Meet Yoram Solomon

We recently connected with Yoram Solomon and have shared our conversation below.

Yoram, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
What a great question! We often pressure children to find “what they will do when they grow up” too early in life. I started my professional career in engineering. I started it when I went to a technical high school, learning electronics and later focusing on computers. I was amazed by what computers could do. It was the early days of computers, before the PC. I worked in that field for many years until I decided to get a law degree. It surprised everyone because it had nothing to do with engineering. But I pursued it and got it with no intention of practicing law. I enjoyed the discipline, and it gave me a lot. I gradually turned into business. I launched several startups, joined companies, and worked for tiny companies and a Fortune 500 company. In the process, I got my MBA. Then, I decided to get my PhD. The doctoral program revolves around your research, which defines your degree. I often heard, “A good dissertation is a done dissertation.” So, I suggested topics that were, well, manageable. On the other hand, my mentor expected me to write a dissertation that “will improve your life and the lives of others,” which is the exact opposite of “a good dissertation is a done dissertation.” Still struggling to come up with ideas, he asked me one of the most pivotal questions of my professional career: “What pisses you off?” My answer was, “Why are people so much more creative when they work in small startup companies than when they work for large, mature companies?” This ended up being my dissertation topic. I developed a model of innovation culture in organizations, and one day, I realized that this culture was built on the foundation of trust. I started researching trust, I published “The Book of TRUST,” and that’s when I realized that my mission is to help people and companies be trusted, build trust, and know who to trust. I found my purpose in life when I turned 50.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I research trust. I started by reading everything there is to know about trust, including research that very few people ever saw. Before embarking on my trust path, I asked myself what is unique about my trust perspective. I wasn’t going to go down that path if I was going to do what everybody else was doing. However, I realized that my perspective on trust is unique in several ways. First, unlike the standard approach to trust, which assumes that there is a universal and abolute set of behaviors that makes people trusted, trust is relative. The same behaviors that would cause one person to trust you could cause another person to distrust you. Take risk-taking, procrastination, attention to detail, specialization vs. generalization, for example. The second uniqueness is the understanding that to be trusted it’s not enough to be trustworthy. The other person must be willing to trust you. They must have trustfulness. We are the sum of our experiences, and some people are unwilling to trust others, no matter how trustworthy they might be. Another uniqueness of my approach to trust is that it’s not enough for me to tell you what you must do to be trusted. I must help you form new habits that change old behaviors and make you trustworthy. I created a 7-step process that I use in my workshops called Trust Habits®. Finally, I believe we can affect other people’s trustworthiness simply by first trusting them. Recently, I started a new branch of my work. I realized that people will prefer to buy from a salesperson (or brand) they trust more than from a salesperson (or brand) they don’t know enough. Not only that, they are also willing to pay a premium. I started
Where can you find out more about me or access my content? You can check my website (https://www.trusthabits.com), my podcast (The TRUST Show), any one of my 19 books (mainly “The Book of TRUST®”), my Relative Trust Inventory™ assessments, and more.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Curiosity, consistency, and pragmatism. Without curiosity, I would not have reached the level of knowledge I have on the topic of trust. But you can’t force curiosity. If you are not curious about a topic, drop it. You will not be great at it. Find something you are truly curious about to the point of relentlessness. You must be consistent and avoid seeking immediate gratification. Too many people will offer you “magic bullets” that will “make you rich in three months.” Those don’t work. Some things take years to show results. It’s the fact that they take years and that you stick with it that makes you unique. Otherwise, you are just like everyone else. Finally, be pragmatic. You are not smarter than anyone else. You are not faster than anyone else. You will not win because you are first (odds are that you are not first anyway). Be pragmatic with your assumptions; you will build a strong foundation for a lasting business.

Do you think it’s better to go all in on our strengths or to try to be more well-rounded by investing effort on improving areas you aren’t as strong in?
Let me step on my soapbox first… When I worked for a large public company, I was asked to fill in a self-assessment form on an annual basis. I was sure nobody read them. The first question I was asked was, “List your strengths.” I wrote “Strategy, Innovation, and Industry Relations.”
Can you guess what the second question was? Did you guess “List your weaknesses?” If so, you were wrong. We are so politically correct these days that we don’t use the word “weaknesses.” I will probably have to find a ”safe space” if someone tells me I have weaknesses (that was sarcasm, in case you didn’t recognize it…). Instead, the second question was, “List your areas for improvement.” So, I wrote exactly the same three things I listed under “strengths”: Strategy, Innovation, and Industry Relations.
I was promptly called to the Human Resources office. Apparently, someone does read those self-assessments. “You filled the form incorrectly,” I was told. How can I fill it incorrectly if it’s a self-assessment? “You wrote the same three things for strengths and for areas for improvement,” they told me. My answer was, “You didn’t ask about my weaknesses. If you had asked about my weaknesses, I would have told you what they are, and they would have been different than what I listed under my strengths. I have weaknesses. God knows I do, but you didn’t ask about them. Instead, you asked about my areas for improvement. Let me tell you, I would rather spend my time, energy, and effort improving my strengths and turning them into greatness than improving my weaknesses and turning them into mediocrity.”

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