71. Trusting Leadership

Intro: Duration: (02:29)

Opening music jingle & sound effects

Jeff Hunt:

Welcome to the Human Capital Podcast. I'm Jeff Hunt. Today, we're going to talk about the complicated topic of trust. Trust is a fundamental element that underpins both our personal and business relationships. Let's just think about this for a second. How much is trust worth to a company whose customers explicitly trust them?

Or how much is trust worth to you if you're able to completely trust your boss, your leadership team, or your peers? Trust is essentially the adhesive that binds individuals, organizations, and societies together. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, high trust organizations experience greater customer loyalty, increased employee engagement, and a better ability to weather crises.

These statistics provide compelling evidence of the direct impact of trust on both financial and non financial performance metrics. Conversely, according to Edelman, the world is becoming a more polarized place, and distrust breeds polarization. For example, when asked, very few people would help, live near, or work with someone who disagrees with their point of view.

To help me unpack all of this, I have the pleasure of welcoming a special guest to the show today. Dr. Henry Cloud is an acclaimed leadership expert, clinical psychologist, and New York Times bestselling author. His 45 books, yes, I did say that correctly, 45 books, including the iconic Boundaries, have sold over 20 million copies worldwide and have helped transform the relationships and lives of millions of people.

Henry has an extensive executive coaching background and experience as a leadership consultant, devoting the majority of his time to working with CEOs, leadership teams, and executives to improve performance, leadership skills, and culture. His latest book titled Trust is a must read and I've put a link to it on my recommended books list on the podcast website and also in our show notes.

And on top of that, Henry is just an all around good guy. Welcome, Henry.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

It's good to be here. Excited about all you're doing.

Topic 1. Who or what inspired you the most along the way? (02:30)

Jeff Hunt:

Let's start with a thumbnail of your career journey. How did you end up where you are today?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Oh, gosh. There's no saying we make a plan and God laughs, right? Because we really don't know all the steps in the destinations.

Do we get on the trail? But I did know early on that. I was. Really, really interested in the field of psychology. So I went in to my training as a clinical psychologist. And when I went knocking on doors for my 1st job, I got hired by a leadership consulting firm because this is way before executive coaching and all that.

But they learned and this doesn't surprise anybody leaders have issues. Right? So. There's personal and interpersonal dynamics that get in the way of performance. And so, as a clinical psychologist, I actually started out in the context of working with really high performers and fell in love with the field of leadership as well.

So, I've really had 2 parallel tracks a few years into practice as a clinician. My business juices were flowing and I wanted to do something in addition to the clinical work and I wanted to start a psychiatric hospital that I could have, total control of the way things worked and the models and the milieu and all that.

And so long story short, did 1 hospital and that was. Successful did well, then did another one and another one ended up with hospital units and treatment centers in about 40 markets in the Western United States and ran that company for a long time and then sold it when managed care in the field started to change.

And then I went from there, what did I really like to do? I love working with high performers. And so since then, that was in the late nineties when I sold it. I've been, uh, you know, hung up my shingle, a little boutique practice. And I work with CEOs and their teams and organizations, sometimes big inner enterprise wide projects for, you know, even big, big public companies as well as smaller firms.

So I still spend about a hundred days a year in the war rooms with CEOs and their people. And that really is what kind of lights my fire.

Jeff Hunt:

Was there any one person that really inspired you along the way? Well, in terms of the field itself, in any way that you may have felt inspired to continue to grow and learn and go deeper into this incredible space.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Yeah, I would think of it it's sort of, it takes a village, you know, it's like that long term study that was at 70 something years at Harvard did on what makes people successful. And it's really the circle that surrounds you. I think because my work touches on so many different arenas from business to performance, to clinical issues, to, I do some things in the faith-based world.

I would say it's A handful of people. I had one particular business mentor who adopted me basically is about 20 years older when I was 23 or 24 years old and really, really taught me a lot about business and then I was working with organizations and there've been CEOs that I've worked with that really, really inspired me even though I was there to help them, you know, you can't watch these superstars.

Without learning a lot and getting inspired and certainly a lot of their people. And then in the, the more of the harder science of, of psychology, I had a couple of professors and supervisors that I worked with long term that really did a lot, and then certainly as all of us know. We get taught by the larger community of experts in the things we read.

And so I've been a voracious reader, but also I spend a lot of time and effort and money on continuing education over the years and going to sit under real experts and kind of micro verticals of things. So I'd say it's been a bunch of them.

Jeff Hunt:

I'm just reflecting on this sort of dual track that you've had, you know, the clinical and the leadership track.

And it just seems so fitting because when you get into business, you get into relationships and you also get into a lot of interpersonal stuff. And so when did the problems occur? The problems occur when you have a breakdown in relationships or you have predispositions that overstress yourself. So you burn out.

