Ep 87: Dan Vallone | To build trust you must create belonging

Rethinking Communication

This episode explores the nuance of trust, and how we create more of it.

My guest is Dan Vallone, the Director of More in Common USA. After spending 6 years as an active duty Army infantry officer, which included a tour in Afghanistan, Dan got into the work of education policy and innovation, and eventually began to explore the common factors that exist in broken societies — alienation, isolation, polarization, distrust.

As you’ll hear in our conversation, Dan views trust as a nebulous and ever-changing thing brought on by influences that exist all around us. Trust is built through communication and experiences with others, and is rarely ever linear in nature.

Creating more trust across our divides as a society requires some messy, murky, and at times, seemingly morally satisfying work to get us to the point where we can lift our heads above the field of view of our immediate tribe and see others who exists near and with us who, as Dan explains, more often than not want and value very similar things as you.

You can find the studies Dan mentions in this episode at https://www.moreincommon.com/our-work/publications/. Connect with the More in Common USA team on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Moreincommon_.

Connect with me at https://www.michaelashford.com.