The TrustBuilder Podcast

Welcome back to The TrustBuilder Podcast, where hosts Scott and Brad, along with special guest Morgan Hartanov, tackle the tough questions surrounding trust and team dynamics.
In this critical Episode 5, we dive into the question: "When Teams Stop Talking... Is It a Trust Issue?" We explore how silence can be misread and when a lack of communication signals a deeper problem within the team or relationship.
The conversation covers:
The difference between comfortable silence (a sign of strong trust) and ominous silence (an indicator of a breakdown).
Why leaders should treat silence like a warning light on a dashboard - a signal that something needs to be addressed.
The connection between cooperative trust and the need for teams to engage in conflict and repair to become truly robust.
If you are a leader, consultant, or team member looking to understand and resolve critical communication breakdowns, this episode will give you the tools to open the dialogue and diagnose the root cause of the quiet.

In this episode of the Trustbuilder Podcast, hosts Scott and Brad dive into a couple of difficult questions surrounding the foundation of trust. They tackle the core question: Is trust earned, given, or assumed?
The discussion explores the critical role personality plays in how individuals build or withhold trust. The hosts share their insights on how different personality types (Action, Insight, and Connection) can influence trust-building dynamics, offering a specific story of how one person's attempt to build trust was met with the opposite reaction due to a misunderstanding of the other person's personality.
The second difficult question posed is: Should leaders give trust freely, or should they make people earn it? Drawing from their own leadership experience and concepts from Game Theory (like the Prisoner's Dilemma and the idea of initial optimism), Scott and Brad explore the idea that trust operates on a gradient, not a binary scale. They conclude that starting with a degree of optimism and cooperation is the most effective way to foster a high-trust environment.
Join Scott and Brad as they look for answers to these difficult questions and help listeners explore their own relationship with trust.

In this thought-provoking episode of the TrustBuilder Podcast, hosts Brad Williams and Scott Linklater tackle one of the most critical and challenging questions about trust: Is it possible to rebuild it once it's been broken? They dive into the complexities of repairing relationships, exploring whether every breach of trust should be forgiven and if a simple "I'm sorry" is enough to heal the damage. They share insights and research showing that true rebuilding requires sincere acknowledgement, changed behavior, and a commitment to understanding the other person's perspective. This episode offers a deep and honest look at how to move forward from betrayal and build a stronger foundation than ever before.

In this episode of the Trust Builder podcast, hosts Scott and Brad discuss the complexities of transparency in leadership. They address the hard question: "When does transparency stop building trust and start eroding confidence?". The hosts explore how oversharing can sometimes be a lazy or selfish act and can actually erode confidence. They also differentiate between privacy and secrecy, and warn against using radical transparency as a way to avoid accountability.

Welcome to the very first episode of The TrustBuilder Podcast! Join hosts Scott and Brad as they introduce a new series dedicated to tackling the "hard questions" about trust in teams, organizations, and everyday life. In this introductory episode, they share their backgrounds, explain why trust is a critical topic, and preview some of the challenging discussions to come, including whether it's possible to rebuild trust after it's been broken.