Transcript
Troy Blaser (00:05):
Hello, welcome to Simply Feedback, the podcast hosted by LearningBridge. I'm your host, Troy Blaser. Our guest today is Barry Rellaford, who is the lead coach at the Sorensen Center for Moral and Ethical Leadership at Brigham Young University. Barry, welcome to the podcast today. It's so great to have you with us.
Barry Rellaford (00:23):
Great to be here, Troy.
Troy Blaser (00:26):
I wonder, would you maybe just take a second and introduce yourself to our audience and give us a little bit of your background?
Barry Rellaford (00:32):
Gladly. Yeah. So you mentioned one of my roles, workwise, Troy, and that is the lead coach of the Sorensen Center. We're a new center. We got endowed, a few months ago at BYU and our focus is on our students. So we've got 33,000 students, I think, at BYU. And we're figuring out ways to help students to see themselves as leaders, to understand really what leadership is, which we look at as positive influence. It's not about position, it's about your choices and being able have positive influence in the various stewardships of your life. And so we help them develop skill and then prepare them for when they leave the university, go out into the world and make an even bigger difference. So my role as a coach is to help, I've been coaching students. We've just started as I mentioned, but we're also ramping up students as peer coaches and will also be certifying what we call seasoned professionals, people who have been in the workforce for a while to be able to coach students.
Barry Rellaford (01:30):
So that's a lot of my role right now, but I also have, I teach at BYU as a adjunct professor in the Marriott School of Business. I teach ethics for leaders, and then I have been in the consulting, people development field for many, many years. I was corporate for about, oh, let's see, about 15 years. Mostly in HR roles, ran HR for a tech company and worked in tech and then was a client of Covey Leadership, which merged with FranklinCovey, or to become FranklinCovey. And then I was with FranklinCovey for a few years and then have been on my own and helped build something called The Speed of Trust and done lots of other things around people development.
Troy Blaser (02:11):
Sounds exciting. I, as you talk about the Sorensen Center it actually sounds very exciting. I see a lot of work to be done, but also a lot of potential there as you talk about the different aspects that you're involved in.
Barry Rellaford (02:23):
Well, yeah, I actually think BYU students tend to be just above average individuals. A lot of them have more life experience. They've, many of them will have spent 18 to 24 months in humanitarian service, somewhere around the world, outside their own cultures which develops all kinds of leadership skills and experience and understanding. And yet like all of us, it's helpful to be able to get a good sense of what are your strengths, what's your unique purpose? How do you understand that? How can you operate from that to be able to accomplish the purpose and work that you're about throughout your life? So that's, yeah, it is really exciting. There's tons of potential, lots and lots of work, and I feel very privileged to be part of it.
Troy Blaser (03:07):
Oh that's fantastic. Well, maybe as we kind of get started, one of our favorite questions to ask our guests on Simply Feedback is to maybe think of a time in your life when you've received some feedback, maybe it was, it had an impact on your life or on your career, or even something smaller than that. But is there a meaningful time when you've received feedback?
Barry Rellaford (03:27):
Oh, it happens often and regularly what I heard someone call once an ego enema. One that comes to mind definitely is I was working at a company called CompuServe. CompuServe was the first big online services company pre-internet and,
Troy Blaser (03:43):
I remember CompuServe well, yes.
Barry Rellaford (03:44):
Yes I was there in all of our early growth days and I was working internally. I did, my undergrad at Brigham Young was in organizational communications. Basically my major was called human resource development and I was trained to be a trainer classroom trainer to be able to go in and help people develop particularly soft skills. So supervisory skills, communications, et cetera. So I was teaching courses and one day my manager, her name's Chris, called me in her office and she said, sit down. And I was like, oh, and she basically gave me a lecture. It was a lot of feedback. And I got a major ego enema. Cause I, and I needed it. She said, you know, Barry, I keep hearing things about how, you know, you come in and you're teaching your class and this is all about you.
