Talk to Me Nice

Speaker 1: [Music] Trust is earned and trust is built each and every day. Trust isn't a one-time event. Trust is a lifestyle. Even in reality, we are all going to make a mistake. We're all going to erode trust with somebody, not intentionally, but sometimes unintentionally. But the thing is, do we have enough courage to be able to listen to people when they tell us that we've made the misstep? So, I think it's uh one thing to say I don't trust someone, but when they do uh hold you accountable for it, are you courageous enough to make a different decision going forward? I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheila Tip podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leads to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leaps, a senior level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the She Built It Community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to the Sheila podcast. Thank you for joining us. Minda, share with us who you are, what you do, and what led you to focus on trust in the workplace.

Speaker 2: Thank you for having me, Melanie. Happy to be here. Thank you for the work that you do. I consider myself a workplace advocate, and I spent 15 years in my former life in the workplace experiencing erosions of trust. And uh it led me to, you know what, we never really talk about it out loud. It's one of those things that we know we need and we know how it feels when it's not there. And I started my workplace advocacy, if you will, from a blog many years ago, if any of you remember that dinosaur thing called a blog. And eventually it led me to writing books and talking at various companies and conferences around the idea of how we make the workplace work for everybody.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And trust is so important. Trust that someone's going to show up. Trust that someone's going to be part of the team and show up as part of the team. Trust that someone's going to create a positive work environment. There's a statistic that says we will spend 90,000 hours of our life in the workplace. Why wouldn't that be a place where trust is a main component? Because we want that in our romantic relationships. We want it in our platonic. So, it's unfortunate that we don't prioritize it in another environment that we spend so much time in. You have worked with so many teams and organizations. When did you realize that trust, not just talent or titles, is

Speaker 2: what changes everything. I think I probably always knew it, but I wasn't in a particular space to probably articulate it because I think trust sometimes is one of those soft skills that we don't think about. And over time, when people were telling me, oh, I don't trust HR or I don't trust my manager. I don't trust my colleague. What they were saying to me was there was an expectation that wasn't being met that is continuously eroding trust. And for me, I was like, okay, so maybe if that person knew that you needed something more, maybe trust could be repaired, but how can we solve for something we don't know is a problem? And so it made me kind of go down this rabbit hole about expectations and trust and is it really a trust issue or is it

Speaker 1: a communication issue? Yes, I was going to say communication is such an important part of that and sometimes communication can be hard and not knowing how to articulate what you're

Speaker 2: experiencing. That's the reason why I decided to do this research and write this book on trust because I felt like people didn't know how to say it in the right ways and you can't just tell your colleague or your manager, I don't trust you anymore. You're probably not going

Speaker 1: to get the outcome that you want. Yeah. And it is so hard to know what to do in

Speaker 2: those situations at times. Absolutely.

Speaker 1: You've been such a strong voice for self- advocacy. What's a moment when you had to speak up for yourself when it wasn't easy?

Speaker 2: You have to learn to trust your own voice so that you can advocate for the things that you want. And when I was in my corporate career, I was the only woman oftentimes, but I was the only woman of color all of the time. And so for a long time, I just accepted that I was going to experience a low trust environment because there was no accountability for how people demonstrated trust or how they eroded trust. And I didn't feel safe enough to be able to say, "Well, maybe you shouldn't say that in a in a meeting to the only person in the room that would experience that, you know, and I just didn't trust that the environment was safe for me to say the things that needed to be said in in a productive way." And I realized that very early on that I entered into the workplace with my voice. And by midway through, I was trying to find it on the ground somewhere because it had been kicked around. And I had to come back to trusting myself and say, "Okay, Minda, you've always had a voice. You just have to decide how you want to use it." I had a similar experience working for the Los Angeles Dodgers. I was usually one of the only women in the room. And looking back, I wish I had something like you're offering people now to find that confidence because I look back and there are times when I think, why didn't I speak up in that meeting? Why didn't I say the giant client that I had brought in in in the meeting? And it was mostly because of trust because I didn't trust

Speaker 1: that environment was open to me. I wish I would have had it too, right? And so I'm glad that we're having this conversation so that on those days where we feel like our voice don't matter that we take each other into the rooms that we might not be in so that we have a little more leverage on those moments that feel kind of lonely. What do you think most people get wrong about

