not only about the trust downstream to the consumer, but you have to keep a keen eye to building and maintaining and reinforcing that trust upstream as well. Tia Glave: Yeah, absolutely. Because just like you said, right, if a grocery store is having a lot of recalls, people are gonna say, say, wow, I'm not gonna purchase from that grocery store. And in a sense, they do have a responsibility to make sure that they're doing their food safety checks, that they're making sure that the products that they're allowing on their shelves, that that company has food safety in place and that they care about their products. It's hard to do, right? Like when you think about a large grocery store, they have hundreds, thousands of brands. But it must, it must be done, because even when you think about that trust, right? Like you start to think, man, should I even buy this product from this grocery store? Because they've seen so many, so many recalls. And as a food safety person, I'm thinking like, how are they qualifying people getting into their grocery stores? And so it's almost a joint effort to make sure that when it gets to the consumer, that product is safe. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Well, two, I mean, think about a major multi-state retailer or convenience sort chain, right. So not only are all of your different facilities under different state level regulatory elements but your products don't come from within that state, right? So you have products, first off, the ingredients may come from outside the country. Tia Glave: True. Dr. Darin Detwiler: Or in different states, and distribution, warehouse, everything across multiple states, you, again, you have different versions of the FDA models code you have different, is it a state department of agriculture or state department of public health, or, you know, is that the national environment health association, you have so many variables in terms of, you know. By the time it ends up on the shelves of a store that trust has to accommodate for so many of these challenges. That sometimes you may have a store where, yeah, well, we have our own farm right here in our own community and we do this here. That's great, but that's not, that's not typical. Tia Glave: It is not. Dr. Darin Detwiler: It such a complicated path and I know we could go on and on and talk about trust, but what I love about these conversations that we're having is that, whether the different board members have a different perspective or different definitions, this is a conversation I think that has many different definitions and perspectives that we're going to continue to have. And I'd like to thank you for joining us for this episode. I look forward to talking with you in future topics. Tia Glave: Thank you, Darin. Dr. Darin Detwiler: For My Trusted Source, this is Dr. Darin Detweiler, and this has been an episode of Trust Bites. Thank you very much.