John Corcoran: 10:53
Those are great. What? What was it that made you decide to study in your graduate work? This idea of trust.
David Horsager: 11:04
So I can still remember where I was. In an early age, I built this leadership development out. It mostly was I was speaking around the world for, you know, youth and colleges and that kind of thing. And I built this work. So some companies and one of the military academies started asking about it.
And, actually, I can still remember where I was because in 1999, I think up till that point, I think it was the most beautiful, expensive place I’d ever stayed. And I think it was like the Loews resort somewhere in Arizona, and my wife was with me. We didn’t have four kids yet, and I was standing out on the deck. And this isn’t some big spiritual epiphany, but it was an epiphany of sorts. I was looking out at the sky just thinking, talking to Lisa about the day, and I said, I don’t think it’s what they think it is. They think it’s a leadership issue. It’s not. They don’t trust the leader. And then I started thinking, oh, that’s the next issue. That’s not a sales issue.
The reason people aren’t buying is they don’t trust the product or the teacher excuse me, or the salesperson or something. And I started thinking in a classroom, you know, people, the only way to increase learning in a classroom is increased trust in the content or the teacher, or the psychological safety or trust of the room or marketing message. The only way to make it stickier or more powerful is to increase trust in the message or innovation. If the team doesn’t trust it, they won’t share ideas. So trust goes down.
And I started to see it as the leading indicator. And that led to the grad work that showed. And it really, I think maybe was the one of the first to prove out how a lack of trust is the biggest cost in a company, the biggest cost in the country. I mean, the GDP is directly correlated to trust. The relationship you have with your spouse, partner or friend is directly correlated to trust.
So once we started seeing a lack of trust, the biggest expense was that it was inspiring. Then I did all my grad work on it. And then of course, we used it in companies and we saw you’ve heard it, You know, we’ve had the admiral of the Navy say we drop suicide rates. We’ve had people say it tripled their sales. We’ve had one of the biggest companies in the world say it helped them gain 11% market share in a year. We’ve had people say it dropped attrition by millions, so we’re using it to solve big issues. You know, and that’s the fun that this stuff works.
John Corcoran: 13:09
I want to break down some of those stories a little bit further. But before we get to that, I know when you started out, you had to have trust in yourself because you were living in a basement in Minnesota, you know, saying to your wife, this is going to work out, believe in me. She had to trust in you. And I know because I’ve been there before, that that can be really hard. So talk a little bit about that challenge.
David Horsager: 13:34
It was hard really the first decade of this work from 99 to oh nine. Once I started that company, I think we lost everything, almost lost everything like three times. And Lisa, you know, before kids, she was in it with me working in the, in the company and, and and all that. But I mean, it was crazy. So we moved back from Arkansas.
We’ve been down there for years. We were living on a golf course. We were in, had a salary, we had all this stuff. And we’re back here on an idea and to Minnesota, and we found a place to live for like $350 a month, which was lower than any apartment I could find. And it was the basement of an 86 year old lady named Clara Miller’s home. And what we didn’t know is it didn’t have a bathroom, it didn’t have a kitchen, and it didn’t have windows.
John Corcoran: 14:18
And it sounds perfect.
David Horsager: 14:18
Otherwise, black mold was free. But we didn’t know it was illegal to live in a windowless basement in Minnesota, because we didn’t learn that until two years later when we moved out and we would go three flights up to her bathroom that she let us share to go to. And, we got two flights up. We had a half of a shelf on her refrigerator, and we lived there for two years. And what was good about that is we won.
I don’t think many people would do that today, but we got absolutely focused. We had a part of the time where we didn’t have any insurance. We had some sacrifices that I’m grateful that, you know, worked out that weren’t the smartest choices. But we did get focused. And this is not advice for everybody.
But I remember my brother saying to my brother, he’s like, do you think I should get a part time job? Or Lisa should teach again or whatever it is? And he said, I don’t think so, David. I think if you have to, you will and you need to have to. And he knew me and it’s like so I got focused and worked from you know, we got up in the morning, we worked till 11 at night.
