Building Trust and Authentic Connections in Remote Teams
In this episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take?, hosts Brad Hefta-Gaub and Scott Porad discuss the importance of building trust within a team, especially when working remotely. They delve into personal anecdotes, effective management strategies like office hours, 5-minute summary videos, and regular one-on-ones. Brad and Scott emphasize the role of authenticity, vulnerability, and positivity in fostering trust and share their experiences tackling legacy culture in new roles. They conclude by reiterating that every interaction either builds or destroys trust, advocating for a genuine and transparent approach to leadership.
00:00 Introduction and Connection
00:32 Meet the Hosts
00:39 Patreon Perks and Swag
01:09 Boat Talk and Personal Stories
03:44 Building Trust in Teams
10:35 Empowerment and Ownership
11:57 Navigating Legacy Culture
16:04 Engaging with Team Members
17:22 Navigating Group and One-on-One Settings
18:03 Building Trust in Group Settings
19:55 Effective One-on-One Strategies
22:00 Open Office Hours and Authenticity
24:05 Remote Trust Building Techniques
28:26 The Power of Micro Interactions
29:54 Authenticity in Remote Leadership
36:38 Conclusion and Podcast Outro
Brad: Because it's about connection.
And if we build connection,
then we'll be able to get to the place of like you really trusting me to help you solve your problems.
Scott: Should we record an episode of How Many CPOs?
Brad: Yeah. Why don't we get started?
I'm
Scott: Okay,
Brad: Red Haftagab.
Scott: please subscribe,
rate,
and review Scott
Brad: My co-host is,
yeah,
Scott: Porad, and you can sign up for our Patreon feed.
Brad: there's going to be all kinds of great advantages being
Scott: Oh, my God.
Brad: a Patreon.
If you're a Patreon,
imagine like the swag you get.
Scott: You are not going to get any swag.
at all
we're not doing that out of the case so i actually own i don't have it with me i own swag here we're going to get way off topic in the interview as
Brad: As one does.
Scott: you may know or if you don't you're about to find out i like boats i think boats are just the most fun and uh why first of all i love being on the water
and boats themselves are really just interesting things like they're beautiful and they're they're you know adventurous and so on and so forth but then as someone with an engineering mindset I mean there's always something there's always a little project in fact I'm going down there hopefully later today to like grease some parts right to make them squeak less there's always there's always something to tinker with it's great fun
So anyway,
last summer we got a new boat and it's really my wife's boat.
My wife really wanted a new boat.
So I got some swag made.
I got baseball caps, trucker hats,
and beer koozies that say Lisa's boat.
Brad: Is that the name of it, by the way?
Scott: uh the name of yeah it's informally the name of it she would absolutely kill me
Brad: if Oh, okay.
Scott: i put lisa's boat on the side of the boat it's not a big enough boat to have a name but uh so i got this the point is is minimum orders are high
Brad: Oh, no.
Scott: So we have a lot of hats and we have a lot.
Brad: Do you hand them out at all your guests that come out and party with you on the lake or whatever?
Scott: We do.
And my wife was terribly embarrassed about this.
She was totally she was totally like this is this is the douchiest thing you've ever done in your life. And I loved it. But it turns out, especially my kids friends think it's awesome.
they're electing we can you get us t-shirts
Brad: All right. So what you're saying is we will not be giving out swag on the Patreon for how many CTOs. But if you're in
Scott: well
Brad: the greater
Scott: maybe
Brad: Seattle area.
Scott: like a hundred maybe once we have like a hundred subscribers that can do it when we can cover them in all
Brad: I thought that's fair.
I thought what we were going to do maybe is
Scott: First 100 subscribers get swag.
Brad: first
Scott: Ooh,
limited
Brad: drop
Scott: edition swag.
It's like supreme.
We're going to drop swag.
Brad: swag.
I thought maybe you were going to volunteer to take them out on your boat at
Scott: I will. Yeah,
I will volunteer to take the first three subscribers and Brad and I will go on the boat.
We will go get dinner or lunch.
We'll have a nice cruise on Lake Washington.