So that makes perfect sense to me. And I'm wondering if you have any reflections on that.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Well, you know, it's interesting. If you go to the field of leadership, and sometimes I'll draw this up on a board for people. And if leadership is over here, you've got all of these. Areas of study and leadership, which are absolutely essential.

If somebody is going to build or run any kind of, even a department of a business, because everybody in business has a problem, that problem is you are an expert in something marketing, finance, sales, tech, whatever, but you do it well, and now they've got you leading people. And that's the 2nd job you were never trained for.

And it really is a science. And so we have to treat leadership just like you treat your primary discipline. But then something happens. You go to all the leadership workshops and conferences and read all the books and, I'm supposed to be able to cast vision or execute strategy or all these great things and I know how to do it.

But then I walked out here in this place called reality and then my issues began to kind of get in the way. Now I've got a board. I'm supposed to cast a vision of the board. I stand up and a voice inside my head says, well, what makes you think they're going to believe you? Or that guy over there is really skeptical.

And now I'm kind of anxious. And so our difficult direct reports, our woundedness, our weaknesses, our fears, all of that come into play in performance, even with the Olympians and NBA players, that's a big deal. And then you find out something even worse. It's not just me. I got to work with other wackos besides myself.

And so it's sort of like this, this interpersonal soup of a lot of good things can happen, but a lot of dings happen along the way. And that's when everything breaks down. And so what I started to notice was leaders would find that. And then they, they go back to the leadership material. They didn't really help them with that.

So then they go to personal growth. And so they go see a shrink and they go to the therapist and start to talk about what's happening with the board or leadership. And the therapist looks at him and goes, yes, I can. I can see you're struggling with your work seems painful. Yes, exactly. Well, that's all our time for today.

And sometimes they, and I love clinical work and it's very, very important, but sometimes in that field, it doesn't really understand the context of leadership and the demands that leadership put on the psyche and put on the interpersonal, tools. And so that's why my niche for, you know, all these decades, I hang around and I call it the middle space where we're personal and interpersonal.

Dynamics and capacities interact really with the needs and demands of the realities of business. And I love it. That's the fun place.

Topic 2. Trust as a key component (10:30)

Jeff Hunt:

So there's so many different books that you've written over the years. And as we were chatting before we turned the recording on trust is one topic that I haven't devoted an X, an episode to exclusively on this show, and yet it's the most vital component. In a business, at least I would say so. Why did you choose to write this book today?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Well, part of that has to do with the why today, you know, you, if you're an author, there's time sequences that drive different projects and you can't write everything you want to say about everything all at once in one season.

And there were other things, so it got kind of, it kept getting pushed back a little bit for real reasons, but reasons I was not happy with because. You can't, as a coach or a consultant, you can't get called into a, a breakdown in a board, the board and the c e o or with an executive team or in a culture, or even a performance problem, a product launch.

And when you start getting under the hood and start looking at how did this happen and how do we fix it somewhere, you're going to very quickly get into the issue of trust. And, you know, we all have this button inside that we trust in my, we hit go. And so we trust or they don't trust them. I, and we hesitate to go back, but what we don't realize a lot of times is to get to green or know when to hit yellow or hit red, there's a real algorithm.

Of data that your whole system, your customers have the same system, your stakeholders have the same system that there's an algorithm where it's taking in all this data. And it's going to come up with a green, yellow or red. And what I found was that in businesses, if they could learn the key components that drive that algorithm, then they could begin to actively.

Execute on those components with their people, they lead their, you know, their customers with their brand, with the stakeholders, with the board, with the investors. And when you make it something that you're actively working on and hitting the right buttons, it just pull vaults it to a whole other level.

And so, I developed this model, probably 20 years ago, maybe, and I've worked with it extensively for all of those years, but I never had published it. And I just needed a tool to be able to give to the companies. That's kind of why I wrote it.

Jeff Hunt:

I love the way you framed it in the book because it's almost put, it's almost built around systems thinking, if you will, which leaders can get their heads around so well, even though it is so interrelational. So it goes beyond. A conventional sort of systems methodology within a business, because we have all these complex sort of moving parts around relationships and feelings and the psychological aspects. But in the book, you sort of break it down to the 5 essentials of trust, which are understanding, motive, ability, character and track record.

And I wonder if we could just unpack these and you could give a teaser to the listening audience. As to what these really are, maybe start with understanding.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Well, you know, we basically do not trust someone. And, and what I mean by trust is, they're not going to steal my money or something like that.

But I mean, to invest what you're looking for in a trusting relationship in business is you want investment. You want your team to be invested. In what you're trying to get them to do and invested in you. If you've ever been on a team where somebody had one foot in and one foot out, then you know what happens or around the table.