I made calls, we worked on we, you know, so that was kind of the start of this, the entrepreneurial journey. And really by the way, many people could do it faster. But it wasn’t until a decade later, probably zero nine, until we really had the tipping point in our company. We had some big wins in that first decade. But we also like, as you know, your expenses can easily be higher than your wins.
John Corcoran: 15:44
Yeah, well it’s interesting, it’s a different world now because of the tools available to us, like social media, like, you know what we’re doing right now, podcasts, things like that. But, you know, if you were starting over today and you didn’t have all the items of trust that you have, you’ve got these best selling books. You’ve spoken on stage, you’ve got all these different, you know, marquee companies that you’ve consulted with. You’ve got degrees. You know, if someone’s starting over and they want to build trust and authority in a new field, what do they do?
David Horsager: 16:13
Well, I’ll tell you, the first thing that jumps to my head right here is make sure you build the character along with the competency. And that is that there’s a lot of people that are younger that want, that have actually been able to succeed in getting their face out there. And I’m not saying podcasts are great. We’ve had one, you know, all these things, books. But I mean, I would build character and genuine authority over fake because it gets found out.
You have a lot of people wanting to do it quickly today, entrepreneurism quickly. And I’m saying I would have done a PhD earlier. Number one, I would have done a lot of things like I would have done some things differently written earlier. I think there’s people today that have become kind of a YouTube star, but they don’t have the character to handle it or the depth to handle it. So.
Right. I mean, I’d say write your own books. Don’t have someone else write them. Do some research yourself. Don’t, you know, get, get to do this kind of thing like, this is amazing, John. Maybe not from me, but from every other guest. You’re learning something, you know? Oh, for sure. Yeah, yeah. And you’re an expert?
Partly all your other things, but partly because somehow you have been able to bring on. Get a one on one interview with brilliant people that have led and done things that are a part of research. People trust you because you have transferred trust. You’ve been trusted by them. You’ve gained all this wisdom because of the ability to interview them. Right? Yeah.
John Corcoran: 17:40
And not to break down the process too much. But that’s why I mentioned the names of other companies at the beginning of the interview is because, one, it conveys trust on the person that you’re talking to because you don’t know me from Adam, but also for the listener to, you know, if they’re just tuning in, they’re flipping around on Spotify or whatever, and they’re hearing it for the first time, they need to know that this is something I’ve been doing for quite some time.
David Horsager: 18:02
I think that’s it. So I think the other thing that you do well, and this has been critical for me, so first is capable like character. Build the character along with don’t try to just get rich quick or try to be a star on something. I guess if I was pushing anybody today, I would gain some real depth. Like, there’s a lot of people in our space that talk about trust.
We kind of joke with and without research and people saying all kinds of things today, but like that, I would just push some, some depth and, and a process for ongoing character development. I am open with my team. Like I love this, I’m passionate about this. I’m totally imperfect at everything I teach. And I, you know, talk today about how I, I mean, I agonize that I’m not more what I live like under certain parts of the pillars that I know are true. Like I wish I was more compassionate, I wish I was more patient. Oh my goodness. Like I’m not naturally patient. I have to work at that, right? Yeah.
It’s so there’s that part like people. It used to be a big deal 200 years ago in American schools to teach virtues. They’re almost not taught today. And many people fail at business because they aren’t growing in virtue. So I know that’s not fun. Everybody thinks, you know, everybody thinks they’ve got it. They’re good. Other people need that. So did Barry, you know, Madoff. So anyway, that’s one thing.
Yeah, I would also, you know, I would have a plan for keeping growing in competency. But I think there’s another thing that you teach that I so believe in and that is relationships with others. I mean, mentors, I said nothing great has happened for me without mentorship and relationships like, like you’ve, you know, talked about and, and really encouraged others to have because you can amplify or speed up learning. Like you’re smarter because of your podcast than other people your age that don’t do podcasts or your experience, let’s say right, because you’re listening to others you and and same with like when I think of me, I think of business mentors for sure. Speaking mentors.
