185. Return on Trust: From Best Kept Secret to Go-To Authority with Petra Zink and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_01 0:03

This podcast is for people who know that the workplace can and should be better and are ready to do something about it. You will learn practical ways to change organizational cultures and human behaviour without passwords, without box ticking, without performative leadership. I am the boss of Prina Shark Consulting, working with executives, leaders and teams to create work cultures and environments that actually work for people. I am Prina Shark. I specialise in organizational culture change and human behaviour change. I am all about making work better with people who give a damn. So if you think I can help, contact me via LinkedIn. I am here to help you to find decent ways to change the workplace. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with me, your host, Prina Shah. And I'm very excited to be bringing you today my friend, all the way from the Gold Coast, the sunny gold coast in Australia, Petra Zink.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Hello, Petra. How are you? I'm so good. Thanks so much for having me, Prina. So good to see you again.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Oh, my absolute pleasure. Now, I have brought Petra in uh to this podcast while she's writing a book. Not once she's finished it. I think while you're writing it, because I want to get all of your ideas, I want to see what's percolating, Petra. Um, you are writing a book about the return of investment on trust. But before we even launch into this pet trust, who are you and what do you do and why do you do it?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yes. Yes, I'm writing a second book. My first book was never planned, and neither was the second book, but I found a need that people actually need to have more of a framework, how to systemize trust, because this is the foundation to achieve big things. And this is also the result of what I'm doing. So I'm working with leaders, executives, and entrepreneurs on basically systemizing and packaging their IP so they can monetize it. So what it means in very simple terms is how can you prepare for usually the next step that you embark? So maybe that you've gone from individual contributor to a partner, and all of a sudden you go from doing the work to winning the work, two different skill sets, complementing but different. Or you are an executive, but you're not stepping into entrepreneurship. And just because you've got 10, 20, 30, whatever years experience doesn't make you a good independent consultant, advisor, and entrepreneur. So it's basically preparing for what's next by connecting the dots of what you've done so far and making sense for how you can leverage that in your next step though.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

That's so cool. I think there's another reader or another listener who's very interested in this, and this is a lot of the people that I support, Petra. So there's a lot of leaders within the workplace who have a voice, who are the best kept secret at the moment, and they're not building on the return of investment in the trust that they're building right now, right? So and that but they want to shine, they want to stand out. But how do they do this is a question that I'm more often asked when, you know, we're doing one-to-one coaching. So I'm really especially glad to have been talking to you about all of this today. So your book is about the return of investment on trust. Why do you frame trust as a return on investment rather than a nice to have?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Well, initially it was a nice to have, and everyone was just talking about trust. And I thought, how boring. Like honestly, it's so intangible. You can't measure it, you can't manage it, but everyone says it's the most important thing. And this is what got me curious to say, well, what would it take for me to make it more measurable? How can you turn it into something that actually gives you something back? And what I've realized when I wrote and developed the trusted authority framework, which is basically the promise to go from being the best-kept secret, as you've just said, to becoming the go-to in your industry. And what I've realized working with clients is that they often don't take the first step to even trust themselves, or that their team can trust them or their organization. So they want to make this massive jump from not even trusting themselves to wanting to become the go-to in an industry, which is probably a too big of a jump. And this is where I work backwards and I thought the more you can put effort, time, energy into building your own trust, your team's trust, your organization's trust, and then industry trust, the more it compares. And all of a sudden we can make trust something very tangible, but also something connected to commercial outcome rather than just saying it's nice and we all need to trust ourselves, and trust is the competitive advantage. I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_03 4:36