So we're looking for the whole heart, mind and soul to invest and be both feet in. And basically when you look at what actually drives that, the most foundational aspect to our trusting someone is we must feel. Like, they understand me, what I need, what's important to me. What hurts me, what causes me pain, what causes me happiness, what I'm afraid of.

And if I feel like you really get me and what my business needs or what I need from that chair around the team, and you really understand me at a deep level, an emotional level, cognitively. Then that's the very 1st, and this goes back to neuroscience. We are wired to determine pretty quickly whether somebody is with me or not in terms of a tune, and it basically begins.

Everybody's heard the term mirror neurons. You're wired from infancy to sense if somebody's getting you, you know, if they're if. Yeah, I see what you're feeling. That is hard. And somebody's in tune with us. Yeah. The whole system begins to just open up and it comes from deep, deep, deep. Active and very strategically important abilities to listen.

You know, I was talking about this in leadership forum one day and a guy walks up to me and he says, I'm the lead hostage negotiator for the FBI. He said, I'm the guy that goes in when the guy's got a bomb strapped to him and hostages in the bank, I got to talk him out of there. He said, everything you just described is our entire training program.

We don't walk in and try to convince him. Trust me, we don't walk in and say, dude, this is a bad idea. You know, you shouldn't do this, but that's what leaders do in business. A lot of times they'll try to talk people into going with them. They'll try to talk people into the deal. They try to talk people into the agenda or the vision or whatever.

Nobody's listening if they don't first feel understood. It's have a little phrase. I say, you know, you don't understand somebody when you understand them, you understand them when they understand that you understand. Because now they feel like he gets it. He gets it. He knows what we need. He knows what's important to us.

So it does start with understanding. I mean, how many people have come home to a note on the kitchen table with their spouse after 10 years of marriage and say, I can't do this anymore. I'm gone. And they go, what? What? And they're very surprised, but they shouldn't be because she's been trying to, or he's been trying to tell you for 10 years, but you're not getting it.

You're trying to talk them out of it. We'll never get past people's objections or fears if they don't feel like we get it. Everybody's worked out of a boss's office, and the team's huddled around and they go, what happened to go? He didn't get it. He didn't get it. That's the feeling.

Topic 3. The Five Essentials of Trust. (17:30)

Jeff Hunt:

And I'm translating the word understanding to business nomenclature in terms of what it does for an organization when there's a high level of understanding, which is really engagement.

Totally. Organizations with high levels of engagement are filled with employees that are connected to each other and they feel like they're understood and heard. Wouldn't you say that's the case?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Yeah, and they're, they're understood by the company, but they're understood around the table as well. You know, I got called into a big technology company.

One time they had a product launch that had failed and the, can you read about the wall street journal? And there's a big, big failure. We got in and started doing the postmortem and what it actually had happened was it was this thing of understanding. The CEO is driving the pressure to hit the numbers, right?

So the sales team is out there selling the customers and the customer goes, well, will it be able to do this? Oh yeah, we could build that in. That's no problem. They're promising a lot of features without ever understanding what that's going to mean for R& D because they got to make that stuff by April.

And they never really listened to each other about what the needs of each one of them was in order to succeed. And so when a team is working like that, it's a totally different deal. I, a particular builder, I know that ended up. Winning builder of the year. This is back before this was standard practice in the home building industry.

You know, when you build out a development, your biggest cost is the carrying cost of that land until you can get it all sold. Right? So he's looking at how can we shorten this? And he brought the idea for the 1st time. You know, there's a lot of lags because the roofers show up and the trucks are pouring the concrete in the driveway and they say, well, we won't be done until next week.

And, you know, he started getting all of the subs together to listen to each other's what they've got to do to build this house and just start to meet each other's needs for scheduling and access and all of that. And what what happened was. The length of finishing the projects went from here to here, all those costs disappear, and then he shares, he has them participate in the savings just because they're working together, listening to each other, just a simple concept, but it changes everything.

Jeff Hunt:

The other thing, too, that's before we move on to the next 1, which is motive, the 1 thing that's coming to mind for me about understanding is also. Listening to understand rather than listen to reply. And it feels like, Henry, that one of the things that people want most is this first one that you're talking about just to be understood.

It's the other example is being at a cocktail party and in a conversation with somebody whose eyes are shifting all around the room. They're just not focused on you. They're looking for the next. I'm not really interested in that.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Yeah, that's exactly right. It, it goes back to that term. It's really from developmental psychology.

The term they use is attunement that, the baby comes out and it's crying and upset and all this. And if there's attunement in your tone and how you're present, and they can feel that presence, and then they start, maybe say, yes, they start nodding or they say, no, you know, turn away. You picked up an important point about.

