hi everybody I'm Nikolai tangan the CEO of the Norwegian so wealth fund and today we have a bonus episode on trust and we have the world's leading expert on trust Rachel botsman here with me uh she's written two books what's mine is yours and who can you trust so I absolutely love the work you're doing um big thanks for for being here thank you it's nice to hear on a bonus episode well you are like a real you are like a real bonus so let's just k kick off with the with um with the basics here so what is trust what is trust um it's actually a very hard question um it's a word we use a lot but when you ask people to Define trust you'll never get the same answer so uh depending on the field some people will say it's an asset some people describe it as a currency or an attribute um some people might say it's a value but trust is a belief it's a belief towards someone or something um and what we're still figuring out is if the way we trust the someone a human and The Way We Trust as something are the same thing and the important thing once you ground yourself that trust is a belief all beliefs are highly subjective and contextual and it's the contextual piece around trust that is often missing in the conversation so you've probably heard people say oh I don't trust the media or I don't trust this politician I don't trust this tech company it's a completely useless conversation to be having because whenever we talk about trust we should follow up with to do what what is it we're trusting someone or something to do what is it we're not trusted to do because um unwanted trust is a problem why is trust so important um so it's funny I really struggle answering this question because um there's so many reasons so I've been studying this now for 15 years and what I've realized is that you cannot take risks you cannot Venture into the unknown you cannot navigate uncertainty without trust and it's interesting because when I first started studying trust I probably would have spoken more about the social glue the collaboration those components um but I've realized actually Innovation self trust this ability to cope with uncertainty to cope with not knowing is one of the most important roles of trust today so that's why I put the emphasis there

and today we have a bonus episode on trust and we have the world's leading expert on trust Rachel botsman here with me uh she's written two books what's mine is yours and who can you trust so I absolutely love the work you're doing um big thanks for for being here thank you it's nice to hear on a bonus episode well you are like a real you are like a real bonus so let's just k kick off with the with um with the basics here so what is trust what is trust um it's actually a very hard question um it's a word we use a lot but when you ask people to Define trust you'll never get the same answer so uh depending on the field some people will say it's an asset some people describe it as a currency or an attribute um some people might say it's a value but trust is a belief it's a belief towards someone or something um and what we're still figuring out is if the way we trust the someone a human and The Way We Trust as something are the same thing and the important thing once you ground yourself that trust is a belief all beliefs are highly subjective and contextual and it's the contextual piece around trust that is often missing in the conversation so you've probably heard people say oh I don't trust the media or I don't trust this politician I don't trust this tech company it's a completely useless conversation to be having because whenever we talk about trust we should follow up with to do what what is it we're trusting someone or something to do what is it we're not trusted to do because um unwanted trust is a problem why is trust so important um so it's funny I really struggle answering this question because um there's so many reasons so I've been studying this now for 15 years and what I've realized is that you cannot take risks you cannot Venture into the unknown you cannot navigate uncertainty without trust and it's interesting because when I first started studying trust I probably would have spoken more about the social glue the collaboration those components um but I've realized actually Innovation self trust this ability to cope with uncertainty to cope with not knowing is one of the most important roles of trust today so that's why I put the emphasis there

thank you it's nice to hear on a bonus episode

well you are like a real you are like a real bonus so let's just k kick off with the with um with the basics here so what is trust what is trust

um it's actually a very hard question um it's a word we use a lot but when you ask people to Define trust you'll never get the same answer so uh depending on the field some people will say it's an asset some people describe it as a currency or an attribute um some people might say it's a value but trust is a belief it's a belief towards someone or something um and what we're still figuring out is if the way we trust the someone a human and The Way We Trust as something are the same thing and the important thing once you ground yourself that trust is a belief all beliefs are highly subjective and contextual and it's the contextual piece around trust that is often missing in the conversation

so you've probably heard people say oh I don't trust the media or I don't trust this politician I don't trust this tech company it's a completely useless conversation to be having because whenever we talk about trust we should follow up with to do what what is it we're trusting someone or something to do what is it we're not trusted to do because um unwanted trust is a problem

