The 7 pillars of trust every leader can build

Trust doesn’t usually die in a dramatic blow up. It dies in the small moments leaders let slide: the awkward conversation that never happens, the “brilliant” employee who gets away with bad behaviour, the silence that lets rumours do the talking. Gearl Loden joins us to share the thinking behind his new book, Before It Breaks, and why trust is the foundation that makes decisions faster, teams calmer, and culture stronger. 

We walk through Gearl’s seven pillars of trust, a practical framework leaders can actually operationalise: character, consistency, communication, competence, care, clarity, and courage. We dig into why communication isn’t the same as clarity, how promotions fail when competence isn’t developed, and what caring leadership looks like in a brisk, high-performance environment where people still have room to breathe and think. 

Because many of you lead SaaS teams, we also get specific about scaling from startup energy to a 50 person organisation without losing your culture. That includes onboarding, cross-team systems, AI adoption training, and remote team trust. We also look outward to customer trust: why most SaaS customers won’t complain before they churn, and how mergers and product changes can erode loyalty when you don’t communicate a roadmap early. 

We finish with a simple but powerful trust repair move: don’t just say “sorry” and stop. Name the impact, own the decision, and say what you’ll do differently next time, then repeat it until it becomes credible. 

Produced by Hat Media

Book & Early Buyer Incentives

• Before It Breaks: The Seven Pillars of Trust Every Leader Must Build
• Pre-order now: https://masterclass.lodenleadership.com/before-it-breaks-pre-order
• Official launch: July 7, 2026

Exclusive for Early Buyers: When you register your book, you'll receive:

• A complete resource bundle
• Invitation to a complimentary live masterclass
• Free PDF of Before It Breaks: The Complete Leadership Workbook (Available during the early launch window)

Connect with Gearl

• Website: https://lodenleadership.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gearl-loden-lodenleadership/
• 30-Minute Discovery Call: https://masterclass.lodenleadership.com/lighting-the-path-discovery-call-30
• Growth Alliance Newsletter: https://go.lodenleadership.com/Grwoth_Alliance_Newsletter

Transcript

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Trust Breaks Quietly

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome everyone to another episode of Santa Stories. I am joined by Jerome Loden, previously Against Under Podcast, and joins us today with his new book, Before It Breaks, which is all about trust, the seven pillars of trust every leader must build. And such a timely book as well. Welcome, Jerome.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

I am so excited to be with you again this year, Jonas. And I'm really excited about being with you today just to talk about the book and trust, but also just uh to be able to connect with your viewers, people that are, you know, who are tuning in just to share about leadership too.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Absolutely. And so, in your experience coaching leaders across education and of course, sands, which is what this podcast is all about, how often do leaders um realize trust is broken after the fact? And what are the early warning signs they should be watching for?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Oh, goodness. That is something I think we all, not just in um, I'm an educator by trade, I'm coaching a SaaS uh founder right now, and other people in other fields. And trust is something that we have common in all organizations. And when everything is high with for high levels of trust, things flow. You're able to make decisions, you can feel the synergy. I think we've all probably worked it sometime in an organization where trust was low, or maybe you didn't trust the leader, didn't trust your team. And you know, there's signs around you. But one thing I've learned in coaching people is often people perceive trust being broken as something big, like there's a big event. And often, like if some employees have a flare up, get into it, the the leader wants to deal with it right there, but they don't realize that the problem is not the problem. What typically happens is it's something that's been building over time. So you have to go back and look what has been happening. And often it's going to be people start out with good intentions and then they they feel threatened, or maybe they feel like someone's not giving them the right amount of information, or just simply some things happen and you have tension, and instead of addressing it, you let it build. So I think most people could say, if you look around, uh, do you do you feel like you have good communication? When you have communication, do you have clarity? Uh are people having the difficult conversations that they need to address the issues? You know, uh, I've been in organizations before where the managers are potentially uh have very competent employees, but they're not team players, they you you can't trust them. And instead of dealing with them and trying to coach them around being a team player, being someone who shares, they don't have the courage to because they're afraid this person has a skills. Well, if I try to deal with it, they may quit, they may leave, and I've got a void on the team. But in essence, that really hurts the rest of the team. You know, pre-modonnas get in the way of all kinds of things, they can show up late, they can miss deadlines, but because they have a skill set, they're able to do things, and others are looking at them like, why are you treating this person a certain way? And I, you know, even though I'm an educator, I see that more business people where it's like they feel held hostage because there's certain skills you need, and people are so hard to find once you have someone, they're often afraid to coach them.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Yeah.