Barry Rellaford (04:28):
And you know, that people within the company are fortunate to be able to work with you. And she said, you know what? It's a whole team who puts this on. And frankly, you're better than this. And it was really painful because it was true, I had been thinking that. I had been thinking, oh, I'm so great. And I get to do these things. And I worked with a sales force and I'm somebody special. And Chris cared enough about me to lovingly, it was painful, because it was, she was very direct. And, but I knew her, because I trusted her, I cared about her, she'd hired me. It was, it was really helpful growth and I got better as a result. So it's, I still am embarrassed to sometimes remember, to tell the story. It was a long time ago, but again, but Chris and I are still close friends today and I appreciate, so I love feedback.
Troy Blaser (05:19):
Sometimes the feedback comes in small doses with small growth, but it sounds like in this case, there was a lot of feedback that resulted in quick, and lots of stretching right away.
Barry Rellaford (05:28):
Well, and again, it's arguable, how, again, I look back on it and say, oh yeah, I changed right away. Others around me may have said, nah, it took a while. Or it's still not that way, Barry. You're still deceiving yourself, but maybe it's helpful, Troy, think about feedback for a minute. My definition of it, I don't know where the word comes from. I know there's something in communication signals and stuff. We talk about feedback from loud speakers, et cetera. But I think about feedback's like food, and you know, here in the US, we celebrate last month, Thanksgiving, which tends to be this large feast. And I'll often ask when I'm debriefing at 360 or talking to people about feedback of what's, you know, what happens if you get too much food at once and people say, oh, you get bloated or you get, you know, feel sick or whatever.
Barry Rellaford (06:17):
I say, what if you really eat too much and says, oh your body will reject it. And I said, feedback's like that. You get too much at once that you're not ready for you will normally reject it. And so when we're doing 360's, particularly when people haven't done them before, I'm aware of that and will set that up. But I also give the opposite that says, what happens if you don't get enough food? People say you get hangry. It's like, yeah, you get upset, but it, or they'll often say, oh, you die. And it's like, well, not immediately, unless you're an American, you haven't eaten for the last hour. But what happens is that we, over time, and when I started off coaching, which was probably 30 years ago, something like that, a lot of it was, if you had a coach back then it wasn't necessarily a good thing, unless you're the most senior executive, but coaching was viewed as kind of a way to help derailed executives. It's changed dramatically in the meantime. And these days, it's almost like, Hey, if you don't have a coach, you're not cool. You're not going places, but helping people to get the right kind of feedback in the right way is absolutely essential. And I look at it as nourishing. So how do we present it to people? How do we help it? And there's things we all don't prefer that are good for us, but we choose, you choose whether you take it in or not, your call, just like food.
Troy Blaser (07:36):
And there's definitely a skill set around providing feedback to somebody in a way, you know, I guess, if, continue with the metaphor, you might be a great cook or a great chef and be able to prepare that feedback in a way that makes it tasty and delightful. Or you might be a bad cook and prepare up a dish of feedback that somebody has a hard time swallowing, right. Just because you weren't as skilled at giving that feedback.
Barry Rellaford (08:02):
Well, and there's, yeah. Because there's the feedback itself, Troy, but it's also like you say the presentation. I heard this story once you may have heard of it, of somebody who was teaching about how to present something meaningfully and they baked this chocolate cake and they said, who would like a piece of this? And people are like, oh yeah, one volunteers, yeah I'll take that. And again, this was an audience where this person could do this, but he took a piece of cake and he shoved it in the person's face. And it was like, whoa. And you know, offered to pay for clean clothes, et cetera. But it's, we may have a very nourishing, beautiful meal, but the way we serve it up is not useful. And you could have the best serving, but the food itself, the feedback, is bland. It's not nourishing or it's, it's kind of junk feedback.
Barry Rellaford (08:48):
And sometimes people get that throughout their careers. It's just kind of like, oh, you're so great. You're so wonderful. Or it's a steady stream of negativity that's nothing specific. It's just kind of like, well, you're just not cutting it. Or, you know, you're not a good fit or things where you're going like, well, what is, what specifically are they talking about? Well, you don't get it. It's like, I obviously don't, but these are things, so this is where I like the metaphor. And having, this is the skill set, there's also a heart-set that I think is really important.
Troy Blaser (09:16):
I think too, there's a, the person receiving feedback has the opportunity, you know, at LearningBridge, we talk about receiving feedback graciously, independent of what the feedback is, or maybe how it's presented. As a feedback receiver we can learn certain skills about how to receive that feedback and whether it's presented in a nice way or not a nice way, there's still also that opportunity to take that feedback and use it in a way that's positive. You know, even if that, like you received feedback, that was somewhat negative, that really caused you to stop and think.