Brad: the yacht at the yacht club.
or
Scott: uh
Brad: just pull
Scott: we don't
Brad: on
Scott: we
Brad: up to some
Scott: don't like yeah
Brad: a dockside cafe or something like that like in a yard i'm maybe or something
Scott: not a like yacht club i'm not a yacht club people um but there's a handful of places on lake washington where we can go get a meal and we'll go we'll cruise up to kirkland go from mercer island to kirkland and then we'll cruise right by bill gates house
Brad: and here's the question we had talked i we sent around some topics for this week
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: And one of the topics was, how do you, when you're air dropped in on a team,
how do you build trust?
Is there a segue here that involves taking your team out on your boat?
Is that what this is? Is it gifts? Is it like what?
So how does one crack the nut of,
and how do you frame this?
As much as I love talking about your boat.
Scott: how do you build trust with a new team that's
Brad: Yeah.
What's the process?
Scott: a great question i don't know i can tell you how i do it and i have no process for it i just speak i speak from the heart and
Brad: Speaking from the heart.
Being authentic.
Scott: i'd be yeah just totally authentic and i also exhibit
extreme trust out of the gate some people will say hey i'm not going to trust anybody till they earn their trust i'm going to i start by trusting everyone and then you know learn who turns out maybe i shouldn't be trusting which is maybe a foolish way to do it maybe i kind of get myself up a creek a little bit
Brad: Do
Scott: sometimes in that department but that's how that's how i go about it
Brad: That sounds like a very,
that does sound like a process.
That sounds like a very intentional process.
Um,
so I'm going to give you credit for having
Scott: I
Brad: a prompt,
Scott: wasn't but I
Brad: not calling
Scott: would never thought about it as a process, but like that's there's one other part.
I started with an AMA where I introduced myself and the introduction was also sort of very personal. Like here's who I am, you know, here's the jobs I've had.
Here's my family.
here are some of my strongly held beliefs just to tell people who I am so
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: I think yeah come out come out of a place of vulnerability all three of those have vulnerability in them and basically I guess I guess I have a theory that I didn't know I had which was you engender trust by being vulnerable
And here's
Brad: You
Scott: small
Brad: sound ways like my that therapist.
Scott: can exhibit itself. So I think I mentioned we have a recharge week and it's not entirely closed because people have to be on call and there's operations people and things like that. But somebody wanted to ship something, there's a code freeze during that time and somebody wanted to ship something.
The code freeze like started yesterday,
somebody wanted to ship something.
And they were asking for my approval,
to which my response was,
here's my point of view on this.
The people who make decisions should have to be responsible for their outcomes,
or get to be responsible for their outcomes.
So if you think this thing needs to be shipped.
and you're prepared to take on monitoring it to make sure it doesn't break something and dealing with the fallout if it does break something then you are empowered to decide to ship it was my first point
My second point was knowing specifically what it is that you want to ship. If it was me in your position,
I would not ship this.
The downside,
I understand that you have a deadline you're trying to meet, but the downside is far bigger than the upside.
And I would just take the heat for missing my deadline because I would rather have that heat than the heat of having
Brad: Potentially like
Scott: a
Brad: yeah
Scott: system be down while everyone's on vacation.
Brad: And how did that and well,
first of all, logistically speaking, how did that conversation go?
But it was their reaction to that.
Scott: uh it was it was twofold actually it was number one it was positive they're like that's great i love that but see over here in this wiki we have this written policy it says in order to ship from a code freeze you have to get approval from someone on the senior leadership team i was like oh okay interesting so um i think
They decided to postpone it. Anyhow,
I can't remember why there were some other factors that came up, but I said, okay,
we'll have to add looking at that policy to our list of things we want to look at our
Brad: backlog of things we need to look at and then how do you feel like um you know if we if we put that through the lens of your like um be authentic uh be um uh genuine and vulnerable and
and then like you know your radical trust um
Scott: Yeah, so
Brad: what do you think do you think that the person on the other side of that conversation heard it and and sort of took it in that genuine sense or do you think that it's more like um many many small acts build up to this and was this the first small act
Scott: I think
Brad: with
Scott: I
Brad: this
Scott: think
Brad: with this actor
Scott: Well, yeah,
I think it,
so I should say, this is interesting. I'll tell you the dynamics.
A product manager came to me and said, hey, this engineering manager says he needs approval to ship it.
And I told the product manager, well, this is my philosophy.
It's under,
you know.
is that engineering manager's decision and then it was so i was actually interacting with the product manager
Brad: Yeah, okay.