why is trust so important

um so it's funny I really struggle answering this question because um there's so many reasons so I've been studying this now for 15 years and what I've realized is that you cannot take risks you cannot Venture into the unknown you cannot navigate uncertainty without trust and it's interesting because when I first started studying trust I probably would have spoken more about the social glue the collaboration those components um but I've realized actually Innovation self trust this ability to cope with uncertainty to cope with not knowing is one of the most important roles of trust today so that's why I put the emphasis there

why does it take so long time to build trust

um well I I would challenge that question because um most people have a natural propensity to trust okay um so most people will go into a situation and they won't say I don't trust you they'll be they'll wait for reasons signals we call them trust signals as to why they shouldn't trust that person okay so so the default is to trust

the default is to trust which is great

but it's certainly very quick to tear it down it's very quick to tear tear down very quick to tear down

um so there's a difference between what we call sort of transactional trust um which is very easy to turn tear down and relational trust which is built with experience it's built with information it's built over time and I think this is another mistake many organizations and companies and Brands they think about trust in a transactional sense and what they don't think enough about is this relational human component of trust which is actually harder to tear down so if a product fails me or if a service fails me and the way that company tries to solve the problem is transactional um it's very hard to trust it again if it's human and relational you can actually earn trust back

do we trust politicians to do what I'll challenge you with that question question

run the country

to run the country in a proper way in which country

well no not in this country and certain politicians so go back to context now just for the just for the context here we are now in the UK okay we are in the UK um there are certain politicians I trust to do certain things um but generally when we look at trust in government it is at an all-time low um when we

why why is it um

there's a whole host of factors but if you keep stripping them back um the central problem is to do with a line M that people no longer believe that the government's interests align with their best interests and that actually runs across demographics it runs across um education income class so it could be alignment could be I don't think the government does the right thing by my taxes to all the way through to I don't think the government does the right thing for education or my Healthcare so when you have a misalignment problem um is the deepest deepest trust problem to fix

when will you get it's interesting when will you get the happiness schools across Nations so Finland for instance SCH is very high one of the real differentiator there is that people trust the system right they trust the politicians that trust the that trust there is very that there is no uh corruption MH why so why is trust so important for happiness

so the day in the research around trust and happiness um I mean is very cultural I should say so the nordics do really well on this um part of a big component of trust and happiness where they align is um Community Collective interest so um in cultures that become not just hyper individualistic but narcissistic where there is a lack of belief in the collective social good they tend to be lower trusting cultures with lower scores of Happiness so one of the things I strongly believe is this lack of community this lack of collective interests this me over we is damaging happiness and it's damaging trust so you have to believe like in Finland like in Denmark that these social systems they serve you but they also create a greater sense of belonging to something bigger than your individual self and when that happens you generate trust and you generate happiness

what's happened to trust over time so where are we now compared to let's say 50 or 100 years ago

so that's another huge question um so one of the things that has been a thread through my work and why I'm sort of still studying trust is this central question of is trust in a state of decline or is it changing so is it going down like you see these graphs or is it pivoting and what I've seen is that actually when you think of trust through this lens you start to see Society in these shifts

so the way these shifts map at the highest level is what I describe as local trust so when people lived in small villages and communities and it was largely based on people that you knew highly interpersonal trust that trust is hard to scale so we invented institutions um institutions being physical institutions um mechanisms so things like contracts and insurance even Concepts things like trade unions and that was an incredible period of innovation those institutional mechanisms

technology came along um particularly networks and platforms social media and it distributed trust now we are not through that phase we're seeing the chaos that that's causing and we're already entering the fourth phase which I call Autos Sapient trust

so um the isest way Nicolai to visualize this is actually through sort of energy flows so if you imagine institutional trust upwards trust right we looked upwards to experts and regulators and referees distributed sideways I trust another person for information more than I trust the news and alter Sapient is another where it's through trust we won't even be able to make this distinction between whether we're trusting another person or whether we're trusting an intelligent machine so I find like imagining trust through these flow arrows is a really powerful way of sort of getting my head around all kinds of Dynamics and changes happening in society

so um explain to us the how the whole digital space and mobile phones and so on have changed this landscape and how it's gone from institutional trust to individual trust some examples

