Hello and welcome to today's webinar. Our speaker today is Jonathan Jasper from Shape Story. Before I turn it over to Jonathan, I'd like to let those of you who are live with us know that you may submit questions during the webinar via the Q&A tab at the bottom of the screen. This webinar will also be recorded so that you may watch or rewatch on demand at your convenience. With that, I will turn it over to Jonathan. All right. Well, thank you, Liz. Good afternoon, first off, and thanks to all of you for spending some time with me today to talk a little bit about trust and how we can use it to kind of lead through times of change and uncertainty. So I'll start out by sharing a little bit about myself. So my name is Jonathan Jasper. About six months ago, I started a small consulting firm here in Columbus, Ohio. I'm really focused on helping businesses and organizations with communication strategy, with their culture building, with their content development. You know, before I started doing some consulting, I've got a little excerpt of my bio there, which you can read if you're interested, but I spent several years kind of with two big businesses. The first was Time Warner Cable, now Spectrum, and the second being Big Lots Stores, which is also headquartered here in Columbus, and really working in those areas. So kind of helping those organizations with their communication needs, with their culture, with their executive transparency and branding, and also with their change management and crisis management. So a little roadmap, a little outline for us today for the journey we're going to be taking together. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to talk a little bit about the problem, what it is we're kind of looking at dealing with. And that's change. And the second thing we're going to do is we're going to talk about what the answer to that is, which is trust. And then the third thing we'll do is we'll talk about the solution, so kind of how do we get to trust. The two big ideas we'll be talking about to get to that trust is transparency and genuine care. And then the last thing we'll do is we'll talk a little bit about a leadership model that hopefully is helpful to all of you that you can use to begin to build trust within your organization. And that leadership model is called sapient leadership. So, let's go ahead and jump in. So, what we're dealing with today, it's change and uncertainty. You know, I've got up there, change the new normal. You know, change is all around us. And as we learned really, really, really well during the last year, change can happen at any time. And it is. So, really, the only thing we can be certain about is uncertainty itself. And since the world around us is really speeding up, I'm sure all of you have experienced that. It seems like the world is moving quicker and quicker every single day. That means that the frequency at which we're going to be experiencing change is speeding up as well. So, what is some of today's change look like? Well, it could be a lot of things. It could be ongoing changes to our organizational structures. It could be new processes and procedures. It often is evolving technology. That's a really big one. Or it could be shifts in consumer mindsets or what's trending. So, what I have here, today's change looks like. And that's a really important thing I want to mention. You know, when we're talking about the change, we're talking about the type of change we're dealing with today, the change is happening in today's world. And it's very different than the change of the past. And today's change is really made up of three dimensions. Those three dimensions are that change is perpetual, change is pervasive, and change is exponential. So, what do I mean by those? Well, when we talk about change being perpetual, we mean that change is occurring all the time. So, gone are the days of business as usual until something happens, maybe it's a shift in leadership, maybe it's the introduction of a new business system. And we kind of manage through that change, get through it, and then it goes back to business as usual for a long period of time. And that's not the case today, right? It's occurring all the time. We are living in a state of constant change. When we talk about change being pervasive, we mean that the change that happens is affecting multiple areas of the business or the organization at the same time, right? So, COVID is really a wonderful example of that. When we think about, you know, we were riding the clock a year ago, you know, when we first started with COVID, we weren't just dealing with, okay, how does COVID impact our business and the way we work with our customers, right? It was also impacting how do we work with our teams? How do we manage our teams? How do we lean on or leverage technology or new technologies? How do we market ourselves? How do we talk about ourselves, right? It really affected every area of the business. And since our organizations are so connected, any type of change does the same thing, right? It affects multiple areas at the same time. And thirdly, it's exponential. And this is kind of what we already talked a little bit about. It changes accelerating at an increasingly rapid rate. Okay, so those are kind of the three dimensions of the change of today's world. And that's kind of what we're dealing with. So, what does it take to be a leader in that world of today's change? Well, simply put, it takes building trust. Simple answer, it's going to take trust. You know, when we are faced with uncertainty and change, we turn to those who we trust. Well, why is that? There was actually some researchers and some research that was done at Aalborg University in Denmark around the idea of trust. And what they found is that as humans, when we're faced with uncertainty, the first thing we want to do is we want to be able to regain some of the