Speaker 2: building trust at work? I I think people think that it's a oneanddone thing or there's this assumption that because I have a title or because I have the tenure that you just automatically trust me. But trust is earned and trust is built each and every day. Trust isn't a one-time event. Trust is a lifestyle. Even in reality, we are all going to make a mistake. We're all going to erode trust with somebody, not intentionally, but sometimes unintentionally. But the thing is, do we have enough courage to be able to listen to people when they tell us that we've made the misstep? So, I think it's uh one thing to say I don't trust someone. But when they do uh hold you accountable for it, are you courageous enough to make a different

Speaker 1: decision going forward? Yeah, it's so true. That can be hard at times and you're making me think about my teams, you try to show up as much as I can for them as I hope that they show up for me. Trust is reciprocal. That's one of the things that also people forget. It's this weird thing of as leaders, we expect that our employees are going to be trustworthy. They're not going to lie to us. they're going to get the work done. But on the flip side, are we offering that trustworthiness as well? Or are we providing kind of white lies or omitting the truth or all these different things that show up that I don't think we want to take a like a hard look at in the mirror to say, "Well, you know, I can't tell them everything." but also being trustworthy is saying, "Hey, I know there's a lot going on in the world right now." And I don't have all the answers and layoffs might come down the pipeline, but rest assured, we're going to keep everybody in the loop and make sure that everybody has the tools they need that if we have to go this direction. You're not just finding that out at 9:15 when you just showed up at 9:00 a.m. So, there's ways in which we can be more trustworthy.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And you bring up a good point. It's okay to say, "I don't know, but I'm going to do my best to figure this out for you." Yeah. And if you have questions, feel free to ask, right? But let's not pretend that there's nothing to see here. And I think that many of us in the workplace, there's a culture of just being conflict avoidant and let's normalize talking about some of the hard things, but also championing some of the things that happen that are great. Trust is also not just the bad things that happen, but acknowledging when people do a good job. That's building trust, too. And so it doesn't have to be this this like negative connotation when it comes to trust. My favorite thing to do is to give a Starbucks gift card kind of out of the blue or you know if I know

Speaker 1: someone's a mom or just those little things that make your team members feel appreciated. I mean there's bigger things too obviously but sometimes it's nice to get that surprise like hey thank you or I'm going to give you a bonus because thank you so much for the the work that you've done or just saying I appreciate you. That goes a long way. I mean, I know a lot of people's trust language might be money, but it's not always going to be that that's provided. I was speaking with a woman earlier today and she was saying, "Oh, I've been at my company for 25 years and nobody acknowledged it. I got an automated email with the former CEO, not even the current one, saying, "Thank you for your service." And I'm like, "Did you feel like that was an erosion of trust?" She's like, "Yeah, I it is an erosion of trust. I've moved for them three times and now they want me to move a fourth time and they can't even tell me like, great job." And I'm like, "It's the little things. It's these small acts of trust that continue to build relationships and we can't get so busy that we forget that people are human first. Yes. And even that I appreciate you. I appreciate everything that you do. I tried to do that as well. That's great. We know trust is built or lost in specific moments. Share with us a time when trust was either earned or broken

Speaker 2: and how that shaped you. Oh, I love that question. I try to give a lot of grace when it comes to erosions of trust. I think now in my life because I know that each of us encounter a scenario in our day-to-day and that decision has an impact and that impact is going to either enhance trust with someone or erode trust and we're not always thinking about how that impact lands when we shoot off the email really fast or we make a certain hiring decision how that might impact others in the room and again I don't think anybody shows up and says how can I grow trust with you today Melanie right I don't think anybody is that sinister but we do things because we're just trying to get things done and we don't realize the impact. And I had a manager who would often say some very crude kind of jokes and they tend to always be geared toward people that did not identify the same way he did. And so he would always say those things. And then one time one of the jokes landed on my community and it it made me very uncomfortable. And even though I know that he might not have intended to hurt my feelings, but the impact was that, right? This was a person that I went to happy hour with, taco Tuesday with, and I did trust him to some degree. And then when he kept making those type of jokes, I'm like, can I trust this person? Is this person see me as a leader in the workplace? And I started to get under the hood of, oh, okay, he's not being sensitive and mindful of the things that he's saying. So that's an erosion of trust. he's not acknowledging that this is impacting me, the words that he's saying and and he's not demonstrating what trustworthiness looks like. And it started to make me kind of hate him a little bit each day. And part of it was

