Trust on Purpose

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Ever wondered how avoiding difficult conversations could be sabotaging your relationships and your career? Join us as we explore the art of timely communication, inspired by insights from Joseph Grenny's "Crucial Conversations." We delve into the reasons we shy away from those essential talks, whether it's fear, procrastination, or the pressures of a fast-paced environment. We share personal anecdotes and reflect on our own internal battles that hold us back from addressing critical issues.

 We'll guide you through the complexities of workplace communication and trust, and provide practical advice for maintaining your core values and assessing your role if you're consistently avoiding necessary dialogues at work.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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In a world that demands constant multitasking and perfection, it’s easy for self-trust to slip through the cracks. In this episode of Trust on Purpose, we dive into what it really means to trust yourself and how it shapes both your personal and professional life.  

We share an honest conversation about how life’s changes can shake our confidence and why it’s okay (and even helpful) to let go of the pressure to remember everything and focus on what truly matters. You’ll hear practical ways to tell the difference between real concerns and fear-based doubts and about the power of being honest about your limits and how that honesty can build stronger trust with yourself and others. And when it comes to intuition, we explore how pairing your gut instincts with data and experience can lead to better, more grounded decisions.  

This episode is packed with relatable insights and practical tips to help you strengthen your self-trust, lean into vulnerability, and create a more authentic life - at work and beyond. 

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Get ready to dive deep in this episode of Trust on Purpose, where hosts Charles Feltman and Ila Edgar tackle big questions around trust and artificial intelligence - starting with a curious twist! It kicks off with the story of a school project involving AI-generated sloth images - yes, sloths - and quickly jumps into a thought-provoking conversation about the ripple effects of AI on trust in our daily lives. Can we believe everything we see and hear in a world where AI is increasingly behind the scenes? Charles and Ila dig into the complexities of transparency, potential deception, and our ethical responsibility to be upfront about AI's role in the content we create and consume.

This episode is more about asking questions than answering them, guiding listeners through the foggy territory where trust and tech overlap. Charles and Ila discuss how openness and integrity can keep psychological safety alive in our teams and relationships, especially as AI takes a bigger role in shaping what we see and believe. Tune in for a candid, unfiltered discussion on navigating trust in a digital age where things aren’t always what they seem!

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Today, we’re diving into a question that strikes at the heart of workplace dynamics: can a truly great workplace happen without a team-wide effort, or is it solely the leader's responsibility? We draw inspiration from Tom Geraghty's insightful perspective from a recent conversation: "A great workplace is worth working for." We’re flipping the usual script on who drives work dynamics and culture. Spoiler: everyone does - for better or worse! We explore why having clear, candid conversations about workplace culture isn’t just nice-to-have, but essential. And how sudden shifts, like unexpected return-to-office mandates, can impact employee morale and trust.

Inspired by Adam Grant’s "Think Again," we tackle the importance of challenging old assumptions and encouraging tough conversations. From small improvements that open the door to big changes, to stories from our own clients on the power of leading by example, this episode is underpinned with practical advice. We’ll reveal how safe, respectful dialogue can turn potential conflict into a powerful learning experience. We unlock what it takes to build a workplace where everyone feels invested, valued, and able to thrive. Whether you’re a leader or a team player, there’s something here for you.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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In Part 2 of our conversation with Tom Geraghty, we explore the critical role of psychological safety and how leaders can model it for their teams. He explains how creating a psychologically safe environment isn’t just about good intentions, but about understanding how your team's lived experiences shape their perception of safety. Tom outlines actionable steps for leaders: from openly discussing psychological safety and being aware of power dynamics, to acknowledging and reinforcing behaviors that foster a safe space.

Tom also dives into the cultural and neurodiverse factors that influence how team members perceive psychological safety and why leaders must adapt their approaches to accommodate these differences. Finally, Tom debunks the "reinforcement and punishment" myth, showing how punishing mistakes can silence important feedback and why thanking your team for sharing bad news is crucial. Leadership isn’t about avoiding problems but creating an environment where they can be safely addressed.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Get a glimpse into our conversation with Tom as we share exclusive snippets from before the actual episode recording. Hear firsthand how Tom’s unique career path has shaped his focus on psychological safety and his passion for creating thriving workplace environments. We dive into the heart of what makes failure a valuable teacher and why understanding what is "safe to fail" is an essential discussion for leaders. This episode isn’t just about work—it's about reshaping how you approach challenges in every aspect of life. Whether you're leading a team or navigating personal growth, Tom's insights are bound to inspire a transformative shift in mindset.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Ila and Charles sit down with Tom Geraghty of Psych Safety - a group that works with organizations around the world to achieve improved innovation, better error-handling and prevention, and more resilience by creating and maintaining an environment of psychological safety.

