We don't shy away from the tightrope walk of workplace dynamics either. Dave Nirchi brings to the table his profound understanding of the delicate interplay between competence and engagement. Discover how to cultivate a squad of passionate, mission-driven individuals who are the powerhouses behind informed decision-making and strategic challenges. This candid conversation is your guide to fostering an environment where vocalizing constructive ideas trumps detrimental office politics, ensuring that your organization's compass always points to success.
We don't shy away from the tightrope walk of workplace dynamics either. Dave Nirchi brings to the table his profound understanding of the delicate interplay between competence and engagement. Discover how to cultivate a squad of passionate, mission-driven individuals who are the powerhouses behind informed decision-making and strategic challenges. This candid conversation is your guide to fostering an environment where vocalizing constructive ideas trumps detrimental office politics, ensuring that your organization's compass always points to success.
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Speaker 1:
This is Unleashing Leadership, and I'm your host, travis Moss, with our season five special guest, dave Nurchi, as we get after lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing about hard things by Ben Horowitz, and today we are just going to hammer the shit out of trust. I think this is about the. I think we could probably cobble together all the episodes we've done on trust, but you know, combat denominator here you want to learn from somebody. Every single one of these books that we've done, they got chapters on trust. I'm kind of thinking trust is a big deal, dave. So so and and dave picked this because I talk too much, so I let dave pick the order of the episodes so that he gets he gets more agency on this. So we're going to get after trust.
Speaker 1:
More trust needs less communication. Um should be a fun topic and that's going to be brought to you by ditch the suits podcast DTS as we call it for short, but ditch the suits podcast where we focus on helping you get more out of your money and your life. That's another podcast that I'm on with Steve Campbell. You can get more info on that. I think there's a website, ditchthesuitscom nqrmediacom. Definitely, you can get information there. Yeah, no, it's actually ditchthesuitscom. See, I didn't even know that. That's Hector's area. He's our marketing guru expert. He makes sure that people can find us, so forgive me for not actually knowing where everything is. It's a lot of stuff. We're doing a lot of work over here trying to get content in front of people that can really help them. Okay, so we're back to smacking around trust a little bit. Right, we're going to dig deep into trust today.
Speaker 1:
Ben's point in the book trust more trust needs less communication is the whole point. I think we were talking about communication last time and just being forthcoming on things and being and Dave, we talked a little bit about we didn't get into it too much. But good project management or just good management of issues in general is having a communication cadence where you're saying this is what's coming. No-transcript. People don't operate in a very good need to know scenario, right, I mean, it's just the majority of people. That's not a good environment for them to be in. And what Ben's talking about with trust needing less communication is if you have built these structures, if people have confidence in you because you are very consistent with the way that you're communicating and you make sure that you constantly are bringing out information and you're working on things, but you communicated with them.
Speaker 1:
I'm working on this, this is generally the direction that we're going, and this is when you'll get more information or when you'll know more, or whatever. Then those people are much more willing to hey Dave, you asked me to do such and such. I'm on it, man, not. Hey Dave, you asked me to do such and such. Why I don't want to? It's not important to me, it's a distraction. That's, I think, what he's talking about there.
Speaker 1:
Like if you got to sell and we've been in these situations, you know we've. We've had people that we've worked with in the past that were in this point where we literally have to sell them on every single little thing like there's just no trust in hey, we're doing this. Okay, great, I'm jumping on board, let's roll with it. You know, I mean I, I trust in the fact that you're gonna. So we've had to learn, maybe the hard way, about creating a communication framework, but also on the other side of it, but you have to have people that are bought into what you're actually doing so that they are willing to trust you.
Speaker 1:
And this comes from if I'm worried only about me, it's going to be hard for me to trust anybody. Right, if I'm worried about the organization and I believe that you are putting your heart and soul into the organization and doing everything appropriate that you can for the organization, I ought to be able to jump on board. If you say I need you over here here at point A or point B, or I need you to be working on this, I can't tell you right now exactly why, but I need you to be there, and this is the next checkpoint where we'll be able to explain a little bit more of it, or something like that. You need to be able to get people to quickly and without friction jump in on something when it's critical and not just constantly be fighting back to you. Why do I need to do that? Why do I need to do that? Why do I need to do that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think when we're looking at the way we're analyzing trust today, it's a great way to measure buy-in I think that's what I just heard you say. Is you have a good idea what kind of buying you have? If, every time there's something new announced or a new project initiative whatever you want to call it if you're getting questioned or you need to explain yourself or your ideas every time, it's probably a bad sign, right? You probably don't have the buy-in, either you think you do, or that person, right? That employee who may be doing that. Maybe they are in for themselves and they're looking at things from well. How does this project help me personally, right? How?