Speaker 1: I never got to articulate that there was an erosion of trust. So I just kept showing up and smiling, doing the work, working hard, and he never knew that he eroded trust with me. And and that's when I realized how much more of a workplace could I have enjoyed it had I had the language to talk to him about it. right? In a way that we could move forward. And I think we do ourselves disservice sometimes by at least not acknowledging our own feelings and then trusting that maybe this person if they know that this is bothering me, they might do a little bit better. Just maybe. Yeah. Make those adjustments. And that can be really hard when you're in that situation because what if you love your what you do and you love your other team members, but there's one situation that's making it incredibly hard for you. Yeah. And they say that eight out of 10 people will leave a job that they like without having a conversation about the conflict. And I think, okay, we've all worked so hard to get to where we are. What would it look like having a conversation rooted in facts, not feelings, and offering a solution on how we move forward and partnering together? It might solve some of the problems or it gives you information to know this person's never going to be trustworthy and I got to go, but at least I don't create this narrative of, oh, they hate me and they want me out of here and I don't belong because that may not be true. Yeah. And I think we've all experienced that at one time throughout our career in life. And it's great. Hey, I mean it was earlier in my career that I experienced it, but it's great you're

Speaker 2: giving people those tools. Thank you. You partner with huge brands like Nike and JP Morgan Chase. How do you stay grounded in your purpose while working at that level? When I think about

Speaker 1: writing the blog and then going to brands later in the years, right, and being a trusted voice, but I think it's demonstrating what trust looks like each and every day. and also being honest in a way and not pointing the finger because again I don't think anybody shows up in our leadership and our environment to say how can I make somebody else's life raggedy today but things happen and so I really enjoy being able to talk things through really hard topics and make them digestible so that people see at the core of what we're talking about isn't necessarily gender or age or ability it's about humanity and I get to tell those stories that bring humanity back to the workplace. And when we have that humanity and that dignity, it fuels respect and we get back to trust. Yeah. And when mistakes are made, I I always think I'm a human being. I make mistakes. So when I'm talking to my team, I try to understand we're all human. At least we're still human. I think at least today until AI takes over for for everything. Even though we know that's not going to happen because we're still human beings. Yes. But it's true. Like Facebook says, it's complicated. We are complicated individuals and that's

Speaker 2: why we need to give a little grace and and let people know. Again, it's that expectation gap if we don't tell people that you need to be a little more acknowledged or you need more feedback in the workplace, then how will they know and how can they build trust with you if they don't know what your

Speaker 1: expectations are? Yeah, so true. You're teaching at NYU and advising executives in the field. What are you seeing from both that gives you hope or concern

Speaker 2: about the future of leadership? Well, I'll start with concern and then we'll we'll go into the hope. I think the concern is that I think people are fearful based off what you said of making the wrong choice or saying the wrong thing and so it paralyzes people not to do anything. And I and I hear that from my students all the time just this fear and that makes me sad because I'm like conflict is okay. It's how we solve for it. You are going to make a mistake. So just get that out of your head. But it's how you recover. So if you do say the thing in the meeting that you shouldn't have said or maybe there was a time when it was okay to use that type of language for someone and now it's not. Acknowledge that you made a mistake but don't avoid them in the break room. Don't avoid them on the group teams. Let's say hey I'm really sorry it's Minda right? You know and instead you might have called me the wrong name but don't try to avoid me now when you see me at the all staff. You know we're going to make mistakes. So own that and just you get to it before that person does. And then the other part that makes me excited about it is I feel like our best days are ahead of us in the workplace because I feel like we have majority of people who really want to make the workplace a better place for everyone because we all just want to do our best work without barriers and I feel like we're in a phase where people want to learn what those barriers are

Speaker 1: and how they can help remove them. Yeah, it's so true. I think about that in my business too. How can I make my team happy? How can I make my clients happy? How can I make this the best situation as much as possible? And I think if if everyone in the workplaces thinks like that, it can only go in a positive direction. Even though we're always going to have challenges and things that come up, but you know, it's how can we create the best sustainable company

Speaker 2: culture as possible. One of the things that I often tell people and and leaders too is trust is a nice thing to have. We we love it. It's warm and fuzzy, but trust is also good for business. So when trust is present, people are 21% more productive. You have 50% more retention of your employees and it's provides 40% less burnout. So if we factor all that in, that's good for business because our people are happier and they're doing their work. Yeah. Yeah. And if we miss a deadline, it's just say I'm so sorry. I mean, there's missing big deadlines and smaller ones, but usually a I'm so sorry goes a really long way. And that builds trust also part of the follow-through. There's probably somebody out there who's like, it's not that they didn't want to send that or didn't make the deadline, but also going back to you and saying, "Hey, Melanie, I know I was supposed to deliver this at, you know, noon to you. Can I get two more hours running a little behind? Is that okay?" That's going to make me a little more trustworthy than you having to ping me 24 hours later like, "Hey, are you still

