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Focusing on the Person in Front of You
I don’t think I have anything unique to say about building trust, but I think the honest answer for me is: Listen, number one, pay attention to the person you’re talking to because you want to be engaged. Number two, be yourself. Be authentic. I don’t think that’s hard. Third, and this is more challenging today and it’s more challenging for young people today, is provide energy.
There is way too much distraction and multitasking. It is impossible to build trust in an environment where you’re not providing a hundred percent of your attention. So that means, do you have a device? Shut it off. No, don’t just turn off the alarms, shut it off. Put it in your pocket. Don’t put it on the table. You want to build trust? The only thing that matters to the person that’s in front of you. That’s such a simple thing, and yet people don’t do it. 10 minutes of focused attention, where you’re really listening to someone, you’re interested in what they have to say and you’re being authentic yourself, matters a lot.
Frequently I will see people that just want to make sure, I haven’t seen you in, you know, months. Let’s get together. I haven’t seen you in weeks. Let’s get together for a coffee. They come together and they’ve checked the box. They’ve already checked the box. They think they’ve checked the box just by showing up. You haven’t checked anything by showing up. Half an hour coffee, where you don’t really care about what’s going on in my life and you haven’t engaged with me personally. You haven’t told me something interesting. We haven’t gotten to know each other better, is worse than not showing up because you have just wasted that person’s time.
And the worst thing you can do to someone who matters is waste their time. You waste their money, they’ll forget about that, right? You waste their time, that is the single thing they can’t make any more of. That’s a horrible thing to do. And so I think that the best way to build trust is show that you respect their time. And how do you do that? Focus, listen, attention, authenticity.
When Trust Becomes Cooperation
I opened the book with this wonderful and very strange conversation. It’s the first time that Gorbachev and Reagan met in person, the dacha outside of Geneva. It’s only the two men and their translators, no one else is there. So the story didn’t even come out, wasn’t made public for decades. It’s interesting, Reagan goes to the general secretary and he says “So if aliens were attacking us, you’d come to our defense, wouldn’t you?” And Gorbachev says, “Yeah, of course I would.” And he said, “Well, we’d come to your defense too.” And you think it’s a hokey moment for the former actor, Ronald Reagan. But it actually was a profound moment for both of them, recognizing that some issues, some conflicts were existential and required cooperation.
And that humanity, common humanity transcended the evil empire that Ronald Reagan had said that the Soviet Union represented. That relationship persisted and not only allowed for some successes in arms control that helped to avoid the world’s Armageddon, but also helped to facilitate some of Gorbachev’s early moves towards reforming the Soviet Union.