Scott: which is kind of funny by itself but then i i took that same message into slack and i told all my engineering directors there's six of them i was like hey i just had this exchange with so-and-so and i just want you to see like my point of view on this um and i and and i recognize there's this policy and i want to add that to the list of things to discuss but
Um,
I think they,
they received that positively.
And I think because I think that's a different tenor from my predecessor who put in a policy that said to ship during a code, you know, who put this policy in place, right?
Brad: Right.
Scott: I don't, you know, I don't think.
my predecessor he'd left the company voluntarily so i don't think he was either beloved or hated but
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: i just think he was just he was just a boss
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: um but i think it was definitely a signal of like in a positive way like okay well there's a different mindset in town than was here before
Brad: Totally.
Scott: um
Brad: Totally.
Scott: and so in that and probably some other things people are sort of getting that like
Oh, interesting.
This is Scott operates differently than the last guy did.
And there's some frictions there, like we saw, well, hey,
we have this policy in
Brad: Right,
Scott: the wiki.
Brad: really.
Scott: And I'm having some frictions too,
because I'm like, oh, interesting,
okay,
I probably need to follow.
So then my question went to the directors was,
so if we wanted to consider this policy,
what's the right way to do that?
Brad: Right.
Scott: Like, I can't just come in and be the dictator and say I'm changing the policy today.
Brad: Really.
Scott: Like, that's actually just being a dictator in a different way.
Brad: Right,
Scott: You
Brad: totally.
Scott: kind of got to say like, so how does policy get set around here?
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: All right.
And how do I play in that game?
So it takes some patience.
But to your question,
I think it's a lot of those little acts add up to changing a culture.
And the culture I want to build is a culture of empowerment and ownership.
And I think that's, to me, that's the name of the game is to get.
engineering teams thrive they have to feel like they own what they're doing and
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: it's interesting I had a totally separate conversation this week with some of our product managers about business metrics
there was this conversation in slack that said the business metrics that there was this line the business metrics that engineering teams own
And I wrote back, I was like, I don't understand that statement.
Brad: Right.
Scott: Engineering teams on engineering metrics.
And we sort of got into this dialogue about how, well, it's very important for the engineers to know what business metrics are trying to move,
which I agree totally with.
But if what you're trying to do is increase,
if your software is trying to increase orders,
it's other people that made the decisions about what was going to be on the product roadmap.
And we can't hold engineers accountable to increasing the orders. It's important that they know the outcome we're trying to achieve.
We can't hold them accountable.
And that's a fuzzy line.
That's actually one of the harder lines to draw.
Brad: Do you think, by the way, one of the things that, so let me, I'm going to try to like.
to corral this conversation towards this question of you're the CTO, you've been dropped in,
you know, you're dropped into this environment,
it's got its legacy culture,
it's got its legacy technology,
it's got its legacy policies,
it's got its legacy ways of working,
it's got its legacy business metrics,
right?
And you've got to build trust with both the team that you manage,
you know, your engineering team,
and you've got to build trust with your.
your stakeholders right so your product team you got to start building trust with them you got to build trust with your rest of your executive team right you know one of the things and first of all i love your your your general philosophy of like be genuine be authentic be vulnerable be clear about what your core values are right
And I think that I
Scott: You know,
Brad: agree.
Scott: there's one other thing I'm going to put in there, and
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: you didn't include be trusting, but there's also another thing I'll put in there,
which is be positive.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: I mean, I have this big philosophy,
Brad,
which is as engineers, all we do is deal with problems all day.
Brad: Right.
Scott: Once we've solved the problem,
the system works fine.
Brad: right
Scott: right we encapsulate into a library or we set a system up and it runs normally etc fundamentally what we do as engineers is deal with problems problems are my business isn't performing the way i want it to or my software isn't running the way i want it to or whatever and always live we live in a context of things that are broken right and things where nothing is good enough right
Brad: right well you kind of said this in the last we talked about that in the last episode this notion of this like
like a disease of everybody wanting to get an a everybody wanting to always get better always get the highest possible score
Scott: right Yeah,
Brad: right
Scott: where straight A's is not good enough.
Brad: straight is not good enough we're like set ourselves like we're failing even when we're succeeding right
Scott: Because we just live in a context and an environment where everything is broken,
right?
So I think you have to come at it with positivity also.
In fact,
there was a Slack message I sent this week, which is we had a really unpleasant meeting. We were having the classic,
you know, having to choose between many bad choices,
the least bad choice kind of meeting of some things, something.