Seven Pillars Leaders Must Build

SPEAKER_00 3:11

And on the topic of skills, you've written about the seven pillars. I think you may have just mentioned one or two, but walk us through the high level of what these seven pillars are.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Oh, and and I'm gonna say this there's a lot of research around trust, so you'll see some of the common trends. The biggest difference in my book is trying to operationalize trust is something that you just don't take for granted. No, it's higher and low, but you actually are able to put a system around. But the foundation of everything that I talk about says that you've got to have character. And when I'm talking about character, you know, you want a team where everyone doesn't have to be like you, but you want to though people have the value system that's consistent, you understand their system, you know that they have ethics and values. They may not be perfectly aligned because of their religious beliefs or ethnic background or whatever, but at least you know you can figure out what they stand for and they're consistent with it. And that leads into the second pillar of just being consistent. Uh, when I talk to people or talk to groups and I ask have you ever had a boss or someone around you that you didn't know what day of the week it was, you have to check in before you wanted to have a meeting with them or conversation, they all laugh in head nod. You know, okay, do I need to talk to them today or do they need to talk to them today? No, they're in a bad mood, wait till tomorrow. Oh, that happens. That happens so much. And you know, when you have people that are consistent and you know how to read them, I don't have to grive everything they do, but if I just know I can predict what they're gonna say, what they're gonna do, and understand what they like, then I can adjust because you know I want to support the leaders that I have. With me, I have seven bosses in the board, and I want to I had to figure out what they like and and don't like and make sure they have the right amount of communication, not too much or not enough. And one thing on the operational side that I put in that's a little different about consistency, because most things about trust are going to talk about consistency, like I just said, but also it would be putting systems in place that are consistent. So you have quality inputs and outputs between your teams. You have sharing, you don't have one team, like a SAS team. One group's doing this, one group's doing that, the marketing people share with the software development people, the people running the betas. Uh, you make sure that you have consistency so all the people have what they need when they need it. You want to know that you're consistent enough that just any person in that on that team could basically make things flow and operate. That you don't have to be a hero with a special skill set to just make the day-to-day things run. Uh, communication, and something I did with the book is I separated communication from clarity. Communication is so important because you've got to have a variety of ways of communicating, you've got to make sure you listen to your people and understand how they like to be communicated with. But then a pillar later on that I'll share now is clarity because you've got to be clear. Just saying you communicate does not mean people understand. And if you don't have clarity, then you'll have rovers flying faster than the truth. And and if you're silent, you know, or don't communicate properly, the rumors are going to tell the story, and you won't have an opportunity to tell the story in a timely manner. And then just being competent. And that goes back into you know, you've got to know your stuff. Your employees have to know the stuff, they have to be good at what they do. And as a leader, like when you're developing people, part of the trust factor is you may not have the perfect employees, like you're not the perfect leader, but you have a growth mindset, you're learning, you understand where you're weak, and you show up your weaknesses by having people around you that are strong. And when you move someone into a new role, you understand you've got to develop them, you've got to spend time with them. Because I have seen this so many times where you've got a great salesperson, they're your best salesperson, you promote them to the head of sales, and they fail. And then they end up resigning and going and doing something else, or you take a nurse that's your best nurse, you put them as a charge nurse, but you don't train them, you don't lift them up, and then they're getting frustrated and quitting, or worse than that, you may have to remove them because they're not good at leading. So the competence factor is so important, and that goes back to your systems too, just having systems in place people can trust and can predict. And then care is very, very important. And I know care is a soft skill that people talk a lot about, but being in an environment where you feel like you're more than just a number that your leadership cares about you. And one way that I tweak care that's a little differently is like in my organization, people hear me just say, we want to have a brisk business-like environment where we know our goals, we know our jobs, we do them well, but also the care in the system where we set it up, where like Joni, you're gonna be productive, you're gonna have what you need, but also you're gonna have enough time to breathe and catch your breath and be able to think about am I making a difference? Am I working with my team? Am I supporting my team? Am I checking in on them? And I'm also do I have enough time to cast the vision for the future. Because if your head's always down in the world, it's as fast as we're in moving now, you're not gonna be able to stay up because you got to have time to think and be creative too. And and if you know, if you're in that kind of environment where you like the team, you like your boss, you feel like you're supported, you know you've got time to really decompress, or maybe at times there's in the care is knowing that people like different things, so you can give them enrichment opportunities if they want to try new things. Like if someone wants to be a leader, you can give them little roles along the way to stretch them before they're a leader. And then the clarity part I've already mentioned. And then the last thing is probably the foundation. You have the character at the beginning and at the end, the courage. Because it takes courage to have difficult conversations, and often people will probably the biggest thing I see with courage is people will think it'll work out, you know, take care of itself, and then it doesn't. And being able just to say, I want to sit down and talk with you. And I have several tools in the book that I think people enjoy. You know, I've marketed the book as not a motivational book, but it's really an OS for uh trust, so you can actually manage trust and not just let it go. Because if you're in an environment like if I move into a new system and there's high levels of trust, if I don't manage it, it can erode. Or if I'm in an environment where I'm a turnaround agent and there's no trust, then I've got to start somewhere working on the pillars to build trust. So I think there's some opportunities there for people. Yeah. Uh but courage, courage is a big one.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

I love that. Uh they all start with a C and they're very easy to remember. So I'm gonna say them once again character, consistency, communication, competence, care, clarity, and courage.

