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In this episode, Adam speaks to founder and CEO of Synaptic Potential, Amy Brann. Amy is a published author and a keynote speaker, and in this podcast she gives some fascinating insights into the importance of trust at work, and how you can build it.
The Power Skills Project is a free podcast from Assemble You (https://assembleyou.com).
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Adam Lacey: Hello and welcome to the Power Skills Project from Assemble You. Trust me when I say today's going to be a good episode. I'm joined by the amazing Amy Brann, founder of Synaptic Potential, at synaptic potential dot com, and author of Make Your Brain Work, Engaged and Neuroscience for Coaches.
Amy is a fascinating person. She started training as a doctor, but transitioned into a keynote speaker, and focuses on helping organizations unlock the potential of their people through neuro based tools. We're very excited to have Amy join us today and help us understand some of the science behind how we can work better.
Amy, welcome.
Amy Brann: Thank you. I'm really excited to talk to you, Adam.
Adam Lacey: Fantastic. So, to get things kicked off, well first of all, there are so many things we can talk about. The power skills project covers a really broad church of topics, but understanding how our mind works or how our minds work is probably broader.
So Amy and I had a conversation before we started this and decided to focus on one particular thing today, and that thing is trust. So you might have guessed it from my opening line, the bad pun. So specifically why trust is so important in your professional life as well as your personal. So I've got a question to kick us off and then we can go from there.
So clearly trust is important, but can you talk us through why it's one of the most important things for us to master professionally?
Amy Brann: Sure. It's so vital because I've really struggled to think of an area of organizational work, a role, a skillset that doesn't involve trust in some way. I'm not sure whether any came to your mind, but it's absolutely fundamental for all interpersonal relationships and many of the things that we need to do in organizations require some interpersonal work, but it's also involved even in the documents that we receive. Because if you can't trust the source of those documents, then any work you layer on top doesn't have firm foundations. So really just every aspect of our working lives and also our personal lives require trust. The absence. Triggers this threat response in ourselves and in others, and it's got huge links to things that are now very popular.
Things like psychological safety, but just everything is impacted by trust. We know from evidence that when trust is present, you get more engagement, more productivity, more energy, more loyalty, more inclusivity, more belonging. Stress levels reduce happiness levels increase, performance improves. So trust is important.
Adam Lacey: Brilliant answer. Yeah, trust touches everything. That's how I would summarize that. That's absolutely fantastic and it almost stretches beyond the individual as well in a business context in that there are certain brands that I would trust or not trust.
Sometimes based on who maybe the CEO is or who the leader is, sometimes based on things that they've done in the past. And I guess as an organization it can take years to build up trust and it's five minutes to completely ruin it.
Amy Brann: That's so the case, and there are countless occasions throughout history where pivotal people within organizations have behaved in ways that others do not appreciate, and we can unpack a little bit more about what that is, but it's often got roots in their actions being self-serving.
So if someone demonstrates that actually they're more interested in what's in it for them or how to get ahead themselves, that threatens our trust with them. And it may not completely destroy our relationship with them, but certainly it helps us understand where they're coming from and therefore things like discretionary effort or all these other good things that we want from people are not gonna be so forthcoming.
And as you've said, we can completely be alienated by a brand because of the halo effect. So the halo effect works positively and negatively. You've got someone that is taking the best parking space, even at an opportunity where they could have parked further back, but they're choosing to be self-serving.
It influences how we think about them and by default, their leadership and then the organization that they're serving.
Adam Lacey: Yeah, I guess it's particularly important in leaders as well, isn't it? Because that trust and perception flows down through the organization in a way that maybe it doesn't with other roles.
But if you're in a leadership position, especially in a senior leadership position, leading from the front, maybe not taking the best parking space, like you say, but giving that to somebody is a good way to go. What I'd love to understand more of is some of the neuroscience behind this. So how the mind works regarding trust.
What is going on up there and how do we relate that to our day to day actions?
Amy Brann: Well, the first thing I'll say links to what you were just talking about actually, which is that we've got so many filters that information needs to go through and we exist in so many different contexts that trust and what's even going on in the mind is not fixed, and it's not a one size fits all. So while I can unpack a little of what we understand to be happening in different contexts, I think the bigger picture to bear in mind is that previous experiences with people, your current state, other things going on in the world, all influence, trust, and how trust works in our mind at particular times.
