Rachel Botsman
Appearances
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Right, yeah. I don't think anyone would also come to you and say, I don't trust you. Like we're not that direct. Well, I am direct, but most people are not that direct or open. And it's a real problem because what happens is, you know, that the way that sort of comes out in the first phase, people get very defensive. Like that's the first sign that people are not trusting you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And then they start to disengage. Like these are the signals. Yeah. So it's, You know, in terms of creating this environment where people feel safe to take risks, to speak the truth, to speak up in a respectful way, it starts with modeling it yourself. I mean, it's such basic 101 advice that people miss. But social mimicry is what forms cultures.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So, you know, even asking leaders to track or get feedback on how many times they say, I don't know. Or do they even say those words, right? Like in a meeting, like how do they demonstrate humility? How do they demonstrate that they are taking a risk? In what ways do they signal their own vulnerability?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And again, this is where I think a lot of people think being vulnerable is talking about your personal life or talking about your kids or your pets or whatever it might be. But that's not really like true vulnerability in the workplace, right? It's like saying...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
finding this like really hard or I'm actually quite frightened that I'm going to mess this up or for some reason feel really nervous about this. And I've done this many, many times before. So that's the emotional signaling that is creating that safe environment that you can say these things and there is going to be no, we're not going to see you as weak. There's not going to be any punishment.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
There's not going to be any consequence. And then the stakes go up. So when someone makes a mistake, not like a minor mistake because there is to forgive, but they make a mistake. And in some way that mistake hurts your reputation or your company's reputation, loses a customer, loses you money. Like how do you handle those situations? Like they are the deep moments for trust.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah, I mean, there's so much to talk about on this topic, but I think something that often gets missed is if you think about the pandemic and the move to remote hybrid working, we really became dependent on people like verbal signals.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So like the nonverbal signals, the energy you feel when we, if we were in the room together or what I'm doing with my lower body and my hands or the way I walk into a room, you know, all these things, they went right. Like it became when we were speaking even through video, very two dimensional and very controlled. And then through Slack and all these other messaging platforms, all that,
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
non-verbal stuff went away. And this had huge implications for trust because these are all signals. These are all things that we're knowingly or unknowingly using to decide whether we trust that person or not. So the communication, the channels of communication and styles of communication have had huge impacts on trust.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And I don't think many teams were trained to change their communication styles. They were given all the tools, but they weren't given the behaviors of like, how do you message? How do you check someone's intention? How do you check in with someone? How do you like ping messages without it feeling like that surveillance and that micromanagement? So that's the dynamic that has really shifted.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And we're just starting to understand the impacts of that shift.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
You're going to be even worse, right? Let's be clear, right? It's like feeding that beast if you were a micromanager. But, you know, this is slightly controversial to say as well, but Most teams have to get together in person. Most teams cannot function purely remotely. Now, I'm a huge supporter of remote work. I have two children. It fits in with my life. But you have to get together.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Just different things happen. It's like human chemistry. And so... I think what's missing from this whole return to work, which is crazy when you think we're still talking about that three years later, is we haven't been very intentional as to why we're getting together. That goes back to transparency, right?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Oh, come into the office four or five days a week. It's now a mandate, right? Why? Yeah.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
I'm going to put my parlor game hat on now. Okay.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So really well is you catch it. So imagine it's like a ball that's been thrown and you return it. So you either acknowledge what that person has said or you share something that demonstrates empathy in return. And then I know what we call like a negative minus. The other way would be, well, that's nice. And then we move on. Well, thank you for sharing that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
That person would find it very hard to speak up again in a vulnerable way.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
I imagine it's a baseball mat. Yes, you got it. When students do it to me in the classroom, I'm like, oh, got to catch it. Got to throw it back. I love that. A company navigates a public crisis. Oh, that's a good one. That one's very easy to answer. When they have a public crisis and they come out and they point to a capability problem.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Oh, it was the product or the system or the algorithm or something that wasn't inside their control. Like, ding, negative. When they come out and they actually say, you know what, this was a character issue. This was to do with our culture. This was to do with our incentives. This was to do with our leadership and management. It can work really well for trust.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So I call this one a trust leap, actually, because this essentially a new initiative is you're asking people to take a risk to do something new or to do something differently. And what you have to recognize is. that leap looks really different for other people.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So adjusting your communication, realizing what trust state people are in, realizing what you perceive to be the risk or what they perceive to be the risk. There's a massive gap between those two things or that you just haven't really explained what's in it for them. So if you get those things right, actually the launch of new initiatives and cultural change is where trust often goes really wrong.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
It does depend on what the workplace conflict is, right? So some... should be kept private and discreet and handled directly with that person. And others that have seeped out and have become team conflict need to be addressed. So just hoping or praying that it's going to go away is not going to happen. And then also it's a ding.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
