Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast, the podcast to help you get the support, validation, and skills you need to accomplish your goals and really succeed in a male-dominated world, all without having to give up your incredible female strengths.<\/p>\n

Carol: Welcome to another episode of Skirt Strategies podcast. This is Carol.<\/p>\n

Katie: This is Katie, covering another tip \u2013 actually two tips this installment, two tips from the book Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership<\/em>. We\u2019re going to cover, get this \u2013<\/p>\n

Carol: We\u2019re going to blow your mind.<\/p>\n

Katie: For you linear folks, this will really blow your mind. We\u2019re going to cover Tip 21 and then Number 20. It\u2019s a topsy-turvy world.<\/p>\n

Carol: It\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n

Katie: Number 21. Read that Carol.<\/p>\n

Carol: \u201cNever underestimate how far trust can get you<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie: Which is a statement simply and powerfully about building trust because it gets you so far.<\/p>\n

Carol: The power of trust.<\/p>\n

Katie: The power of trust. You give people grace, you build long term strategic alliances with them \u2013 you are more likely to. You take what they are saying at face value and even when they are inferring something you are more likely to get it because you trust them and you know that they don\u2019t mean something different than what you might be gathering.<\/p>\n

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Carol: Right. So Number 20, on the flip side is, \u201cPass up the temptation to quip if it runs the risk of hurting someone\u2019s feelings<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie: If I have trust with you and you quip at me, it\u2019s not going to hurt my feelings as much. So that\u2019s why, tip Number 20, about quipping is tied into understanding the trust. So pass up the temptation to quip if you don\u2019t have that type of relationship with someone.<\/p>\n

Carol: I think that\u2019s really important. That takes a lot of EQ.<\/p>\n

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Katie: Say what \u201cEQ\u201d is.<\/p>\n

Carol: Emotional quotient. Or EI. You have to know that this is not the place I should quip because this person doesn\u2019t know me, doesn\u2019t trust me, doesn\u2019t get my sense of humor. So I\u2019ve got to be very careful about how I quip in this situation.<\/p>\n

Katie: And have a little self-control.<\/p>\n

Carol: Yes. Why should I when you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Katie: I don\u2019t know because I have extra rules that apply to me, or no rules that apply to me.<\/p>\n

Carol: These rules don\u2019t apply to Katie.<\/p>\n

Katie: Well what happens when somebody\u2019s humorous, like I am, quipping leads to humor. Or humor sometimes comes from quipping but it can often be at the expense. I\u2019d like to think that in high school I didn\u2019t say things at people\u2019s expense just to get a laugh out of everyone else. I don\u2019t think I was that person.<\/p>\n

Carol: If you didn\u2019t know who it was in your high school it was probably you.<\/p>\n

Katie: It was a small high school and everyone was very caring and compassionate with one another. I think it was great that way.<\/p>\n

I look back on my high school and I don\u2019t dread it. Not very many people from my class I think looked back on it as, \u201cOh God I hated high school.\u201d I think everyone loved it.<\/p>\n

Carol: Yeah, we all did. But, I was in a small school too.<\/p>\n

Katie: Yeah so that helps. If you do say something remember that it could be the difference between what is intended and what is perceived. So think about two arrows pointing at each other. One arrow on the left pointed to the right, and one arrow on the right pointing to the left.<\/p>\n

The one coming from the left is what someone might be saying, that they are intending.<\/p>\n

Carol: Their intent is to be funny. Could be right?<\/p>\n

Katie: Person on the right, what they are hearing, from that other person \u2013<\/p>\n

Carol: \u2013 hurts their feelings \u2013<\/p>\n

Katie: Is what is perceived. So if I say something about that dress, because it\u2019s kind of funny \u2013<\/p>\n

Carol: The one I have on?<\/p>\n

Katie: You mean that burlap bag? But see, okay, a little quip \u2013<\/p>\n

Carol: And I know your sense of humor and I enjoy yours sense of humor, but other people might not and especially if I had on something resembling a burlap bag, I would be a little hurt.<\/p>\n

Katie: I\u2019d be shocked that you wore it but there\u2019s where you can get into trouble. You have to know your audience and you have to know. So one-on-one relationships in leadership are super important.<\/p>\n

As a woman leader, you\u2019ve got a certain level of influence that you have on others. You\u2019ve got to be able to know that you have perhaps, especially if you\u2019re a boss if you\u2019re in an organization where you are the boss, you\u2019ve got the upper hand and what you say is broadcast louder. It radiates.<\/p>\n

