TrustCrafters: Uncovering the Alchemy of Trust

Jose Leal (00:00):

Welcome to rHatchery Live. My name is Jose Leal. I'm here today with my partner and friend Matt Perez, who's feeling better. So he's back with us this week. And today's guest is Patrick Hill, and he is from Inspired Performance Solutions. Welcome. Welcome Patrick. How are you doing?

Patrick Hill (00:29):

I'm doing great. How are you?

Jose Leal (00:31):

Awesome. Awesome. I'm here in the Azores visiting family, so out in the middle of nowhere and getting ready for a conference next week in, in Lisbon. So that's that's the prep here, and looking forward to having a good conversation with you.

Patrick Hill (00:50):

Absolutely. I'm happy to be here.

Jose Leal (00:51):

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about Patrick Hill. Never mind. What you're, what you're here to talk about. Just, just you. Alright.

Patrick Hill (01:01):

Well I, I spent 20, well, a total of 28 years in the, in the US Navy. I joined the Naval Reserves when I was 19 while I was going to college. I was a music education major at Illinois State University. And so I was a reservist. I was a drilling reservist who did my one weekend a month, two weeks a year of training as a, as a boon's mate in the Navy. Boon's Mate is a deck hand kind of a jock, jack of all trades in the Navy. And as I was getting into my senior year of college my wife was pregnant and I needed a job. So I auditioned for the Navy Music Program as a French horn instrumentalist. And I, I won a gig and they accepted me. So I changed over from Boon's mate to musician, and I started my career as an enlisted navy musician. And then in 2012, I commissioned as a limited duty officer, band Master, and was leading Navy bands for the last 10 years of my career. In that time though I did finish my bachelor's degree from Illinois State, and then I finished a master's degree in public Policy and International Affairs from Liberty University. And then in 2020, in 2020, I finished a doctorate of strategic leadership with an emphasis in leadership coaching from Regent University. And then last year, right about this time last year, I retired from the Navy.

Jose Leal (02:38):

Wow. Did you ever, were you ever based in the Azores by any chance?

Patrick Hill (02:43):

No, I was not. Most of my career was up and down the East Coast, Jacksonville, Florida Norfolk, Virginia, Virginia Beach, Annapolis Newport, Rhode Island. And then finishing up at Great Lakes in North Chicago.

Jose Leal (02:59):

I was trying to find something to connect us, and I found it. I lived in Newport, Rhode Island.

Patrick Hill (03:03):

Oh, fantastic.

Jose Leal (03:05):

There you go. There we

Matt Perez (03:08):

All this hell in Newport, Orlando.

Jose Leal (03:11):

It can be. It can be. So that's like a pretty interesting career for, for the Navy. And, and then leading within that environment. So what was that like?

Patrick Hill (03:27):

It was well, leadership in any capacity has, its, has its challenges. I will tell you that It is, it was a fantastic job. It was a lot of fun. I mean, I got, I got paid to to play music and to and serve my country in a very unique way. And I to, I, I was, I was just in love with my job. But, you know, leadership in any capacity has its challenges. And early on in my officer career, I, I had some challenges. I had a very demanding boss. And he and I, we, we struggled a lot. We had a lot of challenges because I don't think he and I communicated very well. And it, it caused problems because I was an officer. I was the third officer at a command with three officers, and then we had a lot of enlisted folks as well. And when the leadership isn't connecting really well, the whole command suffers. And so we, we had a challenging time together. And so it caused me to really dive in deeper into the idea of leadership. What is leadership? I knew what kind of leader I didn't want to be. I knew how, I wanted to make sure that the people that I was responsible for, you know, felt safe to do their jobs. But I wasn't sure how to be the leader that I would want to follow. And so I started really studying. I read a lot of books Simon Sinek, David Marque, as we talked about before the show started. And a lot of these Adam Grant and and then I started, I went to school at, at Regent University to, to study leadership on and on a graduate level. And kind of what does, what does the academic world say about leadership? And how do I apply that to, you know, going to work in the morning? What does that look like when I walk through the doors of my business or my command or my organization? And so that's, that really is, that's a situation that time in my life really inspired me to dig in and figure out this leadership thing.

Matt Perez (05:50):

So what did you figure out?