And that's a real nuance, a quirk of the brain, which is fascinating and always means that we are learning more and always gives us the opportunity to meet with people as real humans and meet them where they're at. But it does make things a little more complicated from a research perspective, and I'm sure many of the neuroscientists squirreled away in labs would wish that some of the aspects of the brain were a little simpler to study.
But what we do know, is that being trusting and being trustworthy can trigger the release of a chemical called oxytocin. Now, oxytocin has got mixed press over the years. There was a big flurry of research that said, oh, it's the love chemical, it's the cuddle chemical, it's all good, it's all about all the positive stuff. And that was certainly one aspect of it, as it were.
But then more research has certainly come about, which shows some of the other responses to oxytocin and how it works. And I think the biggest summary or the best summary currently of oxytocin is that it's a social salience magnifier, so it helps to magnify things. So there are occasions where it can lead to less trusting behaviors and less pro-social behaviors, depending, as I was saying, on what's gone before.
So that's why it's not so clear cut, but generally, we do see that if we are trusting to people, then something changes in us. Often an oxytocin increase, something changes in us, and something changes in the other person as well, which then, feeds back to us. So you definitely get this feedback loop occurring and almost there's a social contract.
And so then if someone breaches that social contract, that's where we get into trouble.
Adam Lacey: Got you. Social contract. You're taking me back to my days studying politics now. So feedback. This is really good. Social salience magnifier I just wrote down there and that idea, that trust is it's different in different contexts.
Of course, it is, it's obvious when you think about it, but actually having heard it put that way just makes a whole lot of sense. And so I guess from a practical point of view, me as a, as a leader or me working with colleagues as a peer, I guess one of the important things is leading with trust to, to start the process of that feedback loop.
So you have to take the first step almost in order to receive that level of trust back.
Amy Brann: Absolutely. As a leader, we're always encouraging leaders, managers, and everyone in organizations to proactively, intentionally organize themselves in a way that is building trust. So I always say, how is it that you work, that you get the things are important to you done?
Is it that you schedule things in your calendar? Is it that you have to-do lists? Whatever it is, borrow that strategy and use it for other things, pro-social things that are important to you too, like building trust with those around you. Because if it's not systemized, if it's not in your intention, we're very busy people typically, and cognitively overloaded and things then tend not to happen, which is a travesty.
We did a big literature search, I think it was last year, again, on trust, and looked at scientific disciplines and non-scientific disciplines and gathered all the research together and then distilled it all down into themes, and then ran all of these themes through the lens of what we know about the neural basis of trust and how the mind works and the prep response and things.
And then we put it all into a model as you do. And I think there was some core, some surprising things actually around what individuals can do to build trust. That unless you give it thought, you don't realize just how nuanced trust is and how you can build it up for people.
Adam Lacey: I really like that idea of a kind of a practical first foot forward in terms of instilling trust, and I guess for a lot of people it's very much a subconscious thing and some people will naturally be better at it than others.
And they probably don't realize they're better at it, but maybe they're just the people that seem to get on with more people, seem to find interaction easier and, and things like that. But guess if I'm struggling with that, what kinda practical things would you recommend? You mentioned putting things on the todo list, but what would those things be?
Amy Brann: Absolutely. What should we put on the to-do list? Yes. So, uh, I'll share three that I think are slightly more unusual concepts that link to trust. So the first. Fairness. So consider if what you're doing is fair to all, because one of the most common challenges we hear about in organizations is it just, it wasn't fair.
What they did wasn't fair, and what they mean is, I perceived it not to be fair, which is a really critical piece for leaders to understand because in their mind, they believe they're being fair a lot of the time. Not always. Sometimes everyone does things that perhaps is not gonna work if it were the case for all but it's our responsibility to frame everything that we do. And so when something is potentially gonna be contentious, it might be a promotion, it might be something as silly as leaving your cup in the sink, but the number of organizations that have difficulties interpersonally because someone is not tidying up the kitchen and it doesn't feel fair.
Why should I be the one having to wash up their cup again? So proactively acting in a fair way, or framing everything that you do so that people have got the best chance to perceive it as fair would be my first tip. The second is around humility. And we've spoken a lot about humility, but it is still not fully understood by many people and they're often quite grouped in terms of who doesn't get it and who does get it.
But um, if I just unpack it a little, the first thing with humility we found useful for people is to just acknowledge that they're not perfect. Some people can't do that. Some people don't want to admit to others that they have imperfections, but if you can't admit that you aren't perfect and you won't always get everything right, then it's very hard to apologize when you do get things wrong.