What happens at the end of the sentence, the really, really, really powerful leaders at the end of somebody's sentence. What they say most often, especially in the beginning is going to take that person deeper into what they were saying. Not like you're saying, hit the ball back over the net with their point, or it becomes a cue to think about what they want to talk about.

You start watching this with people and you can see who is other oriented and who is egocentric and self-centered.

Jeff Hunt:

Okay. What about motive?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

We sense pretty quickly why somebody is there, but motive it gets to the question of whatever they're telling me, who's it for is, are they just out for themselves and that's why they want to do, even if they're doing something for you, how many times you said, Hey, I got a deal for you, you go, yeah, for me, really, we always know what's in it for them.

Now, there's nothing wrong with having a mutual interest. That's how it's what drives business. But if you feel like all you are is another sale or all you are as, as even a team member is another object to them to get what they need to get done versus when you feel like. Somebody, certainly they got to get what they need to get done and they got to make sales, but they really have your best interest as a win for them.

That that makes them happy when you're doing well and when you're thriving. I wrote about in the book, I had two knee replacements in the last couple of years and I went to see one surgeon and You know, he was examining me, he calls in 4 residents and he's going, Hey, so see this thing guys, this is the research paper doing this guy has to be a great subject.

And what we can do, we can take his measurements and all of a sudden I'm feeling like, hey, there's a patient over here, you know, but it was all about him. And all about his deal, all about their conference and their research and all that. I went to another surgeon to get a 2nd opinion and he's going, man, you know, I've read about you.

You're a competitive golfer and we got to get you back on the golf course. You can't be hobbling around like this, but you could really. There's a lot of years of good golf out there. So, you know, and then he said, and you got two, two daughters, how old are they? And I told him, he said, you're going to want to be traveling with them and all this.

He's describing, and you can kind of tell he's. Really excited about my results for me. And I'm like, dude, I'm, go ahead. You can cut on me now. I'll tell you another example. I, one of the last times I bought a car, everybody knows the car salesman, right? They're trying to get the deal.

But this guy says, you know, it started asking me about how we use our cars and what we do. He goes. I can sell you a car, but everything you described, I could go down the street because they've got a money and a totally different brand, totally different leader, a dealership. He said, I think it'd be better for you.

I go, I don't care. I'll buy your car. You want me to win, but have you ever been nervous? When somebody is in a meeting and they know there's something going on that meeting also about you and something that's important to you, there are certain people that you feel like, oh crap, I better be there to protect myself and there's other people you feel like, I don't have to be there.

They got my back. That's when we sense that motive and customers feel this all the time. Are you about your business? Are you about theirs and what they need?

Jeff Hunt:

It's almost like we have an innate radar around this whole area of motive. That's nonverbal that you can tell, right?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Usually, 150 percent nonverbal because somebody's usually not going to show up and says, I'm here to screw you any way I can.

I'm from the government, I'm here to help you, right? They tell you they're for you, but you better trust God and lock your door, right? Yes.

Jeff Hunt:

The next one's ability. Talk to us about ability.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Yeah, somebody can be really empathic and really understand us deeply really want us to win. But do they have the ability to pull off what I'm entrusting to them?

My surgeon, the 1 that's really empathic. And I know he's for me and I say, okay, let's do the surgery. But what if he goes. And I'm really excited about doing your knee replacement. This is because I'm an OBGYN. I've never done one of these before, and I've always wanted to do one. I'm all of a sudden going, no, I don't.

Jeff Hunt: So exactly. This is going to be my first knee surgery.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

And this is contextual. See, we can trust someone. With our lives in one area, but we're talking about entrusting something to them that if we don't feel like they have the real ability to pull it off to meet our need and the desired result, then it starts to break down.

This happens all the time. People go into business with friends. Because they love each other. Wouldn't it be fun to work together? Let's start a business. And they trust him with their lives. But then 6 months later, he's going, my partner doesn't know anything about running a business. This is a nightmare.

So, this ability thing is really, really important for us to, to just. Rest our head on, you don't have to worry about it. They are going to be able to deliver through their competencies, what I've entrusted to them. And, you know, brands and companies that have ways of without being arrogant or prideful or blowhards, giving people a little bit of a peek under the hood of, we really didn't know what we're doing.

So people begin to experience that they. Let down and so we just need for somebody to be able to do what we're dependent to do and a lot of times we think, oh, I trust him. He never lied to me. You know, he's been good in this area. I got called in 1 time to a company where there is a new CEO and been there a year and it was kind of floundering.

And I said, well, how did he become the CEO? And the board said he was our. Our COO for 10 years. And he was incredible. He, you know, increased supply chains and infrastructures and all this stuff. And so we promoted him to CEO when the old CEO returned. I said, so he was a CEO. And they said, yeah. I said, where do you get the E?