control that we feel like we don't have, right? And in certain situations, you don't often feel like you have control. So we want to look at trying to regain some of that. And we can do that by making a decision. And the first decision we can make is who we're going to trust. Okay, so that's one thing they found. They found that we can regain some control by saying, I can make a decision and I'm going to decide who it is I'm going to trust. The second thing they found is that when people trust someone else, they are not on their own, right? They can let their guard down. They feel like there is someone else that they can lean on to help get them through the uncertainty. Okay, they're not by themselves. They have someone else there. So that's kind of what happens, right? So we're faced with uncertainty as humans. We're going to look for who we can trust. So how do we make the decision about who it is we trust? Well, according to the same kind of researchers in that experiment, they found that people make a decision about who it is they trust based on two things. Based on the experiences that they have and the available information at hand, right? So it's going to be experiences they've had with an individual or with those individuals and the information they have that kind of tells them who it is I should be trusting. Okay, so when we think about becoming someone that our team trusts and becoming that person that in times of change and uncertainty, they're going to turn to, there's a lot of things that go into that, but there's two really big, important ideas. So that's kind of going to be the meat of what we talk about. And those two things are transparency and care, right? Transparency and care are what's going to get us to trust. So let's start out by talking a little bit about the first part of that equation, which is transparency. And I want to start by talking about what transparency is not. So transparency is not telling people everything, okay? It is giving people context. So, you know, I think of all times where I've sat, you know, kind of at the table with some executives and leaders, and we're going through some crisis management or some change and talking about how we can manage through that. And oftentimes when the conversation starts to begin to go to the idea of transparency, a lot of leaders get concerned or scared about sharing sensitive information or about sharing confidential information that can't be shared because it wouldn't be good for the health of the organization, perhaps, or maybe even because there's some fiduciary responsibilities. That is okay, all right? It is okay not to tell people everything. But what we do need to do is to give them context, okay? We need to help them understand, you know, what we can share with them. And sometimes that means being honest about what we can't share and why we can't share it, okay? Again, it's that context piece that's really, really important. And when we talk about that context and we talk about, you know, when we're sitting down and deciding what we can tell people, never assume that people get it, right? It's also been another thing that I've experienced is that, you know, you may have some leaders say, well, do we really need to say that? It kind of seems like common sense. You can't share too much. Never assume that people understand something. Even if it seems really simple that the organization is making a change that everyone should understand, never assume that, okay? Always share as much as you can. You know, we've all been, I'm sure, in those situations with a coworker and you hear them saying, I have no idea why the organization is doing this. They have no idea what they're doing. And that's really what we're trying to avoid with our transparency. We don't want the rumor mills to start. Now, sometimes with transparency and with change, there's going to be bad news. And oftentimes you'll find that leaders will want to try to think of how they can spin that bad news and how they can maybe add it as a little asterisk to something else, right? Hey, pay attention to this. Don't really look at that over there. Avoid that temptation, okay? Try your hardest. Avoid the temptation to spin the bad news, okay? Honesty is really, really important. Sharing the tough things are really important. You know, bad news is stressful. It is. It's going to be stressful on people. It's going to be stressful on your organization. But reassurance does not help. There's actually a really interesting study that was done, a child psychology study. And what they did is they looked at children and they studied children who had been made aware of some bad news or something bad that had happened. And after they made them aware of that, they invited their parents to come in and to lie to them. Tell them everything's going to be fine. Everything's going to be okay. You have nothing to worry about. And they were measuring the children's stress levels throughout this experiment. And what they found was that when the parents would come in, when they would give the reassurance, the stress levels actually spiked in the kids, right? Kind of the opposite of what you would think would happen. You would think maybe the parent coming in and reassuring the child that everything's going to be okay, the stress level would go down. But it was spiking. And what they found was that that spike was actually an erosion of trust, right? The trust that those kids had in their parents was eroding. Because people can sense bad news, okay? People can sense when they're being lied to. You know that. You've been in those situations. You know when the person isn't being forthright, okay? And so when we're building trust and we're trying to do that through transparency, we've got to be honest, even though it's tough, okay? Remember, people can get over bad news. They can, all right? But they can't always