AI Needs Training Not Hope

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Um, the competence one stuck out at me. Um when you were saying, you know, people get put into roles, but they don't get the training and education for it. It made me think of MEI and the way a lot of organizations are currently um rolling it out. They're saying everyone should be using it, everyone needs to learn it, but there's no education program, there's no training, there's no systems, there's no processes. It's just like go out and learn it. Um, are you finding this quite common as well at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 10:08

You know, something I have been predicting because we have actually paid SaaS professionals to come in and that work with designing systems for organizations to come in and train our team. We started two years ago and just effective prompting. Then we are leaders on our team and instructional leaders have been training good prompting. Now we've been working on connectors for a while and developing our own projects. But uh, something I believe is the person, and now there's a new title. I cannot remember the title for you, but the the money, in my opinion, is not going to be OpenAI or Claw, but it's gonna be the person that can actually take the average person and tie it all together so you can use it. And that's like the hottest new job on the market because these people can take small companies, they can have a full-time job, or they can work in multiple small companies and make a very, very good living. Just being able to connect the dots and have systems in place that we can use. Uh, so I think that's going to be big. AI's come in them, it's here, it's not going away. I know I I use, gosh, I use so many credits with a clawed co-work every week, it's unreal. And it's amazing what it will do.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

It's incredible for sure. I do think though, um, a lot of the a lot of employees are kind of being left to their own devices in terms of when and how to learn everything. Um, and so coming back to the seven pillars, do you find specifically for SaaS bounders, say scaling from, you know, to 50 people, which one of the pillars tends to get neglected first? Which is the one that tends to be the most um out of sorts?

Culture Systems For Scaling SaaS

SPEAKER_01 11:41

You know, the SaaS people that I'm working with, of course, you know, the model there is most people they're they're trying to develop a good software that they can scale. And the ones that are addicted to being that startup on to mirror, they want to sell, make a good profit, then they want to go back and do it again. And it's almost like you see this transition in the culture where you have these innovators that are so creative, and then as you scale, you need the MBA in, you've got to have the CFO, you got to have the the protocol. So then that really challenges them because you're having to put in the HR manual, you're having to do the things that maybe they don't like, and that's where bringing the culture up to speed and designing your culture, like a person I'm working with now. We've worked on an onboarding guide, and he you know, he's in this on his second company that he started up or helped start up, and they're trying to scale, buy another company, bring people in. And the big thing I keep working with them on is this the culture. You have this great culture, but are you developing the people as they come in so they're they're acclimating to your system? And also as he scales his ability, making sure he's able to leave things along that he had to do when he was a startup, because he now he can be more of a CEO type person, COO person. And uh, I don't care how much money you make, how fast you grow, your culture is what sustains your organization. And and the culture that you have, you can't take it for granted. That's why you have like the trust indicators, they're all about culture. You know, there's research more and minutes, you know, culture, each strategy every day. And you can have slogans and you can have a company to come in and pay them big bucks to have a banner, and this is what you're about. But then is that really what you're about? And you'll see with teams like talking about the competence and the consistency, you want to have that between your teams because if you're not careful when you have multiple departments, each one has their own little mini culture, and even though you want them to be free to have their own creativity, you want to know at the end of the day they all support the organization's culture too.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

No, I think you deal with SaaS people all day long, and I love SaaS people because they're so creative, but the that culture piece is so important.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

I agree. I think culture is it goes a long way, and it's a very hard one to define. Like if you ask anyone what is the culture like at your organization, um, they can't answer that question. And I've been thinking on that as well. What makes a good culture? And I the word trust does come to mind. So, you know, I think diversity is important in a culture, and I think the culture is defined by the employees, not the leader, as well. Um, trust is a big one, but what else would you say to that question? Is it answerable?