so it changed everything when it comes to trust so it fundamentally changed the way we could trust total strangers and connect with people and so when you can suddenly think very differently about supply and demand so I want something and you have that thing that thing might be a piece of information it might be a skill it might be time it might be love it might be a house that I want to rent and we can suddenly connect and facilitate trust through that technology you change the flow of value you change the flow of information you change the flow of relationships and we've seen how that creates innovation so everything from platforms like Alibaba and eBay Uber Airbnb um education platforms um we've seen what it creates but the problem is what happens when things go wrong

so uh Airbnb you trust people enough to let them stay in your house

yes but not when I'm there which is strange but maybe that's because I I don't really like I I trust to rent out my home when I'm not there but I don't like people being there when I'm home right which is kind of weird from a trust perspective

so it's why is it this way

um I think it's because uh it's not actually so a trust it's I don't really like strangers in my home um but I trust when I'm no way that they'll treat it with respect so and I've only had a couple of bad experiences but uh we won't go into those

what is going to happen with AI when are we going to start trust machines I mean do we trust machines

is another huge question I mean again I'd say trusting AI to do what right so I think at the moment the way most people think about AI is a tool it's something that sits open on their phone or on their desktop and they are using it for information so they have a question they put it into some let's just say chat GPT and it gives information um and that trust leap is happening really really fast

um I would say when you look at the data across most sectors um they don't trust it for decision making so Finance is a good example right so I trust it for information but to actually make the final decision um is a is a different trust leap but what we're seeing is that and I think the law is really interesting so um my husband's a lawyer and he's really interested in this space and we were talking about how a year ago um judges said you know lawyers cannot use AI to help prepare briefs and there's been a 360 turnaround on that in less than a year because what they're realizing is actually you know AI can search through data like the Panama papers great example right

so our initial reaction when something comes along there's a new technology particularly in high stakes high risk environments is to say no to reject it to not trust it and I think what is really interesting and slightly frightening is how fast those turnarounds are happening in different sectors

so let's talk about um trust in the workplace working from home yes what are the issues with trust there

so this is an interesting one um so let me try to unpack this on different levels um working from home can bring out the worst micromanagement in some people so it can actually trigger very low trust so and this is a two-way thing so this is both the employee and the boss so the employee might sit there going um I'm not sure this person trust me because when there isn't that face-to-face interaction it creates a vacuum it creates a gap and we form in our minds a narrative in that gap which is often not positive right

so no one sits there going oh yes my my boss really trusts that I'm working all the time they go I've got to demonstrate that I'm working right so you have all these kind of um productivity not hacks but PE performance like productivity performance we call it so people needing to demonstrate they on slack people staying on email longer that's the first problem right that people second guess whether they're trusted um

now in some scenarios that may not that may actually be true so um many bosses and leaders didn't grow up in the year of remote work right they physically had to come into the office they have not been taught even through the pandemic how do you manage people remotely how do you let go what are the things that you do as a boss that actually can be perceived as controlling by the other person so they will often signal things that they don't trust the other person to do so there's this really interesting tension that goes on that we don't really know how to fix yet

the second thing and the data is just coming starting to come through on this is how remote working is impacting interpersonal trust so can you really nurture trust virtually in the same way as you can face to face where can you I personally believe no because there is something that happens when two human beings so we could do this through a a a zoom call right or through the screen yeah we wouldn't feel the same kind of energy I couldn't read you in the same way um and with the very best technology in the world that human connection that human energy when you sit down with someone um is very hard to replicate virtually

and one of the things that worries me is whether we're losing this skill I mean I have leaders tell me all the time that they have huge cohorts of workers that are now uncomfortable sitting physically in a room with a client in a meeting not even in a contentious meeting just sitting and being with people because they're so used to the technology being the mediator and that for me is a really big worry

that is this an argument for being more in the office

um with purpose so I'm a huge believer in hybrid working I'm a huge believer in different types of work that happen at home and in the office I'm a huge believer in how it helps with inclusion especially as a woman with two young kids um but I think we are underestimating how we are losing a skill that it's a weird thing to say that people are uncomfortable being in a room with a group of people because is they're so their experience their way they're entering the workplace is being on their own in front of a screen looking at lots of people

well there's more social angst at at schools for instance um a lot of absence because of it I see it now on planes well that me maybe just because of me but uh people put their air plugs in don't want to talk to me uh has this anything to do with trust