get over a break in trust. That's really a big thing, all right, to try to repair. So what I kind of want to do now, we kind of talked a little bit about trust. I want to share some kind of practical ideas, maybe some things that, you know, you could try to experiment with transparency with your team or within your organization, some ideas, some things that I've done with other organizations and clients. The first thing is, you know, if you don't have it, institute some honest, state-of-the-business communications, all right? These could be weekly emails. You know, we're in this digital kind of remote working. They could be weekly video updates from you, whether you're an executive or you kind of have a team that you're responsible for. Share those. You know, one way we did this at Big Lots was we had what we called our weekly ups and downs email that went out. And it was very honest about, hey, over the past week, here's some really great things that happened for the business, and here's some not so great things that happened, but here's what we're doing to combat those, right? And it really allowed people to feel like they had the whole picture. They understood what was happening in the company. They understood when bad things were happening, right, so that there weren't surprises down the road. And that was a really great way to build that transparency culture. Another thing is, if you don't do this, host some regular check-ins, right, both with individuals and as your teams, okay? So sit down. Again, it might be great to be weekly. And get some feedback. Ask them kind of, you know, what their perception is of things. Use it as a chance to one-on-one talk about, you know, what's happening within the business, especially during times of change. This should really increase in frequency, the times you're having these check-ins. But it's really important because it allows your people to see that your hope is to be transparent with them and to share with them. Another great thing is open live Q&A sessions. I've done this with organizations, you know, with both the executive leadership team as well as other leaders within the business. Just an opportunity for them to be open and honest with, you know, either their teams or the entire organization. And take live questions. You know, you can prep for some of the questions. Some of the questions, you don't know what you're going to get. But again, that's okay. And that's where that being honest, if there's something you can't answer, that's okay to say you can't answer it. Or if there's something you don't know the answer to, that's okay to say too. All right. But those are great tools. And they're even easier to do nowadays using Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Everyone's familiar with those tools. And so it's great to use them for that. And then the last thing, Tip, would be to share important updates with those impacted first. So if you are working through something in your organization, if there is some sort of change, make sure that the immediate team that's going to be most impacted by that change, you let them know first. Right? That's really important in building transparency and trust. You know, we really want to avoid unpleasant surprises. So that's a great thing to keep in mind too. All right. So that's kind of a little journey on transparency. So next up I want to talk about the other piece of that equation, which is genuine care. And, you know, if you remember back kind of at the beginning, we talked about the fact that people are going to make a decision about who they trust based on the information they have and their experiences. You know, the transparency really addresses that information piece. Now when we talk about genuine care, this is going to be how we build those positive experiences. Right? This is going to be that experience piece of it. So how do we share and show, you know, genuine care in the workplace? Well, here's kind of three great ways to think about that. And the first is to put the needs of others ahead of yourself. Especially when we're talking about your team and your direct reports. Right? As a leader, regardless of how many people you lead or if it's the whole organization, your job is to empower and support your team. I don't know if you've heard the example, but a lot of times people talk about the pyramid leadership where the chief executive officer is at the top at the point. Well, we want to talk about the inverted pyramid. Right? Where really you as a leader, your job is to work for your team. Right? That's your responsibility. And being able to show that to them, right, and putting their needs ahead of yours is really, really critical. And remember, too, recognition is a really important part of that. So your team needs more recognition than you do. Okay? There's always enough praise to go around. So give more than you receive. Okay? Second thing, listen. Don't just hear. Okay? There's a really important difference between listening and hearing. Okay? So when we talk about listening as opposed to hearing, what we mean is engaging in conversations with your team. It means staying humble and searching for the best ideas. I'm sure we've all been in those meetings with, you know, a leader, an executive, a supervisor. And it kind of seems like your role in the meeting is to just hear them talk about their idea and go along with it, and they don't really care to hear your feedback. You know, it's just kind of there to reaffirm them. That's not listening. Okay? That's what we want to avoid. Okay? We want your team to feel like, you know, their ideas and what they're sharing with you may actually change your mind, may impact the decision that you have to make. Right? That's really important. The third thing, giving and receiving honest feedback. Okay? So just like sharing honest bad news is better than trying to skirt around