Speaker 1:
does this?
Speaker 2:
help me advance my career or how do I increase my salary with?
Speaker 1:
this or my bottom line. Whatever, my bottom line is right, Like this has nothing to do with me.
Speaker 2:
Why am I supporting this? So I'm going to ask questions. So that's a really good way to kind of figure that out. If someone's bought into the company right, the hope, the vision, all the other things we've talked about or if they're kind of second guessing things because it doesn't, it doesn't help them directly.
Speaker 1:
I think, subconsciously, I've realized that, but I've never phrased it like that, so that's really good, Is it? It is a litmus test, and not that you want blind followers, right, Like you don't. If you're doing something stupid, you do want people to raise your hand, but that person has got to have enough awareness of what's going on around them and sometimes and I think it's through egotistical reasons people just are completely unfreaking aware of all the things going around them because they're so internally oriented towards whatever their day looks like. It doesn't matter what everybody else around them is doing, it's it's their concern is how they look in the puzzle. Um, and one of the things that I always bring up in this, this area, is like the need to pick your battles, you know, and and if you have people who are really bought in, like you're saying, and they're really committed and they're passionate about what you're doing, they're going to look at something and go. I don't know why he's asking me to do that, or seems like there's an issue there, but I'm going to trust that they're going to talk to me when I need to be talked to. I'm going to let this go and I'm just going to. You know, I'm going to follow a little bit here and see where this goes, rather than every single hill there.
Speaker 1:
You, you know lots of situations where you get into this, where it's a very insignificant thing that somebody is digging their heels on over something, that's that's not a material issue and it's just you know it's hurting their feelings or whatever that you're not dealing with it. But you're like, look, you know what's the point of winning that battle, Right, You're like, look, what's the point to winning that battle? All you're doing is you're slowing the entire army down from advancing. And even if we win the battle, we don't win anything in that argument. So why are we extending all these resources? Kind of digging in here.
Speaker 1:
And that just goes with whether it's a lack of trust, because I've had people who are in that situation and it's like oh, it's not that I don't trust you, Okay, well then it's something else. It's an egotistical issue or it's a skill issue. It's like the Peter's principle. Maybe you've just gotten to the point where you're incompetent in the role that you're in, or something. But it's an interesting dynamic If you have people that are bought in and they're compassionate and they're passionate about what they're doing, Um, and they believe that everybody here is here for the same reason. It seems like it's just a lot easier to get in line and help keep everything moving forward, because you don't have to be a part of every single decision or every single discussion. Because you don't have to be a part of every single decision or every single discussion.
Speaker 2:
Right yeah.
Speaker 2:
And to hit on the point of the opposite, where you have the blind followers, right Like, that's not healthy either, because sometimes you do need to get put in check or rethink something, a new project that you may be excited about, you know.
Speaker 2:
I think that really kind of ties back into the structure.
Speaker 2:
You mentioned structure a little bit there too. If you have a good structure in place where you combine the buy-in people trusting what you're doing but you also have a structure where you have project outlines or you have a place people can go to look at what's happening in the company or what some of the bigger ideas might be, that should be enough then for that employee to look at and say, okay, I have the idea now I understand why this is happening. I may not have all the details, because that might be part of that project management, the rollout or the communication cadence that has a purpose behind it, but just having that ability to look at kind of the big picture and the plan should be enough for that employee who's bought in without having to now just agree to everything blindly. So that's where I think you achieve the balance. You have the buy-in but you also have a structure for people to go to, to understand the big picture of where you're headed should create that balance where you have a healthy following.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and the last point that I would make is like so, somebody, you want people to say, hey, this isn't right. You know we need to kind of challenge this, but only when it's in alignment with the mission, though, and not a self-serving issue, and and I think that that's. You know that that that's just a good caveat to it. You know, it's we we want people to be able to, to speak up when it's important to speak up. But again, think about it if this is the hill I'm going to die on, was this worth speaking up about, right, right, and, and it's not again, it's not a discouragement, it, but it's like, if you're talking about project a and you got a problem, project b and project b and project a have nothing to do with each other. You don't bring up project b to sabotage project a, you know, I mean, and that's kind of where people start to get confused a lot of times, because it's like, well, you know, you know the politics come in.
Speaker 1:
I need to win over here because I'm losing over there and that kind of stuff needs to be. That's the wrong kind of communication.