#348： A Counterintelligence Expert's Five Rules to Lead and Succeed
Episode Stats
Summary
Trust certainly makes life easier when it exists. Instead of having to craft complicated contracts for a business deal, a simple handshake will do. And instead of surveilling your spouse like the NSA, you ll just take them at their word. But trust, seems to be in short supply these days. We re afraid of trusting people, and we have a hard time getting people to trust us. How can you establish trust in even the most toxic environments? Well, my guest today thinks he has the answer to that question. His name is Robin Dreek, and he spent his career working in a field where trust is hard to get but important to have. He s recently published a book sharing how he s been able to gain the trust of people who aren t very keen on trusting others. And today on the show, Robin shares the 5 rules of building trust with anyone, no matter how suspicious they are of you.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here. Welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Trust certainly
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makes life easier when it exists. Instead of having to craft complicated contracts for
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a business deal, a simple handshake will do. And instead of surveilling your spouse
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like the NSA, you just take them at their word. But trust, it seems, is in short supply
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these days. We're afraid of trusting people and we have a hard time getting people to trust
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us. How can you establish trust in even the most toxic environments? Well, my guest today
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thinks he has the answer to that question. His name is Robin Dreek and he spent his career
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working in a field where trust is hard to get but important to have, doing counterintelligence
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for the FBI. Robin's recently published a book sharing how he's been able to gain the trust
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of people who aren't very keen on trusting others. It's called The Code of Trust. And
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today on the show, Robin shares the five rules of building trust with anyone, no matter how
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suspicious they are of you. While these rules may seem like they're an invitation to become
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a human doormat, Robin explains why that's not the case and how they actually make you
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more influential. Whether you're working with spies like Robin or just want to build more
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trust in your office, you're going to find plenty of interesting and actionable advice
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in this podcast. After the show's over, check out the show notes at aom.is slash trust.
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Hey, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it and taking the time to chat.
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So you just put out a book called The Code of Trust. But I think to appreciate what you're
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writing here, the ideas you're putting out in The Code of Trust, we need to know about
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your background because you work in an industry or you have worked in an industry where there's
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not a lot of trust. Can you tell folks a little bit about your background?
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Sure. The industry where there's not a lot of trust, it's an interesting statement too.
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So we'll talk about that. So yeah, my background, it's really simple. I'm a Naval Academy
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graduate. Went in the Marine Corps afterwards. After the Marine Corps, I came in the FBI. So
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I've been in with the FBI over 20 years. And specifically inside the FBI, I worked counter
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intelligence and ran our behavioral analysis program. And it's interesting because it's
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when you work in the world of counterintelligence and spies and counter spies or counter proliferation
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or whatever it is. You think of it more as a criminal matter, I guess, a lot of times.
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But in reality, it's not because we deal with human beings on a day-to-day basis. And we all do in every
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walk of life that we are in and every profession. And in my line of work, there's very, very little
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remuneration I can give someone for cooperation or wanting to put our country's well-being ahead of
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their own sometimes, except a relationship. And people aren't going to generally do that without
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some semblance of trust. Because I generally, 99.9% of the time, I'm not dealing with criminals
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that have committed crimes. And so there's really no reason why they should want to talk to me. So
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if you can't make it about them and inspire trust, you're not going to get very far.
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And when you first started in counterintelligence, what was your approach? Did it take you all to figure
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out that I need to make it about them and to get them to trust me in order for them to work with you?
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That was really the approach. It was, it's, you know, it's funny, the book, you know,
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The Code of Trust, it's about inspiring trust, but ultimately it came down to leadership.
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What I learned in the Marine Corps about leadership, because again, I'm not a natural-born leader.
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I'm really kind of a natural-born self-centered jerk most of the time. But that approach of that
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type A hard charger might work fine for you to a limited degree if you have a title or position or
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a rank or a billet or something that someone has to listen to. But what I found out very rapidly,
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when you come and work in my line of work, you know, it's a very flat organization. It's a very
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flat hierarchy and structure with people you're talking to. Matter of fact, most of the people
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that I interacted with are twice as old as I was, four times as smart, at least. And, you know,
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they didn't care about title and position. They cared about how you treated them.
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And luckily for me, I did have some people that I, that are surrounded with that were the real Jedi
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masters of human interpersonal skills that actually had the art form down that took me
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an awareness. You know, I definitely had self-awareness about what I lacked, but a lot
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of times maybe a little more challenging to figure out what it is I had to add.
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So to understand how important trust is, let's look at examples of where there's,
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where trust does not exist. Any examples of organizations or businesses that you've worked with,
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or even countries where there was hardly any trust, what's that like?