People say, you know, I was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame and whatever, you know, all this stuff. And I was just at this event that not too long ago was one of the biggest leadership days in the country and ten speakers and they’re all more known than me, and I was the highest rated two years in a row. That’s really cool. How did that happen at the Hall of Fame thing? They said, oh, overnight success.
Look at this guy. Like, I’m not that known. One thing we’re not good at is marketing, but we’re good at getting results. That’s the only reason we have work, probably because people share it. But what are they? This is the speaking side. Now we know the research is important. We know that trust tools are important. All that. But what about speaking when you get paid at a high fee especially for non celebrity. It’s hard work today. Like there’s a lot of speakers out there right. Why am I so booked? Well I went through it in my head with our team. And I said well I’ve had speaking coaches that I get critiqued on for 30 years.
I took acting classes never wanting to be an actor. I took stand up comedy classes, never going to be a stand up comedian. But people are surprised that, oh doctor, I didn’t expect him to be so funny. Like was not natural. You know, I, I took, I think of all the mentors and classes that just on the speaking side were important and valuable.
And I think that’s something just like you teach just in any part of business, like I’ve had speaking ones, I’ve had business ones, I’ve had financial ones, I’ve had marriage coaches to get better there, you know. So I think health coaches, I’ve had, you know, personal trainers, it’s like that can amplify and speed up success because you have firsthand experience. And so that’s another thing I.
John Corcoran: 21:45
Yeah, yeah. No, I love that because there are people who get good at hacking the YouTube algorithm or the TikTok algorithm or whatever, and they build a big audience, but then there’s no depth behind it. There’s no character behind it. So I love that. I’d love to break down some of these examples that you gave here.
You know, like you mentioned, you know, the admiral, the the Navy said that some of this work helped to drop suicide rates, helped connect us for that. Like how did that work exactly? How does building trust drop suicide rates? Well.
David Horsager: 22:18
I mean, maybe you first have to know the pillars to go from, like, I don’t know okay. It’s the content. Yeah. Then there’s several levels here. It’s, it’s, it’s true. Like it’s got to be true outside of you. The research proves it. But like I didn’t come up with trust. Trust was right. And it turns out that trust is the leading indicator, I believe. Right. So it drives things how I build trust. That’s another one that’s the framework. That’s the eight pillar framework. And then you can’t just have the overall framework.
You have to have actual tools you can use tomorrow morning. Because the most motivating idea is not someone to climb Mount Everest. If I’m not going to do that, the most motivating idea is when I can use tomorrow morning to solve my problem. So you have to have these three things, and then you have to have a way to cascade that or feed that into a company or across a company. So they get a common language like the eight pillar framework, and they get tools they can use.
So there’s two steps there. There’s one the actual stuff and there’s two is how do we do that throughout 15,000 Navy midshipmen or. Yeah. And how do we do that through Penn State or University of Nebraska or, you know, you know, parts of John Deere or whatever it is. Right. So yeah, I don’t you can so yeah. Go ahead.
John Corcoran: 23:31
So there’s the eight pillars there which incredibly all start with a C. That must have taken a lot of work to figure that one out. But take us through it.
David Horsager: 23:39
Yeah. So number one we ingest don’t think of them as some kind of pastoral eight CS for cuteness. They each represent a really important research funnel. They are seeds for clarity. Seven out of the eight basically came out of the research that way. Or very.
John Corcoran: 23:53
Well. That makes it easier then I guess.
David Horsager: 23:55
Yeah, passion, head care and and you know, the connection pillar had collaboration as point number two. So there’s one. And I’ll tell you it’s pillar number seven that we’ll get to that really a word a different word really represents it well. So here they are very quickly. So this is how trust is built globally.
Under these there are tools I can speak about any of these for eight days. But let’s go. How is trust built? Number one people clarity. Clarity builds trust. We trust the clear. We mistrust or distrust the ambiguous or the overly complex. So if I complexify something in today’s world, we lose trust because we lose clarity. Cleverness does not win today. Clarity wins.
