Unlocking the Neuroscience of Trust: Strengthening Leadership

Welcome to the latest episode of our podcast series, where we delve into the fascinating topic of trust and its underpinning neuroscience. In episode 352, we revitalize our understanding of trust by revisiting our initial interview with Greg Link from episode 206 and exploring Grant Bosnick's insightful approaches.

We unpack the concept of trust as presented in Bosnick's book, emphasizing the five C's for strengthening trustworthiness: Character, Competency, Credibility, Consistency, and Care. Each of these pillars serves as a foundation for building reliable relationships both personally and professionally.

Further, we examine critical factors impacting trust, like responsiveness, authenticity, and empathy, shedding light on how these elements foster an environment of trust. This exploration is pivotal for anyone aiming to enhance their self-leadership skills and boost their interpersonal effectiveness.

Join us as we push the boundaries of self-leadership, preparing to soar to new heights in the upcoming year with insights that are not only transformative but also actionable.

On today's episode #352 we continue with our 18-Week Self-Leadership Series based on Grant Bosnick’s “Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership: A Bite Size Approach Using Psychology and Neuroscience” that we first dove into with our interview on EP #321[i] the end of January 2024. The goal was that each week, we focused on learning something new, (from Grant’s book) tied to the most current neuroscience research, that builds off the prior week, to help take us to greater heights this year. It’s honestly shocked me that this series took the entire year, and we still have 2 chapters left. The Neuroscience of Empathy and Presence, and then stay tuned for a review of the entire series to take us to new refined heights, in 2025.

((On today's EPISODE #352 “The Neuroscience of Trust” we will cover)):

✔ A review of our FIRST interview where we covered trust with Greg Link,EP 206[ii]

✔ Ch. 17 from Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership book on “The Neuroscience of Trust.”

✔ The 5 Cs to strengthen trustworthiness from Grant Bosnick’s work.

✔ Critical factors that impact trust.

Review of the Neuroscience of Trust

We first covered The Neuroscience of Trust on EPISODE #206, as I was preparing for an interview with Greg Link[i], the co-founder of the Covey Leadership Center. Greg was the one who orchestrated the strategy that led Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change, (1989)[ii] to become one of the two best-selling business books of the 20th century according to CEO Magazine, selling over 20 million copies in 38 languages. Greg created the marketing momentum that helped propel Covey Leadership Center from a start-up company to a $110-plus million-dollar enterprise with offices in 40 countries. 

You can go back to episode #207[iii] to learn more from Greg Link’s incredible experience working with Dr. Covey, and with the fascinating individuals and companies around the world he reviewed with us, where we dove into the topic of “Unleashing Greatness with Neuroscience, SEL, Trust, and the 7 Habits.”

While researching Greg Link, who I met when he came to work in the seminar industry in 2002, I was reminded of a topic that he thought was so important that he wrote a book about it with Stephen M.R. Covey (the son of the late Stephen R. Covey) called Smart Trust: The Defining Skill That Transforms Managers into Leaders.[iii]

If you look up quotes from Stephen Covey on trust, you can see how important this skill or character trait was to him. He said, “trust is the glue to life” and “the one thing that affects everything else you’re doing. It’s a performance multiplier which takes your trajectory upwards, for every action you engage in, from strategy to execution.” It’s the “shortest route to results” (Robert Allen, author of Multiple Streams of Income). “Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.” (Stephen Covey).

Greg Link confided in us in our interview, that it was when Dr. Stephen Covey extended trust towards him (to build his company) that his whole world shifted.

If you’ve taken the leadership self-assessment[iv], look to see if Trust (in Pathway 6, our final pathway in this book study) along with biases, relationships/authenticity and empathy is of a low, medium or high priority for you to focus on this year. I was not surprised to see this pathway is a high area of focus for me.