Patrick Hill (05:52):

I'm still working on it. One of the, one of the big things that, that I found is that, that as leaders, it requires leadership in any capacity at any level of the organization, requires three things. And, and on your previous show, you had captain David Marque, he talked about two of 'em. You talked about technical competence and organizational clarity. And you, so you've got to be good at what you do. And then you've got to be clear about the organization's mission. The third thing that I add to that is character. We've got to be people of integrity. We got to be people of our word. And, and we have to have the, the moral compass to be able to stand up and say, Hey, I don't think that's right. Or to go, and this is an even tougher one sometimes, is to say, I don't know. And as a leader, sometimes, you know, that's, that's a hard thing to say is I don't know.

Matt Perez (06:56):

Why do you think that is? It's a hard thing to say.

Patrick Hill (07:02):

Well, I think that sometimes we have this, this belief that because people are looking to us for leadership, that means that we are supposed to know everything there is to know about this organization and how to get it functioning or to, or to increase productivity or whatever it is that we're trying to do. But we're also human, right? And one of the things that I would tell sailors that, that checked into my command, and it didn't matter where they were in their experience, they could have been fresh out bootcamp. Maybe they were a seasoned chief petty officer. But I would tell them, look I've been in the Navy a long time. I know the rules and regulations and policies, but when it comes to new ideas, I'm kind of fresh out. I I could use some help. If you see something and you go, I think there's a better way to do this. I think there's a more efficient way or a more cost effective way, or, Hey, have you heard about this new software that's just now coming out that might help us do our jobs better? Whatever it is, let me know because I'm just going to, I'm just going to maintain course and speed until somebody tells me otherwise. And and that's one of the, one of the challenges that we have. One of the other challenges that we have as leaders is being open to new ideas. And that's one thing that can create trust in the organization, is when somebody brings an idea to me and I go and I immediately shoot it down if I, you know, if I immediately shoot it down and say, no, this is the way that we've always done it. We've been successful doing it this way. So I think we're going to continue doing it because what was effective in the past is bound to be effective in the future. Just ask Blockbuster video.

Jose Leal (09:00):

Or Kodak.

Patrick Hill (09:02):

Or Kodak. And, and we can get into that too. cause I have done a lot of research on that. But the, the, the fact is, is that if I'm open to new ideas and I'm, and I'm willing to take a little bit of risk I'm willing to accept some risk, calculated risk, not you know, Jesus take the wheel kind of thing. But if we look at it and say, okay, here are the risks. Here are the bad things that could happen from this. Here's the likelihood that those bad things can happen. And here are some of the mitigations that we can put into play to try to minimize those bad things. And then we look at the reward. What is the potential reward from that? We put all of those things into our numerical meat grinder, and we say, Hey, you know what? I think maybe this risk is, is worth, worth taking, because the benefit could be much greater than where we are right now.

Matt Perez (10:03):

So you, in passing, you said two things. One is you encourage people to come up with new ideas. It doesn't matter if they're low world, world the same. And and, and the thing about trust, and it just something in the pre-show about transparency. You know, you have to let people know what's happening and stuff like that, because otherwise they may have you say it best the, the evolutionary process or whatever.

Patrick Hill (10:40):

Right. We have to, we have to give, you know, and, and I think one of the things that I had put up on on, on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago, and I can't remember the exact quote, but it was, it was basically that organizations do not succeed because of command or executives. They succeed based on the information that has passed, the, the effective way that we communicate and pass information. If we don't give all of the information or all information that we legally and morally can give to our people, then that creates gaps. And the gaps will be filled in by the imagination. And as we talked about during the, during the pre-show, because of our, our evolution, we have this fight, flight or freeze response to things. Our imaginations will come up with the worst possible case scenario. Put that into the information gaps, because we have to protect ourselves. We always want to think, what's the worst thing that can happen so I can be prepared to protect myself? And that's the evolutionary response. So when we don't give all of the information that we have or that we're able to give to our people, they'll fill those gaps in with bad things. And then, then that'll start to spread around. We'll start having these conversations, right? Well, hey, he didn't say this because we're going to lose our jobs. Or we, he didn't do this because he's trying to position himself for a promotion over the other. So we're going to start kind of, and then, and then those little voices, and then those conversations happening, and it'll kind of spiral into this, into this toxicity that a lot of organizations have.

Jose Leal (12:31):

And they'll start in our heads and then spread to our, our groups, and then spread to the organization. And before you know it, it's everywhere.