Having a little hair cutting salon called Whispers on Main didn’t work. She changed it to Best Cuts by Barb. People went there, not cuteness or clarity. I drove by a bunch of. I was being driven to a speaking event recently, and, you know, there’s all these stores or malls, and it was actually out near you in California.
And there’s one store that was packed full. Every spot was full. I thought, wow, people know why, to get off the highway to go to that store, because it was in bold letters, huge. And it was one word. And then that was it flicker. And they just said liquor above the liquor.
John Corcoran: 25:20
That’s it. And that’s all. It’s clear.
David Horsager: 25:22
Yeah, but it was crystal clear. Everybody knew why they would go to that store. Right. So you can think about this like a leader might not be trusted if they’re not clear about the vision. A manager if they’re not clear about the expectations.
A salesperson if they’re clear about the wrong things, like they’re clear about how cool they are, but not how you know, not about the benefits of the product to me or a teacher is not clear about the assignments. Kids go home frustrated. So clarity number one. Number two, not in order of importance, but that’s where we start. Number two compassion.
We trust those that care beyond themselves. We don’t want to be accountable to someone, accountable to someone, or follow someone unless they care about something or someone beyond themselves, even if it’s not me. Right. Number three is character. Of course, we knew that would be true. Character. We trust those that do what’s right or what’s easy.
John Corcoran: 26:07
Example of your father earlier. Yeah.
David Horsager: 26:10
Yeah. Number three would be competency. You have to be capable at this. Like I trust John to take my kids to the ball game. I know you’re, I know you’re compassionate. That doesn’t mean I’ll trust John to give me a root canal. Right. So you are competent, and that’s the same. We say it all the time. If you’re leading the way you were 20 years ago.
I don’t trust you. If you’re selling the way you were ten years ago. I don’t trust you. You’ve got to be getting better and we can talk. Come back to this pillar if we want to. But the next pillar is commitment. We tend to trust those that will stay committed in the face of adversity. So you’re going to jump when there’s a pandemic. I’m not saying you don’t need mental health help or anything else, but I’m not going to trust you and follow you. You.
I need someone I can trust in the middle of the tough, in the middle of the adversity. The next pillar is connection. The willingness and ability to connect and collaborate with others. So, you know, there is a counterforce, in fact, in the In the Trust Matters book, at the end, there’s a, there’s a, a counterforce wheel to show what you know, things are working against trust. And actually I learned this came to me when I was working with building trust between Procter and Gamble and Walmart 15 years ago.
And one of the folks, Walmart folks, I think, said it feels like there are counter forces. And we saw these forces against trust. How do we remove those? And one of the counter forces of the connection pillar is siloing. Like, you know, siloing or selfishness where we stay like this, if we can open that up a little bit, we can increase trust and solve bigger problems.
So the seventh pillar is his contribution. Remember I said this is a better word for the yeah Contribute results. You’ve got to contribute results if you’re going to be trusted. You can’t just have compassion and character. You know, I go in for amputation. Surgeon was kind. Surgeon was compassionate. Surgeon cut off the wrong leg. We have a problem. You got right.
Yeah. That’s the same with all of us. And the final pillar is consistency. You are trusted for whatever you do consistently. Sameness. Predictability is trusted. Predictable is another word under that research funnel. And that is just like for good or bad. If you’re late consistently, I will trust you to be late. Right? Right. So this is so we can go into any of those. We can give tools under any of them. I can.
John Corcoran: 28:21
So as you know, I’m thinking about the example of the admiral of the Navy. So, you know, I guess it could be complex why the Navy would have high suicide rates, you know, but I can see how it could be lack of clarity from the leadership. It could be a lack of compassion for what the, you know, enlisted, you know, members of the Navy are going through. It could be a lack of character. It could be a lack of competency in managing their career. I guess all of these things could contribute to higher suicide rates.
David Horsager: 28:52
So basically there are several things there. But what this gave right away was a language. So on deck they could have a language. Oh that’s a clarity. See, one of the big problems people are trying to solve is the wrong issue or it’s not a clear issue.