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Well, just when you look at a system, when you're at equilibrium and everything's aligned, you know, in a especially a creative environment, like I'm in the education field or SaaS field, that's where you can get so busy, the next thing you know, it's like midnight and you're like full of energy and you're you're fulfilled. But then if you're not in that zone, just like you can have a Saturday where you're doing nothing but scrolling, you're in that lower brain. At the end of the day, you're like, I am tired and haven't done anything today. So a healthy culture, you know, people are willing to go the extra mile. It doesn't matter if you have unions or not. You know, if you need to stay over a few minutes and finish something, you don't mind it because you know if you need to leave a little earlier, boss is gonna be flexible with you. And and two, I advocate there's some people that love money, but in most situations in your area, you're gonna have some similar pays. Some people may pay more, but if I love my supervisor and I love my team and we have synergy, when someone new comes on, we look at that as an opportunity to learn and we're gonna embrace them. I mean, most people are around people like that more than they are their spouse. If you think about it, you get a shower, you go to bed, and you're busy, you have quality time with your friends at work at times more than you do your own kids. So you want to be in that environment, and when you're in that kind of environment, it would really take a lot of money to make you laid.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, absolutely. I think balance is important. It's coming back to CEOs, which you mentioned earlier.

Why CEOs Miss Trust Gaps

SPEAKER_00 15:53

I did some research before the podcast on trust, and the Edelman Trust Barometer specifically came up. So it found that 75% of people think CEOs should be bridging trust gaps, but only 44% actually do it well. Does that surprise you? And what do you think is driving that?

SPEAKER_01 16:14

I think at times some of the things you'll see is like with a leader, at times they don't have the flowing communication like they need. And people that are just on the floor of wherever, they're all very valuable, but they may think, well, they already know that. So you've got blind spots. Uh at times the ego, you've accomplished, you know, you get so focused on numbers, you're making the numbers, and you just assume the culture's good. And or you may have people around you that are telling you the culture's good, but it's not. And that's one thing about the diversity aspects with character. You know, we don't have as many organizations now, but you know, years ago it seemed like people would hire people just like them, maybe like the country club or the good boys, good old boys club. Now you're seeing people value diversity more. Like when we're hiring, you don't have to be the same faith or of faith or uh same background as me. I want people to have different views, and we are gonna focus on what's in common. We're not gonna fight about what's different, but if if I have people that see from a different lens, that helps me. So sometimes the ego gets in the way. You know, the research that's out there says, like, just literally like 85-9% of the people are gonna say they're self-aware, but in reality, only about 5% are self-aware. And that's the biggest gift you can have as a leader is knowing your weaknesses, knowing your strengths. And when I coach people, I'll ask them this at times have you ever had a leader that has just said, absolutely, that did not work. I made a mistake, and here's what I'm gonna do in the future. Most people are like, Oh, I I coach my people, look, find to us when you make mistakes and be vulnerable. Say, look, I made the decision, I owned the decision, we thought it worked. Here's what we did, it did not work, and here's what we're gonna do in the future. That can actually give you more credibility and trust because people realize the leader made a mistake and he admitted it, and also that empowers others to not be afraid to make mistakes because you want people to try. I mean, very few people make a critical mistake. You know, if you're still in or something like that, that's that's more than a mistake. But you want people not afraid to try and to be creative and to also not hold back and tell you how they feel or what they see. And you know, you have a lot of employees, and some are gonna hit you with things you don't like. It's okay, just digest it and look for patterns and trends. And that's where the truth usually is.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah, it's um it's an it's an interesting one because I think the higher up the ladder you go, especially as a CEO, you probably speak to less and less people at the bottom. You're probably just speaking to like the the leaders just below you. And so I don't know if you're getting the full picture. Um, and they're probably giving you information that's not 100% accurate. So how do what do you think the CEOs can do in that instance? Like I agree, I think admitting mistakes and being relatable is very important. Do you also find that it's important to stay close to all the departments in a business?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

You know, I have 1,300 employees. There are a lot of people a lot larger than me in my organization, but the biggest resource I have is my cabinet. You have about nine people that I rely on, that I coach. I try to make sure they understand the philosophy. Uh, we have the quality circles, which you know, different organizations have different things, but we basically run a mini version of a sprint. Uh, whoever has the influence or the authority or the expertise is the one who has total command of the project out there. That's the portal. We try to do a lot of act after action reviews. Uh we actually divide and counter, uh divide and conquer in our organization and make sure that every two to three weeks we've got a couple people that meet with the different teams and just check in how they do and what's what's working, what's not. Takes a lot of dedication. And I'll be the first to say when you're the leader, is always going to be someone saying, Well, I haven't seen you in a while, and I'm always saying I need to do better. But when I compare myself to other organizations, I feel like we're doing well. So the more you can be there, the more you can have feedback loops. Uh, you know, you can have your you can have your leadership team or you have just a quality circle where you bring people in from all the different departments and meet with them and just get updates from them and be there with them so you can get fillers out, the more visible you are. Uh, I'm not a big fan of the surveys because there's some research on surveys that shows that the people that are happy or just doing a good job, they don't worry, it's usually on the extremes and they embellish a lot. But we do surveys too, try to look at patterns. But the communication is so important. And I would say for leaders, just finding the way, ask your employees how they like to be communicated with. Because there's so many tools today, and I think at times what happens is we're sending so many messages out that people just, well, it's the same, you know, they just don't look at it, they get hit with so much. So finding out how they want to be communicated with and communicate with them.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah. Communication is crucial.