I don't know if that's got something to do with trust but learning how to nurture trust and facil itate trust and also to be a lot of trust forms in moments of discomfort

what do you mean

so deep trust forms in those moments of vulnerability in those moments where something's got gone wrong when those moments where you're really listening to someone and trying to solve a problem and I don't have the data on this but how do those moments come about virtually where you really have to listen and show up for that person um so I worry that we're sort of going into these like micro moments of transactional relation relationships at work but these moments of deep trust aren't really forming

so what kind of moments are are these I mean what are the key moments to look out for in terms of building trust when something's gone wrong

when something's gone wrong um so that could be that a project has failed an investment has gone wrong um something people have been working on for years hasn't taken in the market um it could be someone's received a negative piece of media that their reputation's under attack there's so many different um reasons and causes but it's that moment where someone feels exposed

and to build trust then what do you do you so that you listen to them you understand them I mean just what do you do

well the first thing is is actually identifying what the real trust issue is for that person so often when there's a trust issue there's something that you're losing or you're worried about losing um and whenever humans think they're going to lose something their instinct is to want to control things right so that's why sometimes our knee-reaction in a crisis is not a good reaction because it's that feeling of put me back in control just put me back in control and so how you help that other individual identify First of what is the real trust issue here what is really at stake that's actually the first step because your interpretation of that as someone emotionally removed from the situation is going to be very different from the individual or the leader that is in the midst of the emotional crisis right so they're in the midst of the heat so that's where I start is actually helping them identify what the real issue is

and then the secondly thing they need to they need to feel seen they need to feel heard and then where many leaders and organizations go wrong is they get that listening phase right and then there is no action there's no support that follows through

and what kind of action should me

so it's it's how is literally that person held through this right so what kind of support do they need what kind of specialist support do they need who do they need at their side H how what needs to be taken away from them um what needs to be given to them um so the stakes don't even have to be that high you've probably sat through this right where you go through a performance review and um someone collects incredible feedback

I I hate them do you hate them

I hate them because I have had some really bad ones uh

so what's the worst thing that someone said in the performance review about you

that I was just completely and utterly useless and there was no qualification well there was a whole long list of things I had done you know wrong it was my it was my first job I mean the list was as long as a you know a roll of toilet paper

do you remember some of the things on the list

oh totally yeah

so I remember one but he got my you know I got my act together I kind of got my finger and I've worked hard ever since to uh prove the person wrong

so you tried to prove them wrong because you were angry or you just no no

it's just like I realized they were right I had been pretty useless and I just needed to you know to speed up and uh and perform and and you know deliver stuff yeah

so I had a performance review where a boss told me I was totally unemployable right

and um except when you went into academics

no and I said and he said I kind of mean that as a compliment and I said okay you got a qualify that right I'm unemployable but that is a compliment and um it actually led to a really interesting discussion which is that you know my natural thing is to go into systems to go into cultures and to see where they're broken um I want to fix things right I can see so my focus on sort of this was when I was Consulting on client delivery was secondary to wanting to fix the company right was but anyway um but then he didn't do anything with it right like so I I'm now sitting there thinking I'm unemployable I'm unemployable what am I doing in this organization like that's that's an example of like feedback with no catch right no support no follow through

yeah I am unemployable so he was right as well

so but well using eminently employable to me

but just um a bit more on um working from home and so on so digital productivity tracking tools like they use it's terrible right so they use that in in some countries we're not really you know quite rightly so and don't use them um uh in our company but what what do they do to people

they're awful I mean first of all I think if you're a company that has I mean and there's a spectrum right so there's some companies that are tracking your time online right um there's some companies that goes to the extrem of video cameras so they're filming what people are doing um others that are monitoring everything that people look at I mean these are all incredible signals of low trust um

and it's surveillance it's surveillance it's not monitoring it is surveillance right

