The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 250 - Just Trust Me

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: It's time for everyone's favorite segment of The Long and The Short Of It...

Pete: ...Drum-roll...

Jen: "You know what drives me crazy?"

Pete: Featuring Jen Waldman. I wonder if it's everyone's favorite segment or just our favorite segment. I'm excited.

Jen: Well, let me tell you, Pete. What drives me crazy is when someone says to me, "Just trust me."

Pete: Ah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright, alright, I can catch this. I can catch what you're throwing. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Alright, Jen, what's happened? Someone said this to you recently and it's tipped you off the edge?

Jen: I've just become aware of it a little more recently. I'm not exactly sure why, I'm just paying particular attention to when someone says, "Just trust me," or, "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about." It drives me crazy for so many reasons. There was no inciting incident here. It's not like there was some recent event. I've just been thinking about it a lot. Maybe because I'm raising a teenage daughter, and I'm aware of when someone says, "Just trust me," to her. And I'm like, "But don't. Just don't. Like, why?"

Pete: Interesting.

Jen: And I also recently have been catching up on Adam Grant's podcast, ReThinking, so it's just sort of like in my consciousness, and I thought it might be fun to unpack with you...

Pete: Yes.

Jen: ...why we shouldn't just trust people.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I feel like there's like each word in this sentence bears unpacking. You know? Like, the thing that is getting in my grill at the moment, just hearing you say it, is the "just," you know? The like "just," it feels so dismissive of anything the other person might be thinking or saying or any challenge they might have. I guess my immediate reaction to this whole sentence (other than the word "just" making me feel uncomfortable) is like, it feels like a response someone would give when they can't be bothered dealing with a challenging question or someone who's seeking more information or has a provoking insight that might go against what this person has said. Is that a fair assumption, do you think?

Jen: Yes. I mean, yes, and...yes, and so many things.

Pete: And all the things. Yeah, all the things.

Jen: Yes, it will often come on the heels of someone being challenged or a person asking a question. It's a way of throwing status around, I find.

Pete: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jen: It is a way of protecting oneself from the possibility that you might be wrong. It's a way of not having to show your work.

Pete: Right. Right, right, right, right. It also feels like frustration in action. You know?

Jen: Uh-huh.

Pete: I'm sure I'm guilty of saying this. And the thing that comes to mind for me, when I would say this, is something like if Tracey and I were driving somewhere we'd never been before and she was like, "Are you sure you're going the right way, according to the GPS?" And I might get frustrated and say something like, "Would you just trust me? I know where we're going," even though I have no idea where we're going. So like, I could hear myself saying this when I'm frustrated or anxious or overwhelmed by a situation and I'm like, "I can't talk through this right now. Can you just...," so I feel like I have to call myself out, that I'm sure I've said this. I just, for some reason navigating and driving, that seems to be the place I could definitely see myself using this.

Jen: I'm laughing so hard because the navigation in the car is the number one cause of arguments in my marriage.

Pete: Like, "I've driven a car before, but I appreciate your feedback and I will be sure to take it on board." I know, I haven't got the patience for that when I'm driving. I'm with you. I feel like this is a universal challenge.

Jen: Oh my gosh, that is so funny. Okay, the other piece of this...now that you have suggested we break this down word by word, I'm kind of obsessed with that idea.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: The notion that trust would be something that's just casually handed out, "Just trust me." Trust is something that you earn...

Pete: Right.

Jen: ...with your actions, with your behaviors, with your words. Trust isn't something you can demand of someone else. It's something that someone else actually gives you. You can't ask for it.

Pete: So true.

Jen: You can aim for it. You can seek to be more trustworthy. You can put actions into place that help people to trust you. But you can't demand that someone simply trust you because you say so.

Pete: So true. And trusting someone is actually really hard for a lot of people, like really hard.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Which is why (back to my word, back to "just") that feels like why it's so frustrating, is because to say, "Just trust," is just, it's saying like, "Here's the simplest thing in the world. You've just got to do that. You know?" And you're like, "But that is not a simple thing at all. It is actually really difficult." And to your point, it requires you to have earned it. The fact that you just said that to me, actually makes it diminish the trust, almost, in the relationship that we have.

Jen: Exactly. Yeah, usually there's a trust problem if someone says, "Just trust me."

Pete: Right, right. Ooh, interesting. Yeah.

Jen: Okay, and then let's move on to the third word, which is "me".

Pete: Yeah. Tell me more.

Jen: And this is where I tend to have the biggest hang ups.

Pete: Oh, interesting.