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Well, we see it all over the world right now. You know, I've written about it a few times since too,
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you know, trust in government, trust in politicians, trust in organizations, trust in a product. I mean,
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there's lots of examples of mistrust and it's really because there's some core elements that are
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really lacking in a lot of communication that human beings have right now. You know, human beings,
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you know, range in tribal by nature. You know, we're lived and survived in tribes of 40, 50, 60,
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I mean, thousands of years ago. And in order to survive in a tribe, you actually had to have
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trust. Otherwise you'd be left for dead. And what human beings are at the genetic and biological
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level are seeking is a sense of affiliation and a sense of being valued. And there are very clear
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things that you can actually include in language that you use when you're communicating with someone
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to demonstrate value and demonstrate affiliation, because that tells our brains that it's good for
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us. And when you cascade on top our genetics and our biology, on top of good societal norms and
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humanistic ways to deal with people, it really becomes very easy. And those four things are really
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simple. You have to seek people's thoughts and opinions. Yeah. How often do you hear people
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in politics or in government or in a line of work in an industry seeking the thoughts and opinions of
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those people they wish to interact with? Because when you're seeking thoughts and opinions, you're
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saying, Hey, I value what you say. Next, you have to talk in terms of their priorities, their needs,
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wants, dreams, aspirations, personal, professional, long-term, and short-term. Because here's another
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guarantee. If I'm not talking in terms of what's important to you and what you deem is prosperous for
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you, you're not going to listen because why would you? Third, you have to validate them. In
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validation, it's not simple flattery, which I don't really subscribe to. Validation is a seeking to
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misunderstand the human being you're interacting with at the core level of how it is they see the
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world through their personal optic. And you do it non-judgmentally. And fourth, you want to empower
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them a choice. Again, we don't give people choices unless we value who they are and can affiliate with
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them in some way. So very rarely in a lot of things that we're seeing these days are people doing at
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least one of those four things in everything that we're saying and doing. And why is that? I mean,
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why has establishing trust become so hard in our modern world? You know, it's fascinating. I think
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we see this a lot with insecure people at work or people that become annoying at work. Again, let's
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go back to ancient tribal man. We want to feel affiliated and we want to feel part of a collective
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because feeling part of a collective means we'll survive. And when any individual or group singles
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out another group, either positively or negatively, what happens is that everyone else feels disconnected
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and they feel like they have to try to convince someone to accept them for who they are. And so
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when people are feeling ostracized and not included, people are going to start battling.
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And when you start battling, shields are up, no information is flowing, and people start standing
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their ground and thinking they have to fight for what is right from their perspective, while at the
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same time, they're not doing anything. Because the one thing I never even try to do anymore is I never
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try to convince anyone because I really can't. I think in terms of how can I inspire them to want to
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listen to me? Because that convincing aspect is about me and what I think. If I'm thinking in terms
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of inspiring, it's about them. So why aren't people doing it more these days? Because people are battling
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to feel included more so than I think they've done in a long time.
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Which is weird because, you know, supposedly the internet and all this technology allows us to
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communicate. It's supposed to connect us more, but it sounds like it's made it harder to establish trust.
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Well, what's happened is with the anonymity of being behind, you know, a screen or a Twitter
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or a Facebook posting or LinkedIn posting, with that anonymity comes this unbridled desire to give
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your thoughts and opinions and judge others. And as soon as you start judging someone, that's when
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the shields go up and that's when divisiveness starts. Instead of rather trying to understand how
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other people see the world through their optic. I mean, granted, you know, you look at my background,
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you know, Naval Academy, Marine Corps, FBI, it can sound like, like I said before, a pretty hard
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charging, judgmental individual. Well, do this for over 20 years. I can't judge anyone. You know,
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I've had a career and a lifetime of knowing that if I start judging, you know, someone as being right
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or wrong or less or more or morally corrupt or not, I guarantee you that people's shields are going
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to go up and there's no, not going to be any communication flow because ultimately all I'm ever trying
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to do is inspire someone to want to collaborate, want to work on mutual beneficial priorities.
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And if you start judging in any way, half, you know, shields are up, no information's flowing,
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and that's what's happening in the digital world. But I mean, and the good side though,
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is it's very easy to communicate with much more people in the digital world because you can
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use these strategies to make it all about them, but people just have this incessant need to want
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to correct others. Right. And the big takeaway I got from the book, you know,
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the benefit of trust is that it just makes life easier, right? Whether it's business,
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your personal life, you know, imagine a world where, you know, you can just transact on a
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handshake. That's much more efficient than drawing up these huge complicated contracts
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because you don't trust the guy that you're in a partnership with.
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Absolutely, Brett. The, uh, the thing that's really pretty amazing to me and what's happened
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since the years I've developed this is that life has become exceedingly calm and exceedingly
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prosperous. And here's why years ago, you know, I, I, I self published a first little
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book on rapport and the whole purpose of rapport was, you know, to try to elicit some information
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or something for an interview. And then I started realizing, well, the next step to rapport is
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really trust. And, you know, when you have trust, you have collaboration, you have mutually
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beneficial priorities that you're working on together. And what I really realized is the
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more I focused on trust, I started having relationships, deep, meaningful relationships,
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relationships where people are mutually vested in each other's prosperity and vested without
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expectation of reciprocity. So that is truly the unconditional giving that you can offer.