And they said, what do you mean? It was a CEO. Now, where did he get the E? I said, no, the E chip. I mean, as I'm looking at your scenario and I've done all the interviews and looked at the way it was. I said, this company is being operated. It's not being led. And so we can trust people in one context, but we have to make sure that they do have the abilities to do what we're trusting them to do.

I had a Navy SEAL brother in law. If the bad guys were coming after me, I would trust him in a heartbeat. If my dog dies, I need a shoulder to cry on. Mark wasn't the one I was going to go to. Exactly. But my really empathic, loving friends, I don't want them taking the bullet for me. I want Mark. So, ability is a big deal.

Jeff Hunt:

I'm also just thinking about how interconnected all of these are, because you could have somebody with a high degree of competency or ability, maybe even a rock star salesperson that knocks the ball out of the park every month. But nobody can get along with this person. So just because you have that ability, it doesn't necessarily mean that the trust. Should be granted to that individual.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

That's right. And that gets into the fourth component. The fourth component is because a lot of great salespeople, have several of these, right? But you get in the fourth component and that's the character. Now we make a big mistake in that we, we truncate character into.

A sub character definition of character, which is morals and ethics. So we think if somebody's got good character, they don't lie, cheat or steal. Well, my daughters knew not to lie, cheat or steal when they were five years old. But that doesn't mean that they have the makeup, the character makeup to run a business.

Right? So the moral attributes are absolutely foundational without them. You don't have anything and somebody shouldn't even be working for you if they lie and cheat and steal, but we're talking about the makeup, how they're glued together. And this gets into all of those other aspects. Like, you know, okay.

What is their impulse control? You know, do they get distracted by the next shiny object? And this is, this is what we're going to focus on for the next three months. And then Monday morning, you get 63 emails about, Hey, this new day. And it totally gets you off strategy. That that's part of their makeup or like you said.

Well, what if they have an anger problem, what if they are condescending and nobody can get along with them, as you said, or what if, how about perseverance, you've got some people that great performers. But they need a lot of attaboys and they need a lot of good news and things get hard or difficult.

They you know, go find something more fun to do. Well, you're going to send them on a project that's a turnaround for a year and there will be no good news for a year. There are people that are glued together with that character makeup. They love eating problems for breakfast. Well, that's who you want.

And so we have to look at what kind of individual. And their makeup, you know, we're talking about an arc of a story. And if you look at a movie, certain characters. Have very different arcs through the movie and some might be the hero and some might be the hand holder and some might be, you know, the 1 that runs away in a crisis.

There's all sorts of stuff. So really, really important to look at somebody's make up. This is where a lot of the kind of the stuff falls. All the research in the world shows that you get to the C suite. Everybody looks the same IQ education, business experience, business acumen. All of that, but then the high performers about not 2%.

I think it is of that Delta between them and everybody else is this arena of how they're glued together as people.

Jeff Hunt:

Okay. And then the last 1 is track record.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

What happened the last time pretty straightforward. Yeah. All right. Look, our minds build mental map. So. You know, when you go to the refrigerator in the morning, you trust it.

Even if the lights aren't on, you go downstairs, turn right, go right there. And you don't even think about it because you've built a map of how that works. You've done it 10, 000 times. If somebody puts a couch out in the middle of that, in the middle of the night, you go down and boom, you fall down, you know, your map got disturbed, right?

But then the next morning, you're kind of like. I better watch it on something that you thought you could trust. So always, always, always, always, always, always the best predictor of the future is the past. Always. Now that doesn't mean that people can't change. And do way better. But here's what happens.

They've got if they don't have, a track record of having pulled off what you're asking them to pull off. And let's say they fail or you haven't seen it and you go, okay, well, let's go try this. But you haven't seen a track record yet, then good luck because what's going to happen is pretty much the way that they've always performed.

Now, if they do fail and say, I'm sorry, I'll do better. That's not the time to trust me. That's the time. Maybe to give him a chance to build up to that and build a new past because you say, what about this guy? Didn't he? Didn't he go bankrupt? Yeah, he did. Three years ago, but in the last three years, this is how it's developed.

So now what am I still talking about the past? It's the last three years, we've got a new past. And so we've got to look at what is somebody's performance been in all four of these other areas. And that's pretty much what we can count on, you know, going forward, because that's how they're wiring it.

It's how people change. I'm in the change business. People, leopards change their spots, but they don't change their spots because 1 day they say, okay, I'll try harder or I'll get more committed or whatever. And I'm sorry for what happened yesterday. We are knowing depend on and that's going to be a tracker.

I mean, how many times you ever been to a meeting supposed to start at 8 o'clock and. It's 8. 05 and Mary's not there. They're waiting and everybody goes kind of concerned about Mary. Can somebody call her? Why are they concerned about Mary? Cause Mary's always on time. I think something has to happen.