Jen: As you know, Pete, and as some of our listeners know, in the Gretchen Rubin Four Tendencies framework, I am a Questioner.

Pete: Ah, yes. Yes, yes.

Jen: And so, I question whether one person's belief or experience is actually enough to just trust.

Pete: Oh, listeners, if you could see Jen's face right now, she looks disgusted and so frustrated. It's so good. That's so funny. Yeah, "Just trust me, the one individual who apparently has all of the undisputable facts and knowledge about this particular situation." I could see how that might rub a Questioner the wrong way.

Jen: Yeah. And then, since we're parsing the sentence, I guess the next question is, what is the punctuation mark at the end of this sentence? Is it a period? "I assert that you should just trust me." Is it an exclamation point? "I emphatically declare that you should just trust me." Or is it a question mark? "Just trust me?"

Pete: No, definitely not the latter. I feel like when people say this, it's a full stop. It's a period, as you call it in America.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I...

Jen: What do you call it?

Pete: Maybe we also call it a period...I call it a full stop.

Jen: Should I trust you on that?

Pete: Just trust me, Jen, we call it a full stop. Period, I think, is an American thing. Anyway, period, full stop, I think it's one of those, a period/full stop. Because like I was saying earlier, I guess, it's someone frustrated and trying to end the conversation, in my mind.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: So it's like, "How do I put an end to this conversation and this discussion?" I suspect it usually comes from a place of fear and like anxiousness or overwhelm, in my mind. And so it's like, "I need to stop this conversation as quick as possible. How can I do that? I don't even think about what I'm saying," I'm sure this is just like a natural reaction that people have, "Just trust me. And that should kill the conversation."

Jen: I think I prefer full stop, based on what you just said. That feels a lot more accurate than period.

Pete: Is full stop...have you heard that before? Is that a thing?

Jen: Yeah, I've heard it. But I've never assigned it to a punctuation mark.

Pete: Oh, a punctuation...yeah, okay. Yeah, so I just had to quickly look it up. So, "In American English, 'period' is the term for the punctuation mark used to end declarative sentences. In English, the mark is usually called a 'full stop'."

Jen: Huh.

Pete: "Neither term is right or wrong." So, we're both right. There we go.

Jen: I trust you now.

Pete: Great, because it wasn't me. It was Google. I guess we trust Google.

Jen: Hmm. Okay, so I am hoping that the listeners have had a good chuckle and see themselves in this conversation, on either side of the conversation. So my next question is, how can we do better than just telling someone to trust us and ending the conversation?

Pete: There's obviously a number of different directions or alternatives one could think about. Like in the direction of, if it's coming from a place of frustration and, "I need to end this conversation because I'm trying to concentrate on where to get a car park," just a hypothetical example that definitely didn't happen on the weekend, then I might need a shorthand to be like, "Hey, I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed right now. Could you just let me concentrate?" You know? Like, something like that is so much more healthy and true than like, "Just trust me. I know how to get a car park." Right?

Jen: Right.

Pete: So that's like the slightly, you know, slightly comical but also very real example. And then the other one is I think the more where you're going, which is, how do we help one another remove that tick of, "Just trust me," and instead say...I like your idea of saying, earlier, show the work. Like, "Here's the reasons why I've come up with this conclusion."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Or, "Here is why I believe this is the path forward. Like, let me show you my work." And there doesn't have to be like an exhaustive list of resources. It doesn't have to be a bibliography, like we used to have to do in our essays. It could just be...what a great word, by the way, "bibliography". It could just be like, "Come and see me after class, and I'll share with you some resources." right? Like, we're opening up our "work" to others. I feel like that's what we want to be able to do.

Jen: Yeah. It's also reminding me of something I say sometimes in creative work, which is, it's really helpful to predict a flop, or to like get ahead of asserting that you're right by saying, "I could be wrong about this," or like, "This might be the worst idea in the world," or, "I'm not 100% sure," or, "From what I've looked at," or, "From what I've read, here's my understanding." It feels like we can come up with quite a lot of scripts to help us avoid putting our foot down like that.

Pete: I love all of those. And like, in my mind, one of the ones...I think I use this a lot, is if I finish a sentence or if I'm in a workshop and I share an idea, I'll often ask, "Does that make sense? Like, are you clear on what I'm trying to articulate?" And sometimes people go, "Yeah, makes perfect sense." And other times they go, "Huh. I have a question about this," and I'm like, "Great."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So it feels like all of these are, I guess, the opposite of the full stop. Right? There's an openness to conversation and dialogue. Whereas, "Just trust me," it feels like it's like, "I just slammed the door in your face. We are no longer talking about this."