No, no, no. It's just silly, silly language, isn't it? Now, Petra is doing something very interesting on LinkedIn. So if you're not following her, you must put Petra's details in the show notes. On Fridays, Petra shares a framework every Friday, and this is a challenge to yourself that you're doing, I know, and it must be really freaking hard to get your thinking into more of a visual format. So talking about trust, you written you wrote about the trust stack. So you've beautifully outlined it just now, but you talk about trust from that individual perspective in terms of our judgment and our decisiveness. We then go to our team level uh and the translation of our strategy. We then go to cross-functional, okay, and then organizational, and then industry. So these are our spheres of influence, right? And it's with um predictability in terms of okay, you know what you're gonna get when you chat with Petra, and complexity as well. So complexity can expand as we go through to you know different levels of our thinking and our being. Like you said, a lot of people think, okay, well, Petra, I'm now a leader, so therefore everybody should trust me. Like it is it's the gods, you know, given right, often people think. But trust is quite the currency now as well, isn't it? It just does not happen overnight. Um, tell me more you're thinking about the trust stack and how how you've come up with that as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Absolutely. Well, what I was thinking was most of my clients actually come to me now with issues or challenges in producting their teams or their cross-functional teams. So work is now delivered more project-based rather than very hard for. And we've got maybe a software engineer and then a project manager and then a marketer and then a finance person working on one project and one outcome. Nobody's got the one more senior title or the more authority level that they can actually influence um simply by title. And this was also what got me interested in 2020-2021. How can you influence by trust and not necessarily by title? And it's becoming this translator of believing in a language that resonates really to your audience and speak their language, basically. Now, what I've also realized was that um now we have to make more decisions with less certainty. Because especially in the last 18 months or two years, thanks to AI, the world is changing like that. There's more complexity, there's more uncertainty, more emotions are happening in the workplace. And yet, making a decision, whether you're left or right, whether we take this opportunity or not, is becoming a competitive advantage because making no decision is literally the worst and most risky thing that we can do. But how do you make a decision? But also how can your team trust that you make a certain decision when we don't know everything? And this comes down to you being clear on what are non-negotiables for you. And this is where we connect it also with values, like what is actually important to you, to the team, to the organization, that we can then say, you know, let's say reputation overwhelming you. But all of a sudden we get an OnlyFans client on board and they pay a lot of money. Do we actually say yes to it, or do we say thank you, but no thank you? Because often I seem that values are becoming a little bit of a negotiable in a second it becomes inconvenient or there's just a lot of money on the table. And this is when we know what is actually important to us and toward the organization. Me as a team member or as a team leader, I can make decisions and I'm not the bottleneck because we are all clear what we're working towards and how we actually make decisions. I love how trust stake came about. Predictability based on what you believe, but also how you behave and do that consistently. And this is in the end what my brain is all about.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

That's cool. That's cool. I'm with you as well. Values often become negotiable, unfortunately, when shiny things are, you know, being dangled at us. Um, so so one of the ways to actually have that trust and the I guess the investment from your people as well is to be consistent, as you've been talking about, and to really have your own, your own why, your own, you know, purpose, whatever you want to call it. Um, your own, I guess, North Star defined. And our friend Leanne, Leanne Hughes talks about, I know at length about what you stand for and what you stand against as well, being really important and defining that, uh, not just for yourself, but for the people that you're working with as well. So we're all a collective in that respect as well.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Absolutely. And I would say, especially now with AI, in the workplace, we cannot compete on how much we know or how good we are, because obviously AI knows a lot more, it is a lot better with most things. But what it can't compete with is our point of view that's based on our story and experiences and how we translate it. You know, I can say the five steps to write the book, but you can Google that, you can chat to be tea that when I say how I wrote my book and how I got it out there and how I've got X, Y, Z. This is unique to me, and this is what people are more drawn to than ever before. And coming back to the framework Fridays, if you don't mind me. Yeah. That it came out from and learning from last year. So in the Trust Authority, I talk about there are three ways how to build credibility. The first one, and I call them the three O's. So it's on credibility, what you have, um, you know, the access that you've got, the education, but also the frameworks that you've developed. Then the second one is others. So how can you tap into other people's credibility by leveraging their status or their trust, even, that you can kind of piggyback. So brain by association. Now the last one, and I truly believe this is our competitive advantage these days, is on-the-go credibility. Meaning you are sharing behind the scenes, you're taking people on the journey as you go, rather than saying six months down the track, three years down the track. Look at me, this is what I've achieved, and how good am I? People are not interested in that anymore. They want to see what you are going through, what are you struggling with? How do you make decisions? So last year I had all of a sudden this epiphany that I wanted to do 10 pull-ups. And until the 18th of January of December 24, I had not been able to do one pull-up. Anyway, I started documenting it. And literally, you know, my first one was like, and then the second one and so forth. And people literally came up to me at events and said, How many pull-ups are we up to? I was like, I haven't spoken to you in like 10 years, but this is a question that you ask me. It's like, great, there is something to it. Because what it gives us is an opportunity to connect on a more personal level. It shows that you are working towards something. It's easier to start a conversation that can lead then into more business chats and so forth. But people want to see how do you approach that particular challenge. And I didn't want to replicate that with a physical challenge because from a brainbuilding perspective, I don't want to be associated as you know, a fitness girly or anything like that. Even though I I like do it in my private time, it's not what I necessarily want to be known for. Anyway, I thought, what if I can turn it into a more mental challenge? And I always say if you can't draw it, you can't scale it. Meaning if you're not able to explain in a very succinct way what you actually do to others, you're not able to lead a wider team because you're losing people along the way. So I thought, you know what? Framework Friday it is.