So just like I said before, it’s leadership. No, it’s not a leadership issue. The reason you follow a leader or not is trust. Oh, it’s an engagement or something like that. David, you love sea words. Isn’t it ever a communication issue? It never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever is a communication issue at the core. I know what you mean. But they just say these things and they don’t do it. They can’t do anything about it. So if you go one level deeper, you get the point. And that is for example, communication is clear. Number one pillar is trust. Unclear communication is not trusted, compassion is trusted, hateful is not high. Character is trust.
The dishonest communication is not trusted. Competent. Communication is trusted. Incompetent communication is not trusted. So we can go a level down from what people are thinking about leadership, communication, engagement and those eight C’s you actually gave a language to solve the real issue.
Then after that, you give tools that they can use to solve their problems. So on the Navy ships, one of the things they use, and this is a little too long to go into now, but the trust shield is a connection exercise that we offer that is powerful. They use this, one of the captains on one of the ships, you know, and by the way, think of a carrier that’s for 4000 or 5000 people, by the way. Yeah. And they use this every time they do reviews.
And he’s a command master chief. So that’s a tool to increase connection. They said this is the best way of doing reviews we’ve ever had. And it changed how they did reviews okay. Doesn’t take away accountability or anything.
It just changes the way. So this example a couple quick examples under clarity because they’re easy to understand, like quick. So clearly people weren’t feeling clear. So I’ll give a couple of acronym ideas 1I1 acronym that they started running their messages through. You want to clear the message and make sure it’s MRA measurable, repeatable and actionable. Is that a message? Oh we’ve got integrity as a value.
John Corcoran: 31:00
That’s not actionable. If you don’t have one,
David Horsager: 31:02
Integrity, you go to jail. What is it you mean here? Like in our company, we say being the same on stage and off stage. What’s that look like? It’s that integrity that I can see as so memorable, repeatable.
Actionable. Another quick acronym would be Odyssey. So this is for getting clear expectations to your team members. So my first role in leadership was in a whole different area of this world. I was in Arkansas.
I didn’t know, all my team members were older than me. I had a lot of strikes against me. I wasn’t getting what I wanted from my team. Finally, I got crystal clear And I learned because I learned it was my fault. Right? And so I started going through Odyssey. Here it is. O stands for outcome, not micromanaging. Not all of this, but what’s the outcome? If people don’t know the outcome, they can’t win.
What’s the outcome? Simple stuff right? D is the deadline. A deadline is an exact minute. It’s not. I want to see that soon. It’s. I want to see it at 10 a.m. Friday. And the P stands for clarifying questions. Are you clarifying as we say? Are you clear about this project? Just spit it back to me. Are we clear? And it’s just. That seems so simple, but it’s like, oh, now I’ve now I’m winning with expectations of my team.
And I sometimes joke, but this works at home too. Like families, my daughters and I had a different picture of, you know, the view of what a clean room looks like. Okay. So okay, here’s the outcome. We’re not going to be demanding. We’re just going to say two things. One, no clothes on the floor. And you know what clothes are. Yep. You know what the floor is.
It’s under there somewhere right. So do that. And number two is the bedspread or top, you know, comforter over the pillow. Like just that I don’t know what’s going on underneath. Just put that up there. Okay? So it’s just those things I don’t care about. The plastic necklaces on the dresser. I don’t care about what’s going to fly out of the closet. Just those clear.
John Corcoran: 32:48
On the outcome. Yeah, yeah. And you have another, you have another acronym Ice appropriate for someone from Minnesota. Inspire, clarify, equip. Talk about that one.
David Horsager: 33:01
So that’s how our customers and our company serve others. That’s not one of the tools in the book. That is, how do we fulfill the mission of building trusted leaders and organizations? How do we do that? Well, outside of the research we put out every year that, by the way, all of your listeners can have free access to, you know, trusted com you can have access to our global study Trust outlook, but we fulfill this mission for you.