Jen: Yeah. I just finished reading this book, which I told you about right before we started recording, called Awaken Your Genius...it's so good...by (I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly) Ozan Varol, who also wrote one of my favorite books, Think Like a Rocket Scientist. And in it, he shares that he was giving a lecture in a college lecture hall, and someone in the room raised her hand and said, "I am lost." And he said that, in that moment, he wanted to give her a standing ovation because she had just performed such an act of service to everyone else in the room.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Thankfully, he was not so stubborn as to say, "Well, just trust me."

Pete: Yes.

Jen: "You'll find your way." Instead, it opened up room for questions and conversations. And it definitely takes both parties being open to having the conversation, but wow, we make so much more progress that way.

Pete: So I'm recognizing...before I say this, I feel like I need this disclaimer...I'm recognizing that at the moment, I have a tendency to try and fit various aha moments into leadership skills, because I spend so much time thinking about leadership skills. And one of them, in particular, that I'm nerding out on a lot at the moment is humility. So like with that disclaimer said, there's probably me coming up with some confirmation bias here. However, I feel like what we're describing is having a level of humility...

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: ...to be aware of the fact that I don't know everything. Right? Like that is, in my mind, humility in action, is a willingness to share an idea or a thought or give a class or a lecture and have the humility to go, "There's probably a bunch here that I don't know. There's probably a risk that I haven't communicated this in the most effective way that I could have. And so, if someone says, 'I am lost,' how do I respond?" And in my mind, what you described is someone who acted with humility, to go, "That is such a gift. Thank you for sharing that. Let me explain. Because I realize I'm not the genius that knows everything, and I'm not going to shut down this conversation with a full stop/period. But actually, I have the humility to go, 'Okay. I obviously could explain this better. Or let's step back and like look at this through a different example.'" So I just, I think that's such a great example of humility in action.

Jen: Yeah, it takes confidence to be humble.

Pete: Right. Bob Iger, in his book The Ride of a Lifetime (I'll put it in the Box O' Goodies), he literally talks about "confident humility". And it's almost a weird two words to see next to each other, when you first see it. But he talks about the confidence to be able to stand in his executive room and go, "I don't necessarily know the best answer to move forward here. Can you help me, as a team, and we might be able to find something out?" Like there's a confidence in humility, yes. Yes, yes, yes.

Jen: This distinction of demanding that people trust you, and then expressing confident humility which allows people to trust you, seems to jive with something that I hear from people in the leadership space, which is, you have a choice to be a boss or to be a leader. And the boss says, "Just trust me." And the leader says, "Let me see if I can help you understand my perspective."

Pete: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And this is, I think, why (this is a whole different rabbit hole) like leadership is a choice and a skill, not a title and a status. And I think we often conflate the two.

Jen: Indeed. Indeed, we do. I definitely trust you on that.

Pete: The other thing that feels worth throwing into the mix, while we're giving book recommendations because we've thrown a few out in this episode, is I feel like Adam Grant's book, Think Again.

Jen: Oh, so good.

Pete: It's a book on humility. Right?

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: It's like, it's a book on doing the opposite of, "Just trust me." It's a book on saying, "I don't even know if I trust myself. I am going to rethink and challenge my own assumptions and assertions through the lens of humility, because I recognize that I don't know everything, nor do I have to. And so, where might I be wrong? Where are my gaps? Where are my blind spots? Can I think like a scientist?" It's like, all of this is contained within this great, great book, which is really just a book on humility, I think.

Jen: I want to also add to the Box O' Goodies, on the Adam Grant Think Again train, a very recent episode of ReThinking, which I actually listened to this morning. And what I love about it is the guest is so willing to say to Adam Grant, "No, I don't think you're right."

Pete: Amazing. I love it.

Jen: And he always shares that he's open to it. But this was like in a different way, where you could sort of hear him stumbling to figure out how to reorganize his thoughts in real time. And the episode is called Ambition vs. Aspiration with Agnes Callard. I will put it in the Box O' Goodies. It's a really good one.

Pete: Love it.

Jen: Just trust me, listeners. You should listen to it, because it will change your life. Just trust me on that.

Pete: Oh, please no. Please, no.

Jen: Okay, Pete? Just trust me.

Pete: Or, how about we pop it in the Box O' Goodies and if it feels like something that's interesting to you, you're welcome to check it out and ask us any questions or challenge us on any of the things that we've shared and asserted in this episode.

Jen: Hmm...yes. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.