SPEAKER_03 12:07

Bring it. That's how it came about. That's so cool. Now you have just shared so much, okay? So on credibility, so the frameworks and the kind of stuff that you're doing, others' credibility by leveraging their brand, their their wonderfulness. On the go, credibility. This this is something that I don't think most people um consider. So sharing as you go. What are you doing? What are you struggling with? What are you winning? So often within the workplace, the majority of us are taught, okay, once that project is done and dusted, we will then put a LinkedIn post about it and go, rah-rah, I did blah blah. Whereas you're actually breaking my brain and you're stating no, as I'm actually working on the project to share the highs, the lows, and everything in between, because that makes me more trusted.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Absolutely because it it shows how you think and how you work rather than just what you do.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

And this is what makes us different. Like, you know, we're facilitators, we're speakers, we've got blah blah. And it's nice to see the highlighter, but the internet is full of that. Yeah, everyone looks credible nowadays, everyone has got the random awards that we've never heard of, and all of a sudden, you know, people coming from nowhere and are bestsellers and so forth. It's like really okay, you know, you go. However, they've not shared the behind the scenes, and this is why, you know, if you look at the A-leman trust parameter, trust is at an all-time low, but skepticism is at an all-time high. So, how can we combat that? Instead of, you know, hiding everything that we're doing, showing people, yes, I've lost a client and it sucks. However, what I'm doing to win the next five clients is I'm doing X, Y, and Z. Wish me luck. You know, anything like that, nobody's perfect. Everyone is going through a lot of challenges, especially in this day and age. Why would we pretend to have it all together when we don't?

SPEAKER_03 13:57

No. And it is just so much more real, it's so much more relatable as well. And if I can see someone, you know, climbing the ladder, so to speak, they haven't they haven't reached that peak of the mountain yet. I'm with them and I'm cheering for them as well, whether they achieve it or not. And I I I get to know them from a more personal level as well. That is just a complete reframe for me as well. Can I ask you, in your opinion, have you come across this? Are people outsourcing trust without realizing it?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Yes. How I started the book and said we've we've stu we've outsourced trust a little bit too much. Yeah. Because our natural response, and this is also from my own experience, like last year when I wanted to explore trust, I was like, I need to do a PhD about it, clearly. Like that's the only answer, because I'm not an organizational psychologist, I'm not even a psychologist, I've got none of the credentials. So what do you do? Well, you go back to the institution to give you the trust. And once you've got the label, tick in the box. And then I thought, well, when I got my master's in business, I thought for a second and knew everything until I had my first job, and day one, I realized I know nothing. And I have nothing because everyone is so much more experienced and so forth. And then I thought, well, what about the blue ticks that are now everywhere? And we are verifying that we are the real deal. And we get the random micro-credentials and awards. Like I'm not talking uh badly about those because I also do them. But often we outsource trust into the titles, and then thinking, in a second I've got an MBA, people will run my door in and opportunities are open up. And I haven't seen that in like 12 years that this would be the case. Like maybe all the way back in the day, or if you've got such a specialized skin set in such a unique mining industry or whatsoever, maybe that's the case. But usually it isn't. So we can't add source trust to titles and also not to institutions, given we've lost trust now. And you know, when I went through my application process, got a PhD, I also got an email to say, in fact, you can get a PhD, you don't need a research project, you don't need credentials, a credit card, and in seven days or less you've got the title. And they were quite reputable organ uh uh universities. And I was like, okay, so you literally can buy the tick now and the credibility. So what are we doing when everyone, literally everyone, can look credible? Of course, we're not trusting anyone. Exactly. That's the opposite that happens then, doesn't it? And we're just defending it. Exactly. So this is why I thought we need to start with ourselves to build our own trust and build predictability in our own behavior. Because when I know whatever comes in my way, I know how to make a decision based on my values. I know how if I would get made redundant, if my industry goes down for a second, like the travel industry did in 2020, I can translate what I've done here into whatever is next because I may have not had the exact title and may not have worked on the exact project, but I've developed certain skills that I can translate. Yes. So tick in the book again. So it can't literally always down to ourselves, because then we can also translate it to our team. And I also say predictability is more important than perfection these days. Even if we as a leader make the wrong decision, it happens. It is okay as long as it's a predictable response to a situation. Whereas, you know, speaking from a psychological safety perspective, if people constantly have to guess what is the person coming in as, you know, are they angry? Are they uh excited? Are they happy? Are they cheering us on? Do they give us more work? Do they fire us? We cannot perform at our our best. So as a leader, being able to have predictable behavior, yeah, but then also being able to translate what the strategy means on a random Tuesday for the team, this is how we can build trust without necessarily having to have all the answers, but it's creating an environment where I can predict what I need to do and I know what good looks like. And I also know what my contribution to the bigger picture uh needs to be.