Let Go Of Micromanagement

SPEAKER_00 21:14

There's um there's another story in the book that really stood out for me in chapter six, actually. Um, it was one I could relate to because this was me 20 years ago. Um, you tell a story of the CEO who worked 70 hours per week, um, but he had no idea what his team was doing. And is this a common story that you you see throughout when you're working with organizations? And it's trust that you should here, it's trust in the team that you should.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

And I'll I'll share this. My wife peeked at me because the stories in the book are real, and I've changed them all up because of some of the people I've coached. And some of them where I'm coaching someone, it's really me. And my wife's like, That was you, you did that. You know, there's times where you don't have the Trust and you have this perfectionist type, and they're hero, they put all the hours in, they want to change everything. They instead of just giving empowering their employees, it's almost like they're a mini micromanager, and they just they but they've got to stamp everything. And you know, I've worked with people like that, I've I've been around people like that, and I've had friends that work for people. And when you talk about the patterns, it's you know it's like they're really competent, but they're afraid to let go. They've got to sign everything, check everything, and they don't realize that's slowing things down, and it's them slowing things down, and also it stifles creativity. And your folks that are creative, that like to innovate and have a little autonomy, they're not gonna stay with you in that environment. Uh, and you as a CEO, you're still, you want to, you want to have, like with me, there's a lot of decisions where I'll give a few parameters. Here's what I envision, but I want you to take it and make it your own. There's some times where, like during COVID, we just had to make a decision and say, I need your support. There's times where I'll just go out, here's a problem. I want you guys to let me know what it is, and they'll run it to me. And you say, I'm gonna support it and ask good questions. Make sure the thing I love is I can ask the questions, and I'll know there's no way I would do this, but they know what they're doing, and they also know what to look for if it's working or not, and how they adjust. So I'll run with it, and that helps me to continue learning because there's so many different ways to do the same thing. And and there's times where you just let give the decision totally away. But uh, but I think we've all probably worked for a leader. I think at times, well, I'm not gonna say all the time, but I think early on it's easy for a new leader. And I was this way, I you know, you're new, you're thon in, you don't have a mentor like when I first came out, you didn't have the coaching like you did today. Everything's important, you know. You just you're so afraid you're gonna miss something, and you feel like you've got to have all the answers. And as a maturist, I don't have to have the answers. I've got a great team, I know where to go for the answers, and then you learn to filter what that 20% is that really gives you the 80% reward.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Yeah, it's um yeah, perfectionism, it's an interesting one. I think a lot of a lot of them are, a lot of them are perfectionists, and and that's kind of why they've come such a long way as well. But what would be the first step in letting go of that level of control and micromanagement and starting to trust your team a little bit more?

SPEAKER_01 24:26

You know, this may this is going to connect slightly with it, but one thing I've had to coach leaders around is this the ones that when someone wants me to come in and someone's being promoted, is it's often easy to when you're just in a your comfort zone is being moved, your boundaries are being moved, and you're in a new role, but you're supervising someone that was in that same level you were at, you know that role. You were moved because you were really good at that role. But I did not promote you for the skill set that you had then. I saw I'm seeing the potential in you to be in a different role, but often when they get in there, they're nervous, they start micromanaging the role they had before because they understand it. So a lot of early ways to do that is to teach someone when they're new look, let the new person be creative and let them make this their own role. You hold them accountable to the KPIs or the smartest scorecard. Uh being able to have an accountability partner, because there's some things, you know. I'm a coach, I'm not trying to sell coaching, promote coaching from that standpoint, but there's some things you can't read a book on that you'll just sabotage yourself or sabotage someone because you'll be micromanaging and not even realizing it. And and people are not going to tell you, but you'll see it in your retention rates, you'll see it in your creativity. So just like having a coach, having a mentor. So when you promote people, especially that are new, having good seasoned veterans, mentors that can mentor them and make sure they're just checking with them to help to kind of put some guardrails around.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

You think it's important to let people make their own mistakes as well and sort of stop trying to um you know plan for that and prevent it? It's the best way they'll learn, right? It's kind of like children, raising children.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Oh, and and that's and that's the thing now. Like uh in the coaching realm, everyone can say they're a coach. And there are a lot of people that go through a little training, and then when you talk to them, they're really a mentor, they're wanting to come in and say, now, Joanna, here's what you should do. That's not the way you do it. And a real coaching, you're you're asking questions and helping them to get clarity. Now, just like if you're running the suicide hotline or a counselor, if someone really starts threatening self-harm, you may say, Time out. But if I'm with you and I'm working with you and I see that you just absolutely don't have a clue and you're about to make a mistake, I'll say, Time out. Can I mentor you for a minute, or can I consult with you for a minute? And I'll then I'll say, Here's three things I've seen people do in this road. You think one of these might work? But there's lots of times where you're kind of like, Okay, I want you to try this, and you kind of help them to lay out their plan, then you let them try, and and they'll learn from it. Experience is a great teacher, yeah, and it's what builds character, right? Oh, yes, and when you squeeze someone in when times are good, everyone's great. But when times are bad and you're going through a recession, you got a new company you've just started, and all of a sudden things are changing. The ones that survive the challenging times are the ones that usually have great companies and great cultures and thrive. When it's easier, what's in the game? Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:30