Patrick Hill (12:38):

Exactly. So we give as much information as we can. Now, there are some things that are proprietary. We can't, we cannot divulge either legally or, or morally. And or if, say there's somebody on the team that has ha has a, a personal issue or a medical issue or something like that, and say, Hey, Jim's going to be out for a little while, we're all going to have to pick up a little bit of extra slack. But you're not going to give all that information to them as, because Jim's, you know, going through a divorce, or Jim's got a medical condition, or Jim, you know, whatever it is, it's none of their business. We just gotta, we, you know, but, but work has got to continue, right? So when we are completely transparent, as much as we're able to, the times where we're not able to be transparent, we've got that currency in the bank, right? Hey, look, I can't give you all the information right now because it's proprietary, because it's private, because it's wherever, whatever the reason is. But please know that I've got your best interest at heart. And because you've done that, because you've been completely transparent before you've got that currency in the bank, a lot of times in, in an organization you know, in the Navy, I'd be like, Hey, look got this thing coming up. I need you guys to execute. I don't have time to explain it right now. I'll explain it on the back end, but we got to get this going. Right. That's another time. Hey, it's time sensitive. I'll explain later. Please just execute. And you know, with,

Jose Leal (14:12):

With the Radical, one of the pillars that we, we talk about is transparency. And we don't necessarily focus on trust, but without transparency, there can be no trust.

Patrick Hill (14:32):

Exactly.

Jose Leal (14:34):

And, and it, it is transparency that builds trust. You cannot create trust. You can only build trust through repetitive transparency, as you've just described, very, very well. Another thing that pairs up with that is decentralization, though for us. So this is where we push back a little bit. And in a normal organization like you've described, you've got a leader and we call these organizations fiat organizations, meaning that they're about telling people what to do. And what we're proponents of is, is a radical organization that doesn't have that type of structure where someone is telling someone else what to do. So what are, what's your experience with decentralization? Have you had any, I know that David Marque had some quite a bit of it. What's, what's your experience?

Patrick Hill (15:36):

Well, and this is, this is, you know, very similar to, to Marque's situation where the way that, the way that Navy bands are made up. So we've got the band, the big band did, where, where I ended up, we had 45 people total, and that band broke down into smaller units. The whole band was our concert band. And then it broke down into a popular music group, a brass quintet, a wood win quintet, maybe a, a New Orleans style Dixieland band, maybe a big band, jazz band. And so I don't run all of those, you know, I'm not the one that's in charge of each unit. We put people in charge of them. And, you know, I just make sure that they have all the resources that they need to do their jobs effectively. I make sure that they understand our mission, what it is that we're trying to do. And those leaders communicate that to their teams, and they come up with their own programming, their own rehearsal plans, how to get to a gig, how to get back from it. They generate their own, you know? So I'm not, I'm not sitting in my office barking out orders or sitting in front of the, standing in front of the band, barking out orders, you know, do this, do this, do this, say, here is what needs to get done. This is the end vision of it. This is, as marque would say, this is my intent, for our organization. And then they go execute.

Jose Leal (17:06):

And so I find that interesting. These gigs that you speak of just for my edification, how, how does that work? What is the band a Navy band doing gigs out in, at Navy events or at, at public events or.

Patrick Hill (17:24):

All over the place. So, at, in, let's say, let's take Great Lakes, for instance. Great Lakes is home to Navy's bootcamp, recruit, training command. And every week we graduate any, you know, 600 to 1200 new sailors coming into the Navy. And there's a graduation ceremony every week. And the band is out there supporting that every week. That's our, well, that's one of, one of those the primary engagements that we would do. But we go out into the community, we support Navy Weeks in, in an 11 state area of responsibility in the Midwest. We would do military ceremonies, public ceremonies, public events any kind of community outreach and community awareness, bringing navy awareness into the, so there, you, you can't, can't drive an aircraft carrier up the Illinois River right. Showcase the Navy in, in Peoria, Illinois. Right. So, you know, we might send a Navy band and, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, for, for a Navy Week, we would send the band a couple of units from maybe special warfare, maybe some namesake sailors, USS Chicago or the USS whatever namesake of that, that hometown, where we are or that state of where we are. Send some sailors in there and they would do community outreach events, have the blue angels come over and do an air show, those kinds of things.