SPEAKER_03 17:59

Yeah, this is really hard work on yourself and really checking in on yourself and seeing, yeah, what you stand for, what you stand against, really doing a bit of an audit on all of the skills that you've got right now, and future-proofing yourself from a career perspective or an industry perspective in case, you know, the world falls down again, which it may well, so that we can pivot when we need to, knowing that, yeah, all of this hard work I've done is completely valid and I can take it to X, Y, or Z. You know, it's normal. It's not just thrown into the bin altogether. Wow. That's a lot there, Petra. Um it's a lot. How does low trust show up in decision making when people don't realize it?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

It shows up in decisions going back and forth. It's like I'll just double check that with so and so. And let's also circle X, Y, Z in. And have you checked it with A, B, and C? And all of a sudden, three months later, no decision has been made because nobody wants to be accountable for anything. It doesn't instantly fall into our responsibility, so we don't want to take the chance of making the wrong decisions to then being scrutinized for it either. And you know, in this day and age, speed to market is everything. Yeah. However, if I'm delaying a simple decision, you know, does Johnny or Susie need to sign off for that? Do we have to get this person circled in or no? We are literally treading water, and clearly from an organizational perspective, we're talking about losing the competitive edge because a one-man bench or using um vibe coding has got something out on the same day whilst we're still figuring out who actually needs to make the decision. And this is also from a prediction perspective, and I'm very curious to hear from your experience with government organizations and large organizations. There is a prediction that over 50% of SP 500 organizations are not going to be around in 2030 because of this slow decision-making cycles. And you know, it's literally trying to steer the Titanic from left to right. It's quite an undertaking. What do you see in terms of decision making and being uncertain because who knows who's winning the next election and so forth?

SPEAKER_03 20:10

Oh my gosh. So it went well. So anyone who's not looking at the video version of this, when Petra was talking, I was just nodding, yes, yes, yes, yes, to so much of this. You know, there's such a speed of decision making, but then the indecision is just something else, you know. It's like, well, that's not for us, executive might say. Let's just let's just uh enable the managers to decide about that. The managers will say, Oh no, well, we need to ask the board about that, and there's just this throwing off that ball, it's just handballing through to someone else, someone else, someone else. And there's different reasons for this as well. So, from from the stuff that I come across, people are very scared about this whole psychological safety, and I don't want to do any harm, you know, do no harm. That's brilliant as a leader, definitely do no harm. But then make a freaking decision as well. One organization I remember I worked with a few years ago, Petra, and I was the organizational culture lead, and I had a communications person as well for this huge project, and she's quietly said to me, This organization is constipated when it comes to decision making, which just really stopped me in my tracks. I mean, that's quite the visual scene as well, you know. And it really is, it's just something else. So there's so many organizations going through this as well, but then the people that are impacted by this are, you know, the team members who actually want to do the work, obviously, first and foremost, internally, but then externally, it's your stakeholders, it's your clients who are actually going to benefit from your brilliant service as well. So get on with it. But there's just this big fear, this aspect of mistrust of oneself, of each other. It's weird. It's very weird at the moment, and just indecisions just going round and round and round. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