You talk about character a lot in the book, and um it's a tough one to define for me because I and I think a lot of people probably confuse character with personality. So, what do you can you explain what you mean by building character and what is the first step to doing that?

SPEAKER_01 27:47

Well, the character is going to be disnoyed when someone has values, you know, and like I can look at some politicians that have different views than me, but I respect them because I know they're gonna be consistent. Well, character is not having the same values as me, and at times people want to hire people to think like them, go to the same church, they in the same clubs. That's where you end up having tunnel vision. But having someone that you know is a very ethical person that is going to do the right thing when it comes down to it, that they're true to the values of the organization, and they're going to be consistent. Uh, I'll I'll say this: there's times where people that I would not want to go out to eat with that are on my team, or maybe we just are not that close per se, I totally trust them when making decisions. I know they have great character. There's people that I love that I would just love to go and play golf with or hang out with, that I'm not about to let them make a decision because I can't trust them with that decision. And that's knowing the strengths of your team. You know, it's part of my job is I want to challenge people. And if you tell me I want to be a leader, well, I'm gonna give you opportunities to step into roles and strength you and coach you. But there's certain times where I know your skill set well enough, and that's me. I've got to know my team's strengths. And we spend a lot of time doing different things. We'll do the strengths finder, we'll do the disc, and and we'll look and laugh at each other because we know we do it enough, we know each other's quirks and personalities, and we'll make fun of each other because we know, like I used the Disney model where we'll let the dreamers dream and we make sure everyone lets them dream about interrupting, because anytime a dreamer dreams, there's gonna be a million reasons to say that won't work. Oh, yeah. And so we let them dream, and then after that, we'll let the ones that gotta have everything dot and cross tear it apart. Is it and then at the very end, well, let me say this, we'll try to make it reality. Like if we're wanting waterfalls and alligators and volcanoes, then I'll let the ones come in and say, Well, we can't have a waterfall or a volcano, but we can make an artificial waterfall, we can make an artificial dinosaur, and then the land script that want to dot and cross everything. Is it legal? Can we get it approved? Can we fund it? Can it be sustainable? So at the end, all of the people have had input.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Yeah, it's important to get input from the wider team

Remote Trust And Better Meetings

SPEAKER_00 30:09

as well. Um I think in SaaS companies, the remote team continues to be quite privileged. And I do wonder, is it harder to get team trust culture when a lot of the team is actually working remotely? I still run into organizations where they're 100% remote and have been for since COVID days. Um, what do you find in those organizations?

SPEAKER_01 30:36

You know, I will say my organization has shifted back to in-person, but we do have the ability to flip the switch and go, you know, like if someone's sick and they need to work from home. But a couple of people that I've worked with in my master classes that I have or a coach have shared some really innovative things that they do. Um, a friend of mine runs international teams, and he has three different countries that he has teams in, and you've got everything from one country, this is a normal work week. All three countries have different work weeks, they have different holidays. And just being able to say, instead of saying, like in most of the Christian countries, you're going to have Christmas, they just give you a pool of days and you take the ones off you like. He said, What was funny was his people that are Christians now are working right around Christmas because there's not a lot of calls, so they like getting caught up. So they may have Christmas off, but that's about it. Uh, another thing that I've seen people do is just creative things like we're gonna have lunch today, and they all get their lunches and they have a lunch and they just sit there like you would in a workroom and they're talking and having fun while they're having lunch together. So I think if you look at it as far as things that people like to do or want to do, I think you can be creative. Um, you know, as a supervisor, e-cards for birthdays, holidays, just being able to do the shout-outs and recognizing people, the way they like to be recognized is good too. The one thing I caution with that, and I think the last time I talked, I mentioned the platinum rule. But as a as a leader, like I value knowing my team. Well, I want someone new, I'm gonna treat them like the golden rule, which every faith has, is I'm gonna treat you the way you I want to be treated, but then I want to get to know you and treat you the way you want to be treated. Like if you you have children and you need to if I just give you extra time off to go to ball games or have things, that means a lot to you. Someone else may want to raise more money more than anything, or someone may like being publicly recognized with a plaque, while another person does not want to be publicly recognized. Well, if I know that as a leader, then I can tailor my my praise to them. And not just praise, but the the accolades.