However, if Joey, is it there? And 905 ago. Okay, let's get started. What about Joey? We don't Joey. Joey is always late. Let's get started because Joey's got a track record. And so that's how we operate. And with brands, especially people know what their last experience was like. And there's something called a recency effect that loads on that as well.

So we always have to be really understanding that Every interaction we're having with some with some ice cream creating a middle map and that's the track record. And so that's the way it works.

Jeff Hunt:

And so if I'm a leader, and I'm going to take a risk by putting somebody in a new position that they may not have as much of a track record for.

Yeah. Does it underscore the importance of evaluating these other character traits and elements? These other the 4 other 4 essentials of trust.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Yeah, it does, because you can't look at they've run a division before this or the other. But what you can look at is the track record of the competencies that are going to be needed in this new context.

Okay. So where is a place. Where they have led people, where is a place where they, even though they weren't running the thing, they, they had a project that they had to go from X to halo to, to building something where were they able to organize teams all of that. And. You're they've never done this before, but they've done this before, or they've shown the aptitudes to be able to do it.

You know, somebody goes to college, for example, they've never been to college before. That's a new position. But what they do is they factor analyze the skills that are going to be necessary to succeed there. And so you can make what a statistical psychology is called predictive validity that we have ways of looking at people.

To be able to predict that those ways are valid to know that they'll be able to, you know, to pull this off. I tell the story in a book about a friend of mine's daughter's boyfriend called him and said, I want to take you to dinner. And he told me, he said, I know what this means. He's going to ask for a hand in marriage.

He goes, what do you say at that dinner? And I said, well, I got two daughters. I know what I'm going to do. He said, what? And I said, I'm going to tell him to bring his last two years of tax returns. And he starts laughing. He goes, you're not going to, I said, I absolutely am. I promise you, I am going to do that.

He goes, that's so interesting. I said, look, I don't care what he makes, he can white out the numbers. I just want to see if he can find them.

Jeff Hunt:

Yeah, it's a demonstration of responsibility.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Essentially, if my daughter's going to marry her financial life and well-being and running a home to some guy, what's his track record been of meeting?

Not like boyfriend responsibilities. Yeah, he might, you know, can make her swoon. But in running a life, so this stuff gets really, really important.

Jeff Hunt:

So, I want to make sure to hit this question before we switch into the lightning round questions. And it's really about a misnomer, at least what I think is a misnomer.

And I'd love your comments on this, but it feels like sometimes a barrier to trust. Can arise when people feel like validating someone else's feelings is agreeing with them and that's not the case, correct? Can you set the record straight on that?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

That is our, one of our biggest fears. Where you feel like, well, I can't validate that because he's wrong.

Right? Well, you're not agreeing that something is real. You're not agreeing that something is true. What you're doing is validating that. That's their experience and that you hear it. I can see this very, very painful for you. I can see what I did really, really hurt you. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't do the same thing again, because it's the right decision to do, but I'm really validating.

That it's either hard for them, or they're frustrated about it, or they don't like it, or whatever it is. Look I've treated people, you know, as a clinician back when I was doing a lot of that, that were, I remember 1, 1 woman, I asked her something and she says. Wait, I have to ask them, I go, who? And she goes, she looks down the little green men on the couch that she took her instructions from. Okay. So if I go, there's no green men there.

It's not her experience. If I go, tell me about them. Well, that must, that must really help to have somebody watching guard for you and just validating it. I'm not agreeing with it. I'm validating and literally the person I'm talking about now is a leader in an organization that thought disorder and secured all that kind of stuff.

But if you can't enter into their world, you don't have to agree. There's green men, but you got to understand that there's green men for them. Okay, that this customer that's calling you that. As the worst experience with your lousy company, because that you've got to be able to, oh my gosh. That's terrible that it feels that way.

Let me see what I can and instead of well, it's not that big a deal. All we do is ship it a day late where you're invalidating. The current term for that is gaslighting. You're trying to talk somebody out of their reality. So it is a big fear. It is, I struggle with this. It's hard to bite my lip when somebody's just, this is loony what they're telling me.

But you know, I got to nod and understand before I get To see that it's loony. Yeah.

Jeff Hunt:

And coming to agreement on a path forward is a different part of the conversation, but it feels like if we do well in that validation piece, trust goes up. So we give ourselves better odds of actually creating a path forward.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

You're exactly right. Because, somehow We've got to, people started out on opposite sides of the table. What we got to do is we got to get to the same side of the table and have the problem be on the opposite side of the table. So we're working together, like you're saying, to have a path forward, to address this problem and get where we want to go, and if I just keep pushing them back and, you know, explaining to everybody why they're wrong, you know, it's like the CEO where.