Barry Rellaford (09:48):
Actually was not negative. It was very, no, sorry. And that's another thing I'd say about feedback. There's really only two kinds of feedback. And again, I don't know how this fits kind of doctrinally with what you teach at LearningBridge. Sure. I read an article years ago called "The Lost Art of Giving Feedback." It was by a guy named Hank Karp. And this guy, Hank Karp, talked about two types of feedback. The feedback, if the purpose of this really is to nourish people, it's to help them grow, thrive, that's where I see the heart-set's important. What's my intention here? There's really only two kinds. One is what he called supportive feedback, which is saying, Hey, Troy, you know, we've determined in advance where we're trying to go and we're on track and it's saying, Troy, great job. Hey, great podcast.
Barry Rellaford (10:31):
These are great questions, whatever it may be. The other kind is called corrective feedback. Corrective is saying, Hey, we're not on track for what we agreed to, and how do we get back on track? And what I see with corrective feedback, it's not negative. It's not constructive criticism or other words we use for it. It's really, the intention is how do I help this valued performer get back to where they want to go, we've agreed to go? And often it's getting it to them quick enough. I have seen, I used to be a chief HR officer, and too often I'd see times where somebody, you know, come into my office, this is only a slight exaggeration, but somebody'd say like, oh, we got to fire so-and-so, and I'm like, what's going on? They'd say, well, they're not coming to work on time. I say, when'd this start?
Barry Rellaford (11:14):
And it's like four years ago. It's like, well, let's look at their performance reviews. Like everybody else, they're all above average here. And what we need to do is, well, I can't put up with it anymore. And it's like, you know, people, and the sad reality, sometimes people get so far off, they don't have time or the trust levels of the people around them to get back on. So giving feedback, corrective feedback early is really important. And I think what we're seeing in the great resignation right now is getting people enough supportive feedback as well, where they say, Hey, I want to stick around and grow with this place.
Troy Blaser (11:50):
Yeah. Yeah. I think at LearningBridge we would call that corrective feedback, we would call it generative feedback.
Barry Rellaford (11:55):
Oh great. I like that.
Troy Blaser (11:56):
You know, we're headed towards the same place. We'll give you some feedback that helps us all get there. Well, I love it. I wanted to talk for just a minute about The Speed of Trust, if we could. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and maybe how you worked together with the FranklinCovey organization to develop it?
Barry Rellaford (12:15):
Yeah, actually wasn't FranklinCovey when we developed it.
Troy Blaser (12:17):
It wasn't. Okay.
Barry Rellaford (12:18):
No, that's, which is fine. The work is by Stephen M. R. Covey. He's the oldest son of Stephen R. Covey, the author of The Seven Habits. I'm old enough that I was in Stephen R. Covey's last class as a professor. So, but Stephen M. R. called me probably about 18 years ago and said he was speaking at, at the time, It's now ATV, a lot of your listeners will know what that is, Association for Talent Development, but it was called ASTD, American Society for Training and Development. And Stephen had put in a proposal to speak at the conference and they contacted him, said we want your slides. And he called me up and said, Hey, Barry, they want my slides. And I'm like, why are you calling me? I knew Stephen, but not very well.
Barry Rellaford (12:54):
We'd worked together at FranklinCovey and had both left. And I said do you need help with PowerPoint? Like why's he calling me? And he said, no, I don't have a speech. And I said, well you don't speak at ASTD without a topic, what's your topic? He said, it's called The Speed of Trust. And I said, mm, cool title. We got together, he did not have slides. He did not have a speech. He did have a book outline. And he had been researching this and had been working on it for over 10 years. And a lot of it was by running Covey Leadership Center, the company his dad had founded. And Stephen had managed the transition, or the acquisition by Franklin to become FranklinCovey. So we got together, helped Stephen put the material together, and it is really Stephen's book. People said, well did you write it?