So being careful about what you say is a very good reminder.<\/p>\n

Carol: So trust is super important and how do you gain trust?<\/p>\n

Katie: You catch somebody falling off of a picnic table which is an exercise I did once with a team. There are trust exercises. I\u2019m not a fan of them. I think they are fun for team building. I did work with a team out in a park, 7 or 8 of them, we want to do low ropes courses.<\/p>\n

So I had them do some blindfold stuff, walk the plank, catch each other falling back and they made connections to it around their team trust because with certain individuals there was some collaboration where they held each other up because of trust so they did get something out of it but I would not recommend that that\u2019s how you go about building trust.<\/p>\n

Carol: No.<\/p>\n

Katie: I have a very clear model for trust. This comes from the Cumberland Group, our associates and friends out of Cincinnati, Ohio. The Cumberland Group put together a trust model which actually, originally I believe came from the Atlanta Consulting Group, and it\u2019s a pyramid of building trust.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re going to build trust, you can\u2019t just go out and do it. You start with something very actionable and doable and that is making and keeping agreements.<\/p>\n

Carol: Nice.<\/p>\n

Katie: Think about what discipline is involved, communication discipline in making and keeping agreements. You\u2019ve got to be clear. You\u2019ve got to talk about expectations. You\u2019ve got to be willing to maybe renegotiate an agreement if it went awry and the more you have trust with someone the more you\u2019re likely to give them grace around that renegotiation.<\/p>\n

Carol: Okay.<\/p>\n

Katie: So the answer to your question, go forth with good strong communication, listen to what people are saying, make agreements, and then stick with them. No fuzzy agreements.<\/p>\n

Carol: I think that\u2019s so important. People have to know that they can trust your word and that\u2019s where it comes from. If you say one thing and do another, you\u2019ve just given them reason to doubt and that\u2019s forever will be etched in their mind as \u2013 there\u2019s a little bit of doubt in that, which in turn makes it harder to trust you, which in turn makes it harder to make agreements with you and you\u2019ve got to be very careful about that.<\/p>\n

Katie: When you\u2019ve done something before that was not what you said you were going to do, is it often because you decided I\u2019m going to do something different than I said I was going to do?<\/p>\n

Carol: No.<\/p>\n

Katie: No, not at all.<\/p>\n

Carol: You don\u2019t purposefully not do what you said.<\/p>\n

Katie: What might happen, you said you were going to go do something, something changed or you didn\u2019t hear back confirmation from the other person and so you thought it was not really a negotiated agreement, so you go do something different. And now the other person just saw you behaving in a different way than they expected. That\u2019s how it happens. It\u2019s not somebody being malicious.<\/p>\n

Carol: It was not intended.<\/p>\n

Katie: Right.<\/p>\n

Carol: And I\u2019ve got a good example of you and I working together and that is I had promised that I was going to get an animated GIF for our site, which is something on our website and in the meantime I had had a conversation with somebody else who said, \u201cOh, that wouldn\u2019t look so good,\u201d and I didn\u2019t relate that back to you but I also then didn\u2019t do my task of going out and finding that.<\/p>\n

I think I finally did relate it back to you that, \u201cOh well I didn\u2019t know it we were still doing that,\u201d and it was all in my head, everything that was going on. You thought I had purposefully not done it or was ignoring my task list, as sometimes I do, but in fact I had had this other conversation and I was trying to figure out how to either come back to you with it or how to get it done without \u2013<\/p>\n

Katie: Action items are a great example. Last I heard you had an action item. So what am I expecting? An action item to be completed. That happens all the time.<\/p>\n

Carol: It does. And then I finally did, I think I circled back with you and said, \u201cLook this my dilemma, and I don\u2019t know if I should have it. Tell me one way or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie: Not before I thought you\u2019d dropped the ball.<\/p>\n

Carol: That\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

Katie: Who wants that?<\/p>\n

Carol: That\u2019s right. Yeah and now you don\u2019t trust me.<\/p>\n

Katie: I have enough grace and experience with you that I give you the grace.<\/p>\n

Carol: Right, thank you.<\/p>\n

Katie: But that\u2019s what you have a build with someone. And what if I was a jerk and I didn\u2019t want to give anybody any grace? It\u2019s not like, \u201cI can\u2019t rely on you.\u201d Well that\u2019s not necessarily true.<\/p>\n

