I next want to think about three other key issues that help us build trust. Rapport, warmth, and equality. Now remember back to homicide detective, Marshall Frank. Now Marshall Frank faced this challenge, his was trying to get Paul Rowles to confess to murder. Paul Rowles certainly knew if you confess to murder, you're going to prison for a long time, for sure. And yet, Detective Marshall Frank figured out how to get a confession within 30 minutes. How did he do that? Well, it turns out that the key to what he did was building rapport. And he built rapport through a lot of different steps and some of them seem kind of funny. He essentially treated this murderer as if he were a friend. He sat in close to him, in fact sat in so close to him, legs were almost touching. He leaned in when he talked to them. He spent most of those 30 minutes not talking about the murder or the victim, but talking about family, life in general. Detective Frank talks about, I made friends with him. That is, he's making friends, he's talking about things that friends would talk about. So, we think about this as non-task communication. That is, rather than getting right down to business, he's chit-chatting about things as if they were friends. And that allowed him to build this rapport, to build a sense of friendship, that created a sense of trust that then led to Rowles revealing all of this information. So, acting in a cooperative way, in a way that Detective Frank was hoping for. Now in general, how do we do this? Well, we build rapport by this non-task communication. Rather than getting right down to business, we should talk with people about local events, ask them about their family, their friends, hobbies, recent sporting events. We do things that aren't about the task at hand, but that help build rapport that make it much easier when we do get to the task at hand. We can also do things like share meals together, we can actually go to events together, like sporting events together. When we do things together, that allows us to build this sense of rapport and that really facilitates trust. Now, let me tell you about another story. This was about an election, it happened in Florida's 22nd district. It was Ron Klein, a neophyte to the political scene. He was taking on Clay Shaw, a 13 time incumbent. Now in this election, Ron Klein knew his stuff, he was a policy wonk. He knew the ins and outs and he was ready for Congress. But Clay Shaw was a formidable opponent. After all, he had won over a dozen elections before. He was ready to take on all challengers,but Ron Klein was persistent. It turns out though, Ron Klein had a challenge. He was perceived as competent but cold. When we think about these perceptions of people, we often think about them in terms of their competence and how warm they are. And here Ron Klein, when he talked about policy seemed competent, but he wasn't warm, he wasn't connecting with voters. Now, he brought in these consultants and they figured out how to overcome this key challenge. So how can he sound articulate but also warm? People saw him as aloof, he actually did a practice TV interview with these consultants. He went through the entire practice interview. And at the end the consultants said okay, I want you to watch this interview that you just gave and tell me what would you do differently. He said, well there's actually another point that I would have raised, there's some other material I could have brought in here. And the consultant said, look, I want you to watch it again and I want you to see that in this whole interview you never smiled. Now it seems funny, why would we want somebody who's an expert in policy to smile. But it turns out if you're running for political office, people need a connection. They need to trust you. And so they figured out is that what Klein really lit up with was when he talked about his son, when he talked about his family. And they said, look, when you go out on your political stump speeches, start off talking about your family. Start off talking about your son, and then pivot to talking about the key issues and policy. And it turns out as he did that, he was able to connect with voters. He demonstrated warmth as well as competence, and he was more likable and trusted. We need to do things sometimes that are different from just demonstrating pure competence to instill trust. In fact, I think about this is a presidential imperative, where we think about every president since Eisenhower. Since the advent of television, every U.S. President, as they've moved into the Oval Office, bring with them a dog. And this imperative is so strong, it's true even for President Obama, who had never had a dog. And for good reason, one of his daughters, Malia, is allergic to dogs. And yet, when they move into the White House, the Obamas went out and bought a dog, a hypoallergenic dog, but they needed a dog. And so you think about how important it is, why would you need a dog? And the key idea here is it projects warmth. If you've won a national election, you've demonstrated some competence, it's hard to do. And then a key challenge is projecting warmth. When you see a president, a high power person, you presume confidence and then you're looking for that warmth and having a dog does that. You want to do things like spending time with family, sharing stories, personal stories, hanging around with a dog. Those are things that project a sense of warmth and they end up building trust. So Klein talked about his son, presidents end up getting dogs. It's this non-task communication that's really important. We have experiences that we share in common like going to sporting events, or sharing meals together, using first names correctly. Those are things that will build rapport. If we come up with nicknames, or we have shared hobbies, we find commonalities, those are things that are going to build rapport and that's really an essential ingredient for building trust. So that's the rapport idea and it's related to warmth. The idea that we can demonstrate warmth when we demonstrate concern for other people. We demonstrate kindness. We spend time with our friends, our family, with pets, or volunteering. We're demonstrating concern for other people and that concern projects a sense of warmth and that's a really key component. There's an affective piece, an emotional piece, to trust and we want someone whose going to be warm. Now, one final point related to this is this idea of equality. When we show up on time, we're demonstrating that our time isn't more valuable than somebody else's time. That's communicating a sense of equality, as well as this idea of benevolence and warmth. We want to be equal, so we don't sit on a higher chair. We don't accentuate differences between us. We can do things like a dress in similar ways. We convey a sense of equality and that's also important for building trust. We're more likely to trust people who seem to not only care about us, but also treat us as equal partners. So taken together, here are three key elements. Building rapport, demonstrating warmth, and demonstrating a sense of equality. They're all key ingredients for building trust.