when you don't recognize that actually it should be resolved confidentially and privately and you make it public, also ding. So the way conflict is resolved, really delicate balance between score or fail.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Oh, I haven't asked that question. The interesting thing about teaching is it's very multicultural and cross-generational. So that's seeing the different response of people from different backgrounds and different nationalities and different stages in their career. I think that's been a real learning.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
I've also realized how much teaching often is about the relationship between the manager and the employee versus managing up. So it's made me think a lot about framing that if you are quite early on in your career and most of your day spent reporting to other people, you're looking for very different things at that stage. So that's been a real shift.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And then the other thing I have to remind myself all the time is how to take people on a journey with you. And that's, This becomes harder and harder. It's a strange thing to say. The more fluent you become in a subject, it's like being fluent in a language and having to go back to like, hello and how are you?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And really making sure people have got the foundations of things they can move along with you. It might sound like a jukebox to you and really simple, but you have to start with those building blocks still.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
The creativity and care they put in creating trusting environments. So The teacher in particular, her name is Kim. She won teacher of the year and she works in a really hard school in Illinois. And a lot of those children, her students are coming in with serious trust issues. Some are living with grandparents, some with foster care. It's a very difficult situation and she's teaching Spanish.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
which is not the easiest subject to teach. And it was the work she put in and they weren't big things and they didn't cost her any money. So she made sure, for example, on the first day of term that she knew every single name and that she could pronounce it, that she spoke to their past teachers to understand something that was important to them. So it was really...
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah, it was the creativity and care and that these were seemingly small gestures that made such a big difference to the people that they were trying to connect with and touch.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
I think it's really giving thought to intentions. That can be, why are we having this meeting and how you set that up? Not like this is what we're going to cover in the meeting, but this is the intention. Or when you make a decision, describing where that decision has come from. I think it's one of the easiest things
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
to self-correct and implement that can have a huge difference in how people respond to you.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Do you know what gives me hope is that I think the workplace of people lots of different environments in society is where people are turning to feel trust. It puts a lot of pressure on leaders and managers, but that employer-employee relationship is now one of the most important relationships in people's lives.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And that's what gives me hope that it's not actually about customers and brands or citizens and politicians. It should be about those things. But those systems and institutions are very hard to influence and fix. But your workplace, that is an environment you can somewhat control and influence and shape. And I've seen in teams how quickly you can change culture, how quickly... dynamics can shift.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And so I think if people can go to work or be at work and feel trusted and feel like they can take risks and feel safe to take mistakes, it might just be the only part of their life where they have that experience.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Don't wait for a program. I think if it's a program, it's actually sometimes a problem because it's like imposed versus really coming from people.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
One last tip I give is around empathy. So empathy is a really important trait of being trustworthy in our character. And I think empathy can sometimes be mistaken for like putting yourself in someone else's shoes. It's not really what empathy is. Empathy is more like curiosity. So you genuinely want to understand what that person thinks and where they're coming from.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And then the important piece is that it's followed with care. So it's really about how you take the listening and then you turn it into something active that you make that person feel supported and you demonstrate that you care.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So that would be my other thing is that when you're trying to be empathetic, it's not just on the listening component, the information in, it's how you create the scaffold and the support structures that that person feels held.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah, the question, what would be the number one question? I guess it's actually more about what happens when trust breaks down. And I think that's interesting in itself because trust is kind of like one of those things, a bit like air or oxygen. We don't really appreciate its value until it's gone.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And so I think that's why people tend to focus on that question is they know that feeling of not trusting someone or not being trusted versus being able to describe what trust is, which I think is really interesting in itself.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah, that's a really good point because trust is cultural in terms of signals and the way it's earned, but the feeling of trust, that is universal. I love that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Well, it depends on context. Context is really important when it comes to trust. So if you ask me that question, I would say, what kind of team? Is it a small team or is it a large team? Is it a team that works remotely or is it a team that comes together? Is it a new team or is it a team that's been together for a long time? What kind of work are they doing? So
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