Moving on to chapter 17 of Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Bosnick opens the chapter by saying that “trust is like a bank account: we can increase it with deposits or reduce it with withdrawals.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 215). He elaborates by saying that “when we are kind and respectful to others, we make a deposit and increase the levels of trust; when we are unkind or disrespectful to others, by contrast, we make a withdrawal and lower the trust. When we keep promises, we make a deposit; when we break promises, we make a withdrawal. When we apologize, we make a deposit, when we are selfish, proud, or arrogant, we make a withdrawal.”

Every time we interact with someone, we have the opportunity to make a deposit, or a withdrawal, and if we make deposits and build this up over time, “we can have an abundance of trust.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 215) and Bosnick reminds us that this allows for when “we might have made a withdrawal, others can forgive us for this one time and still keep a high level of trust.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 215).

But he warns us that “if we make multiple withdrawals, these will accumulate and drive the level of trust down, which is harder to come back from. It can, in fact, go into a negative balance, where we may distrust that person, and then interpret all of their behavior in a negative light, from which they may never come back.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 215).

Bosnick does point out that “there is a strong correlation between trust and a person’s willingness to acknowledge their own mistakes, apologize for them and encourage other to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 215).

What is the Neuroscience of Trust?

Bosnick points out that “when we trust and have trust with others, our brains release and build oxytocin: the neurochemical produced from the comfort of social trust either given or received…Oxytocin is produced in the human brain when we feel trust and trusted, and this molecule motivates reciprocation.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 219). Researchers found that this response signals that another person is safe, familiar and trustworthy, and can occur with strangers without face-to-face interactions.

 

In chart 17.1, Bosnick lists some behaviors that erode trust, like being inconsistent, lying or lacking transparency, lacking follow through, taking undue credit, passing blame, gossiping, not “walking the talk” or poor communication.

IMAGE CREDIT: Chapter 17 of Grant Bosnick's Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership.

• Have you ever met someone who eroded trust with you, using any of these examples?

If you want to work on building rock-solid trust with others, (personally or professionally) here is what Bosnick suggests.

How to Be Trustworthy

Bosnick shares the 5 Cs to being Trustworthy.

1. Character: To be trustworthy, we need to be a person of integrity. Integrity is when our thoughts, feelings and actions line up, and it can be felt from others. We’ve talked about this concept before on this podcast and have called this PRAXIS. To be sure that your thoughts, feelings and actions line up, (or that you are walking your talk) a good measure would be to look at your results. Your conditions, circumstances and environment in your life are a direct reflection of the actions that you take day to day. If you don’t like the results you are attaining, (or your conditions/circumstances or your environment where you live) go back and look at your thoughts, feelings and actions, and see if you can uncover where it may be misaligned, and then correct where you are out of line. You might not think this is important, but it really is, as others will just “feel” something is off with you, until this alignment is corrected.
2. Competency: What is your personal track record of success? Do you say what you are going to do, and then do what you say, successfully? Being honest with what we are capable of doing, increases our trustworthiness. This also goes for when we need additional help of support to complete whatever it is that we are working on. To work on strengthening this area, remember that it is not a weakness to ask for additional help when needed.
3. Credibility: If we can “connect the dots between other people’s problems or situations” Bosnick says that this adds to our credibility, and this increases our trustworthiness. He says that to do this properly, we cannot “make assumptions and predetermine the solution before fully understanding their needs. We must listen to the core issues and provide solutions that meet their specific needs.” Our ability to listen deeply to others, therefore, improves our trustworthiness.
4. Consistency: Do you do what you say you are going to do with consistency? This creates stability, puts others at ease and builds trust. Bosnick says that “we need to create stability in the situations we face and with the people we interact with. This stability helps people to feel at ease and know what to expect” and this in turn, increases our trustworthiness.
5. Care: Do you care about the people you interact with? Do you show them that they matter, or that you appreciate them? Doing this demonstrates emotional intelligence, Bosnick says, and this “builds human connections and enhances our trustworthiness with the people we engage with.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 222).

I can think of examples in each of these areas, but the one that impacts me the most, is the first one, our character. It’s how we behave when no one else is watching. When no one else is watching, are you of integrity with your thoughts, feelings and actions?

Then think about the others.