But there is huge strength and there is a lot of research now to being able to say, I'm not perfect. I have made a mistake. I am sorry for that and this is what I'm doing. To try and not make that mistake again, builds trust and it builds reliability. And if someone is not able to recognize that they are not perfect, then they become very difficult to work with and very difficult to trust because you don't know whether they realize that they've made a mistake or whether they would admit whether or not they've made a mistake.
And then the third one is to be opportunistic. So we can schedule a lot of stuff and we should schedule a lot of stuff, but we should even schedule time to be thoughtful and kind and look at our past week or our upcoming week, and just think for a moment. Is there any way I could do something that is unexpected, that is going to be nice to someone?
It's gonna be helpful, it's gonna be thoughtful. It's gonna be kind, and they can be tiny, tiny things. But when you go out of your way, go over and above, when you do anything that costs you something and everything that I've talked about and everything that, almost everything that we'd link to trust normally has some cost associated with it to the individual.
But when we do that, then we're saying to other people, we're willing to do things that cost us something to benefit you and that helps to build trust.
Adam Lacey: Amazing. Fairness, that got me thinking about, you mentioned a job interview, so would a good example there. If there's multiple positions, people going for a position and they're all internal candidates going for a promotion, putting in place a interview process that maybe doesn't involve some of their direct line managers or something like that, so that it's a more objective.
Way of running an interview say, to bring that fairness about that sort of practical thing is, what I'm thinking is, is that a good example of I completely butchered?
Amy Brann: No, no. I think so. What jumped into my head as you were speaking was we've, we've had some scenarios in the past where companies want proposals and attending process to be really fair and really transparent, and so they think that by organizations just removing their logo or their name from.
An application to something that makes it fair. And organizations do this in a similar way by saying, let's block out the name and perhaps the age, or perhaps the sex, or perhaps any other identifying data about someone. And that makes it fair. And I almost don't want people to get premature closure around fairness because yes, there are things that we can do that can.
But that doesn't completely make it fair, and it doesn't necessarily make it fair in the eyes of the beholder. So there could be a huge number of other variables. For example, if you take people look at it, not even from a neurodiversity perspective, but just from a diversity perspective, there will be some people whose strength is in writing proposals or writing c.
You know, maybe they've had help. Whatever it is, it could just be their strength. There'll be other people that could be a far better candidate, but actually they're rubbish at writing cvs. But the job you're employing them for isn't to write cvs, so possibly not the best metric for evaluating them. And I know we get into sort of familiar challenges, but I think wrestling with fairness, you just need to get into the meat of it and communicate.
Adam Lacey: I guess it's, it's being conscious and aware, isn't it? And it's being aware of your own bias and your own preferences and making sure that they don't inform some of those decisions.
Amy Brann: Yes. Wherever possible thinking about it. Yeah.
Adam Lacey: And then humility. I wrote down the word vulnerability, which I think is just so important in, in any leadership position.
So showing that you're not superhuman and showing that. You're vulnerable to, uh, things that happen and not completely in control all the time. I definitely have seen that work in the past, and if I think of some of the best leaders and managers who I've worked for, a lot of them are very, have been very open and accepting and know that they have limitations and, and that kinda thing.
And then, yeah, be thoughtful and kind. I was just thinking of different ways to implement that in terms of just making sure. You send a compliment when somebody does something? Well, that's something I learned that from a leadership book many years ago, and it's something that's always stuck with me. It's if someone does something good, then just tell 'em they've done something good.
That kindness costs you very little as a person, but often means a lot to the person receiving the compliment.
Amy Brann: I completely agree, and my husband teased me about this once because when I'm out and about and I see a woman looking good, I'll often say, oh, you look fantastic in that dress, especially if it's something a bit different or it's in a bit of a different context and the number of times a woman then turns around to me and goes, Oh my gosh.
Thank you so much for saying that. I was really unsure about whether to wear this or whatever it might be, and they're just tiny, tiny little things, incidental, taking a cupcake to someone just because you know they had a tough week the last week. Sending a link to an article that someone might find interesting.
There's so many ways that just are nice and kind and don't cost us anything or cost us very little, but can just change someone's state and yeah, be helpful.
Adam Lacey: Yeah. Brilliant. I really like that. That is three really good ways to cultivate, nurture, and build up trust. So I maybe wanna go down a slightly darker path and talk about what happens in the mind when trust is broken or abused.
Let's talk about the bad stuff because that's really important as well.