And I said, I said to the team and then I actually reiterated in Slack,
I was like, hey, I just want to remind you, like thousands of orders got filled in the last hour, last hour.
our mission is to do such and such and it is happening right now even though we're like having to deal with this very sticky situation like the mission is happening like it's going it's ongoing every
Brad: minute Don't
Scott: of every day
Brad: lose sight of it. Don't lose sight of the abundance.
Scott: yeah we just don't get it at all right we just especially in a remote environment
Brad: Yeah,
Scott: Okay,
Brad: well,
Scott: so you said you said like the philosophy I added the positivity in there. You were going somewhere with that question though.
Brad: so so yeah,
so I like that framing. I also love adding positivity to it. That's great.
Let me sort of like set the stage right for what I think we often always run into.
Right. We get dropped in and the very first moment like the very first moment.
The team that reports to us.
I don't think I've ever been dropped into an org where they weren't skeptical of the new guy, of the new person. And maybe they were skeptical because the last person in the role was problematic,
right?
And so you're not only like working against like,
you know.
I'm new, I'm other,
I'm unknown,
here I am my authentic self,
but I also think you're working against whatever the history was, right?
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: Because definitionally, you were brought in by whatever context had the last person in charge,
right?
And so I think that...
So there's a like I love your higher your overarching theme and I guess I'm kind of curious do you feel like especially like in a large organization like yours or a large-ish organization right where we're 100 people or more like
I love the idea of the all hands AMA, right?
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: Do you do other things? I feel that one of the things you got to do is you got to go ask a lot of questions.
You got to like find out and try to get and and in my experience,
I think that there are two types of people you run into when you first start asking questions.
The first type of person is like.
They've been pent up waiting for someone to listen to them, and
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: they tend to be more willing to be open right away.
And then you have another group of people which are maybe more conservative with a small C,
careful,
like they don't guarded,
Scott: Started, yeah.
Brad: guarded.
I like that.
Yeah.
And so it takes them like you can ask them directly like,
hey, I really want to know that I really want to know what's going on. I'm open to anything. There's no wrong answers here.
And it takes multiple times of you saying that and multiple.
multiple times of you demonstrating your own authenticity before then they go yeah I've been meaning to wanted you know to talk about this yeah
Scott: So, okay,
you have now,
I want to flip the table here. Let me ask you a question.
Brad: totally
Scott: It's a two-parter.
So the overall question is, what are the questions you would ask?
And part A is what are the questions you would ask in a group setting and what are the questions you would ask in a one-on-one setting?
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Scott: And I actually think I can come up with my own questions in the one-on-one setting.
But it's actually in the group settings that I think it's interesting,
especially remotely when like it's just crickets on Zoom,
right?
You got 96 faces looking at you and literally nobody's saying a single thing.
thing right and there's no body language you can read really like you can read in a room what are the questions you would ask of groups in that
Brad: Well,
Scott: environment
Brad: that's a, that's, I love that. And first of all, 100% agree with you that.
Very rarely do groups produce good questions because to your point, it's like it's crickets. And so I feel like you got to do a lot of you got to put stuff out there in a vulnerable way and then.
When they see that you're genuine and vulnerable and authentic,
then that will allow them to then come to you one-on-one or come to you in a smaller setting and say,
you know, the person who stands up in the large meeting and asks the hard question is rare.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: And even rarer that they are coming to it with a positive mindset.
Typically, I've found that the person that sort of stands up in the group meeting and asks the hard question,
I want to encourage that and say, yes, please bring that.
But they tend to have an agenda which tends to not be as constructive as possible, but at least you're getting signal.
You know, so I
Scott: It's
Brad: don't ever try never to shut that down,
but it's rarely,
it's rarely, it seems to me the better, the better feedback loop comes from creating the sense of trust,
creating the sense of authenticity in the group setting. And I have some specific logistical things I've done in the past, which I feel have worked really well.
And then through one-on-one, through skip levels,
through team AMAs, you know, smaller settings,
cultivating that space where people feel comfortable bringing their issues to you.
Scott: So, okay,
so what are the, you said you had some specific tactics to build trust.
What are those?
Brad: So a couple tactics that I feel like worked really well for me is.
And I definitely set up one-on-ones with everybody in my span of management,
for sure.