Barry Rellaford (13:36):
I say, oh no, I collaborated, I contributed, but it's very much Stephen's work. And with a couple other partners we put that together and we created a company and Stephen gave the speech. It helps to be called Stephen Covey in our industry. I don't know why Barry Rellaford doesn't attract attention the same way, you know, but I don't, harder to say or something, but anyway, and in fact, Stephen has a new book coming out called Trust and Inspire that'll be out in April. So I've been helping him with some of the training on that. But anyway, it's been, it's been fabulous work it's, in many ways typical Covey stuff, which is packaged common sense. But we often say is that common sense is not common practice. And how do you get people to not just say, ooh, trust, that's a good thing. It's kind of a nice social virtue, but it's really a hard economic driver. That is what makes organizations, especially companies successful. And if you don't have it, it will really cost you. So we help people understand that. But then how do you behave your way into high trust relationships?
Troy Blaser (14:35):
Interesting. So, and that was about, you said about 18 years ago when that work started?
Barry Rellaford (14:39):
The book came out in '06, so that was a couple years later, but Stephen and I started working together late, yeah, 2003.
Troy Blaser (14:47):
Oh, exciting. Does that model, does it have a relationship to, you know, giving and receiving feedback or developing a feedback culture?
Barry Rellaford (14:54):
Sure. Absolutely. I, and this is, you'll hear this. I talk about a heart-set in a sense. We, you know, we talk about mindsets and skill sets and toolkit, tool sets, but I think a heart-set, your true intention, what it, so when you're working with somebody, whether I'm their coach, or if I'm a person who might supervise their work or I'm a teammate, or I report to somebody. That relationship, what's called psychological safety a lot times, but the trust level, so like Chris gives me this feedback, and yeah, it was tough to receive. And I was being immature. I was, you know, stuck on myself and I was doing good work, but I wanted to serve clients, et cetera. But I wanted to be noticed for serving clients. And there were comments, I'm sure I was making about my team. And I said, oh, you get to work with me, right.
Barry Rellaford (15:40):
And it, whether I said it or acted it, it was happening. But because I trusted Chris and I knew she trusted me, I could receive that feedback and not quit or retreat and withdraw, or, you know, make them my enemy and, you know, we get into the whole allies and enemies thing. So trust is essential. We talk, I think of it like, there's a lot of metaphors I've used, but one of the ways to think about it, it's almost like bandwidth. You'll understand this Troy. But you think about, if you look at our phones or if we look at the internet, you know, people are listening to this, you can look at your phone or, and you'll see these little bars or you'll see, you know, the wifi signal and the idea of bandwidth, something goes way back to my CompuServe days is if you don't have much bandwidth, let's see, you got kind of one bar.
Barry Rellaford (16:31):
We might get a text through, but you can't do, you know, there's no way you can do full motion, video streaming, anything like that. And you need a lot more bandwidth, and the same thing in relationships. If you're going to give corrective feedback to someone, you better have built a relationship. In fact, I've heard this phrase: connect before you correct. That you've got to have the bandwidth there and some, and so one of the ways you actually build it is giving the feedback and working through it, but seeking to be, you know, again, if the intent is generative and you really care about this person and want them to grow, want to help them and help them see as they're seen, all that fits in together, so.
Troy Blaser (17:08):
Would you say that trust is one of the challenges that a lot of companies face in developing a feedback culture?
Barry Rellaford (17:14):
Yes. Absolutely. I, we look at, we say on the subtitle of the book is, "It's One Thing that Changes Everything." It's not the only thing, but think about it like a machine. You can have the best car in the world, but if you don't have a lubricant in the engine, it will, over time, it will freeze up. If you have a garden and you're trying to grow certain plants, but you're not nourishing it with water or with fertilizer, whatever those plants need, they will grow, it won't grow. It will die, you know, just, or will produce, but not the way it could have. So, trust is not the goal, typically, by itself, but it is such an enabler, such a lubricant, social lubricant, that the presence of it will make all kinds of wonderful things happen. And the absence of it will solve the best strategies, the best technologies, all these things we try to get done. But if I, and that's what I've worked with organizations with for many, many years, is helping them, let's increase the trust level. Let's increase the bandwidth so that now we can really do the work together.
Troy Blaser (18:15):
Yeah. Let's talk about the Sorensen Center for just a minute. That started, you said last summer.