Amy Brann: It can happen so quickly as you identified. And it's really heartbreaking the number of ways that organizations break trust with their people and they don't know that they're doing it. So I had a friend once who just started a new job and he was so excited about this new job.
He'd worked for a really long time. It was like a second job out of, uh, a degree. And for his job, he needed two different monitors in order to do his job well, just two monitors on his table. And he asked his employer if he could have this second monitor and they said no, and he'd explained to them why he needed it.
He did a sort of trading type role that I don't understand at all, but required visibility of two screens and it's what he's always had before. And the screen would've cost what? Maybe 50 quid? I don't know. And they said no. And immediately he lost all trust in them and the consequence was, any engagement that he'd built up in the previous couple of months before he was appointed and in the first couple of weeks with the onboarding, all of that engagement was just gone because he's like, they won't even give me the equipment I need to do my job properly. Any discretional effort was out the window. There are so many ways that organizations can break this trust, and what happens is we go into a self-preservation mode.
A good part of it is that we go, okay, you are not rooting for me. You're not willing to self-sacrifice for me. You're not on the same team as me. I get it. Okay. So I will protect myself over here and align myself with my tribe, who will protect me, if we think evolutionary terms, when the going through of its forming times, this is what we are going back to.
Okay, I need to protect myself. But the added negative that occurs that you, again, you see so frequently is it changes our moral code. So if you have wronged me, Adam, I then suddenly justified wronging you. And just think about organizations who've fired people. Uh, for whatever reason, there's been a reshuffle.
They've tried to do it as best they can. The individual feels it's unfair. They don't feel that this has been handled well. They take half of the office equipment with them when they leave. Would they describe themselves as a thief? No. Have they ever stolen major items before? No. But suddenly they're permitted to take what's owed to them.
Adam Lacey: Yeah, they just don't return that laptop or, uh, the stapler goes missing it.
Amy Brann: It's all of those things people know who have definitely done that.
Adam Lacey: Yeah.
Amy Brann: But people would never go a shop and leave the shop without paying, would they?
Adam Lacey: Exactly, no exactly, it yeah it alters your perspective entirely doesn't it? That's fascinating. There's so much of this in the news at the moment, big tech companies laying off tens of thousands of people and very quickly the rhetoric around.
These mega firms that have got hundreds of millions of investment or have IPO'd, at huge numbers has changed very quickly from something quite positive to something very negative. Grew too quickly, irresponsible with hiring. We're paying too many high salaries and all this kind of stuff, and it's fascinating how, like you say, on the drop of a hat, trust can be completely lost versus how long it takes to build that up.
Your friend might have been looking at that, have looked at that brand a while ago and the interview process may have been a couple of months, and then the onboarding, and then, one tiny thing, and then it's like, ok, well this company really doesn't care about me. They can't spend quid on a monitor, then what am I doing here?
The effect or the impact on that on a company is enormous. And I've been in companies before where there's been redundancies and uh, it's very, very tough on the remaining people because everyone who's left, even if they haven't lost their jobs, have lost their faith, or lost their trust very quickly in the leadership's ability and, and all the rest of it.
And yeah, it's a very, very tricky thing to navigate. How do you avoid losing that trust, I guess don't do all these things, but are there any tips you have? Sorry, I'll stop.
Amy Brann: No, no. There's one tip that I think trumps all the others because we are human.
Just as others make mistakes, just as maybe we don't feel we make some of the big mistakes that some of these leaders have chosen to, but whatever our own part in things there's one thing that's really, really useful and that is to frame things. So because our minds are busy, they have lots of data coming in all of the time, and because our states vary so much, The way the data comes in is so easily influenced by our context, by what's gone before, by what's coming up.
So if as leaders, as managers, as as parents, as spouses, as friends, if we can frame things in the way that they are intended then it gives, again, it's the best chance, but it gives the receiver of whatever information or experience the best chance to process it in a positive way. So, you know, redundancies very difficult situations often so poorly communicated so many gaps and so much lack of compassion.
And those gaps definitely need plugging and the honest, real communication, the humility to say, you know what? We screwed up and we're sorry, and these are the consequences. Rather than, oh, we've just decided to do a reshuffle and it's good here. It's just not real. And people can see through that. So, yeah, lots of components to it, but framing things, putting the, your intention around what you are doing as best you can and being real and honest and all the other things about that.