so you know um one of the things though I have an issue with is what are you actually measuring because you're not really measuring value you're not really measuring productivity you're just measuring how people physically show up

yeah

and this is one of the worst ways to Value human beings it's the worst ways to get quality of work out of people you're just basically going back to factory days where people are clocking in and clocking out so um look it's it's a huge challenge for organizations I have a huge amount of empathy when you are trying to manage tens of thousands of people that are working remotely that aren't necessarily engaged that don't necessarily care about their jobs how do you monitor those people I would say if you have to implement any kind of surveillance system you've got a culture problem which stems from a lack of trust

what does it do to bring laptop into meetings

uh that's an interesting question um it depends so you know when you sit in those meetings and everyone has a laptop and then everyone is typing on that laptop and there's some meetings where you know people are actually taking notes because they're looking up they're looking like they're still engaged in the meeting and they're using that laptop as a tool within that meeting M but when people are there and they're not there what's the point of having the meeting um

I mean I think the laptops are worse than the phones in that sense um I think there is I I sometimes sit with people and I literally want to grab the phone out of their hand and throw it out the window because I don't think people realize that they're being rude I I really don't think they realize that they're signaling that you are not as important as the thing that's in their hand and you've probably had this situation right where you're talking to someone and then they look down and they start swiping they're not even typing right and what they're saying is you're boring you're not important I've disengaged

well true love is to be with somebody without looking at your phone

well TR yes true

um now I have a I have a a slogan which is that speed is a mindset and I think speed is very important now so what do you mean by that

uh that's that you can do pretty much everything twice as fast as as uh as you had planned or uh speed in organization how quickly you pick up the phone how quickly you answer an email uh and I think it's interesting the quicker you do things the more time you save if I answer an email within one minute yes it can be one sentence yes if it takes an hour it needs to be a paragraph and if it's a day it needs to be a page

agreed so you save time by being quick responsive

absolutely

now I read that you say somewhere that speed is the enemy of trust

yes

what is that

so I would argue I think what you're talking about there is responsiveness versus so you you you may respond quickly to emails um because what you're saying is in the Gap the person is wondering what you're thinking right

so you then why do you just explain to me why you think it's a sentence versus a paragraph

well because you'd be impressed by you'd be impressed by how quick how quickly I answer so I don't need to impress you by what I say

interesting okay but how thoughtful you thoughtful are you in the one sentence answer

always of course very thoughtful always thought

right so if you rush that there would be a problem

sure okay so there's a difference in sort of how quickly you respond to people I'm not saying that's bad for trust what I'm saying is when people don't slow down and they don't think about the information that they're sharing so you know sometimes someone sends you an article and you know they have not read that article but this happens to me all the time I think will be really useful to you and you dig in and you're like this is rubbish right because they they've seen the headline they've seen where it's being written that's an example of speed being the enemy of trust um when you give your information away too quickly

so guilty because sometimes I want the thing but you know when you're just like accept or reject and I try to go to press reject sometimes and then I get caught in a loop so I just accept it because I want to get to the thing right I'm really annoyed by the friction um banking um you know when you get those texts and it's like um UPS cannot deliver your package please click here and you just want to you want the package so you click there and you've suddenly given your credit card details to a scam right when you're not slowing down when there is no friction in those experiences what I call a trust pause that's really damaging for trust because you're giving your trust away too easily

and this is a huge problem because what technology wants to do is remove that friction right you speak to most entrepreneurs you talk to experience designers what they trying to do make things efficient make them quick make them seamless well if everything is frictionless our tolerance for friction goes down now I see this all the time right you know um self-service checkouts in the supermarket terrible design right like CU every three things you hit the person is coming to help you right now

so this is just an example I was in the supermarket the other day and this guy is like shouting at the machine right and then he's Bang the machine because he can't check out and I'm like dude you're trying to buy an 11 liter bottle of vodka whatever it is right someone has to say that you're old enough to buy it hitting the machine is not going to help he's like I I got to get out of here I'm why is this a self-service checkout it's just one example we see all the time like we have no patience for any kind of friction because everything has become so on demand so quick and so when we are slowed down we don't like it but slowing down helps us think about is this person is this product is this piece of information is this money I'm going to send is it actually worthy of my trust