Barry Rellaford (18:19):
Yeah, we got funded about a year and a half ago. So it's the David and Verla Sorensen family donated a large amount of money, 40 million dollars to BYU, to fund this. And so, one of the things I learned about university funding, it takes about a year for them to build up the, you don't touch the principle in an endowment. You work off the interest. So it takes about a year to get there. And so we've been up and running and we're moving fast, but it started this summer. So the executive director was hired, then I was hired soon after that and we've been staffing up and hiring students. And so it's, we're in growth mode. It's really fun.
Troy Blaser (18:56):
What are some of the interesting challenges that you've seen as you've sort of revved that up or got it up and running?
Barry Rellaford (19:03):
Yeah. Challenge is a great word because it's the, we have so many good things that, to drop on. One is we have so many people we want to serve so fast. It's, you know, they, and they leave, you know, they graduate. So you want to reach them as fast as you can, but you also want to walk before we run. So a lot of what we're doing is seeking to, I was joking with Jeff Thompson, our director, a couple months ago saying, well, lucky they hired us, you know, nobody at BYU thought about leadership before, you know, little sarcastic or, you know, ethics and morals? Nah, nobody here ever thinks of that. No, of course they do. So one of our initiatives right now is campus outreach. We're just out, and we talk about collaborating and curating more than we're here to compete or to control.
Barry Rellaford (19:51):
There's so many good things going on, but like any organization you get, you know, the engineering school has this really cool thing going on, and the business school has this going on, the theater department's doing this. And they're just not always aware. So part of what we're doing is just trying to go out and say, who's doing what, and leadership, by the way, amongst the generation we work with, you know, often people who want to be in leadership grab the tape to the business school, not all of them, but you know, it's kind of like, oh, those are the business types. But leadership, they may call it social justice, they may call it social impact, they may call it service. But this generation, I'm seeing so much of where people, all of us, we want to make a positive difference in the world. We want to make a dent.
Barry Rellaford (20:32):
So whatever the people may call it, we're just trying to understand what's going on right now. And how can we help to share and strengthen that. We are benchmarking with other universities who have leadership centers and understanding what they're doing and ethics centers and we're also staffing up with the student leaders. So there's a student leadership group that started a couple years ago where students wanting learn about leadership and they started their own club. And we were able to fold that into the Sorensen Center, so. Our thing right now is we have so many opportunities and ideas it's picking and choosing our spots.
Troy Blaser (21:09):
Yeah. It sounds like it, a lot of opportunities and yeah. Picking and choosing where you go. You've been a coach for a long, long time, you're the lead coach at the Sorensen Center. I'm wondering, in all of your coaching, is there a specific experience maybe that stands out to you or a time when you've seen someone, been able to be part of someone receiving feedback that was a point of inflection for them, maybe kind of like you talked about Chris giving you that feedback, but as you look back, have you been able to sort of coach someone through that process that's had an impact?
Barry Rellaford (21:41):
Yeah. And I've seen it. And so I recognize you folks provide a 360 platform, and 360s can be so valuable to people to be able to, again, I'll often use this phrase, see as you're seen. I, sorry, Troy, there's so many stories coming to mind. I'm thinking about one executive who, I had heard a lot about him from people around him. I was doing a workshop actually on trust with him and his team and in the pre-consult call with him, he was very clear about what he wanted and didn't want. I was like, okay, that's good to know. But as we got together, I noticed, and I said this back to the group, I often will have people working at small tables and things that, you know, doing exercises. And what I noticed was that every time I did a small group or table exercise, tons of conversation. Every time we went to large group, crickets, quiet.
Barry Rellaford (22:41):
So I said hmm, and I would say that to him I'd say, Hey, I work with a lot of groups, and I'm just noticing this, this is a lot of what it is, coach. I'm not judging it. I'm not evaluating, I'm just saying, Hey, I'm noticing this. And people didn't really speak up. And then toward the end of the first day, somebody was making some comments and then this senior leader lit up on this guy. I mean, lost it emotionally. And he's just making this, statements about, that's why we need this da, da, da, da. And I'm like, whoa. And everybody's looking at me. And then he gets, and I said, it's like 4:30, we're ending that day. And I said, okay, well, do we want to stick around? And he goes, no, I got to go. He gets up and leaves.