And what I've also realized is within organizations, and again, I've seen it with different clients across different industries. Yeah, it's what I call the three Ps. So it's Price, power, and um profit or the loss of profit. Meaning there's often consultants or project managers, they're working kind of against each other even though they are complementing each other. But because this team is rewarded on X, but this team is rewarded on Y, they literally walk over each other to achieve their goals instead of working with each other. So simply identifying is in terms of price, like you know, who actually gets the reward when we're doing something. How can we make sure that we are presenting together? So there's there's just so many ways how you can initially build trust with the cross-functional team to then being able to build trust with the organization. And there's a lot of um yeah, what's the word, uh walking on actions happening at the moment because nobody wants to get fired. We're all job huggy. So that doesn't help, but then at the same time, we don't want to be seen as the loser who doesn't achieve their goals. So we're doing whatever it takes to achieve that goal and sometimes at the detriment of others and the team and the cross-functional teams. So clearly, you know, as if that world is not complex enough, we're making them work and our life with each other even harder within an organization and a team. Because the organization doesn't reward the same behavior with different departments.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Oh my god, okay. Many a nodding head here again. But no, you you just I love I love your language. You just uh give gave me a new word or a new concept, job hugging. So we're all job hugging, okay? So, you know, my job is very precious, I don't want to let go of it, the world is breaking. There's lots of stuff happening in our current environment. Therefore, I'm just you know, I've I've got my security blanket and I'm holding really tight to it. But with that as well, therefore, comes this big thing that you're talking to is silos within uh, you know, the larger the organization I'm seeing, the bigger the silos as well, Petra. Because of the fact that I am marking my territory like even more than before, because I'm job hugging, using your words now, and therefore I am staying close to this thing, but but my deliverables actually require this area, this area, this area, this area. So, you know, the the cross-functional work as well that's needed. So a lot of organizations I'm seeing right now talking about breaking silos, breaking silos, breaking silos. But I think the big work here to do, as you talk to and as your frameworks talk to, and I'm sure you've got this in your book as well, is breaking the silos across the cross-functional areas first and building that trust at that level first, and then we can get to brilliant extra things. So without working on that, we're always gonna have silos, are we not?

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Yeah, absolutely. And it also comes down to how the organization actually rewards behavior but also punishes. And I put an example in when I was in recruitment, one of my first um roles, and I did really well from an individual consultant perspective, and you know, I just made a lot of money for the organization. And we had a new head of brand and marketing, and he said, You can't do that. And he called me literally every other week and said, We love what you're doing, don't get me wrong, but you can't do it, it's against the brain and so forth. I was like, Cool, no worries, I'll talk to you next week. Like I did not even, even though he was quite senior, but I didn't report to him, my team didn't report to him. We had nothing to do with each other. So even though he had kind of influence and authority, because whatever I did wasn't punished, it was a bit, you know, I didn't want to be a rebel, but at the same time, I didn't necessarily like the brain style either. It was not reinforced, we had no training on it, it was somewhere and it cost me a lot of time. So I looked at consultants who were also successful and nobody followed that. So I'm like, you know, I know shoot, but I still don't. You know, and often we are looking at people who are similar to us for influence. So even though I'm more senior and I've got the bigger title than you, you may still go to your friend over there and say, How do you do it? You know, how do you handle it? And this is how we often might pass it. And again, from a cross-functional perspective, it doesn't help. So if I would have been punished and said, you know, you do it one more time and you know we're cutting your commission, well, I would take those brain style guides in a heartbeat. Yeah. You know. But there was just no repercussions and it just made my life harder to use those templates to find them to start with. So I didn't even do it. And I think often as an organization we forget that yes, we should follow the rules, but have we actually enabled the team to succeed with that because there are rewards and consequences? Or is it just that oh I really would like you to do it? Yeah. And somebody who doesn't actually have influence over this person has to deliver the message.

SPEAKER_03 26:45

No, it doesn't work like that. No, no. No, you give me a really good example of something else that I'm really seeing across my desk at the moment. And I I think I've been seeing it for a few years now as well. Is that, well, I want to build a relationship with that person, what my director is against it, okay? So my big boss is stopping me. But how can I stealthily build that relationship with that other team or that other area that I still need to rely on? Because the other thing as well, Petra, is you know, people that we might report to, they might have ambitions, goals, you know, politics, whatever. They want to get to whether they wherever they want to get to. But there's me here every single day who has to do the job itself. And they are stopping me now, Petra. How do I get around that?

