Jocko Underground: What If Someone Breaks Your Trust? | How to Look Like a Hard Target

Losing trust and gaining it back. Being productive at work making you too valuable? Is Tik Tok pulling one over on you? Things you can do to be a "hard target" and keep yourself safe. Deal with obnoxious people at work. How to start a consulting business. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is the Jocko Underground Podcast, number 71, sitting here with EC, Echo Charles. Trust.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  So, trust, obviously, is the, the, the foundation of relationships. And not just personal relationships, but business relationships, people that you interact with, your family, the whole nine yards. So what happens when trust gets broken?

• 0:25Jocko Willink?

  What do you do? And really, that can happen from two directions. One is you broke the trust. The other is someone else broke the trust.

• 0:36Jocko Willink?

  So I think first and foremost, it's very important to understand the impact of broken trust. Because what we're going to talk about is that it is very, very, very difficult to rebuild and get. I mean, this is like, if someone break, let's say you have a friend that, that breaks your trust. It could take, first of all, there's a chance that it could never recover. I mean, depending on what it is, there's a chance it could never recover. If it is a recoverable item that was broken, like they did something a little bit less negatively impacting your life, it could still take years.

• 1:19Jocko Willink?

  So, what I'm saying is, nothing's more important in a relationship between two human beings than making sure that you don't break trust. Don't lie. This is the lesson that you teach your kid, right? Your kid does something stupid. Hey, you punish him for doing something stupid. Your kid does something stupid and lies about it, it's next level, right? That's when, that's when it's going to get kind of wild. They're going to make sure they don't forget that. So, keep that in mind in any time you're interacting with people that trust and integrity is the most important thing you got. If you break it,

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  and look, if you make a mistake and break it, that's totally, it's, it's not totally different. Because you can make a mistake and break someone's trust, and now they're like, you know? But you, you already on the, are on the path to rebuild because you explain, hey, you take ownership of this mistake. But if you break someone else's trust, first of all, you got to recognize that it's a problem. And you've got to, you've got to recognize that there's a decent chance that no one should ever trust you again.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is by the way, a class of humans. There's a class of human beings, trust is not a thing for them. They don't ca- like they're, they're gonna, they're gonna, they don't care about it. Like everything I just said, they're kind of struggling their shoulders like, what is he talking about? Like, hey, I gotta get mine and hey, you know what I mean? You know, hey, you gotta take care of yourself and you gotta take care of number one and, you know, if they don't want to trust me, that's fine. I still got mine. You know what I mean? That, there's a whole class of human beings that are like that. So stay away from them for sure. But if you're not like that and you accidentally or you purposely broke someone's trust, and now you're trying to rebuild it, I'm just gonna say, right out of the gate, don't expect some kind of forgiveness. Don't expect, oh, I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have done that. Don't expect that, that, that things are handled now.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  Cause they're actually not.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Don't expect them to trust you. Don't expect, you what? You don't trust me anymore? No, I don't actually trust you anymore. And they might not, they may or may not say that to you. But you have a lot of work to do. And the way that you're going to do it is by performing and being trustworthy for a long, long, long time.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  And hopefully over time, you can rebuild. You may never get back to like a 100% trust. You may never clear that, that blemish off your record. You know, you're like a felon. It's just on there and that's the way it is. It's gonna show up on your police report. So you gotta expect that. That's what you gotta expect. Now, on the other side, how to rebuild? If someone else broke it, right? And again, first of all, you gotta recognize it's a problem. Second of all, you gotta recognize that there's, you probably shouldn't ever trust them again, right? Like, they made, they made, now listen, like I said, if they made a mistake, we're in a kind of a different category.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  Than someone that consciously decides, oh, I'm gonna, I, I think I can get away with this, or I'm gonna make this move because it's better for me.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  Someone breaks your trust. Look, I'm not saying you can't work with them anymore. And I mean, I had to work with people that I didn't really trust a hundred percent. But yeah, okay, now what do I do? Watch them, right? Don't give them impactful things that you don't have trust in them on. And then, I mean, I think you just start small. And you start giving a little bit of trust back and hopefully you can grow that over time. If they're repentant in their behavior, if they are trying to rebuild that trust. If they're taking ownership of their mistakes, then I think you can move it in the right direction.