Barry Rellaford (23:17):
And the room explodes, like, that's what we told you about Barry. This is what's going on. I'm like, oh, well, so I got ahold of him. I actually sent him a note and said, Hey I'd really like to talk to you before we get started tomorrow morning. And the next morning he said, because part of what had happened overnight, we had a 360 that people were to review. I walked him through some of it, but they were reviewing it overnight and came back the next morning. And we talked for probably 10, 15 minutes before the session started. In fact, we may have even delayed our start for us to have some time to do that. And he shared how, he said, I almost didn't come back today. Just the feedback I got was so difficult. And I typically don't see feedback reports, people share them with me.
Barry Rellaford (23:59):
So he started showing us and they were very, very low scores, which is unfortunate. But this is one of those things where it goes back to being a gracious receiver of feedback as you mentioned, Troy. If you're not very gracious, there's a rabbinical phrase maybe from the Talmud that says there are ears that open mouths. And if you're not getting good feedback, useful feedback, then we can look and say, I work with a bunch of losers, or you can say, you know what, maybe I'm not making, especially in the most senior role, I may not be making it easy for people. One leader heard of who said, you know, he worked on, I think the sixth or seventh floor of his building. He says stuff that comes in the front door, that's swamp water, by the time he gets to me it's eau de cologne, it's been filtered so much. And he recognized he wasn't getting, you know, useful feedback, you know, and sometimes raw, you need the raw data to kind of go like, okay, people are positioning, you know, there's, picking out the outliers and sometimes, really what is going on here?
Barry Rellaford (25:02):
And there's lots of other ways to get feedback. So, but this, for this executive I was mentioning, the second day was better in some ways. I think the third day I was working with some other parts of his group, probably doing a train the trainer thing. And he popped in and was like, everybody's like, whoa. But part of what was my relationship with him was different than anybody had. Because I was from outside the organization. I actually kind of teased him a bit and played a little bit and he responded positively and people saw a side of him they hadn't seen. And I think part of it was his own self confidence of being able to be human with people and not just inhabit his role. A kind of remarkable thing, it was about a year later, he was within the US government. He got transferred, probably promoted and called me up and wanted me to come work with his new team. And I'm like, whoa. So anyway, and I did, you know.
Troy Blaser (25:49):
So it turned out for positive results.
Barry Rellaford (25:52):
Hopefully.
Troy Blaser (25:53):
If he was willing to call you back and have you come work with his new team.
Barry Rellaford (25:55):
Yeah. And that gets into a whole question, Troy, what's positive results? You know, we think as consultants sometimes like, well if they keep having me back that means something good. Yeah. That means they trust us, have confidence. And there have been a few clients I've worked with where you want to be wise about your own brand or reputation at times is that it's almost like greenwash and ethics. Where are they just trying to look this way? Or are they very serious about growth. And most of the people I work, I got to tell you this, I love this industry of helping people grow. It is my field of dreams. And most of the people I work with are fabulous humans. At all types of industries and all levels. And I love people. And most people, but there's, again, from a maturing standpoint, sometimes people are stuck at different things. How to, and I get stuck myself, you know, I don't feel superior to people in any way, so.
Troy Blaser (26:49):
Yeah. No, I agree. Well, so, you know, thinking about our audience for the podcast, we've got folks in talent development, we've got other coaches and consultants. Is there some specific advice that you might offer to our listeners around feedback, around coaching? Maybe a tidbit that they could think, oh, how can I incorporate that into my practice?
Barry Rellaford (27:12):
This is gonna be kind of a funny thing, but you'll, because this is audio, you'll pick it up more. Because sometimes I'll, you know, I used to travel a lot, you know, and I've travel enough on Delta I got upgraded a lot and be sitting next to somebody in the first class seats and it'd be like, so what are you in for? You know, but you'd be talking to somebody next to you and they says, so what do you do? I'd sometimes say well I Barry people. And they'd go, oh, are you a mortician? I said, no, no, no, no, it's my name. I'm Barry, and I, you know, one on one it's, you could call it coaching, but I just try to be me with them. Just like I'm trying to be right here, Troy, just trying to be authentic, trying to be Barry.