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And what happens is, is when you start creating a network of trust through relationships, that's
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when the majesty of calmness happens and prosperity. I mean, it's really been pretty amazing. You know,
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I said to my son a couple of days ago, he originally got into exactly where he wanted to go to college
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on a very early decision. And the first thing we did is we sat down and said, Hey, you had all
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these skills that allowed you to do that. But the first thing we're going to do is let's talk about
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the relationships that was able to facilitate exactly what you wanted to accomplish. Because
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as I've seen throughout my life, and he saw throughout his, you can have all the talents
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in the world, but talent and all these skills without relationships is completely useless.
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All right, let's walk through the code a bit here. And you've already laid out some of the parts
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already. But let's get very explicit here. The first one is suspend your ego. What does that look
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like when you are trying to establish trust with somebody? Yeah, suspend your ego. It's the it's
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really one of the bedrocks of facilitating the code of trust. I often teach and talk about how the code
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is flawless. It is completely unconditionally flawless. The one thing that will cause it to fail
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is you, your ego and your vanity. And what I mean by that is anytime things come about yourself,
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your own priorities, things that you're trying to accomplish through someone else, but still it's
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become self-centered. That's when your ego gets in the way. Because if you're not dealing with
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someone that's unconditional and offer new resources, which generally people aren't, there's
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no reason why they wouldn't want to cooperate you. Our ego and our vanity really get in the way of our
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mouth and the things we say, where we become judgmental, where we have this need to correct other
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people, argue how they see the world through their particular experiences. And that's what we're
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really getting in the way. Right. And, but it could be very subtle too. You might not think
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you're being egotistical, but like, you know, you, the way you approach the person you're going from
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your frame point. Yeah, absolutely. Matter of fact, I used to work with someone. I worked with
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some amazing people. One of them in the book, I call him Jesse Thorne. Real life, his name is John
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protecting names of the innocent, but he was the master of interpersonal communication. One of the most
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down to earth, humility driven individuals that was most successful person I've ever saw in my line of work.
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And like, and also on my same squad, I had someone with the same amount of time that was also very,
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very good investigator, fantastic, but he didn't have the ability to develop the same sorts of
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relationships. And the reason was he had some very stringent ethics, morals, and religious beliefs
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that he didn't necessarily state, but non-verbally, he was very judgmental of people that didn't believe
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what he believed. And so that started getting creeping in there. I call it incongruence.
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We've all experienced this incongruence between that's what we say. A lot of times, you know,
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you get these salespeople, they can say all the right things, but you still get that creepy salesman
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effect. Well, that's because emotionally, they're not actually thinking to benefit you. They're
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thinking to benefit themselves. And so that's what happens in a lot of these things that comes across
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non-verbally. So having congruence between that, what you're saying and that, what you're feeling
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about the other individual and specifically being non-judgmental is really key.
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Right. Well, that leads us to the next step. It's be non-judgmental. And the third one is
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validate, which are very similar. Okay. What do you mean by, because I think we all understand
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be non-judgmental and validate. What do you mean by validate?
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Validate is seeking to understand that human being that's in front of you. Again, you have to
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combine it with non-judgmental because you can seek to understand someone, but if you're doing so,
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scorning them or not believing in what they're saying or standing in judgment of it, there's not going to be
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any kind of trust or shields down where information is exchanging and flowing. So validation is merely
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seeking to understand. So that really the key and the reason to do this is sometimes you're going to
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deal with people that you feel intolerant of, that you don't like being around, that annoy you,
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whether it's personal or professional. And those are the people that you actually have to validate
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the most, meaning that you have to seek to understand them. Because what happens is when you
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seek to understand and you validate, then tolerance ensues. And when you have tolerance,
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then you start having that congruence again between that's what you're saying and that what
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you're feeling towards the individual. I mean, there's people in lives that can, you know,
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bug the living heck out of us, whether it's at work or home. And the first thing I do is I seek to
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understand, well, why is it their behavior is bothering me? And a lot of times it's because of
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experiences they had growing up, experiences they've had in the workplace. And so they're feeling
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insecure about something. And so the first thing I try to discover is, or validate is what are they
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insecure about? And so I can make them feel more secure about it when dealing with me.
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Well, and how do you do that without, you know, approving of their behavior? Because I'm sure this
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happened to you encountering child intelligence. You probably were working with people who were
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possibly thinking about doing some sort of treasonous act. So, you know, you want to be nonjudgmental
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and validate, but at the same time, like say, that's actually not a good thing that you're thinking
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about doing. So how do you, how do you balance, how do you deal with that?
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Yeah. I've got a deep, dark story on a espionage side I'd like to use sometimes,
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but a little too deep and dark for this, but it really comes down to the fact that what I got to
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focus on my end goal. You know, my, if my end goal is to protect national security and my end goal is
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to, you know, then if in the business world, sell a service or a product and you're the person that I
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need to interact with, then I need to communicate with you in a way that's going to inspire you to want to.