Jose Leal (19:03):

That's awesome. Thanks for, for giving me that. 'cause I wondered what that meant. Let me take us back to, to the radical model, because what we've been talking about as far as decentralization and, and transparency, it, it's part of this idea of co-management  co-management, is this idea that we don't really need to have a hierarchy as long as people have an understanding amongst themselves over what the domain they're responsible for, what can they can do. And they, they communicate back at, back to that transparency. And, and things can be distributed. And more often than not, people are, things are distributed by people who seek to have those things. In other words, it's not, you know, sort of, oh, nobody wants this but here you go. But people who are excited about something and, and take it on. So that, that model, that understanding of co-management is, you know, strongly supported by the transparency and decentralization, but also the idea of meaning and belonging. And, and I wonder how much of that is, you know, in your work in the Navy meaning and belonging is, is part of what you do did there, but also in the work that you're doing now in in consulting,

Patrick Hill (20:44):

Right, and one of the things that we have to do as leaders is create an environment where people feel like their work matters and they feel valued. Rather than just saying, Hey, I need you to do this, and then when you're done with that, I need you to do this and do this. Give them a picture of what the overall end goal is, and then they can take ownership of it. And it helps them to feel like they have a piece of the mission, regardless of what that, you know, how, how big the organization is. You know, the, the most maybe not out front center stage job, maybe your job is to make sure the toilet paper's refilled and take out the trash and make sure the place is clean. And you might look at it and go, how, how does, how does that really contribute to the overall success of the organization? Well, I mean, how successful is the organization going to be if the bathrooms don't have toilet paper and there's, and there's garbage all over the place, and, you know, the morale isn't going to be good if you work in a, in a messy place. So if you have somebody whose job it is to do that, they are a valuable part of making sure that we have good morale, which leads to higher productivity, to which leads to, you know, even better, better health of the physical health of the people that are there. So everybody's got a vital role. And, and the more that we emphasize the value that those people bring to that role, the better they are they're going to, one, the better they're going to execute, but better the, the better the whole overall organization's going to be.

Jose Leal (22:36):

Absolutely. And so, the story of what are we doing? Why is this important? How are we going to get this done? And, and being not only transparent about data, but transparent about intention and that's really the meaning, right? And, and back to marque and <laugh>, you know, using intention as the intent as as what we're talking about. What about belonging? Because very often in organizations like the Navy, I would assume you get thrown in together with a bunch of people that you don't know, you don't care about, and don't have a whole lot to do with you. And that's true in a lot of organizations as well. Part of the, the idea that teams get to build themselves by the fact that they, they can collaborate in a way that that allows them to pick teammates, if you will, to work in, in smaller teams and in, in collaborative engagements. How do, how would that work and, and what you've experienced and in what you're also speaking about in, in your work,

Patrick Hill (23:59):

The way that I take kind of a, a dual-sided approach to putting teams together. One is who's the best for the job? And the second approach is who needs the experience? So I'll typically put a very seasoned person and a very junior person with not very much experience together. I'll make sure that there's a good mix of that because the junior person might have some ideas that we haven't even, might have some untapped talents, right? Might have some ideas or some experiences or knowledge that we don't know about that, that they can really bring to that table. But then you've also got the experienced person going, Hey yeah, we tried that before and it didn't work because of X, Y, Z, or hey, that's a great idea, but regulations, the rules, the policies, the laws say that we have to do it a different way. Right?

Jose Leal (25:05):

But I'm speaking more to the personal aspect of that.

Patrick Hill (25:09):

So, okay, when you, you mentioned belonging, right? So one of the, when we, we ask people to bring, to come to work, right? Do we ask them to bring their best self to work? Or do we ask them to bring their whole self to work?

Jose Leal (25:33):

If you're asking me, I would say that most people don't ask anything. They just simply say, show up, gimme your time.

Patrick Hill (25:41):

Well, they don't, maybe they don't overtly ask it, but how many times have you, have you heard someone say, Hey, you need to check that at the door. Check that attitude at the door. Check those personal problems at the door, check your, you know.

Jose Leal (25:55):

Emotions at the door,

Patrick Hill (25:57):

Your emotions at the door, you know? But here's the thing. We, we come to work and we have, we have all of our white space on our calendar filled, and we don't have time to deal with personnel issues, and we're going to come to work, we've got our routine and we're going to go. And then pretty soon there's a knock at the door and someone says, do you have a minute? Well, do you, first of all, do you have a minute? Probably not. I mean, this has happened to me many times in my career. Do you have a minute? My first instinct is to say, no, I don't. But there was something in the tone of that question that says maybe I should, maybe I should listen to this person. Yeah. Come on in, have a seat. And I can't tell you how many times that's happened, where that person has come in, sat down and just started crying, my marriage is over, my child is sick, that my whatever, whatever personal thing is going on outside of work, and you have a choice in that moment. Are you going to be a leader and listen, or are you going to be a manager, or are you going to be, you know, a jerk and say, we, we got work to do. You need to check that at the door and get your job done, and then you can go deal with your personal stuff, right? Most of us would say, well, no, we're going to be a good human being and do those kind of things, but how many organizations do you see that have this kind of toxic culture where people don't feel like they can tell their bosses what's going on in their lives and get the help and resources that they need in order to be their whole self at work and trust that their leadership isn't going to, you know, find a way to fire 'em because they're bringing their emotions and they're bringing their drama into work. Well, hey, look, we're human and it's going to happen to all this.