• 5:04Jocko Willink?

  But like I said, you gotta use caution with this type of person. Cause they might be a snake, right? Like just a, just a rat, just a snake. And so like a dog with kids, like you really, you really like your dog, but you still shouldn't leave your dog in a room like alone with a toddler, you know? Cause that's not just a, not a good thing to do. Cause a dog is still a dog and a rat is still a rat and a snake is still a snake. So you give them that opportunity and they're probably going to break your trust. So that's what I'm saying.

• 5:40Jocko Willink?

  I think the, the point here is trust is like a, such a valuable thing. And you better treat it that way. There you go. Well, you're taking notes over there. What's up?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  It's kind of like teeth enamel, right? Once you lose it, it's gone. One of those kind of things. Super hard, you know? I don't know. I just thought of that. But no, you said a mistake, like if someone makes a mistake.

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Like what, like what would be an example of like a mistake? And wait, wait, let me be sure that I understand. Where say you make a mistake, then it's like easier to be like, oh, okay. It was just a mistake and maybe like gain have trust.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  Right, right, right.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  Easier like what would be in just.

• 6:19Jocko Willink?

  A mistake would be like, oh, you know, you had our equipment in your car. You left the car open. This stuff got stolen.

• 6:26Speaker 01

  Oh, right. And so, yeah, your trust in me to oversee.

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. That's like a different kind of trust, right?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you know, some people, they'll say it was a lapse of judgment.

• 6:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  And they'll kind of almost try to categorize that as just a mistake, you know? Like, I don't know, like what's the, the deal? Like, I don't know if you get with someone's girlfriend or something like that. You know, like, oh, I had a lapse of judgment, kind of a thing. Where it's like, that's not like an innocent mistake like the one you're saying.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  No, it's totally different.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  That's like violating trust, right? Like that kind of whatever.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  But they say lapse of judgment. Do you give that any cred?

• 7:05Jocko Willink?

  It's a step.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:07Jocko Willink?

  You know, but it also could be an excuse. I might sound like an excuse and it might be an excuse when I hear it.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like what, what would be in an innocent, not innocent, but like a legitimate just lapse of judgment that wouldn't have the weight of an actual betrayal. See what I'm saying? Like a lapse of judgment that's like legit.

• 7:33Jocko Willink?

  A lapse of judgment.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Oh, I know one. Like maybe if someone like had like a meeting or something like, let's say me and you had a meeting with somebody. I don't know. That was gonna, we're gonna do something cool or big. And I went out drinking the night before, cause I was maybe fired up and I drank too much. And then I came to the meeting like super hungover or something like that.

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  That could be a lapse of, I think of an example similar to that, but maybe a little bit more like legit is there's a big business opportunity and a guy like reaches out to you and me and I don't see the email and you go and meet with the guy and I'm like, dude, you didn't even tell me about this big business opportunity. You see what I'm saying?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  And you'd be like, oh, man, I, I saw your email. I thought, I thought you just didn't care about it. You know what I mean? So then it's like, okay, we, we were just a little not aligned on what was important, what's not. You, you made a judgment call. I don't agree with your judgment. Okay. You know, there's, there's like combat scenarios where people, people do things and, and it's sort of a bad judgment. You know, we actually have a saying for it. It's a good initiative, bad judgment.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, I thought it would just be smart for me to just storm, you know, get across the street and take that other house down. It's like, bro, no one knew you were going there.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? So the things like that happen. That's bad judgment and that would impact trust. Because obviously