SPEAKER_00 27:30

Well, I would say it's similar to influencing anyone else. How can you make this person look good or elevate their agenda? Yeah. You know, what could I do to help them get the promotion or um make things happen quicker or get the budget approved or whatsoever? So I would know what's in it for them to then work on how I can make this happen or at least work towards it and make them look good rather than make myself look good. Yes. And you know, even just saying, you know, it takes us 90 days to get the approval, but this other team needs 30 days. What can we do to build our or re-brand ourselves to say we can deliver in 15 days, you know, or whatever it might be. Because unfortunately, slash fortunately, teams can and do build internal brands and perceptions. Oh, totally. And you know, often another team has never worked with that team, but they've heard that they're really slow or they're the bottleneck or they are whatever. Yes. So we're already saying, oh, now I have to work with them. They're always slow and they can't deliver. So I already have my perception, even though I had never worked with them. Yeah. And we need to often break that as a team leader's perspective, change this perception by changing the behavior and being consistent by delivering on that promise.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

To then change the internal brand of the team.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Totally, totally. I've done so much work with, and this was a few years ago, with many a team on actually rebranding uh themselves. And yeah, that there's a there's a difference between how people perceive you and what you think you're being perceived as as well. So they're two different conversations there as well. Um, for any leaders listening, and you think, oh, my team might have a shitty brand or whatever. So the question to you I would ask would be okay, so what is the real perception of your team? Have you done, you know, surveys? Have you gone out there? Have you done a bit of a listening tour? Have you found out what's what in terms of your perception of their perception of your brand? And then what's the story your team are telling themselves as well? And there's the gap that you need to work on, you need to bridge that gap to build those relationships as well. Um Petra, another thing that happens within the workplace is that you are a brilliant technical expert. I am now going to promote you to the role of leadership now, okay? And some leaders in that aspect especially struggle to build trust and uh influence. What's happening there?

SPEAKER_00 29:57

I call that the authority clip. Meaning you climb this letter and you get the promotion, you're excited, bang bang. And you feel like the biggest failure because nothing works as it used to work. You got rewarded and promoted, and the pets on the back, and all of a sudden you have this issue to deal with and this fire to put down. And somebody makes a complaint. I was like, I thought I was good, and now I literally start from scratch. Am I even cut out for that? Yes. And it's because we often don't realize that being really good at what she does to leading other people being really good at what they're doing, it's two different skill sets. And just because you're doing individually well doesn't mean that you can enable and empower others to do the same. And it often comes down to this communication gap that technically does not necessarily have and or have not been able to develop. And I've also seen that in recruitment. You know, the one goal that I had was I need to build this massive practice because clearly I've made it. And I worked towards it, but all the really successful people like who made a million a quarter, they were all individual contributors. And I was like, why don't you want to have a team? Because, you know, you can tend them to do the work and you get their commissions and so forth. And I said, oh my god, no. I'm bulk down and I was actually a team leader, but I wanted to get demoted because I thought it as my promotion. I was like, huh? What? I've never even heard or considered that prior to it because you know, 10 years, 12 years ago, you climbed the ladder. You got to a more senior role. You don't say, I actually want a demotion. It's just not a thing. But people were literally saying, I want to be on my own. I don't want to have anyone reporting to me because I can run at my own pace. And this is when I also realized that not everyone should be a people leader. It's just so ingrained, especially in you know our generations, I grew up in the 70s, 80s, 90s, that you need to have a team, and the bigger, the more successful you are. And then we get kind of pushed into leading people, and often we've lose the confidence in ourselves because we are not prepared for actually doing that particular job. And sometimes it's not necessarily our personality either. And over the last few years, just working with clients, I realized that there are kind of four different leadership team styles. So, yes, people leadership or people management is the most obvious one. But some are better with project management and getting things done from a project perspective. Others are really good with change leadership. So, how can we get people on board through communication, painting the picture? Not necessarily direct reports. And the other category that I find myself more so in is thought leadership. I don't want anyone to report to me. I don't want to micromanage, I don't want to change projects and lead projects. I want to make something that's so abstract, easy to understand, visible in frameworks. So we can lead in different ways, but for that I think what we need to do first is to clarify what does success actually look like to us. Yeah. Give ourselves the permission that we don't necessarily have to have the big title to make an impact. We can make an impact in different ways, leveraging our strengths and then redefining what success looks like for me in this particular position.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

