77: The Trust Equation series - Intimacy

The intention and outcome of vulnerability is trust, intimacy and connection, says Brené Brown. This is Walking Your Talk, a personal development podcast about leadership, authenticity, and courage. I'm Carolyn Taylor, and I've spent my life working with leaders in organizations on how to change their culture. but this is much more personal if you want to be known as someone who walks your talk at work and beyond then this podcast is for you hello

and welcome to Walking Your Talk and to this, which is the third episode in my series on The Trust Equation. The Trust Equation comes from a book called The Trusted Advisor by David Meister. And it's given me just the most wonderful framework to use with my clients. Hope it's going to be useful for you as well. And particularly when I'm working on building more trust in a team.

or between two individuals, or in the culture more generally. The equation has four dimensions, credibility, reliability, intimacy, and the lack of self-interest. and is expressed as C plus R plus I divided by SI, self-interest. So to build trust, you need to be working on obviously all four. And in the last two episodes, I've covered credibility and I've covered reliability. And today I want to cover intimacy. So as I see them, credibility and reliability are much more in the rational.

side of trust. Whereas intimacy is much more the emotional response. And certainly for me personally, it's something I've had to work much harder at. Don't know about you.

So I wonder what intimacy does mean to you. Because for me, I think the very word seems to describe what is needed, which is into me see. to allow people to see into me, to really see, to really see who I am. And I think we've all got something of a front, you know, a shield. some version of me that we present to the world. I know I have. I've got mine, I think, and you've got yours. And so when you and I meet, what kind of, you know, one shield?

meeting another shield, which I think is natural. And I think we all edit ourselves a little bit. You know, we want other people to see our best selves. And on social media, I think we've learned to do that a whole heap more. But my professional instinct, and I imagine your professional instinct is too, is to show my achievements, my competence.

And to build my credibility through showing you how reliable I am and, you know, how knowledgeable I am and so on. But I think this only takes us so far. And that's what I really want you to... think about it as we explore this element of intimacy as being a part of trust. Because I think if we're truly trusted, we also have to show the other sides of ourselves.

You know, because we all know that we're not perfect. And so if I know I'm not perfect, then I'm kind of assuming that you're probably not that way either. So when you don't bring me your whole self... into work, into our work relationship and into my relationship with you at work, then I tend to trust you a bit less.

And I think there's a few dimensions to that that we can explore, and I'll lay them out for you now, and then we can talk about how you can build a bit more on this part of the equation in your relationships with others, whether they're colleagues. or clients, whether they're your boss or members of your team. Three dimensions I'm going to look at. The first is your personal life.

I think people trust us more when they know something about us and what we do outside of work. It makes us more human, more normal, more kind of one of the gang, one of us. The second is what shapes. and influences you. And I think this is a little deeper than the first one because it reveals more of why you are who you are and why you think and act the way that you do.

And the third dimension are your vulnerabilities. So for many of us, I think this is the hardest of all. It's the ability to talk freely about our imperfections. about what we don't know, about where we haven't succeeded, our fears and our doubts, because we're worried that's going to show us up to be vulnerable. So it has to be done with care. But those three...

personal life, what shapes you and your vulnerabilities. Really help build that intimacy with those who matter most to you, whose trust you want.

and perhaps also can help you encourage them to do the same. But if I go more deeply into those three, I just want to make one important point, because many say... They don't want to share all those things because they don't trust someone else. And yet the irony is that by taking a bit of a risk and revealing more of yourself, you actually build more trust.

So it's not about waiting until you have trust and then revealing more. It's about revealing more and in that way, building more trust. Now, obviously, it's a staged process. You have to use your judgment here and jumping from zero to a hundred doing what we could call oversharing is also a mistake because some people might use what you tell them against you.

And some people just don't want to know every deepest detail about you, to be quite frank. But using judgment wisely and revealing even when you don't feel that the environment is totally safe and you don't feel... Trust or complete trust builds more trust. And the vast majority of people will actually respond by warming to you more and maybe revealing a little bit more of themselves in response.

So with that in mind, let's look at these three. Let's talk first of all about the personal life, talking about that. Because what I think that does is it forms bonds beyond immediate work issues. It finds... common interests. You know, it shows other sides of you and your humanity and your normality. And you become more of a person like me.

And I think we do all find it easier to trust people who feel like they are in some ways a part of our tribe. Now, of course, that flies in the face of our desire to have diversity. And so what we have to do is to bridge across and reach out. And if we are different from others, do it in a way that intrigues other people, that they still feel like...

They can relate to us, even if we're different, rather than holding stuff back when they just don't know us. And I think when they don't know us, then people get suspicious. Now people have got mixed views, I think, about whether the increased working from home we've all been through by the pandemic has actually increased or decreased intimacy. We found out more about each other's homes in some ways. You know, we've seen children and pets popping up on Zoom. We've had people call.

out that you know they need to take a bit of a break now or they're being more honest about the limitations they've got in their home which make it easier or more difficult for them to work normally but on the other hand I think our opportunities to talk informally with each other have almost disappeared when we're not physically working close to each other. Because when we're not physically working close to each other, then the...