and what's the relationship between empathy and Trust

so empathy is huge so when we look at um trustworthiness um the behavioral side of trust um we talk about someone's capability and someone's character and on the character side um social sciences have been studying for over 50 years why do you trust certain people why do you give them their trust and on the character side there are two high order traits the first is integrity and the second is empathy they carry equal import well actually they don't carry equal importance it depends on the situation so if you are a teacher you need very high empathy um if you're a lawyer you need very high integrity um

and then on the capability side we have reliability and competence and it's interesting because you need different amounts of these traits in different situations but empathy is interesting so when you say to leaders why do why do you think empathy is important they'll say well I think it's because it shows people that I'm a good listener this why here or um I think it demonstrates that I care and what's really interesting is that the most empathetic leaders often score very high on curiosity h and I find this fascinating

so why why is there a relationship there

because they ask questions mhm what you have to say is interesting to them what you think is important to them they're open to difference they're open to disagreement so I think empathy and this is just my opinion has sort of been rebranded in a way that isn't helpful so if you're a leader and you think of empathy I've got to demonstrate I can hear and listen to thousands of people that I'm in their shoes that's what empathy that's really hard to scale if as a leader you have to demonstrate that you are curious that you're generally interested in people's stories where they've come from why they're working from you what they want to achieve how they want to impact the company what they think that's I think much easier to sort of emulate the empathy so if people perceive you as curious they also think that you have a lot of EMP

yeah it's a sign that you care they and they trust you more yeah

because you're saying you're important to me what you have to say is I mean you're you're a curious person is this something that you try to do with people is just ask them questions where they go I haven't heard that before I've never been asked that before like those are actually ways of signaling empathy that you're there you're present you're interested in that person

why is consistency important you write that in a in a recent newsletter

so um it's a we read Atomic habits yeah so there's a line in there um by James CLE where he says um intensity makes a great story but it's consistency that leads to progress now he's talking about that in the context of habits but he could be writing about trust

so leaders not just leaders people who show up in a big intense way so this could be in a family situation right so you know the relative that never picks up the phone you can't rely on them but they show up for Christmas with the big gift right that's intensity or the leader that is often late is really unpredictable their energy changes all the time but give them a Leadership Summit and they are they are there right they're going to show up that's intensity but where real trust forms is the person the friend the grandparent whoever it may be who shows up consistently that remembers the small things that you said six months ago that were important to them

so what I want to what people often conflate with this idea is you can be an intense person and you can be consistent you can have bad days and you can have good days you can have high striz days where you achieve loads of things and low stri days where you get nothing done you can still be consistent in the way you show up for people so what I mean by consistency is people know what to expect of you they know what the experience of you is going to be and it's those inconsistent leaders family members friends we like I just I don't know how is this person going to show up how they going to react how are they going to respond are they going to show up that really damages trust

when things go wrong when we make mistakes what does that do to trust

so what kind of mistakes you think you have when you ask that question

uh well it could be all kinds of things um well let I know I'm a CEO I made a big mistake I admitted in front of the whole organization so I think if you if there is an

admission and then tied to that admission there is accountability um because sometimes leaders can admit mistakes but they don't actually own the mistake afterwards right so um I'm responsible I'm accountable and then really important this is what we're going to do to change this so accountability to fixed trust has to move to change an action um and where many companies make the mistake and we don't

I'm so but if you so if you do that do people trust you more or less

they can trust you more so it can actually have a positive effect on trust yeah um

now where it backfires is it can be a leader it can be an entire company uh it can be a small trust breach or a massive crisis and we we see this all the time they point to the system so um oh it had nothing to do with me or any individuals it was the algorithm or it was a product failure or something happened to the data and you see companies go through this right whether it's Boeing whether it's Facebook meta right it's very hard for those companies to recover from those trust crises until there is accountability in the character side of trust not the capability side of trust