And that is recurring and
Scott: regular. Yeah,
Brad: And I have a specific script that I use for that to kick that off.
I absolutely believe
Scott: you mean of the first one-on-one, like that first one-on-one you have a script that you follow.
Brad: Yeah, pretty much. But also it's a standing agenda that is true for all of those one-on-ones,
right?
And that agenda is basically,
well,
the introductory script is like,
I am here to make you and everybody on the team as effective as possible.
That is what I consider my mission to be.
And I am willing to...
I'm willing to do no job is too small.
Let I treat me as your agent.
Scott: Mm
Brad: Now,
Scott: -hmm.
Brad: there are some things that you might ask me for that I won't be able to do.
And I'll be super clear and direct with you to the best of my ability whenever that happens. But otherwise,
I want you to bring me things that I can do to help you.
That's the main thing here.
And then I say things like, you know, another example is logistically speaking,
like we have a running document that's either,
you know, there's tools for it, but right now I just use like a Google document that's got the agenda in it. And I say, go put whatever you want in there and I will make a point before you're one-on-one, I will show up and I will have read whatever you asked that you wanted to talk about and
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: I will be prepared to talk about that. If there's things on my mind.
I'll put them in there, but every one of my one-on-ones always starts with the question,
how's it going for you and what can I do to help you?
Like that's the first question in every one-on-one.
What can I do to help you?
Scott: Okay.
Brad: And I do that with direct one-on-ones. I do that with skip levels.
I also do random one-on-ones. So that's like the one-on-one playbook that I have.
The other thing I do is I've done open office hours,
like
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: I just set aside an hour and a half,
anyone can come.
And then I make a point of like when I kind of market my open office hours,
I promote it with here are things on my mind.
And I always include in that.
stuff that's specific to the team to the business to whatever and i also include just personal stuff you know like
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: oh i've been doing this research on um you know whatever you know um something that's not related to the business or oh i'm really excited about this mountaineering trip that i'm going to take next weekend you know and i use that as like these conversation starters that are
Like you literally could come here and talk about anything you want because it's about connection.
And if we build connection,
then we'll be able to get to the place of like you really trusting me to help you solve your problems.
Scott: I loved grinding the office hours.
Because I've done office hours in the past and haven't always worked well because people sometimes it's just the same people that come and other times people don't really have anything to talk about.
Right.
But saying here's what I'm thinking about right now.
If you are interested,
you can come talk about whatever you want,
but if you're interested in talking about this,
that's kind of what's been on my mind. I really like that.
Brad: Yeah.
And that approach has I've gotten very specific direct feedback from people saying, I have never come to your office hours, but I read your office hours, you know, here's what I'm thinking about.
And even if I don't come,
it helps me feel like you're there to be authentic.
and you're willing to talk about anything and so that's that's been something that's really worked for me yeah
Scott: Yeah, that's a good one.
That's a really good one.
That's brilliant,
actually.
So if it's actually,
I want to mention something going back to the philosophy thing.
And you talked about skepticism.
I intentionally I've had I've only had one all hands which was that asked me anything at the beginning I've intentionally not gotten up and tried to be the face of the organization and and tried to just you know be small because as a reaction to the skepticism which is like okay well
we've all been a part of that we're like well here's the new guy just talking a bunch of nonsense like whatever we don't need to hear this guy we're just going back to our desk I've tried to not be that guy right but
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: I have received the feedback like hey you're not very visible and that's hard in a remote environment without sort of calling all hands right when you're in a in office environment you can just walk around the office and chit chat with people and take people to lunch or whatever
But in a remote environment, it's harder.
So I really like that office hours as a technique to sort of split the difference a little bit
Brad: Yeah, here's another one that I started using recently,
and I've really had some great feedback on this one.
So in an organization, so my last stint, organizations got like 100 engineers in it. I've got like five directors that are, you know, managing, you know, somewhere between.
in a third and a fifth of the of the team and i would do regular staff meetings with them right so once once a week hour we get together and we're talking through whatever the the topics of the week are you know um and what we started doing and got huge response from is we would record you
The last five minutes of that meeting and do essentially a we would in the in the last 10 minutes of the meeting,
we would quickly figure out, OK,
what is the summary of what we talked about?
that
Scott: Mm
Brad: we feel
Scott: -hmm.