Jose Leal (27:54):

You're making my life hard.

Patrick Hill (27:56):

Yeah. It's going to happen to all of us at some point.

Jose Leal (27:59):

I want somebody who doesn't have a life. Please, come, come and work for

Patrick Hill (28:03):

That's what, that's what robots are for, right? Because AI is coming.

Jose Leal (28:08):

So Patrick I've been sort of beating around the bush here about the radical stuff. Just to, to push you a little bit on trust. Tell me a little bit more about you, your ideas on trust and, and what it is that you are advocating in organizations today. And maybe we'll close up after that.

Patrick Hill (28:35):

The, when you look at servant leadership, right? Servant leadership is, is sometimes people refer to it as one of those cute buzzwords that make me sound like this quiet, humble leader. But it is truly a scientifically researched leadership philosophy. And it was developed by Robert Greenleaf in the late seventies. And the tenets, the top tenets of servant leadership are listening, empathy, and healing. And if, and if you could, we can just do, I mean, there's, there's about seven or eight other ones, but those top three in any research that you see in servant leadership are listening, empathy, and healing. And if we, if we as leaders can just stop and listen and, and repeat back what the person said, don't listen. As, as Steven Covey says, don't listen to respond, listen to understand. Make sure that you understand what the person is saying, and then empathize with them. That goes a long way towards building trust. The problem is, is that those are onetime events listening. When I'm listening to someone in front of me, that's one time that I'm listening. But if I stop listening somewhere else, I've, I've destroyed that. Same with empathy. I can give an instance of empathy, but I, I'm, maybe I'm not empathetic. Trust is built over time, consistency of listening and empathizing and prove and healing. It's, it's built over time. You can't just, you can't, you can't just walk in the door and say, Hey, I'm in charge. Trust me.

Jose Leal (30:22):

Absolutely. I would add to that, that there's one thing to trust your own, your owner, pardon me, your boss. Oof. That was a that was a slip of the ton. And it's another thing to trust your colleagues, right? And be trusted by your colleagues. And that's where I think the, the makeup of teams is so important, right? And thus, the, the focus for us on co-management as teams building themselves up, teams aggregating around their whole selves rather than being placed like chess pieces on the board as, as, no offense, but as you described earlier, where as a leader, you're sort of making those decisions of who's going to be put together. So that's a, a bit of the pushback that I would have. But I, I think we.

Patrick Hill (31:24):

It's, it's collaborative. I mean, I'm not the one that sits on a high, you know, sits on high and says, you know, this is what we're going to do. It's cool, it's a collaborative effort. We talk about amongst ourselves. Ultimately, the person in charge is the person who's responsible for the decisions. And if something goes wrong, yeah, I'm the guy, but you know, we don't make those decisions in a vacuum,

Jose Leal (31:46):

Right. And in today's world, you have that role and you have to occupy that role, right? That's the way it works. We're advocating for something a little different that is a system where we don't have those roles to start with and how we change organizations in that way. So Patrick, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate all that you've said. I learned quite a bit about the navy bans and what they do. And I enjoyed talking to you about trust. Matt, we've got a guest for next week.

Matt Perez (32:30):

Yeah, we have let's see, is Timothy Kaczynski, I think I'm Pronouncing his name. Well, who knows? He is the founder of Oxtail Labs. I like Oxtail. And he engineers, technologies, procedures, and culture, primarily in the D o d. And I think that stands for the Department of Defense. So we're going to have two military people

Jose Leal (33:06):

In a row here.

Matt Perez (33:08):

So, looking forward to that and looking forward to conversation with them.

Jose Leal (33:15):

Perfect. Patrick, again, thank you very much. Anything else you'd like to, to share with us before we depart?

Patrick Hill (33:23):

I just want to thank you. This has been a great honor, and, and I'm, I'm glad to be a, a guest on your show. This has been fantastic.

Jose Leal (33:30):

Awesome. Thank you so much. We appreciate you being here. Cheers.