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And if I start judging you, then you're not going to want to. So you're all, so you're
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automatically undermining what it is that you set out to want to do. And that's what makes this
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leadership. You know, leaders are the ones that are setting the goals and objectives about
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interacting with other human beings. And now strong, inspirational leadership makes it about the
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other person. Leaders set the goal and then they take actions that's going to inspire someone to want
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to come along on the ride with them and make it beneficial for them ahead of you. And if you start,
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you know, judging others and not validating them, then I guarantee you, they're not going to do it.
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You know, the great thing I love about this too, is human behavior becomes extremely predictable.
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If I take the time to understand what your priorities are, like I said before, your needs,
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wants, dreams, and aspirational, personal, professional, long-term and short-term. If I understand
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how you define prosperity and what's in your best interests, and I now offer you resources for you to
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achieve all those things, I know you're going to do it. I guarantee you're going to do it. Why wouldn't
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you? So that's what this is all about, is understanding those things about other people
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non-judgmentally and then offering resources for them to achieve it. And now, if for some reason
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you feel so strongly that you're going to stand in judgment of them, I'm not saying that's right or
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wrong either. I can just guarantee you, you're not going to have a productive interaction. So you
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should just break contact before you even start.
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Gotcha. So the fourth part of the code is honor reason. What do you mean by that?
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Honor reason is kind of what we've already been talking about. These things all kind of swirl
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together congruently. Honor reason is making sure, especially as a leader, whether it's leadership
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where you're trying to sell, whether you're trying to lead on a battlefield, counterintelligence in
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your household with your teenagers, what leaders are very, very good, at least the inspirational
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leaders are, they're very good at maintaining cognitive thought processes during the interaction.
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And so the thing I love about the code, the code is very empathetic. In other words,
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I care very deeply about what other people are doing. Because if you're finding out their
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context of the world, you're validating them, you're seeking to understand those priorities,
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you're going to start to understand them and empathy is created. Now, what honor reason is
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doing this, is ensuring that that feeling I have towards your success that I don't get
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emotionally attached to your decisions. Because ultimately, they are your decisions and how you
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want to interact. My job is to help you understand your cause and effect of where it is you are and
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where it is you're going. And so for me, honor and reason is maintaining an objective third-party
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analysis for you so I can be a resource for you moving forward. I have these three anchors
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that I do that maintain my cognitive reason. One, I make sure that I have happy, healthy relationships.
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So everything I say or I'm doing is going to make sure that I have happy, healthy, or professional
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relationships. That I have open, honest communication with transparency, because you cannot have
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healthy relationships without that. And third is I'm an available resource for the prosperity
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of others without expectation or reciprocity. Because making yourself that available resource
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with no expectation or reciprocity is what leaders do. Leaders don't keep a scorecard. When I honor
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those three things, that keeps me very rational, honoring reason. But how do you maintain that rational
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sort of cool detachment in the heat of the moment? Because it's easy to get caught up with your emotions.
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Yeah. So you've got to build some muscle memory, as I call it. You have to first recognize in
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yourself what you do when you get emotionally hijacked, when you start having brain creep of
00:19:03.100
either stress, anxiety, resentment, anger, frustration. All these thought processes that
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enter the brain, they start the emotional hijacking process where cognitive thought starts going out the
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door. So first, recognizing when you're hitting that emotional state and then immediately going to
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the code of trust. In other words, I hit it all the time. I mean, I'm a type A. Type A's love to fix
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a problem with a baseball bat half the time. And what happens is as soon as I get that emotional
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that hits in there, I recognize it rapidly and I then immediately go to what's my goal. And is what
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I'm about to say or doing going to help or hinder what I'm actually trying to accomplish? So in other
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words, I recognize emotional hijacking rapidly and then shift into cognitive mode. And it takes practice.
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There's no doubt. I mean, when I first started realizing this, I'd slip into this emotional
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hijacking kind of gradually and not realizing it. But as soon as you start realizing it, go right to
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the code of trust because it maintains that great cognitive thought process. So the final step of the
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code of trust is be generous. What does that look like as far as gaining trust? Pretty much combined
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with what I said before, my three anchors and the third anchor being make yourself an available resource
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for the prosperity of others without that expectation of reciprocity. In other words,
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be generous, be generous with your time, be generous with resources if you have an offer.
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And when you do, and when you're generous with both time and resources without that expectation,
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in other words, if you have an expectation, it makes it about you. That's the only reason you're
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doing it. But if you can actually let go of it with no expectation of return on it,
00:20:34.640
that's when people are actually become inspired to want to reciprocate. But you can't hold on to that
00:20:39.680
because then it all becomes about you and the whole thing gets undermined by your own ego and
00:20:44.200
vanity. So, I mean, I like the way this sounds in theory, but I think a lot of people are probably
00:20:49.180
listening to this and thinking, well, this is like a formula for getting, you know, becoming a doormat,
00:20:54.360
right? Because you're just making it about the other person. You're being generous, you know,
00:20:59.500
giving them your trust to them without them earning their trust. I mean, so are you going to get
00:21:05.140
walked over following the code of trust or does it play out in the long run in your favor?