Brad: we can share with everybody almost always it was like we could share all the topics we talked about and we would then you know create a quick little mini agenda for our five minute summary and then we would popcorn around the room with each director and myself giving a summary of the topic right and then we would produce that literally just like boom we just did a five minute video
And then we would just upload it to Slack and say,
hey,
here's the summary of my staff meeting that we just had.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Scott: Builds a lot of trust.
Brad: Right.
It's all about like, here we are, we're being transparent.
This is how we interact with each other.
And so it's like a little bit of they get to see my authentic self,
right?
Because, you know, that that mix of like, yeah, I'm a professional, but I'm also kind of a fun, silly guy. And they get to see the interaction and the positive interaction between myself and the staff.
their
Scott: Mm
Brad: boss
Scott: -hmm.
Brad: their boss's boss and they get to get a greater sense of like my leadership style their you know their chain of commands leadership style the interaction between all of us
And we get to hit topics.
Oh,
we've got, you know, animal performance reviews coming up. So we talked about that,
you know, HR is going to be sending out the 360 forms next week, you know, great.
Okay, now,
Anne,
you wanted to talk about our latest offshore testing initiative.
Yeah, we've got this new compliance requirement.
We've contracted,
legal's working with this offshore agency that we're going to be doing this new.
new compliance testing with.
We don't expect to interrupt our schedules,
but that's what I've been working on, you know, okay, great, Donnie, what,
you know, whatever.
Scott: So it's a summary, not a reenactment.
Brad: It's a summary.
It's a quick punch list summary of what we did.
That's huge.
That's I found that to be so, so powerful in an organization where, you know, especially if it was like building trust, rebuilding trust because of like, I don't know whether it be like business hardships of layoffs or something like that, you know, then you've got this opportunity to basically like.
let people be a fly on the wall to see the trust that you and your team have with each other.
Scott: okay so there's one thing we i wanted to bring up like half an hour ago that we didn't talk about and so maybe we can get to the end of this no no you didn't cut me off at all i just was thinking about it as we've been talking about all this stuff which is all of these tactics and strategies we've talked about but the the trust building
in a remote environment is so different and is there it's it's so different over the screen you
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Scott: know the human interaction is just so different and um you know i think about a simple here's something so simple there's a we our company had an on-site about uh
four or five weeks ago in san francisco and i met one of the engineering managers there a woman named hannah i mean literally hallway passing she said hi my name's hannah i want to introduce myself that was like we talked about nothing of meaning um other than that which was meaningful i guess but i mean nothing of substance but now i'm having to engage with her on something else and just having that i mean
15 seconds right made there's something human we exchange smells I don't know how to describe it right is so powerful right
Brad: I
Scott: it's
Brad: have to
Scott: the question
Brad: agree.
Scott: of like trust building and remote seems so much harder to me and I it's something I personally struggle with especially when I'm spending eight hours a day on the screen anyhow and it's like oh my god more meetings right so it's like trust building is so hard remotely
Brad: Okay, here's unpopular opinion.
My unpopular opinion is no, it's not.
It's not any harder than in person.
The difference is that in person, in the old world,
in person, a whole lot of people thought they were building trust when they weren't really.
Scott: Hmm.
Brad: The walk around management by walking around.
was this is a common theory that lots of people, you know, subscribe to that that didn't really build trust,
but they they fooled themselves into thinking they were building trust and that instead the way to build trust is to be vulnerable and authentic in every interaction you have. Here's a simple example.
My screen is not blurred.
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: And I make a point of always having my camera on and
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: letting it be my,
this is me.
I like
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: guitars.
I like tiki mugs.
You know, I don't have any mountains in that wall,
but I have mountains on this wall.
Right.
That's a small gesture of authenticity.
And and saying like, yeah,
man,
I had a hard weekend.
I didn't sleep well, you know, like being authentic in every possible interaction is what builds trust.
Now, in that hallway interaction,
like.
You kind of have you definitely have some extra tools at your disposal to be authentic and vulnerable.
Right.
But you can totally manage by walking around in person in the office and not be authentic and not and just build this false sense of trust.
And it
Scott: can Well, I agree.
Brad: be that the leader thinks they're building trust.
And in fact, they could be they could be not building trust and they could, in fact, be undermining trust by basically just not being authentic and not being vulnerable.
Scott: Well,
I agree with everything you say.
And I mean, figuratively speaking,
there's no going back to the office,
right?