You know, the team's in there and, you know, there's some difficulties in the market or with the supply chain or whatever it is, and, they're processing that. And you're going, what is y'all's problem? You're in the C suite. If you can't solve that, I'll find, you know, instead of, well, tell me what the struggles are.

Yeah, that's slow down is a big deal. I mean, that's gotta be, you know, and just entering into it with them. So the key word is with it doesn't mean that you think that it's as big a deal as they think it is. It probably is not to you, but bite your lip and empathize.

Jeff Hunt:

Yeah. And curiosity can be your best friend in that moment.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Right? Yeah. You said an important word there. Really, really important. Yeah. The best leaders are curious. Ready for the lightning round? Doesn't sound like it. Sounds scary.

Topic 4. Lightning round question (42:00)

Jeff Hunt:

Lightning as in quick, not painful. Let's do it. What are you most grateful for?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

I'd have to say my family, my wife and our two daughters, and our Doberman, who I have to include.

Jeff Hunt:

What's your Doberman's name?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Finley. One day we said, we ought to count how many times she makes us laugh in a day. You can't buy that kind of joy.

Jeff Hunt:

Oh, no doubt. That's what's important in life. Really cool. What's the most difficult leadership lesson you've learned over the course of your career?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Oh, boy. That's like trying to choose from a bunch of them. I think one of them, one of them is this is going to be harder than I thought. Cause I tend to be see things that don't exist and go do them and I feel like if I can see them. There's the path. Let's go do it. You know, well, yeah, there's lions and tigers and bears out there too.

And so sometimes more than sometimes I can, can be guilty of kind of fire ready aim, if you will. And just in terms of not understanding how hard it's going to be. But once you get into it, you learn that you're there. And so you work it out. I think that's 1 of them. I think another 1 is. Learning to really, really, really have self-respect in this way.

I've got, I had to learn to respect my weaknesses. I had to give them great respect. Say more. Well. You know, I think, I think building things and running things and starting things and trying to execute on things, you really need to know what your lane is, what you do well, and you really need to respect your less than great abilities in other lanes.

You really start to listen to people better, but you start to look for talent very differently. First of all, you understand the need for it, but you realize you're not gonna get there without it. And so that finding the right talent goes really, really important. I think that that's, uh, that was a difficult one.

I think, I mean, I could go on. There's a bunch of them, but those are two of the big ones.

Jeff Hunt:

Sounds like the voice of wisdom speaking right there.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Well, you know, the thing about wisdom. I was saying, what is, what is experience, you know, people with the experience, they learn and we call them wise, but there's 2, there's 2 ways to get it, we can be humble enough to receive it when somebody offers it to us, who's.

Had the skin needs to get it, and buy it from them, or we can go learn it the hard way. I try to spend a lot of time and effort buying it and getting it from people who paid a lot higher price and, trying to continually develop the real humility. It lists people who know what they're doing.

You know, the downside of that, uh, is. You know, at times, if you're wired a certain way, that you see things that the wisdom of experience doesn't see, because they are a little bit trapped in, into old paradigms and stuff. It's kind of a balance. You gotta be hard headed enough to not...

Believe everything over what you think you can see, but you got to be humble enough to know that you can't see everything either. And that's kind of a tough balance. That's where a good, I think a good, good board of advisors, good coaches, good thought partners. I always tell those, you know, we begin to go, how do you describe, you know, what you do?

And I go, well, there's a lot of different things I'll do here, but number one, I'm going to be your thought partner. And have, an outside person is not a stakeholder. So it doesn't matter to me whether you close that factory down or not. You know, what matters to me is that you guys win, but an outside place where somebody can think with you.

And I think that's an important role that we all need in our lives.

Jeff Hunt:

I appreciate that. And don't you have something on your LinkedIn site? That's something to the fact of if you're a CEO and it's lonely at the top, you're doing it wrong or, or, you know, it shouldn't be lonely at the top. Dr. Henry Cloud:

Right. Absolutely not. I mean, I hear people say that leadership's lonely at the top. No, no, what's what's tough at the top is the weightiness of some decisions because you got to make the call. But if you're lonely. You're a dictator, you know, if you don't have, if you don't feel like you've got a board that's in it with you, you've got a team that's in it with you, and you've got a couple of advisors or whatever, then you're a closed system, and every closed system, entropy increases, it degenerates, and ultimately it implodes, so if somebody tells you they're lonely, we've got to fix that first.

Jeff Hunt:

Great reference point. Who is one person you would interview if you could living or not?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Well, one's kind of a little bit of a slam dunk and then I'll give you a more realistic one. I'd interview Jesus. I mean, how do you start a global movement with not very much talent around that lasts for 2000 years?