Barry Rellaford (27:47):
And understand the needs of your listeners, share something that hopefully will be useful to them and their journey and experience. If I'm working with a group of, I don't know, four to 25 people, or maybe it's training or team building. Above, at some point you get to where it becomes speaking. But in all those settings, I try to be me. And that I think is part of the reason I love this field is I am seeking to just grow as a person. And to, like you hear so much from people, I want to be the best version of myself. It's just, I just want to be true. And I find that the, trust is essential to being able to accomplish things. If I were to add another thing that changes everything, it's love, it's genuine caring. It is, you know, it's, there's no better word than what, you know, and I love people.
Barry Rellaford (28:38):
I love my clients and I try to be loving with them. I don't say, Hey, I love you, very much. But I try to be, you know, it's like, I care about people. It's not like, oh, Barry, remember, got to care about these people. It's, no, I do. And I'm fascinated.
Troy Blaser (28:52):
It's genuine.
Barry Rellaford (28:53):
Yeah. I'm fascinated with people's stories and their backgrounds and their purpose. Where are they going? I love to do work on purpose and help people figure out what's the unique contribution you're here to make and what are the talents and gifts you have. So I do some strengths coaching. And so I don't, is there anything unique in that? I hope not. I think for many of your listeners that people are, you know, that you find the clients that you connect with the most and we're able to serve the best are often ones that there's a lot of mutual respect and trust and even love. And that is, it's a privilege to be able to do what I get to do. And with so many people, and it's such a privilege working with students now.
Troy Blaser (29:32):
Well maybe not unique, but certainly a good reminder, right? It's useful to hear it stated that plainly, be yourself.
Barry Rellaford (29:39):
Yeah. Be yourself and love. I mean, oh wow. That sounds, this sounds like lovey dovey covey, you know, but there's a reason I resonate with a lot of that content from Stephen M. R. from his dad and also stuff I've worked on myself, so.
Troy Blaser (29:55):
Well, I wanted to ask about your book. You've got a book, A Slice of Trust.
Barry Rellaford (29:59):
Yes.
Troy Blaser (30:00):
Right. Not The Speed of Trust. We talked about that earlier, right.
Barry Rellaford (30:03):
That was, this was just a little slice of the whole pie. Yeah slice is a project. David Hutchens is really the main author on it. David is a wonderful author. He's very well known in the, now I guess you call organizational storytelling field. And David and I actually wrote this book without having met face to face. We were working on a project with CoveyLink, the company we had that created The Speed of Trust. And David, I heard was working on a little book on trust, a little parable kind of book like, Who Moved My Cheese or like the Ken Blanchard types of books or Pat Lencioni stuff. So I reached out to David and chatted with him about it and said, you know, I'd love to help with some of the content, and he, I don't remember if I asked he offered, but somehow I became a co-author.
Barry Rellaford (30:47):
So, A Slice of Trust is based on a story that we tell in The Speed of Trust about a, the original story is one I found when we were doing research for The Speed of Trust book, which is about a street vendor in New York who is selling coffee and donuts. And he has, and the blogger is saying, you know, I'll tell you who I trust, it's this guy. He says, I don't even know his name. I'll call him Ralph. And he said, he runs a little, you know, street cart. And he says, you know, there's a Starbucks on every corner. I can get coffee and a donut lots of places. But I always go back to this guy. And he said, and there's a reason why. He says one is that when you get in line, the guy doesn't make change.
Barry Rellaford (31:26):
He has a change basket. You make your own change. And he said, that seems kind of crazy, maybe in New York, but he said, but this guy is fast. I mean he is really fast, because he's not slowing down. He's got a really smart process. You get through it. But the other thing is, this author, Jason Kottke, the blogger said, I like being trusted. And I think most of us do, we do our best work when we sense somebody trusts us and they believe in us and they want us to do our best and we trust them. So we took that, David and I took that story and repurposed it into about 1600, probably in France, it's in Europe. And it's just this funny little story, but it helps to teach the idea of The Speed of Trust. But then also what happens if you are too trusting or if you become suspicious. And so it's just a fun little read. So I think it's, we might be out of print. There may be a few copies available on Amazon. I think I may have the last few copies of it, but it's been a really fun thing to do. And I've got a couple other things I'm working on right now that hopefully will get published before long.