00:21:09.820
It has never happened yet where I've been a doormat and here's why. Yes, absolutely. This
00:21:15.220
can be a very humanistic, altruistic way about dealing with people. But never once did I say,
00:21:21.860
be kind, be nice, be soft. No, it's about rational thought. And the first step in the rational
00:21:27.660
thought we're talking about, I said it earlier, is what's your goal? In other words, if people that
00:21:33.120
are doormats, either they don't set a goal at the beginning of an interaction or relationship
00:21:37.920
and or they set it and they become wishy-washy on maintaining it. There hasn't been any instance
00:21:44.240
yet where I've actually had to compromise my original goal or whether I had to let go of it
00:21:50.220
or even not have one to begin with. I'm always a lot, I have a lot of clarity on what it is,
00:21:54.800
why I do what I do. And it focuses on the ends goals for me. As I said, I gave you my three ends
00:21:59.640
goals already. The happy, healthy, professional relationships, open, honest communication,
00:22:03.560
available resources for prosperity of others with expectation reciprocity. Under there,
00:22:07.360
I have a few others. Maintain security for myself, my community, my country. That's another end goal.
00:22:14.460
And so if I have these milestones along the way, I become very flexible in how to execute those
00:22:19.540
milestones so they can maintain the mission statement. In a lot of companies, we have mission
00:22:23.860
statements. And I also have mission statements with my own family. Again, healthy, professional,
00:22:28.060
healthy, happy relationships with my own kids in open, honest communication, an available resource
00:22:32.580
for healthy relationships in their lives. The only way to do that is to make sure that I'm talking in
00:22:37.460
terms of their priorities, empowering them, doing all these things. So in other words, I'm always
00:22:41.320
extremely clear on the direction that I'm moving with the mission that I'm trying to achieve. So
00:22:47.100
I've never had to be a doormat. Now, the thing that makes this non-manipulative is one,
00:22:52.600
manipulation is nothing but control with an attempt of subterfuge and deception.
00:22:55.960
Well, how does the code deal with that? Well, there's no deception whatsoever because the
00:23:01.940
third anchor, again, is open, honest communication with transparency. I never try to deceive. I don't
00:23:06.980
use pretext calls. I am straightforward, 100% honest because I'd rather have one or two people give me
00:23:13.900
120% of their effort and time together than 10 or 20 people give me 5% and they don't want to talk to
00:23:21.940
Right. So an important part of this is knowing your goals. And then a part of that is aligning
00:23:30.840
So the trick is how do you figure out what the other person's goal is? Because sometimes they
00:23:35.640
might say it's one thing, but it might actually be another thing.
00:23:38.800
That's a great question. And you're absolutely right in this. And this is what goes back then to
00:23:44.200
the fail. Again, the code to me is majestic and fail safe because the fail safe for that is if you've
00:23:49.380
told me what your priorities are and your goals are, and I've offered you resources for achieving
00:23:53.340
them. And for some reason, you're not doing that and you're not executing. Again, it's on your tempo
00:23:58.640
and timeline because again, if you're trying to manipulate, you're on your own timeline. If you're
00:24:02.160
trying to inspire, it's about their timeline. But if they're not taking action, they're not executing
00:24:06.560
and things start becoming incongruent, well, what are they not doing? They're not being open and honest
00:24:12.080
with you. And that means if they're not being open and honest with you, it's not a healthy
00:24:15.660
relationship. So now you have to make a choice. So again, the fail safe here is, is if it's not
00:24:20.500
being effective because they're not taking advantage of what you're offering in terms of
00:24:24.860
their prosperity, then there's something else going on. It's not you, it's them.
00:24:29.040
So another phrase you repeated throughout the book, and you even said it a few times already,
00:24:32.780
is you never argue context with somebody. What do you mean by that?
00:24:36.960
People have a different point of view of everything. I mean, just one of the things we're talking about
00:24:40.860
at the beginning here today was trust. One reason why people don't trust is because people are
00:24:45.120
arguing context, whether it's the right side or left side of politics, whether it's a performance
00:24:50.780
of a certain product or a certain service, whether someone views their own children in a certain way
00:24:56.660
or a different way. Context is how each of us has developed our own sense of self and our own sense
00:25:03.960
of how we see the world around us. So our prefrontal lobe is not fully formed until around roughly 24,
00:25:09.840
25-ish. And so the things we experience between the first formative years of our lives, a lot of times
00:25:14.820
between the ages of 8 and 19 forms how we see the world for the rest of our life. Then you put on
00:25:19.460
top of that our individual demographic, our gender, our ethnicity, all these different things that make
00:25:26.000
up who we are, gives us our vision of how we see the world. I mean, I could hold up a product or a
00:25:32.400
situation in a room with five people, and I'm going to have five different things that people see when
00:25:37.640
they see that, and that's context. If you want to inspire trust, do not argue context. Again, if it doesn't
00:25:43.680
cost you anything legally, because all you're doing when you challenge someone on how they see the
00:25:48.380
world is I guarantee their shields are going up and no information that you want to talk about is
00:25:52.180
going in. All right. So you never say, you know, like if someone says, I feel this way, you say,
00:25:56.480
well, you're wrong. Absolutely. Again, you can say what you want, because I believe there's no right
00:26:00.620
or wrong, just cause and effect. So say someone says something that you don't particularly agree
00:26:05.120
with. The natural response is exactly what you said, saying something like, well, I don't agree with
00:26:08.680
that. Here's what I think. Well, what's your actually end goal here? Well, if your end goal is
00:26:13.080
to have them actually listen to what you think, you can't convince them because now you just tried
00:26:17.880
and failed. How can you inspire them to want to listen to you? So the first thing I do is I seek
00:26:22.020
to understand. So I validate. I say, wow, I never heard it quite put that way before. Help me understand.