It's not like there are general rules on how you earn trust as a leader. And one of the things that I often find when working with leaders is they don't think enough about context. They don't think enough about environment or conditions. And all those things really impact not just how you earn trust, but how much trust that you need. So There are like general principles that apply.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So one of the most important ones, regardless of the size of the team or whatever you're working on, is expectation setting. And I find it really interesting when I say to people, have you ever been taught how to set expectations, clear expectations of people? And I don't even think of it as a skill.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So they'll think of like communications as a skill or negotiations as a skill, but how you are clear with people about what you expect from them, the quality of work, when they should deliver it, not just sort of the what's, but how they approach work. Like this is absolutely key to trust.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Well, that's a big one. And just going back to the context thing, the other really important point is often trust is broken when we take things out of context. Yes. And so, you know, when you work in those teams and that narrative starts to brew, it's because something that's been said or something that's been intended has been taken out of context.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So clarifying context and intent is also really, really good for trust. So you asked a question about security.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah, this is a really important distinction between safety and security. So you've probably heard of Amy Emerson. She's a brilliant professor at Harvard, and she talks a lot about psychological safety. There is a really important difference between safety and security. Safety is creating the environment where people... I feel like they can take risks. They can make mistakes.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
They can admit that they don't know something. All these things that some people might perceive as a sign of weakness in some cultures. And they can do all those things without fear of negative consequence. That's what every leader needs to create. That's fundamental. Psychological security or insecurity is actually very hard to control. That is about your inner thoughts.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And sometimes as a leader, you could create the safest environment. You could wrap someone in cotton wool and they are still going to feel insecure. And that's because of their upbringing. That's because of their conditioning. Often it's because they have trust issues, right? So it could be something that happened very early on in childhood that they just find it very hard to trust people.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So as a leader or a manager of a team, or even just being on a team, I It's actually more helpful to think about psychological safety, like how do you create the conditions and the environment that people feel safe versus people's inner emotions and feelings. That's very difficult for you to influence and control.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah. And it's also something that I think needs to be reeled in, in that these boundaries between the personal and professional have got very blurry and mushy. And this really started to happen with the whole bring a whole self to work. And then the pandemic where those lines were really blurred.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And the reason why I say this is that it's not actually a leader's responsibility to manage how you feel. And so what I see in a lot of teams is there's quite a lot of flooding. There's quite a lot of sharing of feelings and emotions that maybe should be kept out of the workplace and aren't necessarily your boss's responsibility to manage.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So that is why I think this distinction between environment and conditions that people feel safe versus your own emotional security is really important to understand. Does that make sense?
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's also how we make bad trust decisions. It's like when we rely on feelings and intuition and we don't have enough information to make a good decision. That's not a great place for decision making, particularly when it's a high risk or, you know, high investment.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
There are actually many. I keep thinking I'm done with trust, right? And then I discovered that it's like another thing. It really is this transparency thing. So... It is this idea that the more transparent you are with your team, the more transparent your culture, that trust will increase. And that is the opposite. It often has a backfire effect. The reason for that is actually to define trust.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
So the way I define trust is trust is a confident relationship with the unknown. So if you think about people that you deeply trust, personal and professional, you don't need to know what they're up to, right? Like you just let them get on with things. It's that visibility, that needing to know, like checking messages, needing to track someone, wondering what someone is up to.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Like these are signs that you don't trust someone. Transparency is essentially trying to make everything visible in your culture. And often, I'm not saying transparency is a bad thing, but often what people want to understand, again, they want to understand the context in which you've made a decision. They're trying to understand the reason that you've made a decision.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And that's really important for trust, but you don't need to make everything transparent. In fact... really, really trusting cultures, if I went to someone and said, oh, I really like to know what that person earns, or I really like to know the thinking behind your bonus structure, the ultimate sign of trust is they turn around and say, you know what, you actually can't know. And I go, I get that.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
I trust you. I trust how you've made that decision. So This call for transparency is often people are desperate almost or hungry to understand how and why you're making decisions. And that's the piece that's often missing from communications in the culture.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
Yeah. So this idea of blanket trust, right? Like, so we're going to create a high trust culture or you should trust me. It's how the media talks about trust. It's like the element trust barometer is about to come out and it will be in these like very generalized terms.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
But really in your culture and even in yourself, you want to be thinking about what it is that you're asking people to trust you for or to do. And so for me and my work, I'm being trusted to share factual information and research. I'm being trusted to teach people. I'm being trusted to storytell, being trusted slightly to entertain people and give them an experience.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
I'm not trusted to touch their bodies. I'm not a surgeon or a doctor. Let's qualify what I meant by that. I'm not a therapist. I'm not going to deal with their relationship issues. So even things that are closer to the context.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
And this is really important to understand because what you see in businesses and teams that are really, really trusting and trustworthy is they are very clear about what they do and they are very clear about what they don't do. And they reject things that don't fit within that context that they should be trusted within. And this, I think, is something that you shouldn't be afraid to do.
Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin
Trust Issues at Work? Here's What to Say with Rachel Botsman
You shouldn't be afraid to say no. Trust is often in those things we decide not to do or those things that we turn down. That's often where trust is earned, not the things that we continually do.