That's cool. That's really breaking the whole system and making the system work for me. So am I uh more focused on people leadership, more on project leadership, more on change leadership or thought leadership? I love that. And you know, this is a lot of what I come across as well. You might be a brilliant change expert, but might not be the best at people. Therefore, we need a someone else to fill that people gap. Um, I want to ask you as well. So you've been really deep diving into all things trust. What is one behavior that instantly erodes trust that leaders often overlook?

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Breaking more promises than actually delivering on them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

You know, this is why we've lost trust in institutions because the politicians and even education, they promised us the world. Get the $80,000 degree and you get a job. Oh, I didn't mean a good paying job or any job these days. We're kind of preparing you for the job. And you know, there were just so many um breaks in the delivery of what we've promised that we're like, no way, I'm not gonna buy into that again. And also that playbook maybe worked 10, 20 years ago. We can't just replicate it and hope for the best. So we also have to rethink what value creation actually means. So, from a leadership perspective, when I promise you we can do a four-day work week and three years later nothing has happened, you know, I eventually stop even trusting and jumping onto an opportunity because I'm already thinking, and again, this is where perception comes in, it's gonna be put down anyway. Like, why should everybot? Not getting my time.

SPEAKER_03 34:50

Okay, so this leans into my next question. And sometimes this does happen. Unfortunately, it does. And we as humans have memories like elephants, I tell you, we do not forget things, especially when we've done uh we've been hard done by. So, how do you rebuild trust as a leader once you've broken that trust?

SPEAKER_00 35:08

It's tough. It is honestly tough, and it takes time more than anything, and repetitive showing and demonstrating that you actually deliver on that promise. You know, if we want to rebrand, and this is also how we rebuild trust, what is it that there's the gap to start with and why? And what do we need to do to bridge that gap consistently? Like if we are known for being notoriously light, what can I do to deliver 15 days early over 20 projects? Not over one or two projects, because that could be luck. How can you do it consistently? Or being more transparent up front. There's so many ways how we can do it, but people usually have the guards up already once they've been burned one too many times, that it does take this over-delivering on it before we can actually just have the baseline again and going from the negative perception to the neutral before we go into the positive perception.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

I love that. So analyze the gap, what actually broke, what is missing, and therefore what you need to work on. And then you need to be persistent with it and repeat, repeat, repeat, and consistent with it as well to make up the trust as well. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

How do you think sorry to jump in, but this is an opportunity for teams to analyze where are some capabilities missing? Because often a perception doesn't just come out of nowhere. No, there must be some kind of experiences in the past that led to that particular perception. You know, and maybe it is that we need a little bit longer because there are so many roadblocks that we have to overcome. So as a team leader, I would now need to challenge my team to say, how can we go from the 60 days that we need to six hours? Yeah. You know, we we may not get to the six hours, but we could condense it to 30 days. It's about this big picture thinking and throwing out everything that we know and what's familiar to us out for a second, because otherwise we improve by a day or two days, you know, but not necessarily a massive jump. And this is where we can identify what capabilities in the team are a bottleneck. Like can only one person sign off on things? Does only one person have this skill? Does only one person have access to this particular tool? And if so, how can we build capability bringing all the different skills in that we can leverage this as a team and act a lot faster? And to be honest, I think as an organization to stay relevant, nobody can avoid that part.

SPEAKER_03 37:34

But this is a really important conversation to have. And you as a leader might have too much positional power and your team may not trust you well enough. So you bring the petros in the room to open that can of worms safely and have the conversation, right? And then you have to actually act on the stuff that has been brought forward as well. So for this kind of conversation to happen, you need to be ready to listen to it and you need to be ready to then act on it as well. Absolutely. Two things is there, is there such a thing as too much trust in a workplace?