00:26:26.260
How did you come up with that? So I'm seeking thoughts and opinions, their brains rewarding them,
00:26:30.040
and they're sharing their thoughts and opinions, and I'm gaining their context. Now, if I want them to listen
00:26:34.000
to what I think, the next thing I say is, wow, that was really interesting. Again, thank you for
00:26:38.500
sharing. I haven't heard it that way before. I'm curious. What do you think about this? Again,
00:26:42.880
I'm now seeking their thoughts and opinions about what it is I wanted them to listen to to begin with.
00:26:47.360
I guarantee you they're going to contemplate it, they're going to ruminate on, and they're going
00:26:50.840
to give you thoughts and opinions. If you had just said what you think and told them that you didn't
00:26:55.300
believe in what they said, they're not going to listen to a word you said. Again, that power of asking
00:26:59.480
those thoughts and opinions where you're demonstrating affiliation, you're demonstrating value,
00:27:02.900
they're going to listen to it. It's the same thing as people say one of the things you want to do with
00:27:08.100
people is plant the seed for them to think about. Well, if you want to plant seeds with people,
00:27:12.000
you don't tell them what you think. Ask them what they think.
00:27:14.180
Right. And another one of my favorite maxims you repeated throughout the book on gaining trust was
00:27:19.820
don't follow the golden rule, follow the platinum rule.
00:27:23.100
Right. Yeah. I wish I could claim total credit for that one. The great book called The Platinum Rule
00:27:28.820
by Tony Alessandra a number of years ago when I first got to get into all the behavioral stuff.
00:27:34.740
It's really pretty simple. The golden rule, it's a beautiful intention, and I'm not arguing at all.
00:27:39.880
The golden rule says treat people as how you want to be treated. What the platinum rule is saying is
00:27:45.220
what I'm talking about in the code of trust is treat people how they want to be treated. In other
00:27:49.660
words, a lot of times I'm going to treat you – matter of fact, that's the big reason why I had some
00:27:54.580
some fantastic, humbling moments in my life, I treated you exactly how the type A wants to be
00:27:59.000
treated. But that's not how they want to be. So shields up and no interaction. Meanwhile, if I took
00:28:04.340
time to understand how you want to be treated, how you prefer to be communicated with, what your
00:28:09.000
priorities are, and I talked in terms of them, that's the platinum rule.
00:28:12.300
Gotcha. And so this means if you're a type A person and you're dealing with someone a little
00:28:17.640
more laid back, you want to take a more laid back approach. But if you're a more laid back person
00:28:22.560
interacting with a type A hard charging guy, you probably want to take that approach as well.
00:28:27.860
Absolutely. A lot of times – we see this in emails a lot of times too or even in a quick text or
00:28:33.560
something where you have someone that's extremely people-oriented. And people-oriented people are – they do
00:28:38.240
make up the majority of people on the planet. And they're – these are the individuals that like
00:28:43.060
anecdotes. They like stories. They like doing things with a lot of pronouns and usage and generally
00:28:49.740
goes in the world of a lot of words. And so one of the challenges here, if you're dealing with
00:28:55.080
someone task-oriented like that, they just want just a fax man. Cut to the chase. Tell me what you want
00:28:59.380
and I'm in and out. And so when you have a severe divergence there, it can be a real off-putting to
00:29:05.280
each side. But just remember, no one's – people very rarely are trying to do something to you.
00:29:11.540
They're just being who they are. Right. A lot of times it's not about you. It's usually about them.
00:29:15.660
It's never about you. Very rarely is it about you. You just happen to get in the way that day.