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  you're doing stuff that you shouldn't be doing. Now, is it on me? Yeah, it's on me. Cause if I'm the leader and I didn't explain to you, hey, don't clear any of the buildings that aren't part of the target set and you go do it anyways. So.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  We got some, we got some issues.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  I'm thinking of this scenario, doesn't have to do with storming buildings, by the way. So I was in Kankua, a few weeks ago, whatever. And Terry, big sexy, was there, happened to be there, him and Nareen, so. But they were leaving like a, two days after we arrived there, so we only had essentially one day to like, catch up or whatever. Uh, so I was like, oh, let's go up to my younger brother's house, right? And so I'm on the phone with my bro, my younger brother, Yata. And Terry, so basically something came up where it's like, oh man, the, the time is running out, you know? We got kids now, they're going to bed, so it's like, we don't really have time to go up to Yata's house. Cause he lives in Colorado, which is like, a good twenty minutes like drive one way.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  But Terry, literally is, he's staying walking distance from me and there's a bar that's walking distance from us, like, it's in the same kind of area. So I was like, ah, we only got basically like an hour left for me to, I don't know, to, to hang. For whatever, oh yeah, cause the bar is gonna close. So, me thinking, I thought this literally for like ten seconds where I'm like, oh, I'll call you. Cause the plan was like, oh yeah, all three of us are gonna hang out for Terry's last day. So maybe go up to Yata's house or something like this, but time got away from us. It would have been, just, the circumstances turned out where going up to Yata's house is like unrealistic. We're not gonna do that. So we're like, oh, we'll just go to this bar real quick, we'll hang out, have, you know, have a few laughs, whatever. I look, we only have an hour left.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  So me and Terry can just shoot up there. If I tell my younger brother, oh, we're going to this bar, he, he's gonna say no, cause by the time he even gets there, put on his clothes, that's at least five minutes. By the time he gets there, he's gonna be like freaking, there's just a few minutes left, you know? So he's not gonna come all the way down to this side. So anyway, I thought that for like ten seconds, didn't tell him, so I was like, ah, let's just go, you know, Yata's caught up for the night. You know, he's with his kids and all this stuff, they have school the next day, all this stuff, right? So me and Terry go, have a few laughs or whatever. Come to find out, like Yata would have wanted to go. It wasn't a big deal or nothing like that, but I found that out. Oh, I would have wanted to go, ah, you should have told me, you know, kind of a thing.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  So think about that, right? Where me, that's kind of a lapse of judgment.

• 11:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Legitimately.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  That's almost the same story that I just said, you know, you, we got an email. I didn't respond. You met with the guy and I was like, and you're like, dude, I didn't even think, you know, that would be a big deal.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why it reminded me of it. So, but it could be in a different dimension or whatever, a different scenario where Yata, my younger brother, could have been like, ah, he excluded me on purpose, which he didn't think, obviously, but.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  And it could also be him just like taking advantage of the situation to make you feel a little bit guilty. You know what I'm saying?

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, the, the, yeah, it's true.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  There's all kinds of mind games going on in the world. That could be one of them. Yata, where are you at?

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Obviously, he wouldn't do that. But it was like, so, you know, the plan was to hang us all three.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so what's your point in this?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Anyway, my point is that's like a legitimate lapse of judgment.

• 12:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Versus if that scenario was slightly different, if I did say, hey, I don't want, let's not hang with him. Let's go secretly hang.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Do another hang, you know?

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's why intent is so important. Even, you know, when I said like, oh, you go and. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground Podcast. So if you want to continue to listen,

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  go to jacood underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this, we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko Podcast, which will remain as is, free for all, as long as we can keep it that way. But we, but we are doing this so we don't have to be under the control of sponsors. And we're doing it so we can give you

• 13:01Jocko Willink?

  more control, more interaction, more direct connections, better communications with us. And to do that, we are, we're building a website right now where we'll be able to utilize to strengthen this legion of troopers that are in the game with us. So thank you. It's jacood underground.com. It costs $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford to support us,

• 13:27Jocko Willink?

  we can still support you. Just email assistance at jacood underground.com and we'll get you taken care of. Until then, we will see you mobilized underground.