What Drug Dealers Taught Me About Trust | Pamela Barnum | TEDxCollingwood

Translator: Natalia Batchenkova Proofreader: Claire Ghyselen Can I

trust

you? This question has the potential to impact every part of our lives, from who we love to how we learn, how we take care of our health, and how we invest our money. And, if mastered, building

trust

strengthens relationships and can improve our health and lead to greater financial success. Now, it may seem strange to learn about confidence from someone who spent their entire career pretending to be someone they weren't. For years, I woke up and entered such an underworld, and sometimes in leather pants, that I couldn't tell who I was.

Being beaten, raped, or even murdered were all possibilities if that were the day a

drug

dealer discovered that I... ...was an undercover police officer. What's even stranger is that unlike the movies, I rarely carried a gun and never carried a wire to protect myself. Trust (and the ability to build and maintain trust) was the only weapon I used. My goal is to introduce you to a skill you can learn so that you can then build a foundation of trust in everything you do, because when you take advantage of trust tricks, you make risky and stressful relationships easier, even those you have with your in-laws.

Before I became an undercover agent, I had to attend this intense training course. You take it and you learn about techniques on how to use medications,

what

the price is and the terminology, and you learn how to build trust. Although they don't call it "building confidence," that's essentially

what

you learn. And you have to learn it in really uncomfortable and often unpredictable situations. So, for example, officers who look like bikers are taken to gay bars, and young, rookie female officers are taken to busy strip clubs. Now, it's been quite a few years, so if you're having trouble connecting the dots, I was the one who went to the busy strip clubs.

There were about 48 hours left in a long-term covert project, about 10 months long, and we were preparing for all of our attacks. And rips are essentially what they sound like. You order a large amount of

drug

s and then you go to meet the dealer and the scams. Sounds fun, right? It usually is, unless it means you have to jump out of a moving car driven by a really angry drug dealer. When that happens, it's nothing like what happens on television. I didn't roll, I cowered and gracefully jumped into the action. I just fell, like a bag of cement.

Later, a drug dealer called and threatened to kill my partner. My partner was actually an undercover officer who I first met when we were assigned to live together as husband and wife. Now the undercover agent finally went underground and we got married for real at the end of the project. (Laughter) We call it our "government-arranged marriage," and I'm happy to report that nearly two decades later, we're still in a happy, trusting relationship, and no one has called him or threatened to kill him, at least recently. So, life has progressed quite happily. Now, when you think about these confidence tricks, you ask yourself, "Do I have to put myself in danger to learn this?" Absolutely not.

Think of me as your double as we walk through some examples of confidence tricks. Please note that I have changed the names to protect the not so innocent. Julie (not her real name) was a full-time waitress and part-time drug dealer who had connections to the Hells Angels. But that's not what made her so interesting. Every night she would go to the bar and I would sit and listen, trying to hear conversations that would give me some perspective and information about the local drug scene. I learned a lot about that, but what I learned even more was how to become an active and effective listener.

Julie was amazing at this. She would lean in and ask questions for clarification; she was nodding and saying affirmations, mirroring her body language, and as a result, she has built really great relationships and gained a lot of information. But the piece that really stood out for me, because those are all great ingredients for a wonderful listener, but the piece that really stood out was that Julie let go of all prejudice. She did not prejudge anyone when she spoke to them. And when we let go of preconceived ideas about what a drug dealer should be like, or what our spouse, our children, our partners, our co-workers should be like, we make room for new ideas.

And most importantly, we build a bridge of trust that allows the other person to feel heard and valued. Although active listening is an important confidence trick, it is also one of the easiest, yet least used, tricks. I use all the techniques I learned from Julie when I started connecting with her. And as a result, I became Julie's trusted confidant and she introduced me to Frank, the dealer with biker connections. And after being introduced by phone, we decided to arrange a meeting. So, I go to Frank's "place of business", which is a huge Victorian house that was now a flophouse.

If you've ever seen a horror movie or been to a haunted house, you may be able to visualize this grand old mansion that had been turned into a flophouse. But what you are not able to appreciate is the smell. Think old cat urine, bacon grease, stale beer, and human waste all mixed together in this overwhelming stench that greets you at the front door. As I climb three flights of very dimly lit stairs, every step I take is a stream, announcing to anyone listening (and they didn't even have to be actively listening) that I was getting closer.

Drug

dealers

are a fun bunch of businessmen. They do not like unexpected visits to their workplace. So I thought I'd better let them know I was coming. "Hello!" I called from the stairs, in my best "I'm a tough drug dealer" voice, although it sounded more like the hotel maid calling "Housekeeping!" But I kept moving forward and with every step I took, I reminded myself, “I got this.” When I finally get to the door and was about to knock, it opens, so I step inside. Then it quickly closes behind me. I can hear the lock turn and a chain slide, locking me in.