00:29:21.140
And how do you apply this stuff to digital communication? Much – a lot of our communication
00:29:25.680
is going online now. And as you said, one of the challenges there, there's anonymity. You're not in
00:29:30.040
person so you can't have like the facial cues and body language interaction and the – how do you
00:29:35.180
establish trust online? I actually enjoy doing that a little bit more, believe it or not. Even
00:29:40.460
though I'm an Xer. I'm just about 49. So I'm not born of the digital age like a lot of the millennials
00:29:48.180
are. But I actually enjoy it a lot easier only because you can really strategize how to say things
00:29:53.680
a little easier. Because when you're having a live interaction with someone, you can't memorize
00:29:58.500
what you're saying because if you're memorizing things, you're not focusing on them, which is
00:30:02.180
the most important thing. You're thinking about yourself. I do think about my first line when I'm
00:30:05.820
going live so I can make it about them. But after that, I have to really focus on them and make sure
00:30:09.660
I'm using language that is about them. But when in a digital age, if I'm emailing or texting or
00:30:14.180
Twittering or whatever we want to do, it's very easy to go line by line with everything you're doing
00:30:19.900
and making sure you're including one of those four things. Seeking those thoughts and opinions,
00:30:24.340
talking in terms of priorities of others, validating them and empower them in choices.
00:30:27.680
It's so easy to build one of those four things in. I mean, a simple way to just do it is here's
00:30:34.320
what I want to do, folks, blah, blah, blah, if that's okay with you. In other words, just by adding
00:30:40.540
if that's okay with you, if that's something you're comfortable with, I just made it about them.
00:30:45.360
Validating their time, that makes it about them. Seeking assistance, that's making it about them.
00:30:50.320
There's lots of little things you can do to make sure that every statement is about someone else.
00:30:53.760
And writing is very easy because you can write. I mean, we do this all the time anyway. Think about
00:30:57.820
a lot of us before we send an email, well, hopefully we're doing it anyway. Before we send
00:31:02.640
an email or a text, we think about who's it going to. And then we think about it and then we craft
00:31:10.480
it a little bit and then we send it. And so that's all we're doing in this situation. We're taking it
00:31:15.220
to the next level by making sure that we're doing one of those four things and everything we're doing.
00:31:18.780
So this is a question that just came to mind. So as you're doing this code of trust and you're
00:31:22.880
interacting with a lot, you're probably interacting with dozens, maybe even hundreds of people.
00:31:26.780
How do you keep track of everything, right? Like context for different people. Like, I mean,
00:31:32.060
do you, what did you do as a, as a counterintelligence guy? Do you have like a dossier? Do you have like
00:31:36.700
a document you go to or a database? What do you do there?
00:31:40.200
I, again, great question. I get asked quite a few times. It doesn't get this complicated,
00:31:44.780
believe it or not. The amount of people in any individual's lives that have complete overlapping
00:31:50.420
of priorities, um, it fluctuates from time to time, but there's really a handful, maybe 10,
00:31:56.400
15 most. And, and some will fade in, some will fade out as these priorities no longer overlap.
00:32:02.060
But if you're honoring the code of trust, it's always a strong relationship. So they can come in
00:32:05.540
and out as need be over time. And so that being said, they also have all these 10 or 15 people,
00:32:15.600
they have their contacts, they have their relationships, they have their trusted networks.
00:32:19.580
And so yours become bigger and more vast, the better effect you have on those around you.
00:32:25.720
It becomes what I call the hub and spoke, you know, where you're the hub and everyone else is their
00:32:29.620
own hub and it keeps expanding. And what I've seen is, is the more calm and healthy you can make
00:32:35.320
your relationships, the people you're interacting with, they're starting to do the same thing.
00:32:38.620
Cause they're starting to mirror those behaviors of success. The other thing that I will add though,
00:32:43.020
I learned this early in the Marine Corps was I had what was called the platoon commander's notebook.
00:32:47.440
And what that was, was it was some notes you take on every, you know, I had, I had a good number
00:32:52.600
of Marines that worked for me and yeah, remembering finer details about everyone's lives that they're
00:32:57.540
willing to share. It could become challenging. So I just jot a few notes down on anniversaries,
00:33:02.180
birthdays, significant events in their lives. So I could refer back to it from time to time.
00:33:06.680
I mean, people do this all time. Now you get a business card from someone, take a few notes on
00:33:10.140
the back. But what you'll find is at least what I found is that that core network of highly trusted
00:33:16.380
individuals, I've never had it really exceed anything that was unmanageable that I couldn't
00:33:20.680
remember. Gotcha. That's good to know. So trust is hard to gain or is it hard to gain? Is it actually
00:33:27.120
easy? Is it easy to gain or is that? I think it's very easy to gain. I think it's easy to gain
00:33:30.580
when you know how to communicate. And if you communicate in terms of the other people and
00:33:34.280
not yourself, it's very easy to gain. Now, the thing that you can't force though, is whether
00:33:38.140
the other person is ready for you in their life or not. You know, if you don't have things
00:33:42.320
that are interesting to them, you know, in the worries of their prosperity, or you have
00:33:45.940
a personality trait that's very off putting, then don't force it because then you're making
00:33:49.900
it about you. But in general, it's pretty easy to gain. Now, the big thing here is so everyone
00:33:54.900
has a different tempo. Some people are easy to let trust, you know, go. So they'll, they'll
00:34:01.200
trust you within the first couple of minutes of you just having great communication about
00:34:04.300
them. Some people, they've had some life experiences that make them very skeptical or they're in
00:34:08.860
a business that makes it that they generally deal with untrustworthy people. So it might take
00:34:12.720
three, six, 12 months. So you just got to be flexible. Can't make it all about you.