Troy Blaser (32:27):
Maybe, I'll bet you could probably get it, like in E format or something on Kindle.
Barry Rellaford (32:31):
Yeah, I think so. That's probably the gonna be the version we do for a while.
Troy Blaser (32:34):
That's right. Well, it sounds intriguing. It sounds like a quick read, but worthwhile and a nice story to make you think and find the symbolism.
Barry Rellaford (32:43):
The feedback I love about it, Troy, is that, and some of this I think is still up on Amazon, is people saying like, I've never laughed out loud at a business book before, so it's genuinely intended to be kind of an appetizer for The Speed of Trust. We're not trying to replace the big meal that Speed of Trust is, but it's kind of a, boy, a lot about food today I'm noticing. Yeah. But it's just kind of a little appetizer that it's a, it's got a very important point to it about how to extend smart trust, but it's not, it's a quick read. Most people read it about an hour, hour and a half.
Troy Blaser (33:12):
Oh, cool. I will definitely want to check that out. I was, as I looked at it, there's a subtitle on, at least on the Amazon page, A Slice of Trust: The Leadership Secret with the Hot and Fruity Filling.
Barry Rellaford (33:24):
It's, yeah, it's a pie, you know? So it's about a pie. It's about Simple Simon. You know why they call Simple Simon, Simple is because he trusted people. So that's, this is all about what happens, Simple Simon was a pie man.
Troy Blaser (33:36):
That makes a lot of sense. Well, Barry, it has, I've really enjoyed our conversation today. It's been intriguing. It's been very interesting to me. Given me some things to think about as well, if people want to know more or if they want to continue the conversation, maybe you've said something that struck a chord with them. Are you open to continuing the conversation?
Barry Rellaford (33:56):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I'm glad to help however I can.
Troy Blaser (34:00):
Oh, that's fantastic. Should they find you on LinkedIn? Is that the best way?
Barry Rellaford (34:04):
LinkedIn's good. You can also look up, I think we have a website for the Sorensen Center. It's at, Sorensen is spelled s-e-n at the end. But they look that at BYU, they can track me down through there. LinkedIn's probably the easiest or email me, but I'm glad to help however I can. And if I can point people in good directions or be of service that's what I seek to do.
Troy Blaser (34:26):
Good stuff.
Barry Rellaford (34:27):
Can I finish with one thing, Troy?
Troy Blaser (34:28):
Yes, please do.
Barry Rellaford (34:30):
Now, I just want to support people in the work that you are doing. This, the work of helping people grow, to understand their potential, to be able to believe and grow into that potential. I think is one of the greatest works on the planet. It really is. And if you're listening to this, that says to me that you're the kind of person who has probably experienced it yourself. And something to think about, and I would love to hear from you about this is, I'm collecting stories of who trusted you. And this is another whole conversation we could have here, Troy, but each of us just like Chris, that story told at the beginning about Chris. I have over 250 of these stories. These are, each one, not different stories about the same person. It's 250 people at least. And some of there's clients who trusted me to come in and work with their team.
Barry Rellaford (35:17):
Others are family members or other service I've been able to be involved in. But constantly I find people trusting me, and who I am today is because of those opportunities and the beliefs and feedback and care that people have extended to me. So if people have a story about somebody who trusted you, I'd love to hear and receive that story. So that's just an invitation out there to people is just because I, and they really do move me when I, and that's what's gonna change our world. It's gonna be gracious, generative, caring feedback. It's gonna be trust, that that's, and I'm actually very hopeful. I get to work with a lot of the leaders of tomorrow and they are powerful. So blessed to be part of that.
Troy Blaser (36:00):
That's a fantastic question. Even as you're describing that for me, to review in my own head, you know, who trusts, who has trusted me in my life? And what difference did that make to how I feel about myself? How I interact with others? Because I felt that trust from that person, you know, it's interesting to think about, so thanks for sharing that. I appreciate that.
Barry Rellaford (36:20):
Absolutely.
Troy Blaser (36:21):
All right. Well, that wraps it up for this episode of Simply Feedback with our guest Barry Rellaford today. Barry, thanks again for joining us. It's been a great conversation.
Barry Rellaford (36:31):
Thank you so much, Troy. I appreciate the opportunity.