the issue, so is giving and receiving honest feedback. Okay? And this really plays into care, because if you think about it, we're sharing feedback with individuals and with our team because we want to see them succeed. Okay? We want to show them that we're invested in their success, that that's what we want for them. Right? And that shows them that we do really care about them. And feedback is a really, really important thing. It's something that I know is a struggle for a lot of people, how to be effective with their feedback, how to give good feedback. So what I want to do is I want to share a short video with all of you. It's a great TEDx video, five minutes, but gives four really practical tools for giving feedback. And I think it's the best video I've seen on how to approach feedback and really give great feedback. So let me share that. If you look at a carpenter, they have a toolbox, a dentist, they have their drills. In our era and the type of work most of us are doing, the tool we most need is actually centered around being able to give and receive feedback well. Humans have been talking about feedback for centuries. In fact, Confucius way back in 500 BC talked about how important it is to be able to say difficult message as well. But to be honest, we're still pretty bad at it. In fact, a recent Gallup survey found that only 26% of employees strongly agree that the feedback they get actually improves their work. Those numbers are pretty dismal. So what's going on? The way that most people give their feedback actually isn't brain friendly. People fall into one of two camps. Either they're of the camp that is very indirect and soft, and the brain doesn't even recognize that feedback is being given, or it's just simply confused. Or they fall into the other camp of being too direct. And with that, it tips the other person into the land of being defensive. There's this part of the brain called the amygdala, and it's scanning at all times to figure out whether the message has a social threat attached to it. With that, we'll move forward in defensiveness, we'll move backwards in retreat. And what happens is the feedback giver then starts to dysregulate as well. They add more ums and ahs and justifications, and the whole thing gets wonky really fast. It doesn't have to be this way. I and my team have spent many years going into different companies and asking who here is a great feedback giver. Anybody who's named again and again, we actually bring into our labs to see what they're doing differently. What we find is that there's a four-part formula that you can use to say any difficult message well. Okay, are you ready for it? Here we go. The first part of the formula is what we call the micro yes. Great feedback givers begin their feedback by asking a question that is short but important. It lets the brain know that feedback is actually coming. It would be something, for example, like, do you have five minutes to talk about how that last conversation went? Or I have some ideas for how we can improve things. Can I share them with you? This micro yes question does two things for you. First of all, it's going to be a pacing tool. It lets the other person know that feedback is about to be given. And the second thing it does is it creates a moment of buy-in. I can say yes or no to that yes or no question. And with that, I get a feeling of autonomy. The second part of the feedback formula is going to be giving your data point. Here you should name specifically what you saw or heard and cut out any words that aren't objective. There's a concept we call blur words. A blur word is something that can mean different things to different people. Blur words are things that are not specific. So, for example, if I say you shouldn't be so defensive or you could be more proactive. What we see great feedback givers doing differently is they'll convert their blur words into actual data points. So, for example, instead of saying, you know, you are reliable, we would say you said you'd get that email to me by 11 and I still don't have it yet. Specificity is also important when it comes to positive feedback. And the reason for that is that we want to be able to specify exactly what we want the other person to increase or diminish. And if we stick with blur words, they actually won't have any clue particularly what to do going forward to keep repeating that behavior. The third part of the feedback formula is the impact statement. Here you name exactly how that data point impacted you. So, for example, I might say because I didn't get the message, I was blocked on my work and couldn't move forward. Or I really liked how you added those stories because it helped me grasp the concepts faster. It gives you a sense of purpose and meaning and logic between the points, which is something the brain really craves. The fourth part of the feedback formula is a question. Great feedback givers wrap their feedback message with a question. They'll ask something like, well, how do you see it? Or this is what I'm thinking we should do. But what are your thoughts on it? What it does is it creates commitment rather than just compliance. It makes the conversation no longer be a monologue, but rather becomes a joint problem-solving situation. But there's one last thing. Great feedback givers not only can say messages well, but also they ask for feedback regularly. In fact, our research on perceived leadership shows that you shouldn't wait for feedback to be given to you, what we call push feedback. But rather you should actively ask for feedback, what we call pulling feedback. Pulling feedback establishes you as a continual learner and puts the power in your hands. The most challenging situations are actually the ones that call for the most skillful feedback. But it doesn't have to be hard. Now that you know this four-part formula, you can mix and match it to make