00:34:18.240
And it's, it's, but I found it to be pretty easy.
00:34:21.920
And is maintaining that trust after you spent, you know, after you gained it, is it just a
00:34:28.240
Following the code regularly is definitely critical, but people always ask me, so Robin,
00:34:32.660
how exhausted did you get doing the code 24 hours a day with everyone you interact? And
00:34:36.340
I said, well, I don't, you know, when, when it, when it's a new relationship, that's just
00:34:40.960
starting when it's a relationship that, you know, you'd have to have a more challenging
00:34:45.020
conversation, uh, or something deviates from kind of normal interaction. Then that's when
00:34:49.720
I make sure I'm really exercising it well. Otherwise, you know, I I'm, I'm just me, you
00:34:55.200
know, and what happens is, is you get better and better behaviors anyway. Um, but I just,
00:35:02.840
I, my, my, when I get my shields down, I get a little snarky with people. Cause I kind of
00:35:06.340
got a quick wit and too fast one-liners now and then, especially, you know, outside the home,
00:35:10.600
I'm probably 95% on most of the time inside the home, maybe 60%.
00:35:14.880
What do you do? Uh, like say there, there's probably people listening to the show right
00:35:18.100
now. They're in an office, you know, workplace where there's just no trust. It's toxic. How
00:35:22.580
do you go about turning the culture around where people start trusting each other?
00:35:27.020
That's not uncommon. So first of all, for anyone listening, it's in that environment. Don't
00:35:30.480
think you're alone. It's very common. Unfortunately. Um, it really depends on how the trust is,
00:35:36.040
was lost to begin with and, and, and that, that unhealthy culture began. Um, a lot of times it's
00:35:42.480
from management on high. And so a lot of times, I mean, I've worked for bosses that, you know,
00:35:48.800
constantly shift up goals and priorities to keep you off balance so they could feed off of your
00:35:52.320
stress and anxiety. That's unhealthy. So sometimes you're not going to be able to affect the individual
00:35:57.960
cause in the environment, but if you can start mitigating the people around him, in other words,
00:36:02.240
people like that don't bother me anymore because I know it's their issue and not mine.
00:36:06.040
And so if I can start calming the reaction of the people around me, so there's nothing
00:36:10.140
for these people to feed off of, that's one way to mitigate it. Um, another way to mitigate
00:36:14.940
it is just possibly asking yourself, is this kind of environment that's healthy for me in
00:36:19.740
my way of life? You know, because ultimately what we, most human beings were not, we're not
00:36:25.620
seeking, I mean, studies came out about this a couple of years ago. I think the, the average
00:36:29.460
income of the happiest people in the world was not in the millions or hundreds of thousands,
00:36:33.000
about $75,000 a year. I think it was. And what it is, is see people are looking for very simple
00:36:39.880
things for their own prosperity, um, healthy relationships, uh, health, diversity of activity
00:36:46.280
and food, shelter and healthcare. That's about it. After that people are seeking to be valued.
00:36:52.180
And if you're in a place that you're not feeling valued, um, and sometimes we don't, you'll never
00:36:56.460
feel valued by your bosses and that's okay. If you're feeling valued by the people around
00:37:00.080
you, that might be enough to hold you. Just do an assessment. Ask yourself, is this healthy
00:37:04.080
for me to stay in this environment? If not, what can I do about it? And if I can't do anything
00:37:08.200
about it, you know, ask yourself, why am I still here?
00:37:10.660
Gotcha. Well, Robin, this has been a great conversation. Where can people learn more about the book?
00:37:14.220
That's easy. So, uh, the book, the code of trust, you can get it anywhere. It's available
00:37:17.660
everywhere. I do have a website. It's called www.peopleformula.com. Uh, all one word people
00:37:23.980
formula. You can follow me on Twitter at R D R E E K E. I've been posting a bit lately, LinkedIn as
00:37:30.440
well. And, uh, I got a Facebook author page, so I'm pretty much all over the place. Uh, look forward
00:37:35.380
to chatting with folks. Awesome. Robin Dreek. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:37:39.260
Hey, thank you. I really appreciate it too. My guest there is Robin Dreek. He's the author of the book,
00:37:43.340
the code of trust. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find out more
00:37:47.060
information about his work at peopleformula.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash
00:37:52.460
trust, where we find links to resources. We're going to delve deeper into this topic.
00:38:07.280
Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:38:11.380
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com. If you enjoy the podcast,
00:38:15.000
I've gotten something out of it. I'd really appreciate if you give us a review on iTunes or
00:38:17.780
Stitcher helps out a lot. And also share the podcast with some friends. It's how most people
00:38:21.440
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00:38:25.220
support. And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.