so it's not we're going to fix the product we're going to fix the system we're going to fix the algorithm it's what are you going to do in the culture particularly around the Integrity piece that ensures me this isn't going to happen again and it amazes me how long it can take companies to arrive at that point of saying you know what this wasn't just a capability issue actually there's something in the culture and the character of the way we're measured the way we're incentivized the way you know we're held accountable to each other our reporting structures regulation whatever it might be the problem lies there not in the product or the service or the system

moving on to the the fund where where I work um now we run capital on behalf of the whole Norwegian population what do you think is the key to build trust

well let me let me turn the ti tables on you because I have an answer but I'm intrigued in your because you must spend time thinking about this questione responsibility right and I would argue it's probably the thing you think about or should think about the most right what do you think is the most important thing

well I think it is to build knowledge because about the fund and what we do because what we see is that people who know about the fund they trust us more um we even see that the people who listen to our podcast trust the fund more than the people who don't listen to the podcast MH um when we see various age groups and so on it's just consistent that knowledge builds trust

yes uh we need to be consistent we need to be uh we need to do things according to our mandate uh and we need to communicate correctly and of course we need to behave you know we need to do the right things

so the way I hear that is the first thing that you're talking about is familiarity yeah so um we tend to trust things that we are more familiar with um and that can be because what you're doing is you're taking something that is unknown and you're making it known to people so that's the first step um the second thing that you're talking about I think is openness so you're not talking about transparency what you're talking about is funds are often well it is also transparency

because we are the most transparent Fund in the world

in what sense

that we make information available to everybody that we are uh that we tell everybody how we are voting at various uh annual meetings the these kind of things

okay let's come back to that CU it be interested in if if there's anything you can't tell people if you don't tell people and they want to know but let's come back to that and I would say the behavioral piece that you're talking about is the Integrity piece so I would say and this goes with the openness piece the thing with funds is that 99.9% of people don't know how they work right they're these mysterious things that are run by powerful wealthy people how do they make money but more importantly how does that money serve me

so this gets back to where we began right with politicians and government like how do the funds interest align with the citizens of Norway right not the wealthy and the elite but the average person that they believe that in some way the fund is benefiting their life and it's a mistake we also we don't tell those stories right so we tell the stories of growth um we tell the stories of how well we're managing the wealth but how that wealth is positively impacting people's lives what it unlocks what it enables Norway to do how that impacts my life for the better that's the piece that often gets missed in the trust story

so um the people on the inside they will talk about performance right so the fund is performing really well and therefore we should be trusted but those percentage points points those increases they don't mean anything to the average person so the trust bridge is The Narrative of what's in it for me how does this benefit me

talking which we have tens of thousands of young people listening to this podcast what should they do so that people trust them more when they're joining a new job or and and in any situation what's the key you are 20 years old and you're thinking about your career and your life how do you build that trust that's trust Capital

interesting um so I would say early on in your career um you're trying to demonstrate your capability on equal footing with your character your capability is what's going to get you an interview your character is what's going to get you the job and what you see often and this isn't just the fault of young people it's the people interviewing them um it becomes about their experience what they're qualified to do and both sides often don't communicate their interests their motives their intentions why do they really want that position um

and so I think in an interview situation um when you're trying to demonstrate who you are and what you can bring thinking about that capability side and thinking about that character side is really important and then in the early stages of your career um I honestly think one of the most important traits is reliability it's how you show up and behave over time and you talk to leaders um and this is anecdotal and managers and they'll say their pet peeve is inconsistency right like oh I don't know if I can trust them that they're going to get this thing done or they're always late or

I rarely speak to people these days and they Rave about their teams and these cohort it's usually a list of complaints around changing attitudes in the workplace and it used to be that people were lucky to have a job here and now they think we're lucky to have them and the power shifted that relationship between employer and employee is never going back and you have to understand that P power Dynamic to really understand how trust works so this idea that now a young person is going to be deferential to the organization to the leader that they're going to show up every day and demonstrate they really want that job it's just not the way power and Trust works so as a young person I'm not saying mean differential but if you are reliable and you are consistent that trait will really shine through

and make the effort to show up in person

absolutely

uh Rachel you have shown up in person you are clearly very reliable I know a lot more about trust than I did an hour ago big thanks for coming thank you all the best thanks

thank you