it work for any difficult conversation. All right. Well, I hope that was helpful. I think it's a great video, a great really simple way to have some tools in the toolkit when it comes to feedback. So what are some practical ways we can, you know, work on introducing a little bit more care with our teams and within our organizations? What are some ideas hopefully you can use? So one thing is to try to increase the frequency that your team connects in different ways. Find opportunities for your team to learn and grow together. It could be taking some online courses together, you know, since we're kind of remote. It could be starting a leadership book club. It could be inviting other leaders maybe from your network or from other areas of the organization or business to come and talk and share. But really what we're trying to do is we're trying to help them see that you care about their success and their development, not only as individuals, but as teams. And at the same time, you're helping them kind of strengthen their relationship amongst each other. Another thing is engage outside of work. I know it's a little difficult right now with COVID in this digital world, but spend some time on Zoom. Spend some time on Microsoft Teams, whatever your platform of choice is. But spend some time together as a team and on one-on-ones talking about things other than work. Show that you care about what's happening in their life, especially in times of change and uncertainty. You've got to remember that that change that's happening at work is affecting every other aspect of their life as well. And so stay cognizant of that and engage with them kind of outside of that work lens. Try to make sure that you're publicly celebrating the accomplishments of members of your team. When someone has an achievement, has a great idea, make it known. Take some time, if you have department meetings, carve out some time in those meetings to celebrate those individuals. If you have newsletters or emails that go out, again, try to make that a part of those. Maybe once we kind of return back to the office, if you've got a break room, if you have some office space, find somewhere where you can publicly celebrate others, right? Not only does that show them that you care, but it also helps them understand it. It kind of plays into the trust idea, right? They can trust that you're going to celebrate them and that you're not going to go and try to take credit for something that they did. And then, you know, like we talked about or was just talked about in the video, feedback is so important. And it's really important if you just kind of are seeking it. So find ways to continually seek that feedback for you as a leader. It could be anonymous feedback surveys. I've used those so many times with different organizations, and they're always wonderful. Again, the anonymity is really important in that, right? Because they kind of trust that there's not going to be any backlash if they're sharing honest feedback. But, you know, there's lots of great tools for soliciting feedback in that format. Another thing you can do is if you kind of in your role have a little bit of a roadblock you're experiencing, you know, sit down and share it with a member of your team or your team and seek feedback from them. How would they do it, right? That's part of that listening to them. Ask them for feedback. How would they work through it? And then maybe, you know, it could be a win-win. They may give you a great idea of something you could do that you hadn't thought of yet. But, again, if you do seek feedback, if you do get great feedback, make sure you circle up on it. Make sure you celebrate and publicly praise whoever shared that information. Make sure you give credit where it's due, okay? So last kind of thing we'll jump into, and this is kind of culminating, bringing it together, the idea of sapient leadership. So sapient leadership is kind of a new idea that arose from some research that was recently done at Stanford, actually at the beginning of the pandemic. They started doing some of this research. And what the Stanford University researchers were interested in was in this world of 3D change, right? We talked about three dimensions. So in this world, today's world of 3D change, what leadership style should be used? I'm sure we've all heard of, you know, all different types of leadership styles. But they're wondering what should be used in this new world of change we're dealing with. So they interviewed many different industry titans, innovators, thought leaders. And they wanted to uncover how they were handling COVID-19, right, in hopes to answer, you know, what type of leadership that takes. You know, COVID-19 was that perfect micro experiment. And what emerged from those conversations was this idea that they dubbed sapient leadership. And it was rooted in four key beliefs that they uncovered as similar between all the people they talked with. And those four key beliefs are what I've got up on the screen here. And they were all really rooted in this idea. I want to talk about the hero equals zero at the top first. Rooted in that idea. In that in days of past, the leader was the one who had all the answers, knew everything, could provide direction on everything that was happening. But they found that today in this crazy world where you have so much change happening, it's impossible. It's impossible for the leader to have that role. There's too much happening. Okay. And so now what's important is not a leader who can have every answer, right? It's not the leader who's a hero and can come in and save the day and run everything. What's important now is a leader who can foster within their teams their people's ability to be their own leaders and to make good decisions and to keep moving, right? Because your teams have to move at the rate of change and at the rate of the world, right? So