SPEAKER_00 38:03

I haven't come across that yet. Yeah, you know, if there is an organization, please get in touch because I would love to know that. There is, I think there is sometimes a bit of a cross line between being too friendly and becoming too good of a bestie bestie and crossing boundaries, similar to consulting clients, that all of a sudden we're moving from the professional relationship to oh, honey and sweetie and kiss kiss and so forth. Can I also get this other session for free, or can you also do this? And that we're crossing lines, and even though we think it's trust, it's lack of self-respect and lack of boundaries. And you know, don't get me wrong, I've done all of that myself. So it's but if you don't know better, you don't know better.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

No, no. And I differentiate this, Petra. So um I had someone on my podcast a long time ago, he's a CEO, he talks about the difference between being friendly. I'm always gonna be friendly with you, but we might not be friends though. We might not be like best of friends, you know. There's a there's a clear line and boundaries, that's what you're talking to as well. Petra, if leaders only take one thing from your upcoming book, what should they do differently tomorrow, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_00 39:17

I would say instead of jumping onto the next external tick in the box, maybe another credential, getting the MBA, waiting another two years to get the promotion. Backtrack everything and start with yourself. Why is it that you're not trusting yourself to start with? Hello. You know, what what has happened in the past that led you to this belief? And is it actually a belief or is it an experience? And even if it's an experience, what's the story that you're telling around that experience and what do you need to change for it? Like when we get rejections or you know a negative experience, we can say, Oh, the world hates me, everyone is against me, and I'm clearly not good enough. Or I could say, Well, I'm glad I had this experience because now I know I have a framework, how I can approach the conversation next time and I'm feeling equipped for a bigger crisis to occur. So it's also the story that we're telling ourselves around it, because if we can't change that, we're not gonna change anything because the best strategy without rewiring the story around it doesn't go anywhere. Yeah, so yeah, instead of outsourcing trust, bring it back in. Bring it back in. Do the work and yeah, unpack yourself first. And it becomes so cliche, doesn't it? Because everyone wants that hard, the one tool and the biggest and I'd I would love to give it, but it's like I have to be going with the boring answer. It's like, nope, it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Do the hard work, people, do the hard work, people. Now, Petra, this podcast is called Ways to Change the Workplace. If I was to give you a magic wand, Miss Petra, uh, what is one way that you would change the way of the workplace? Anything you wish to.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

That's a very good question. I would say enabling team members to lead from strength rather from stretch. Meaning, how can we actually create new paths for promotions that are beyond the traditional people leadership path? Because to be honest, the reason why so many are working towards leading a team is because of pay rises. You can only get usually more money when you've got a team. Correct. As a uh thought builder within a company, it's like it's great that you're doing it, you're also building skills and you're building a brand, but usually there's no financial reward towards that. So even just rethinking how can we keep our amazing team members here for longer because everyone's got retention issues also by enabling a new career path for them. That they can talk about thought leadership as you know, as a team, and we can create lunch and learn sessions, they can bring guest speakers in, but they can also represent our company outside at industry organizations and so forth. But organizations don't think like that. They're still thinking very linear, and you have to have this experience to get here. And unfortunately, until that infrastructure doesn't change, we will see people failing in jobs, burnout, because leading from scratch and constantly trying to push towards something that you're not even slightly good at will eventually burn you out. Yeah. Um, to complaints, to bad reputation in the market, like it all has ripple effects that we as a company see eventually. So very long answer, even longer change the way how the infrastructure organization actually works.

SPEAKER_03 42:46

Amazing. Petra, I cannot thank you enough. You shared so much. The return of investment on trust is out. When is it out? Do you have a deadline yet?

SPEAKER_00 42:55

I wanted to publish it on the 1st of April, which is not gonna happen as an April full, but um that will be out mid of April, and I will launch it first in the US actually, because I'm going oh, coming soon. Oh yes, coming soon, very soon. It's gonna, it's not gonna be an April full, but yeah, it's gonna be April. I love it.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

And if you were nodding your head through this conversation, you know, Petra's words have spoken to you as much as they speak to me as well. Petra's details are in the show notes. Please reach out to her. And if you want her back, and if you've got really juicy specific questions as well for her, let us know. We would love to know what your needs are. We're happy to serve you. Until then.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

All details about this episode are in the show notes. If you like this episode, I'd like you to take a moment and think about at least two people who might enjoy it. And please share the episode details with them too.