SPEAKER_00 32:40

Yeah. Yeah. The importance of really just recognizing the different characters in the organization and their strengths and their values, and really just catering to that rather than treating everyone the same. Another really good one that I heard recently was um allowing people to excuse themselves from meetings where they know they're not gonna get or give any value as well, which I know a lot of us see in those meetings going like, Why the hell am I near?

SPEAKER_01 33:09

That happens. Death by meetings. That is one thing that we have tried to do a good job of. And uh the one thing I have stressed the whole time is we try to have minimalist meetings, and we tell people, don't be offended. But if you're not in a meeting you need to be in, you need to talk to us because no one's no one's got ill intentions. And there's times where we'll have a meeting, and in the middle of it, we're like, oh gosh, we need to have Joanne in here, she's not here, or we need to have Tom in here, and then he'll be like, Tom, someone on the team will give Tom an update. Next time we need you in, here's what we did today because we needed them. But I think that is a that's a tool that I use as a leader that I like because I don't like having people in and they're wasting their time. Now, my big meetings like once a week, I have a big like all hands, all in my cabinet, and and we have time, we just do our big rides. What are we working on? What do we need? How can we support each other? Helps me as a leader to know the rhythms because now I've been around everyone long enough. I know, okay, Karen likes this, and if I have a special project, she can do this at this time of the year, but this time of year she can't because she's got all of her federal reports to you or whatever, but you kind of learn the rhythms too.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

That sounds good.

Keeping Customers Before They Churn

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Um, we've talked about trans in the workplace amongst employees, amongst the CEOs. One thing we haven't touched on is trans with customers. And so specifically in the world of sadism, uh having done some research, here's a status of me. It said that four percent, less than four percent of the SASA side customers will complain before they leave, which means most people, you don't know if they're a percent, they will just go quietly. I know that's be in a restaurant. If I'll never complain about my food, I'll just leave quietly and never come back. Um, but it's that's fundamentally a trust problem, isn't it? And so what um what can organizations do about this?

SPEAKER_01 35:11

That that is not just in the SaaS world. I think that's in multiple organizations now. And you know, I still take pride in if I have an issue, I'll call a place and say, you know, I'm not the one that's gonna post on Facebook or social media, but here's an issue we had, and uh encourage people to do the same for me. And we haven't publicly did that in our organization, trying to get people to call us when there's issues or use our suggestion boxes. But you know, the world of SaaS, uh, I mean, we use so many SaaS products, and I think it's just like any other field, the best customer you have is the one that you have now, and you don't want to lose them. And it's so easy to get busy and just assume there's a great relationship, or or maybe it's not the company, but I'm hooked on to the salesperson, I love them, and I'm addicted to the salesperson. And then when they leave, the new one doesn't connect with me for the way they did. Uh now, when you're buying, I would encourage this when you're buying companies and you're merging, you know, communicate with the people that are being bought, communicate with the people that are you're emerging because the clients, I mean, I may like a product, I don't know anything about this company's buying. And then when things start changing, if you don't give me a heads up what's changing with a roadmap and communicate with me, I'm gonna be very frustrated. Uh, you know, I'm not a SaaS designer, but we spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on SaaS tools, and that happens a lot where you have a company you love, they merge, things change, and then they don't or they'll say things are gonna blend, but they rush the the blending instead of beta testing and making sure everything's synced up.

SPEAKER_00 36:51

I think mergers, it's a common thing that happens. Um, they don't always communicate, they'll buy out like a the the a smaller company, they won't tell the employees what's happening. Everyone gets flurried that they're gonna lose their job, so they they start leaving um customers as well. They're like, well, they'll probably put up the prices. Everyone's making all these assumptions that's really eroding the trust. And so again, this comes back to the sea of communication. A lack of communication can really start losing a lot of customers and also really good employees in an organization.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

There's a lot in the book about that because silence gives human nature when anything is new, we're gonna guard ourselves against pain over pleasure. And when someone says something's new, people are gonna think, Am I gonna die? Is it gonna kill me? Well, how bad is it gonna be? They think the worst things. And often if you'll just give people a good rationale and communicate with them and then get back and give them time to decompress and then give them time to ask questions, that helps a lot. But when you're in a world of SaaS where you've got developers that are paid very, very well and they have all kinds of opportunities. If you're not communicating, the silence is going to give the people with a negative side the opportunity to tell the story, and then you're gonna be behind the game. I've actually got a story about that about a leader that's having to go through that in the book. And you know, it's very frustrating when you're in that environment and you have great intentions, but you can't get ahead of the story because you were quiet, and the river mill is so fast. And once people make up their minds, we see this in the world today. When someone makes up their mind, even if you present with rational facts, they're gonna double down even more often.