When my eyes finally adjust, I see the guy who had locked me in. He was at least six inches taller and weighed 150 pounds. He was wearing a bandana, a black leather biker vest, and jeans that even a plumber would know needed to be pulled up. Then suddenly I feel pressure against me. I look down and see this huge dog with his snout and drool everywhere. There are two other guys who look remarkably like Thing One and Thing Two, at a table, packaging cocaine, with another of Satan's dogs at their feet. There are three dogs... well, three drug

dealers

, two dogs, guns, drugs and me.

So I pull out the only weapon I have, the confidence trick. I enter the zone. I stood with my hands on my hips and my feet shoulder-width apart. Think Wonder Woman without the impractical jumpsuit or crown, although the lasso of Truth would have been a really nice touch. Glanced up. "Frank?" First thing: "Yes, are you Pam?" "Uh, yeah. Do you have my package?" Within moments, he is handing me an ounce of cocaine and I give him $1,600 and almost simultaneously, I hear the chain come off the slide, the lock turns, and the door opens. Without sounding anything like Arnold Schwarzenegger, I said, "I'll be back for more." I took the time walking up the stairs to gain confidence by repeating positive affirmations like, "I've got this." I slowed my breathing and not just because of the stench.

Once inside, I realized I was outnumbered and unarmed, but I didn't focus on the negative questions. Instead, I decided to remember all the successful and safe drug deals I had already done. Now, most of you will never be locked up in a drug house with armed drug dealers. But many of you will face risks and challenges every day, which requires trust to build trusting relationships. And I encourage you to think about a time when you had to act in the face of uncertainty, fear, or even danger, and you did it anyway. You all have examples of that.

So the next time you face a challenge and need to move forward, use those past achievements as a reminder of what you are capable of doing and allow that to push you into the unknown. Now, trust is a very powerful confidence trick. But you take trust to the next level when you combine it with empathy. Sherry was at the beginning of her drug dealing career when I met her. And she shared with me, during a night packaging cocaine at her house, that she came from a history of abuse, which is a very similar story for many women who get involved in the drug industry.

And while we're packaging this cocaine, if you can visualize this coffee table with little piles of cocaine, and we've got the mortar and pestle, and we're crushing everything, and measuring out the baggies, Sherry's cat comes walking by. towards us. Sherry looks on, "Don't let my cat near the coke! Last time he ate some and was banged up for weeks!" However, the months go by and it is actually Sherry who is using a lot of cocaine because she has been on drugs for months and is accumulating a debt that she cannot pay. She ends up getting kicked out of her apartment and she calls me in a panic. "Pam, you have to come and take Kitty.

I have a place to Couchsurf but they won't let me bring Kitty. You're the only person I trust to take care of him." (Sighs) I took the cat, but it complicated a lot of things. First of all, I was an undercover police officer who had gathered enough evidence that Sherry was probably facing a very long prison sentence. She wouldn't need an apartment anytime soon and she certainly wouldn't be bringing her cat. Secondly, we were just days, not weeks, but days, away from arresting her and dozens of other drug dealers who had sold to my partner and me.

What was I going to do with this cat? Cocaine Kitty wasn't part of my plan. But I recognized how important Kitty was to Sherry, so I worked hard to make arrangements for Kitty to be cared for at the end of the project. Now, on Take Down Day, all of the accused are arrested simultaneously in a series of pre-dawn raids. And then they are taken to the police station, where they enter an interrogation room one by one and meet with the undercover officer who they thought was a fellow drug dealer. You can imagine what that's like from both perspectives.

Some people walk into the room, see you, and are so surprised they are speechless. Others begin to cry and sob because they know what awaits them. Most of them start yelling, cursing, and cursing, and you're so grateful they're handcuffed. Sherry just sat in her chair, looked at me, and said, "Thank you for taking care of Kitty." I learned about confidence tricks working one-on-one or in groups of people, but it all happened in person. And our world has changed considerably with the emergence of everything that happens online, including most of our communications. When people can hide behind a screen, they are not as responsible as they are in person.

In a very noisy space, filled with countless tweets, blogs, emails, shares and likes, it's easy to stop listening. But the confidence trick of active listening is even more important online. And you can show it when you respond to someone in a timely manner. Show that you are interested and committed. And when you respond with a conversational tone, you provide context and clarity, and that goes even further in building trust. We can demonstrate confidence online when we refuse to participate in the comparison game that so many people fall prey to on social media. Confident people know their worth.

They don't need to compare themselves with others. Instead, they shed light on others. In a virtual world full of cyberbullies, trolls, and distant voyeurs, building trust is even more critical. We have the opportunity, with our unlimited access to friends and even strangers around the world, to reflect the compassionate environment in which we all deserve to live. My hope is that they decide to ignore the Doomsday headlines about a post-trust era. and instead, start looking for ways to experiment with confidence tricks and work to build trust. Imagine the domino effect, if each of us worked harder to build trust instead of shouting that it no longer exists.

Because we need to make a determined and concerted effort to build trust at every step of our journey. Thinking otherwise leaves a lot behind. Today we have it in our hands to start a revolution of trust. It starts with confidence tricks and it starts with you and me. Thank you. (Applause)