Adam Lacey: Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Um, yeah, real honest humility. I guess going back to the three things you mentioned earlier, being fair as well, or I guess perceived fairness. Just, make sure it's clear that you have whatever action you are doing that could be perceived as a, a break in trust, you've thought about it in a fair and decent way, and , you act with humility and admit your mistakes and, and all that kinda stuff.
And there's other things that you can do. If there are complex problems,
Amy Brann: if you genuinely believe that others may have, uh, a better idea than what you have, then you can say, look, this is my best plan based on everything that we've gotta do, based on the situation, whatever it might be.
It could be just regarding a, a small project. This is my plan. Has anyone got a build on it? Has anyone got a better plan? Because then you are laying out your rationale, so you're being transparent, which enables people to then see. Even if they don't agree with your outcome, unless they've got a better idea, unless they've, they can see some flaws in your data or whatever it might be they can't, they can't hold it against you and they can't well they shouldn't shift their moral and behaviors as a result. So I think transparency's another core piece of the puzzle, which again, organizations can shy away from and self protect.
Adam Lacey: Yeah, I guess bringing people into the discussion, making them almost part of the decision is a thing there, isn't it? Again, that's really good. Amy, what I'm gonna challenge you here. What one piece of advice can you give in regards to trust? So if there's something you want the listeners of this episode to take away about trust and to start putting into practice, is there one thing that you think if you do this you'll build, maintain, retain, trust more effectively.
Amy Brann: Yeah. It would be an exercise. So there's a lot of great evidence around something called a loving kindness meditation, and you could do various gradients of this. The very easiest version would be, which is a sort of match up between this and something else, but would be to step into the shoes of others.
So every day, step into the shoes of a colleague or someone important in your life and just try and see situations through their eyes, especially important situations that will give you more intel to then respond in a way that is more likely to be demonstrating trust.
Adam Lacey: Brilliant. Take a walk in someone else's shoes. Yeah. I like that. And, um, so difficult to do though. It's really difficult to put aside your existing understanding of different things and think about. I guess one of the, one of the things I'm thinking here is, and you mentioned it before, but it's access to information.
So if you're more senior in a business, you probably have more access to more information, more context, more of the, I dunno, more the numbers, say financial figures or whatever. And then trying to put yourself in the, or in the shoes of someone that won't have access to that, but just maybe sees the decisions that have been made off the back of that context, is perhaps a really interesting way to think about framing and how you're gonna come across when you make decisions or changes that are gonna impact people.
Amy Brann: Yeah. I'm listening to you reflect things back and I'm hearing the complexity of it, Adam and I think the reality is when we're dealing with complex human beings, having a healthy respect for the fact that these situations are complex is wise, because often we reduce things down to do we trust them or do they trust us?
And it's far more complex than that and nuanced. And often it depends on what we're asking, whether we're trusted or trustworthy in and at different times. So having that more gradiated view of it all and proactively trying to build trust in the various areas of our life, I think is a smart move.
That's brilliant. Amy, thank you so much. I won't take up any more of your time on trust unless there's anything more you want to chip in. But I will ask you where can people find out more about what you do?
Synaptic potential dot com is a good place to start. And I think you mentioned, I've written some books, which you can find on the amybrann.com website, and I'm on LinkedIn.
I love connecting with people who have got interesting thoughts, different thoughts, similar thoughts on LinkedIn. So those are all good places.
Adam Lacey: I'm reading, I say I'm reading, I'm actually listening to your book Engaged and there was a term, that came up earlier today when I was listening. Brain Plasticity, and it was mentioned, and I assume it's covered later in the book.
Gimme a one minute on brain plasticity. Cause it triggered something in my mind. I was like, oh, I wonder what that is.
Amy Brann: Oh, we talk about brain plasticity all the time. So it's neuroplasticity. It's one of the fundamental properties of the brain. That means that it can change. If our brain wasn't plastic, as used to be thought, they thought it became fixed around age 25, but then we wouldn't be able to learn anything new.
We wouldn't be able to change at all. So it's the opposite of someone saying, oh, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. You absolutely can. The brain, the neurons, the fundamental cells change physically. You get increased density of white matter and gray matter that will be coming up later, but the brain changes and it's in nature.
Adam Lacey: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Great. Thank you so much. And yeah, I can definitely recommend Amy's books, available on Amazon and other good places. And there're yeah, audio versions as well.
Thank you so much for joining us, Amy. It's been a really, really interesting discussion. And, um, yeah, we hope to, chat about something else soon.
Amy Brann: Wonderful. Thanks Adam. I love chatting.