“All the world is made of faith, trust, and pixie dust.”
-Peter Pan

I’ve been thinking a lot about trust. Does our ability to trust decline with life experience? Do circumstances like the 2020 pandemic make us more cynical? Do we use different criteria for trusting people vs institutions? How has the digital landscape shaped or changed our ability to trust one another?

The bulk of this week’s blog is a direct, unedited excerpt from my book Three New People. Afterwards I’ll sketch some new, unfinished thoughts about trust. I’d love to hear your take on this, so be sure to leave comments or send me a message (email, LinkedIn, Instagram – wherever).

Here’s the excerpt from Chapter 14:

…

People Who Aren’t Interested

“But Brian, some people just aren’t interested in connecting.”

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received that comment, Tweet, or email since the TEDx talk launched. My response is this:

The TEDx talk’s title is “How to Magically Connect with Anyone,” not “How to Magically Connect with Everyone.” 

Connection is a two-way street. It is a mutually beneficial exchange of emotional data. No matter how good your intentions are, or how well you learn, hone, and implement the techniques in this book, some people just aren’t going to be open to connecting with you.

And that’s okay.

Michael Jordan didn’t win every game.

Steve Jobs didn’t nail every product (Antennagate, anyone?).

You will not connect with every person you try to connect with.

The very best you can do is put all of yourself into the world. With each person, every day, give your very best effort to build a connection. If your best effort is rejected, then there’s nothing to be upset about. 

That person simply wasn’t for you. Or you weren’t for them. Or both.

It’s not a quantity game. There’s no scorecard that keeps track of how many people you made a meaningful connection with. The number doesn’t matter. It’s the quality of the relationships with the people you have connected with that matter.

What you might be concerned about is the breakdown of relationships with people who were willing to connect with you.

When Connections Break Down

Whether digital or in-person, miscommunications affect relationships differently depending on the strength and history of the relationship. A single language-based misunderstanding between Lindsey and myself is not going to break our relationship, no matter how frustrated I get over her pronunciation of ‘crayon’ as ‘cran.’ Our relationship has built up enough trust to survive that. 

Even so, small missteps can build up over time. Like cracks in a sidewalk they can eventually break down even the strongest of relationships if you’re not careful.

On the other hand, a seemingly silly or insignificant misunderstanding can absolutely take down a new relationship. …

Have you ever made a joke with a new group of friends or colleagues, only to have it met with dead silence? You find yourself wondering if it offended them, if they didn’t get it, or if they simply didn’t find it funny. 

Speaking of Lindsey, here’s something that happened to me just a few months ago. 

During a stage magic show in a college campus theater of about 800 students and their families, I invited a girl up on stage to assist with a trick. I take great care of my volunteers, refusing to make fun of them or put them in embarrassing situations. As we’ve discussed, it takes great courage to volunteer for a magic show and I do my best to treat people with respect in that vulnerable situation.

This girl was a freshman in college. I thanked her for volunteering and asked for her name. 

She said, “Lindsey.” 

I instinctively responded, “That’s my wife’s name!”

The audience audibly and visibly turned on me, and it completely took me by surprise. It was a full three seconds of silence before I realized what had happened. Nobody in the audience knew that I was married and that my wife’s name is Lindsey. From their perspective, it looked like I was hitting on an 18-year-old girl with an old-fashioned and wildly inappropriate pickup attempt. 

The second I realized the misunderstanding I started waving my left hand around. 

“No, no! I’m married!” I exclaimed, frantically pointing at my wedding band. “My wife’s name is actually Lindsey!

I tried to salvage the moment by finding common ground with her.

“Do you spell it with an ‘a’ or an ‘e’?” I asked.

“An ‘e’,” she responded.

“Yeah, so does she! She always has trouble finding it spelled the right way on souvenirs.”

The girl chuckled and said she did too. I went on with the trick, and the rest of the show went fine. But the spell had been broken. The first 10 minutes of the show until that incident had been raucous and energetic, and in the 50 minutes after it happened I never fully reconnected with the audience.

It was an honest and innocent misunderstanding, but it happened so early in our relationship that the audience didn’t have enough history or trust built up with me to stay connected. 

Should you try to reconnect if a relationship breaks down? It depends on your history and the circumstances.