But there is maybe it isn't trust as much as
Micro interactions do build relationships.
you know I had a practice when I was at Rover my pattern was I dropped my kids off for school at about eight I got the office about 8 15 8 30 so I was the one who took the kids to school and I would typically not schedule a meeting before nine o'clock I mean sometimes they happen earlier because we have company we had offices in Europe but sitting that aside my typical pattern was arrive in the office between 8 15 8 30
Take my laptop,
go to the break room,
get myself a cup of coffee,
start to catch up on Slack and email stuff like that until my first meeting, which was typically at nine, but often wouldn't be delayed.
and if I loved it because you know people come in to get their own cups of coffee and it would be an opportunity to say well hey Brad how you doing what's
Brad: Yeah,
Scott: up oh I heard you got a new dog or you know what are you working on or just whatever it was just an opportunity for casual extremely
Brad: I love it.
Scott: casual interactions right
Brad: Love it.
Scott: and I loved it too it was a it was a it was a way I enjoyed starting the day and I would frequently I mean sometimes I'd get through a bunch of slack because no one came in and sometimes I would
That would just be chatting the whole time, right?
And there's just something about that that built relationships, I guess, different than trust, but built relationships in a way that's harder.
And there's another piece to it, too,
which is I had this friend who is a salesperson who has this saying,
which is more hellos equals more money.
And and so, you know, I would I'd be very intentional as a senior leader at the company.
But anytime somebody walked in that break room that I didn't know who they were,
introducing
Brad: You go say hi to him.
Scott: myself.
Brad: Introduce
Scott: Say,
Brad: yourself.
Scott: oh.
Hi, we haven't met before.
My name is Scott,
right?
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: I'd be very intentional about that.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: And you just don't get that quite as much in this remote thing.
So it's just it's a tool that's out of your toolkit,
Brad: I
Scott: I guess.
Brad: totally agree with you. And I'm not in any way trying. That is a great example of a positive use of the in-person. And I'm just saying that you are a.
I think you're a very strong leader who knows how to build trust through authenticity and personal interactions.
And I'm just saying that a lot of the people claiming that we need to all go back to the office aren't using that tool that you just described,
which is one of the cheapest and easiest tools to use.
Right.
Scott: Yeah.
It caused me a free cup of mediocre coffee every morning.
Brad: Yeah,
exactly.
And, you know, and putting yourself out there.
And I think that.
And so that's my point is that for people like yourself and myself that already have like a very clear agenda of like,
I want to build this authentic level of trust. Sure, we used the in-person stuff strategically.
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: And, and there's plenty of people that didn't use in-person strategically and don't understand.
They got this false sense that the in-person was building this trust when in fact it was not.
You know, you're not, you clearly did have a strategic use of in-person.
And I'm just saying that the hard part about that.
is what we talked about which is being authentic and being vulnerable and you can do that you can do that on slack you can do that in zoom you can do that in meet you can do that with these small things small things like being your you know having your you know camera not blurred having your laundry in the background and
Scott: I
Brad: having
Scott: know that's embarrassing.
I'm embarrassed that I've got that back there.
Brad: it's not i think that that's i think that
You know, I don't I think that's in fact
Scott: It's
Brad: a very.
Scott: it's the clean laundry just FYI. That's the clean laundry
Brad: But that's, to me, that's about being vulnerable,
right?
Letting the dog run in the background,
right?
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: Like that's about being vulnerable.
Say admitting like,
man,
I didn't sleep well last night.
I might be a little cranky because of it.
Don't take it personally.
I'm doing my best, but I didn't get good sleep last night.
Like that,
those tiny little things, I think make a huge difference over the long run.
And that's, there you go.
That's
Scott: You're
Brad: the right. way to sum up how do you build trust in a new organization?
How do you maintain trust?
I think it's about being authentic and being vulnerable.
Scott: Yeah.
And every action, every interaction either builds it or destroys it.
And we've got to be thoughtful.
Brad: Well,
there you go.
How many CTOs does it take to
Scott: At least two.
Brad: least two?
Scott: This episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast was edited by Saffron Heptigal. Our theme song was AI generated by Brad.
Please follow us on all the social media platforms at at how many CTOs pod you can find us on YouTube LinkedIn Instagram Facebook threads X tick tock and patreon or at our website at how many CTOs pod calm and remember to rate review and subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice thanks for listening