it's really important to be a leader who can foster that. And so those four beliefs were, number one, that leader humility, authenticity, and openness instills trust and psychological safety, okay? And this is really, this first belief, this is really tied to what we've been talking about. And that's the idea of transparency and genuine care, okay? You know, if you think about humility, authenticity, openness, that's what those words are, right? They're synonyms with this idea of transparency and of care. And those feed the development of trust and that psychological safety that our people need to feel at work. The second belief was that trust and psychological safety empower individuals and teams. So that's kind of why this building trust is so important, right? Because that is what empowers our teams to adapt and to handle the change of today. And, you know, like we already kind of talked about, you know, with the hero equals zero idea, you know, you can't, as a leader, you can't handle it all. Your teams have to be empowered, right, to make some decisions and to be able to navigate change. The third thing is that continuously learning teams enable effective navigation of change. Okay, and this is really important for two reasons. The first is that it builds connection within teams, right? So teams who are able to sit down and continually learn together, it helps build within the teams and it helps them have shared knowledge and experiences. Okay, which is going to be really important as they are navigating change for them to have shared experiences and shared knowledge that they can work together through change. And the second second reason it's really important is because it creates shared competency. Right, so if we are going to be trusting our teams and we are going to be empowering them to make decisions and navigate today's world, then we need to make sure that they have a really solid shared competency to do that. And that's where that continuously learning together is really, really important. The world's changing constantly. And so we've got to be constantly learning to keep up with it. And the fourth belief is that shared purpose and values enhance focus, cohesion and resilience. You know, when we are transparent and we are communicating our values, both those, the values that we hold personally and the values that we have as a leader within our organization. When we share that with our team, we're able to develop a level of cohesion within our team. Right. And that's what we that's what we want. We want a group that works together, that has the shared purpose and values. And so being transparent about where you stand is really important in aligning your team. And when we build that cohesion, that's really what is going to help us be a little bit more resilient and prepared to handle change, because that's what helps us not feel like we're on an island alone. Right. So when we have that change, we know we have that group of of our team members around us. That makes us a little bit more resilient to move forward. All right. So we talked kind of a lot about some big ideas today. I hope that, you know, you also got some great kind of maybe tactical ideas that you could take back to kind of implement some of these ideas within your organization or with your team. But I do want to do just a little recap so we can kind of put a nice bow on everything. So change is the new normal. Right. That's our problem. That's what we're dealing with. It's everywhere. It's three dimensional. We have to deal with it. We have to we have to lead through it. Right. We have to learn how to lead through it. And in order to do that successfully, it's going to be really, really important to build trust. It's going to be important for us to have teams who not only trust us, but that we can trust. Right. So our teams, our teams need to be able to trust us as leaders to get them through it, but we need to also be able to trust in our teams and empower them. And we can really build that trust by focusing a lot on being transparent. Right. With our teams, with our organizations, being honest, being open and by showing genuine care. Right. Those are the two things that are going to help our people when they're deciding who to trust. It's going to be that knowledge and it's going to be that experiences that they had. And that's how we can really address those two parts to how they're how they're going to decide who they trust. And then we talked about, you know, the sapient leadership model, which hopefully is useful to some of you as you think about trying to be that leader in today's world of 3D change. And that it means not having the answer to everything, but it means being able to build trust with your team and foster a team who can charge forward and be resilient. So, again, I enjoyed our time this afternoon. I hope all of you did as well. I hope you've got some great ideas that you can take back with your team. Maybe you have some new things that you can start practicing yourself. And I'll throw up if you're interested in talking any more about trust or about change that your organization may be going through, please feel free to reach out. You know, I'd love to help and talk a little bit more about how you can use not only transparency and care, but maybe how you can develop sapient leadership within yourself and within your team to kind of move forward. And with that, Liz, I don't know if you have anything else, but I will, I will wrap it up there. Thanks, Jonathan. Nope, nothing else on my end. Just thank you again for joining us this afternoon. We really appreciate it. And for anybody that has any follow-up questions, please reach out to Jonathan. Jonathan, thank you so much. All right. Thanks, Liz. Thanks.

trust

leading through change

uncertainty

transparency

genuine care

continuous learning

shared purpose

sapient leadership