SPEAKER_00 38:40

Yeah, so true, so true.

Clarity And Repairing Trust

SPEAKER_00 38:44

My last question, I've already asked you this one because you've been on this podcast before. So I'm gonna redo it a little bit. So, this is a tradition question that I like to end on. And it's basically if you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self? You've already answered that. So I'm gonna reword it slightly in this instance. And it's if you could go back in time, which pillar of trance did you wish you understood earlier in your leadership journey?

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Oh goodness. Uh, you know, you know my background. I was a kid in school, it was ADHD, dyslexic, full speed ahead. I didn't even realize I was dyslexic until my oldest son was diagnosed with dyslexia. And I asked the doctor, I said, Do you think I'm dyslexic? And he started laughing. He was like, I'm not dyslexic, ADHD. And he started laughing, and he was like, You're a poster child for an adult's never been diagnosed. So my first 10 years in administration, I was like, wow. I mean, just busy, busy, busy, you know, that synergy, take action. And I did mature and I did learn to slow down and take care of myself better and to care more. It wasn't that I didn't care, but I really needed to find people that are like the ones that really like the party planning and they really better think. So I make sure now I have really good people around me. Yeah, I love my people, I care for my team, but I want to have people that that's their passion, that's what fills their buckets every day. I mean, I've always been competent, I've always known about communicating, always been very consistent. You know who I am, you know I have character, and I have the courage to make decisions. Uh, but the one that's probably one of my weaknesses is the clarity side. You know, I'm communicating, but do people really understand? So that's helped me as a literary learn to put more feedback loops in, to realize that people assume I know everything, even though I don't, and to put the feedback loops in and to really get the vibes of what's going on in the workplace floor. Like our big goal this next year is we're going to focus on strategic pruning and going into our teams and getting on the ground floor and getting them started and get out and let them tell us what's working, what's not, where you had to duplicate processes, what processes are in place. Now, this is not as much SaaS-oriented, but as some of your organizations have been around for a while, you'll have turnover and people keep buying the same things just because they've always bought them, or they'll keep doing things the same way, but they don't even need to do that anymore. People are not even using the tools or or they're doing something that's not aligned because it's just the way it's always been done. So we're going to try to go back and really give our employees a lot more time and just purge them wherever we can.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Yeah, that's a really good initiative. Um, I also I think that would be my weakness as well, the clarity part. I can't tell you the number of times I felt like I communicated something. What I got in return wasn't what I was expecting. And I just went, I wasn't clear enough. It's it's my fault. So um clarity is a big one for me to work on as well. Maybe that would be my goal.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Yeah, I and I've learned, you know, tell me, paraphrasing. Now tell me what actions you're gonna take, what what what meet, what did you get from this? That helps. And then I'll pick you back off of what you just said. One tip that I'll give the leaders about repairing trust is don't say I'm sorry, don't say I made a mistake without doing one thing. When I say I'm sorry if I've broken trust, I'm putting that really in limbo. But when I say, Joanna, I tried this, it did not work, and I know your team suffered. Here, I'm sorry for that. Here's what I'm gonna do the next time. That way I'm actually saying what I'm gonna do, and when I repeat that, repeat that, repeat that, I'm building the trust up and I'm establishing more credibility because I've omitted that. So I my employees will trust me more.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

Yeah, I love that. That's a good line, Carol. Thank you so much for being on the show. For anyone interested, where can they get this book? Other than Amazon, of course.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

Okay, I'm gonna say this. You're in a special situation, you have an advanced copy officially on July the 7th, so we're a little over a month away, it'll be available. Uh one thing I'm excited about is on my landing page, which will go live in a couple weeks. Well, in about a week, I've got a trust assessment that you can take. And when you register, you're not gonna be blasted a lot of emails, but it will keep you in the loop as far as what's happening. Once you buy your book in the back, there's a code that you can enter. It's your code, and there's a lot of supportive materials for it. And if you love workbooks, I have a very nice workbook that will be available when the book is. But I'm gonna do this for because the people who are going to buy the book are going to be people that know you've been reading your stuff. The first month from July the 7th to August the 7th, I'm gonna give a uh PDF of the workbook for the people that purchased them that month. I think they're gonna enjoy the workbook. And then one thing I'm really excited about along that lines is I've been having master classes, just free masterclasses and paid masterminds for a while. But I've got about four days already for when you buy the book and rest, you can sign up for a masterclass. And we'll have a conversation like we did today, just kind of going over some of the pillars, asking people to bring some of the issues so you have some great coaching going on for about 90 minutes as a way to serve people.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yay, love that. We're gonna have all of that in the show notes for everyone to be able to access. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

Thank you. And I've enjoyed it. I hope you guys have a great, well, great winter, not summer, but winter.