Things I in Ice stands for inspire a shift of thinking around trust. Inspire trust. And that is a lot of my books. That’s my speaking 100 times a year. Some of the biggest conferences around the world, that’s me doing leadership days. That’s my advisory work on boards that I’m on that I inspire. See is clarifying measure trust. So we have the enterprise trust index the way we measure trust and close gaps like we’ve done in some of the big companies you heard about. That’s kind of a consultative process. That’s see, the E is equipped. That is how we certify. So we have certified partners on six continents using our work inside of companies and as independent coaches and contractors. And they can use our measurement tools. They get to use our content. They get to lead leadership retreats with their team or by charging others.
Doesn’t matter. They can use our trust, work in all the tools we have at the really cool platform portal to to equip coaches and leaders and learning professionals and facilitators in our work. And that’s how we really equip them. They have monthly calls with everybody around the world if they want to be on them. There’s ways we keep equipping them, and that’s what that stands for. So that’s how we fulfill our mission of developing trusted leaders and organizations. The AI is a lot like David. The others are more the Institute.
John Corcoran: 34:40
It’s good to know thyself, right? I know, I know, we’re short on time, and so I want to wrap things up here. And, David, I’m sure we could go for two hours on this, but I appreciate the time you’ve given us here today. I love to wrap up with my gratitude question, so I’m a big fan of gratitude. I’m a big fan of also giving my guests the opportunity and the space to shout out any especially peers, contemporaries, maybe mentors who’ve been there in the journey with you from that basement with the black mold to today. So who would you want to acknowledge?
David Horsager: 35:11
Well, that’s hard to just say one, right? So I have so many, but one. That one group that you made me think of was three best friends Scott, Joe and Jason. And we started meeting together in college junior year. That was 32 years ago, and we stayed as kind of this accountability group.
Each of us became leaders of organizations, companies, and one of them a ministry in the inner city of Denver. And they and we, one of them I talked to every other day, the others I meet with, we meet with one really long weekend a year, sometimes five days. We just got off our meeting last weekend, and we each shared for about three hours through, you know, struggle. How can we do this better? Not ever.
How anybody else could do things better. But we share how we, you know, what can we do better? What can we do and how can we serve our clients? How can we serve our teams better? And we sharpen each other and hold each other accountable to that.
And we are better, as you know, husbands, as parents, as fathers and as leaders in our organizations, by a long shot. We have this that we will. We super love and care about each other, and we’ll get in each other’s grill and say, you gotta stop doing that, or you got to start doing that. And so just one point on this, that kind of to what we talked about before we got on the call and that was how have they been a part of what you’ve done. And there’s many, many ways they’ve been a part of and served and sacrificed.
But you made me think about one thing before we were so like, what people see now and the impact and the best selling books and all that. When my first book came out in 2008 or 9, I didn’t have any money. We were at the end. That was one of our three times when we lost everything and we were upside down and backwards on the house we were living in, and we looked kind of good because we spoke at some big events already. People liked our work, but I, you know, we were upside down and backwards and this book came out and they knew it was a big deal.
So one of them paid for all the food at a book launch in a really cool place. Another one bought me a new computer because he knew I couldn’t afford it right then and paid for that. Another one paid for something else in our company to make this the whole book launch and make this happen. That was a massive tipping point, by the way, not just because of the book, but a bunch of things started happening in 2010 that changed our whole trajectory in the business. And we’d seen some real results by then and all that, but they just were willing to sacrifice in that way too, and it was a big deal.
John Corcoran: 37:42
That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And looking back, I mean, 2010 is such a precarious time coming out of the global economic downturn. So it’s so nice to hear that story. David, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you and connect with you?
David Horsager: 37:55
The institute. www.trustedge.com or my name, if you can spell it. You know, I couldn’t spell till eighth grade either. But, David, you get a lot there. So either one and they connect to each other. So I love to go. You know, there’s also free tools and you can go there from one of those sites. But trust matters more than ever. There’s a load of free tools, discussion guides and everything else you can do with your team if that’s interesting to you.
John Corcoran: 38:19
Awesome. David, thank you so much. Thank you.
Outro: 38:24
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.