Carol: Right, you don\u2019t know my intent on that.<\/p>\n

Katie: I don\u2019t know your intent but it\u2019s easy for some people to jump to those intents really quickly. So that\u2019s trust.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also aspects of trust that help, well let me just give you an example. This won\u2019t seem like it\u2019s trust but it really is.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019m out in the world and I\u2019m thinking about a bike path that I ride along and it has isolated parts to it. If somebody rides by me that looks kind of hairy, it\u2019s a man. Maybe he looks borderline homeless or could be dangerous. Or he just looks different than me. Maybe he looks like he has a different background, different age. It\u2019s a man instead of a woman. He\u2019s bigger. I\u2019m smaller. Whatever it might be. I will not generally, this is my natural reaction. I will try to overcome this, I will not generally wave or say, \u201cHi\u201d or nod sometimes like you do when you pass somebody on a park path. If a woman rides by on her bike and she looks just like me, I wave. I say, \u201cOh hi. I\u2019m out here too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now think about what I\u2019ve just done discriminatorily.<\/p>\n

Carol: You profiled.<\/p>\n

Katie: I did. I profiled. Our natural tendency is to be more trusting of people where we have commonality.<\/p>\n

Carol: Right.<\/p>\n

Katie: When you are working with someone that is like you in many ways that you get or their background is like you or you\u2019ve got some history together that\u2019s having more in common.<\/p>\n

Carol: Or you just believe that, because of that background, they are not going to hurt you and it all comes down to our fight or flight fear. You don\u2019t say \u201cHello\u201d to the man because at some level you have some fear.<\/p>\n

Katie: It might be different because I\u2019m a woman and women can\u2019t generally go out into the world with the same mentality that a man does. We can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Carol: Isn\u2019t that interesting and men don\u2019t understand that.<\/p>\n

Katie: I just had a conversation with a neighbor, he and I happened to be at the pizza place down the street at the same time and we sat and chatted over lunch and he was updating me on one of his sons. He\u2019s got a 24-year-old son who\u2019s in South America, just going town to town, backpack and a guitar and living the free Bohemian life and kind of just winging it.<\/p>\n

And I said to him, \u201cWouldn\u2019t that be nice if a woman could do that too?\u201d And you can but you have a completely different radar up when you are doing it. And you put yourself at risk. In a foreign country?<\/p>\n

So my point being, when you are around, out and about, we kind of have our guard up over who we are going to trust and who we don\u2019t. That commonality comes back to the way we build relationships. Do you have something in common with that person or do you not? If they are very different, you are more likely to mistrust them. That happens all the time at work. It doesn\u2019t mean you do, but there\u2019s a natural instinct to.<\/p>\n

Carol: Right.<\/p>\n

Katie: Do you have a history with them? Do you have the same goals? Are you both in the shipping department? So you kind of have the same goals? Are you at odds with one another over what you want out of the relationship?<\/p>\n

Carol: That\u2019s helps you trust somebody more if you have shared goals, you trust them more than if you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Katie: Than if you suspect there might be a hidden agenda. So there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n

Carol: Very interesting. Yes.<\/p>\n

Katie: And there\u2019s a lot that goes around \u2013 I have a model around the elements, the seven elements of trust and that\u2019s a couple of them \u2013 the history, commonality, the style.<\/p>\n

Carol: We have a video on our website about the seven elements of trust and we did some work with our membership, the followers that are actually in our membership, we did some, a whole month worth of work on trust.<\/p>\n

Katie: The paid followers.<\/p>\n

Carol: And so we might put some of that on the show notes, as well as a link to the video so that you can see all seven of those elements of trust.<\/p>\n

Katie: Those, by the way, this is good to know that for our followers, if you ever want any sort of specific training, other than just listening to the podcasts, we do have a lot of these topics packaged and for assignments, which is the format that the paid subscribers get, you can get any one of those months in the past as a standalone and listen to all four podcasts. Sometimes it\u2019s five depending on how long the month was, where it was originally released, and all four one-page assignments.<\/p>\n

And they are small, like us, we say, \u201ctiny trainings, big results.\u201d They are small and easily manageable so you can go forward and say, \u201cHey, I think I want to know more about trust.\u201d So you go to our website and look at the E-courses, the immediate training.<\/p>\n

Carol: It\u2019s under Tips and Training<\/em> on our website. And you can find it all there.<\/p>\n

Katie: So much to do. I\u2019m a big advocate that little things like this is what leads to bigger changes and being more aware, and so trust is one of those things if you look at it as, \u201cI either mistrust you,\u201d or \u201cI trust you.\u201d It\u2019s not really that black and white. I think you need to lead into a relationship where you build trust.<\/p>\n

Carol: Right.<\/p>\n

Katie: Do you think that people start relationships automatically trusting or they go in not trusting and you have to earn it?<\/p>\n