I think if, if I could interview anybody today, it'd be Elon. I'd love to do that interview. Well, like I said, you know, you got the leadership and business, but you got the, you know, the personal stuff and he is, he's a very complex mix of a lot of abilities and a lot of brains and a lot of complexities and a lot of woundedness and antinomies. And I think it'd really be interesting to climb in there.

Jeff Hunt:

That would be a fascinating interview. You, you're right. So you've written a ton of books. I know you're also an avid reader. Do you have anything to recommend to our listeners?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Oh, that could be a long, long list. Long, long, long list. You know, one of the most Impactful books like when I look at the long haul is a book called no man is an island by Thomas Merton.

Just the, the primacy relationships I get into a lot of technical stuff and there's a lot of. A lot of books like that, Otto Kernberg, because I deal with character pathology a lot. He wrote some really almost similar works in, in character pathology, like, uh, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism was, was what Internal World, External Reality was another one he wrote.

So I can get on the technical side as well. That's kind of where I hang out.

Jeff Hunt:

What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

I can tell you one of the quippiest ones that I find myself saying to people a lot. My mentor when I was 23, I'll never forget this, he said, Henry, You know, the definition of rich, I said, no, what's the definition of rich?

W and he goes, low overhead. That's a good one. And if you think about that as metaphor, metaphorically speaking, overhead slows us down. It makes us have to attend to things that are really off. Real mission it gives us making us having to make sure we could just stay alive It takes away being nimble and agile and creative and all that.

So I tend to think of metaphorically in life There's one of my favorite verses in the Bible says it talks about the stuff that so easily entangles you I think that being able to, especially for CEOs to be unentangled as much as possible, which is psychological and bureaucratic and business overhead that slows you down and it keeps you from, you know, I think one of the biggest problems in business is.

Metaphorically speaking, a d d, that the executive functions of the brain, your prefrontal cortex, they do three things. They attend to what's relevant to get you there. They have to inhibit everything else, and they have to keep a working memory in front of you all the time of what's supported. And largely that is the, you know, executive functions of the brain.

Well, that's the CEO's job as well. And I think that. Finding the things that entangle them and their attention from what that chair only that chair can do is quite a big deal. Exactly right. It's just, I've got a good friend who is the C e O of Cenovus for a long time, and lead director for at t on their board and.

He said one time, he said, every day when I went to work and he talks in a deep Southern Georgia accent like this, he says, every day when I went to where I knew what my job was as a CEO, my job was to figure out whatever I did that day to never have to do it again. And give it to somebody else. He said, cause I need the, my calendar, the future tomorrow.

I need that to be able to be white space to go do what only I can do. And that's really wise, really. And you know that that's how the brain is designed. We attend to something basically to learn it. But once it's learned, your brain delegates it to other parts of the organization. So you can go attend to where you're going. Really, really important.

Jeff Hunt:

That makes perfect sense to me. And I'm reflecting on when we coach CEOs, one of the first things that ends up coming up almost consistently is how to reduce dependency on them. In their role. And it's exactly what you're describing. It's reducing overhead. It's reducing entanglement.

So I really love that reference. Henry, you brought so much wisdom. Your book is fantastic. I encourage our listening audience to go get the book. It's called Trust. And out of all the things that we covered today, you would want to leave our listeners with?

Dr. Henry Cloud:

Oh, gosh, I think, you know, we started by talking about relationship and obviously everything is driven by relationship and the ability to trust.

And I think when a leader really gets it, you know, it's like your brain, if you're the, if you're the brain, you're the executive functions of the organization, your body has a brain and following it from here to there, the brain sees the vision. Right? Well, tell your brain to go there. You want to go from here to there? Go there, brain. Your brain isn't going anywhere by itself. The next thing it does is, it engages the talent that's going to need to take it there. So I think all the things we've talked about are deeply, deeply relationally imbued and some of the space where you can spend your biggest ROI in terms of time and energy and even money is developing your relational.

Toolbox, and that includes self awareness and other awareness and, communication skills, conflict resolution, negotiation, emotional regulation, the more, you know, the word integrity means to be integrated, the more you can integrate as a person, the greater everything is going to be. So that's probably what I would spend time and money on it.

Get a coach, get, you know, go to. Stuff where they get inside your skull. The best investment you can make, right? Yeah, it is.

Jeff Hunt:

Henry, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Dr. Henry Cloud:

It's been good. And I really, I love the space sharing. I love what you're doing. And so, bless you guys and I hope it continues to go well.

Jeff Hunt:

Thank you.

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Outro(39:38)

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Jeff Hunt:

Thanks for listening to Human Capital. If you like this show, please tell your friends and also take the time to go rate and review us. Human Capital is a production of Goalspan, your integrated source for performance management. Now go out and be the inspiration to other humans. And thank you for being humankind.