Creating Contexts for Trust and Connection with Crystal Wong Kruger

How might you create the context to build trust and meaningful connections with those who matter most to you, especially in our busy world?

What are some leadership lessons that come from connecting with children?

We explored these questions and many more with Crystal Wong Kruger, founder and CEO of LIOHAN, a start-up that empowers busy families to form deeper bonds and connections via novel shared experience. Crystal is harnessing her passion for interdisciplinary learning and bringing people together in creative ways and to offer a modern approach to helping families spend more meaningful time together.  

In our conversation we talked about how presence, curiosity, leadership, and the courage to trust can create deep connections and strong relationships – both personal and professional.

If you’re looking for practical ways to create environments that foster high trust and connection in your family and professional life, then you’ll want to listen to this episode of In Trust.

Creating Contexts for Trust and Connection with Crystal Wong Kruger

Talking Points

  • How Crystal helps families bond through novel shared experiences
  • How busyness can get in the way of developing meaningful relationships with those closest to us – like our families and children
  • How our relationships with kids can change when they don’t feel a need to compete for attention
  • The importance of living in our here and now
  • How Crystal harnesses technology in new ways to move from distraction to tools that help families build meaningful connections with each other and the world around them
  • How learning to trust transforms relationships – personal and professional
  • As a leader, the power of trusting that people are always doing the best they can in any given situation
  • Building trust by trusting others and showing up as your authentic self
  • The responsibility of being trusted
  • How curiosity opens the door to learning and connection
  • How role clarity helps build trust
  • A lens to think about trusting in yourself
  • The magic of the gift of spending meaningful time together
  • Why putting expectations on ourselves – as leaders and as parents – that we must know all of the answers is an impossible thing
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Quotables

“When you’re present in the moment, everything that happened before impacts the current moment and what you do in the present moment also impacts the future. So if you really think about here, that’s really all we have.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“It’s very important that we realize and recognize we all have different experiences. And if we can only just learn to appreciate each other’s perspectives and experiences, it would be really meaningful to how we connect with each other.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“There’s just so much more to life to me than just being book smart. And there are all these soft skills that we want that we seem to be, at least in the current traditional education system, not really aware of.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“The more you can learn to trust someone, the more incredible that relationship becomes.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“The only way that I know how to build trust is to live by that value that I do trust others and by trusting others, it means that I can be my authentic self. I can share how I really feel with empathy and just my excitement and my passion for what I’m doing.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“It’s a massive responsibility when people trust you. You’ve got to about delivering. You’ve got to honor that trust.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“If someone thinks something that I wouldn’t have thought of before, I’m genuinely curious. There is no judgment because I know I can learn something from them.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“Little by little, trust is earned.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

“When I talk about trusting myself, it’s more about trusting what I’m experiencing. It’s trusting all the people that are around me. It’s trusting the clues that I get.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

​​“What really matters in the end is human connection.” – Crystal Wong Kruger

Show Notes

This episode sponsored by:

The Future Is Trust

Embracing the Era of Trust-Centered Leadership

There’s a lot of uncertainty about the future, but one thing we are sure about is that The Future Is Trust. Which also happens to be the title of our Amazon bestselling book: The Future is Trust: Embracing the Era of Trust-Centered Leadership.

This reimagination of what a leadership book can be sheds light on:

  • Why Trust: Why now, what’s changed, and what do we have without trust?
  • What is Trust: The act of trusting–how it inspires belonging, resilience, and collaboration.
  • How to Build Trust: Starting with ourselves, the foundational tools to wire all of our connections for trust. 

Visit out thefutureistrust.com to order your copy and access special bonuses.

4 comments

  1. Heather Chavin

    I love that you incorporate trusting yourself into how you think about trust. Our gut definitely has a lot to share with us if we’re listening.

  2. Viola Dwyer

    Crystal Wong Kruger is amazing. This episode packs so much wisdom that would be helpful to all of us trying to build strong, positive relationships.

  3. Angie Flynn-McIver

    Crystal’s focus on how trust, curiosity, and listening build connection is inspiring!

  4. Heather Chavin

    Love the “What matters, in the end, is human connection.” We seem to lose that in fear, ego and “business” and rushing to get it all done. There’s grace in the pauses.

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