Life becomes like a series of scheduled calls with a task and always with some kind of a transactional nature, has been my experience. And so we miss seeing people face to face in those moments when we can just... shoot the breeze, just chat about stuff, and also, I think, pick up many more signals about who people are, their body language, just their facial expressions, how they feel about things. So certainly my conclusion is...

that working remotely makes it more difficult to build intimacy and we have to work much, much harder at it. And that, of course, was the case before the pandemic and will continue to be the case. even as many of us have been able to get back to work and see each other again. But I think this recognition that intimacy is something that we do have to work on. has been a learning, certainly for me, out of this pandemic. So it takes time and it takes less regimented, structured time.

Whether it's just, you know, to tell a couple of stories about my home life or to share what's shaping my thinking. There is something about if I'm working remotely from others. finding that, actually being very intentional about creating the space where I can build that dimension of trust. And if I am physically around people, making sure that I do that, that it is a part actually of work because it's a part of building our trust.

So sharing more about our personal life is one way to build intimacy and a second way is to reveal more about what shapes or has shaped you as a person. with the values and beliefs that you now hold. In our company, Walking the Talk, we actually have an exercise that we do with teams where we ask people to tell a story which does just that.

you know, what shaped you. And I used it recently with a team and I was amazed by the range of stories people told. But on the whole, I do find that women are sometimes more willing to talk about perhaps the painful experiences from their past or their present, and how that affected them. But then also I have found that some men are certainly willing to do the same. But some people tend to just, you know, give you the facts.

they give you sort of a life life history but what really is intimate i think is the ability to tell that story in terms of this is something that was tough for me And as a result of that, this is who I've become. This is why I behave the way I do now. This is the way I think the way I do now. And that really, I think, does tell you I've been so moved when I've heard people to do that, both men and women.

because I think it really helps me appreciate what people have been through. And we all have to arrive at where we are today. And then I feel like I admire them more rather than judging them. And sometimes I do judge people poorly when I don't understand them because I see foibles or traits or eccentricities and I draw perhaps negative conclusions about them. But when I understand more about where they come from...

I get to appreciate the richness of who someone is. It really helps me to understand their intentions and that their intentions are mostly good. So what shapes you now? What shapes you as you were growing up? Which elements and in what moment might you share those with other people? And how might it help others to understand you better?

And then I wonder whether you ask enough questions, as I always ask myself, whether I ask enough questions of others, whether I open the door to help them to speak about what shaped them. so I can better understand them and understand what makes them tick. I think spending time considering those questions and finding opportunities to act on them and on their answers will definitely build trust.

So personal life and what shaped you, and the third dimension I want to cover, which also builds intimacy, relates to showing some vulnerability. And I think this can take several forms. I was giving feedback recently to a team who were all very confident and very successful. I've heard others refer to them as having big egos. And what I noticed observing how they were with each other was that

They never actually said or suggested that they didn't know something. They sort of spoke as if they had all the answers already. They didn't ask questions. That was really revealing to me. They didn't draw out the opinions of their colleagues. Now, they wouldn't have necessarily seen this as a lack of trust, but I did, because knowing what I knew about what they were facing ahead of them.

in terms of the challenges they were up against, I was pretty sure, still am pretty sure, they didn't know all the answers. But each of them didn't really feel safe enough to show that. and to show others, perhaps even to show themselves to be honest, and therefore to build that vulnerability.

And to do that, they're going to need to build an atmosphere of psychological safety where they can each practice revealing a little bit more about what they're going to need to help each other and what they're going to need from each other. And then spend time being uncertain and being anxious. And oh my goodness me, that is a vulnerable place to be. Just sitting with uncertainty as a team.

and gradually working things through and coming up with plans together, that is an intimacy building and it's a trust building experience. So for you to build that trust, You're going to need to start that process off by being straight about mistakes that you've made, areas you don't feel fully competent or where you haven't handled something well. And people will often tell me, for example,

that something they don't like about consulting firms is that they always say they can do everything. So what I try to do is to say, look, we don't really do that. It's not our specialty. I can do this other thing and do it really well. But this is not. You should get somebody else for that. And what I find is when I do that, it does build trust. Because people then see that I'm telling the truth.

And so when I do say I can do something, and that we as a company have the ability to fulfill this need, then they're more likely to believe me. Now, obviously, if I talk about being completely incompetent and unconfident and helpless, that's not going to work either. So there's middle ground. But I think especially as a leader with your team.

You can really improve the dynamic by role modeling what you want from others, which is to be more honest in talking about your areas of strength and success, but also talking about your doubts and your mistakes, because that's how you actually... have breakthroughs and can improve, right? So intimacy, three areas for you to consider and exercises for you to experiment with. One is to reveal more about your personal life.

Two, to reveal more of what shaped you. And three, to be honest about your own weaknesses or vulnerabilities or mistakes. So trust equals credibility. plus reliability, plus intimacy, which we've now covered, divided by self-interest. And in the next episode, I'll talk about self-interest, which as the equation does show, can completely kill the benefits of the first three if you allow it to take over your relationships with other people. So join me then and goodbye for now.