Are you credible? Do other people trust your abilities? Do you LISTEN deeply to others before offering solutions?

What about consistency? Do those that interact with you know where you stand so they can anticipate your actions? Do you create stability?

Or competency? Do we know our limits, and what we need for success to occur, and if in doubt, ask for help or support from others to hit our goals?

Activity:

Reflect on a person you work with where trust is important. Have you ever done something with this person that eroded the trust? How can you use the 5 Cs to build trust to a level where others trust in you without a shadow of a doubt?

Remember what Greg Link taught us. For others to see us as trustworthy, it helps when we extend trust in others. The first time I realized that trusting others was not easy for me, was when I was in an experiential seminar in 2004 that showed me just how much trust I had in other people. I had to climb up high, (in this activity) and free fall backwards, and trust that my team mates (who I didn’t know very well) would catch me, before I hit the ground. I remember looking at each of my teammates, and the big strong men, I trusted would catch me, (without a doubt) but the women, I wondered about. This was a huge lesson for me in self-awareness, as I’ve since learned to extend trust to the close women in my life, learning that strength comes in many different forms, but most importantly, it comes back to you, when it’s given.

Critical Factors That Impact Trust

To close out this chapter, Bosnick covers critical factors that impact trust in figure 17.3 that I’ve added to the show notes. He explains “the most critical factor to build and maintain trust was responsiveness.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 230) and that the size of the team matters.

IMAGE CREDIT: Chapter 17 of Grant Bosnick's Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership

Bosnick listed survey results that showed “having a good team makeup who work well together and are responsive in their communication engenders trust. Unresponsive, new teams need to work together to build a bit of cohesion.”

Next he lists “authenticity and empathy” for building and maintaining trust which includes “showing genuine, positive regard for others, in our mind, intent and behavior.” It’s PRAXIS again. Our thoughts, feelings and actions show up whether we think others can “see” it or not. This comes through with our authenticity that we covered thoroughly on EP 346[v] “Discovering Authenticity and Vulnerability with Mo Issa.”

Another survey result he shared mentioned that “when people can bring their whole selves to work from a place of authenticity, while listening and providing their diverse point of views, it creates an environment of trust.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 230).

He adds that “communication plays a key role in building and maintaining trust. We need to be open and honest because secretiveness and withholding information leads to distrust.” (Chapter 17, Bosnick, Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership, Page 230).

REVIEW AND CONCLUSION

To review and conclude this week’s episode #352 on “The Neuroscience of Trust” we covered:

✔ A review of our FIRST interview where we covered trust with Greg Link,EP 206[vi] a were reminded that when we extend trust to others, it will be extended back to us.

✔ Ch. 17 from Grant Bosnick’s Tailored Approaches to Self-Leadership book on “The Neuroscience of Trust.”

• The 5 Cs to strengthen trustworthiness from Grant Bosnick’s work (character, competency, credibility, consistency and care) with tips for us to strengthen each area.
• Critical factors that impact trust with responsiveness, authenticity and empathy being at the top of the list.

I hope this episode has added some insight for you as we launch a New Year, and work on closing out this 19 chapter series. Stay tuned for our final 2 chapters (empathy-chapter 18 and presence-chapter 19) before reviewing the entire series. See you next time and Happy New Year!

REFERENCES

[i] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #321 with Grant ‘Upbeat’ Bosnick  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/insights-from-grant-upbeat-bosnick/

 

[ii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #206 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-on-the-neuroscience-of-trust/

 

[iii] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #207  https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/co-founder-of-coveylink-greg-link-on-unleashing-greatness-with-neuroscience-sel-trust-and-the-7-habits/

 

[iv] Self-Assessment for Grant Bosnick’s book https://www.selfleadershipassessment.com/

 

[v] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #346 Discovering Authenticity and Vulnerability with Mo Issa https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/the-midlife-shift-discovering-authenticity-and-vulnerability-with-mo-issa/

 

[vi] Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast EPISODE #206 https://andreasamadi.podbean.com/e/brain-fact-friday-on-the-neuroscience-of-trust/