As a performer with another 50 minutes of contracted stage time I had no choice but to try to reconnect and build the relationship back up.

If you suffer the breakdown of a relationship with a colleague or boss, and the success of your career depends on your ability to work well as a team, then it’s probably a good idea to make every attempt to reconnect. 

If it happens in your personal life, you’ll have to weigh the potential outcomes of trying to reconnect. Not all relationships are meant to be or meant to last. Human connections are only healthy when both sides are emotionally invested in each other’s well-being. 

Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself and others when a connection breaks down is to leave it alone. 

Cherish the connection you had and learn from the breakdown. There’s always a lesson, and there is always room for improvement.

…

“Brian, you should be on TikTok!”

A lot has changed in the two years since I published Three New People. 

I spoke on five continents, bought a house, launched a podcast, built multiple online courses, made personal connections with some of my heroes, finished and released a rock opera (because why not), entered a global pandemic, watched the entire live event industry collapse with no recovery in sight, and in just two months we will welcome our firstborn, a baby boy, into the world.

Many of these changes are positive and wonderful, and, of course, some are not. 

One leap I’ve not been willing to make is TikTok. Despite the fact that Gary Vee has been shouting it from the rooftops, and many of my close friends and colleagues have repeatedly insisted I would “kill it” (whatever that means), I can’t bring myself to do it. Why? 

I don’t trust the platform.

Now, before you start shouting at me, I totally get it. TikTok is arguably no different than any other social media app, or any app for that matter, that we already have on our phone. Smartphones aren’t safe, apps aren’t trustworthy, and no matter how many privacy controls we are ostensibly given as the end-user, the fact is simple: these apps exist for the sole purpose of taking our data. We are the product, not the consumer. 

So, how come I’ve stuck with Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube through all of their very real data breaches, but I can’t bring myself to jump on TikTok? Because trust is directly related to the length and strength of a relationship.

Length and Strength

Have you ever looked up a new local restaurant, read a couple of 1-star reviews, and immediately decided against it? Of course you have. So have I.

Now look up your favorite local restaurant. You know, the one you swear by and recommend to all your friends and family. Do they have at least a few 1-star reviews? I bet they do. What’s your reaction to those?

“I bet those people are just picky or difficult.” “They’re lying.” “That’s probably a competitor’s restaurant trying to sabotage our favorite place.”

We hold people and establishments we have a longer, deeper relationship with to very different standards than newcomers. If something went wrong at your favorite restaurant, say the meal was undercooked or the server wasn’t on-the-ball that night, would you write off the restaurant? Probably not. You’d excuse it as an anomaly. 

But if that same undercooked meal or poor service occurred at a place you’re trying for the first time? “Go get the manager. We’re never coming back here again!” 

New App, Old Hat

TikTok is a relative newcomer in the world of social media apps. Sure, Facebook has been dogged by privacy concerns and data breaches, but I’ve been using Facebook since my freshman year of college, when you still needed a .edu email address to sign up for an account (length), and it’s the hub of my entire personal network (strength).

For me, TikTok has neither length nor strength, and for that reason, I can’t look past the data breaches and frequent privacy concerns that constantly make headlines.

Irrational? Double-standard? Perhaps. But we are all subject to cognitive biases, and the most successful businesses are those who understand their customer/clients biases, and their own, rather than pretend they don’t exist.

So, ask yourself: What is it that your customers, clients, or employees need to feel a deep sense of trust with you? Implement practices and organize a culture around that answer and you’ll have raving fans in no time.

Protect Your Data and Relationships

This week on the Beyond Networking podcast I had the true pleasure of sitting down with cybersecurity expert Dominic Vogel.

If you think cybersecurity is dull or boring, you haven’t met Dom. He’s an absolute riot and we probably laughed more and harder than I ever have during a podcast interview.

We discussed cyber risk, of course. The key insight here is that cybersecurity is all about building a trusting relationship with your employees, customers, and clients.

But my favorite part of the conversation was our deep-dive into the right and wrong ways to approach networking, and how to continue making new, meaningful connections in a virtual world. Lots of tips for leveraging LinkedIn as a networking platform and how to reach out cold without coming off as spammy or salesy.

Watch above and listen here or on your favorite podcast streaming app. Join the email community at BeyondNetworkingPodcast.com so you never have to check your app again.