Tom starts by diving into the differences between trust and psychological safety, then takes a second, deeper dive into the value of experimentation, failure, and learning. He describes how organizations and industries that have a high cost of failure and those that require extreme safety sensitivity have experienced failure (and it hurt!), as well as the learning that comes from failure and how to mitigate or prevent future failures. Organizations and industries that don’t have the same degree of failure consequence haven’t necessarily experienced the benefit of learning from things that don’t go as planned. 

Tom shares what it means to be an experimentalist and describes the huge value of focusing the outcome of work on the learning rather than the execution, being less focused on achieving perfection and more concerned with what we can learn. 

This is the perfect trio to have a very human conversation about how trust intersects with psychological safety in our every day, and they don’t shy away from discussing the psychological safety “baggage” we all carry, and how it impacts how we experience new situations. 

This is Part 1 of a 2 part series with Tom Geraghty. Come back for Part 2 in two weeks, when Tom explains how leaders can achieve psychological safety, taking into account the baggage we all have on our backs.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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What happens when someone you trust asks you to trust someone else based solely on their own trust of that person? “I trust them, so you should too.” In this episode, we dive deep into the delicate and often complicated concept of trust transfer. This dynamic plays out in workplaces everywhere and can affect relationships, team cohesion, and even organizational success.

 We explore the risks and nuances tied to referrals that are based on third-party trust, how different individuals assess trustworthiness, and why being told to trust someone based on another’s recommendation doesn’t always sit right. We unpack how trust transfer commonly occurs during significant change, where organizations expect people to accept and even champion changes, despite not feeling fully included in the process. Leaders often expect their teams to "trust the process", but that can create a sense of obligation and even alienation. And resistance often comes when change is imposed, but it can be mitigated with genuine involvement and care for those most impacted. Lastly, we discuss the fine line between cynicism and skepticism and how each can influence the culture of a team or organization and the relationships within them.

Whether you’re a leader, team member, or navigating a significant change, this episode offers valuable insights into the unseen dynamics of trust transfer.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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In this episode, we dive deep into the profound wisdom of intuition and explore why it's more than just a source of answers - it's an invitation to sit with the questions that matter most. We discuss the importance of listening to our gut and how it bypasses rational thinking to tap into a deeper knowing.

We'll explore the gift of cultivating and trusting our intuition, even when society and workplace cultures push us to do more, plan more, and achieve more. How do we trust the whispers from our body that tell us to slow down? How does our "doing" mind react to pausing? And what happens when we make a full-body commitment to what our intuition tells us?

We invite you to gift yourself time and space to be with yourself - without distractions. We'll discuss the discomfort that comes with this practice and why it’s essential to normalize it.

This episode invites you to turn down the noise, pay attention to what your body is telling you, and see what unfolds when you truly listen.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.

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Ila and Charles sit down with Dan Newby, Founder of The School of Emotions, coach, and acclaimed author of five books. Dan is a fervent advocate for emotional literacy, working with educators, leaders, coaches, and families globally. He shares his insights on how understanding emotions can address many of our personal and organizational challenges.

Dan delves into the concept of emotional literacy as a vital life skill, emphasizing the significant benefits of learning to understand and articulate our emotions. Together, the three of us explore:

• What trust is, and how different emotions foster a sense of trust
• The vast spectrum of human emotions and their impact on trust
• How certain emotions, like skepticism and affection, influence our decisions to trust or distrust
• Understanding the purpose and data behind our emotions, moving beyond the simplistic labels of “good” or “bad” based on how they make us feel

Don’t miss this thought-provoking discussion that challenges conventional views on emotions and their role in our daily lives.

We want to thank the team that continues to support us in producing, editing and sharing our work. Jonah Smith for the heartfelt intro music you hear at the beginning of each podcast. We LOVE it. Hillary Rideout for writing descriptions, designing covers and helping us share our work on social media. Chad Penner for his superpower editing work to take our recordings from bumpy and glitchy to smooth and easy to listen to episodes for you to enjoy. From our hearts, we are so thankful for this team and the support they provide us.