Speaker 1: sending that thing to me?" Yes. So true. So true. You're constantly creating

Speaker 2: books, frameworks, and opportunities. When you're building something meaningful, how do you keep yourself aligned? That's a great question. I always ask myself, what purpose is this serving? I tend to work mostly in the workplace, but is this going to make the workplace better or is it just going to keep it the same or is it going to make it worse? And I always try to create practical tools so that no matter if you're in Tokyo or you're in North Dakota, you feel like, okay, this is sustainable for me. We don't need a trillion dollar initiative to implement what you're saying. We just need to know that it exists. And I really love working from that because I feel like most time again people they want to engage with people in a positive and healthy manner, but they just don't know how. And for a long time in the workplace, we weren't even able to have certain conversations about the things that we can talk about today. And so again, how can you solve for things you're not even talking about out loud? And so I love to be that bridge. And I always make that the backdrop. Is this being a bridge to catalyze trust or not? And so that's what I choose. And also with companies, are they even if they were the worst place to work, are they open to making change? If we can break trust, we can rebuild trust. And so I'm a firm believer in that. And it's great that you make it accessible to everyone regardless of the size or location. Yes. Because someone might think, oh, this isn't applicable to me. But it's great that you're bringing that knowledge to all levels. Yes, I work with enterprise companies, but in addition to the books that I write, I also have this game that I created called the Trust Catalyst. And I've played the Trust Catalyst with 200 people, and I'm about to play it with a team of five because they need to build trust, too. And so, I like to make it practical, make it accessible, because that's part of the impact. That's part of the legacy.

Speaker 1: Your next book is called Talk to Me Nice, which says a lot in four words. What does that phrase mean to you, and what shift do you hope it sparks?

Speaker 2: I hope it sparks what the five love languages did in our cultural zygeist for relationships that talk to me nice, the seven trust languages for the workplace will help people think about what we want to receive and what we can give to to build trust. And so I think a lot of what we're discussing is how do we humanize people and how do we talk to people in a language that they understand? And I hope that people will dig into what their trust languages are, but also think about what are the languages of my team. What do they need me to speak? Right? Is it they need more transparency for me? What could that look like? Right? Or if I need more feedback from my manager or from a colleague after a project, what would it look like to ask for that? Instead of mulling over and ruminating on my couch about they never give me feedback, let's let's talk about those things. Let's all be those adults that we are inside the workplace and have better tools to talk

Speaker 1: to each other nicer. Tell us about the memo. What did the night before the memo launch teach you about letting go and trusting the work that you've done?

Speaker 2: Melanie, yes. Let's go back in time into my Delorean when I put the when I put the memo out. It was a scary time for two reasons. Because I had left a job that I had been in for 13 years. That's like the longest I had ever worked. and that was my security blanket. And then being an entrepreneur, you just never know what that jump is going to look like. And I also was writing a book about a topic that wasn't widely discussed at that time. So I was battling two things and a lot of anxiety. But when I decided to write the memo, I knew that it was a conversation that had to be had inside the workplace. And I needed to trust myself and I needed to trust that the book would get out to the women and the leaders that it needed to start to open up conversation for just because we work at the same place doesn't mean we experience the workplace the same. Right? So again going back to what are these barriers and how do we remove them and I learned a lot about my voice. We all have one. We just have to decide how we want to use them. And books has been a really great tool for me to be able to get my voice out there. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. We talked a

Speaker 1: lot about business and work today. What is one thing that you do to make sure that you're finding and living your joy?

Speaker 2: I have to say I'm a fur baby mom. So, the thing that and I love Frenchies. I now am on my second French bulldog and that's what like centers me and brings me joy at the end of the day. A a good belly rub is a solve for a lot of the other things that I can't solve for. I

Speaker 1: don't have a dog, but I would assume it would force me to get outside if I had one or someone who owns a dog. It like

Speaker 2: it forces the nature. It does. Yes. Caring for someone and getting out there and being active. So, if you're in front of your computer a lot, like some of us are, you don't get a chance to be as active. So, the dog definitely helps me get out of my zone and not take myself too seriously.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us today, Minda, and for having the confidence to share your knowledge and wisdom with the world. Please share with us how and where we can find you. Thank you for the

Speaker 2: work that you do. And I'm here because of women like you, Melanie. So, thank you so much. Find me on your favorite social media platform, but the best place is LinkedIn. Hit the follow

Speaker 1: button. Thank you for joining us today. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me at hello@sh shebuiltit.com on our shebuilt website or at shebuiltit on social. Thank you to my editor Rich Duffolino who always makes us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave. [Music]