Carol: I would say that as humans we probably go in trusting? Do you have the answer? Are we conjecturing here? I would say that we \u2013 I do, I go into relationships trusting and then it takes somebody not being trustworthy in order for me to back off from that.<\/p>\n

Katie: I do to. I\u2019ve worked with people before that were the other way around. That you had to really lay yourself out to earn trust. You had to prove it, where being on the other end of that kind of made me feel like, \u201cWhy are you assuming that I\u2019m not going to do this? I said I was going to do it and I\u2019m going to do it whereas he assumes that I wasn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carol: Now you\u2019re hanging over me like I\u2019m not going to do it.<\/p>\n

Katie: It was making me feel a little grubby. Grimy, and grubby.<\/p>\n

Carol: It makes me feel like they are kind of sleazy.<\/p>\n

Katie: I kind of thought he was. And he proved himself in other ways but I wouldn\u2019t that that would correlate between trusting people right off the bat and not, I think it has a lot of things to do with our history and the sort of people you are exposed to.<\/p>\n

Carol: If you grew up not having trustworthy people in your life, then why would you be trusting?<\/p>\n

Katie: Right. If you had a small stent and a therapist in a prison, you probably saw the bad side of the world and you are a little bit more hypocritical.<\/p>\n

So this goes back to actual trust model that we started with, which is making and keeping agreements being a very actionable, communication skill, and one that sometimes \u2013 not sometimes but often, takes discipline. If I hear you say an agreement, like I\u2019ll go make that electronic button, you and I were fuzzy about it. You didn\u2019t say when you\u2019d have it delivered. You didn\u2019t say whether you were going to go ahead and contract somebody to make it or whether you were just going to look into it. It was not a clear agreement. Which is one to have reasons I didn\u2019t jump down your throat because I thought you didn\u2019t say that you would have it by last Friday.<\/p>\n

Carol: But I also didn\u2019t tell you that I was putting it off in my mind because of something else so \u2013 so it was good for you to bring that back because it was an expectation that we had set. So you were bringing it back to see where we were at on that expectation and I communicated with you back where we were at. Now we probably need to figure out what we are going to do about that. We\u2019ll do that offline, how\u2019s that?<\/p>\n

Katie: That\u2019s good. The original communication could have been forced into something less fuzzy.<\/p>\n

Carol: We could have said, \u201cHave this by next Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie: Where\u2019s it going to go and as soon as you get it, how are you going to get it to me and am I going to go ahead and incorporate it into the website? That could be very specific.<\/p>\n

Now the benefit of that, there\u2019s a small caveat \u2013 there\u2019s a great benefit in making sure that you are clear that way, because if it had been a conversation around who will do what by when, what\u2019s going to happen to it, how much are you going to spend, are you going to get it back to me by this time, what am going to do with it? And if we\u2019d had that, how hard would it be to have broken that?<\/p>\n

Carol: Oh yeah.<\/p>\n

Katie: See in your mind if what had happened was you heard some other information, what happens in our lives, things change, so in our heads we want to renegotiate, we think the expectation changed, so over in your world where you were investigating it, you found out it wasn\u2019t exactly what would be the best fit for us.<\/p>\n

Carol: Right.<\/p>\n

Katie: You would have remembered that you and I had this conversation that was specific and you would have felt much more obligated to come back and tell me.<\/p>\n

Carol: Because I would have had the seven days on my calendar countdown to Katie.<\/p>\n

Katie: Exactly. So another benefit of making and keeping agreements and making it really clear, any one person in the relationship can force it to be clearer.<\/p>\n

Carol: Especially if there\u2019s any question.<\/p>\n

Katie: By just asking more questions.<\/p>\n

Carol: Well I think that\u2019s a great conversation on trust. Remember, do pass up the temptation to quip if you run the risk of hurting someone\u2019s feelings.<\/p>\n

Katie: Oh shut up.<\/p>\n

Carol: And never underestimate how far trust can get you.<\/p>\n

Katie: Never.<\/p>\n

(Music plays)<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it for this episode of the Skirt Strategies podcast. Thank you for joining us and please be sure to leave a question or comment at Skirtstrategies.com. Remember that success comes when you lead using your natural female strengths.<\/p>\n

[end of transcript]<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katie and Carol talk about Tips 20 and 21 from Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership. Tip #20.\u00a0 Pass up the temptation to quip if it runs the risk of hurting someone\u2019s feelings. Tip #21. Never underestimate how far trust can get you. This is a justification for investing time in developing […]<\/p>\n