Relationship Trust
Little white lies. Everyone tells them to smooth things over and prevent scenes they would rather avoid. But I often see businesses and relationships fail because of issues where if they had told the truth it might have been painful – but not lethal to business relationships.
Not long ago the owner of a cutting horse ranch fired his ranch manager and moved all his horses to another of his farms. Why? Because he lied and claimed he didn’t know how a horse got hurt instead of telling the owner the truth. When you have horses, accidents happen. Covering up the cause will lose you an owner – or a job.
The same thing happens if you’re a consultant, or a freelancer, or managing someone’s blog. Even though lying is often more expeditious and less painful in the short run, it will ruin you in the long term because you will lose trust. And trust is VERY hard to recover.
Stephen M.R. Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People has a newer book called The Speed of Trust. This short video is an excerpt of his ideas on trust and an example of how trust doubled one street vendor’s business:
For consultants, I strongly recommend under-promising and over-delivering to build more trust into your relationships. Most often, your clients will not understand:
- how complex what you are doing is
- that it takes much longer to deliver quality
- have unrealistic expectations
Scope creep will eat your lunch. Dishonest clients will pretend to not understand, hoping you will give them more work than you billed. Just as you need to be trustworthy, I believe in firing bad clients immediately to make room for good ones.
Read my post Are You REALLY Serious About Growing Your Business Or One of the Many Who THINK They Are? for more on scope creep and consulting.
Building Trust
When we trust someone, we have less stress in our lives. Trust is essential to our success in both business and personal relationships. And the key is clear and consistent communication.
Face your challenges head on. If there is a problem, say so. If you are too busy trying to handle issues, send short status messages so your clients know you are still working on resolutions.
The worst thing you can do – and what many do – is to stop communicating. Do this and people will assume the worst. What they tell themselves is going on will be worse than the truth. It is a cowardly way out that adults need to outgrow.
We have to overcome conditioning we may have been subjected to by bad managers or abusive parents. Many actually teach their children and employees to lie by punishing them for telling the truth. That is their mistake. Don’t make it yours by failing to grow into someone courageous enough to do the right thing.
Learning to communicate clearly and building trust will improve your life. A good place to start it this talk by Stephen Covey on Leading at the Speed of Trust:
As Covey says, when trust is low, speed goes down and cost goes up. When trust is high, speed increases and cost declines.
What can you do to improve the trust in your relationships? Eliminate those you can’t trust and you will shorten the amount of time it takes to get successful.
Gail Gardner
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I agree with you. Trust is the most important factor. In my case trust is damaged in my job when boss ignore staff complain. Later when he comming back to me, he never rebuild trust again.
Trust is the bedrock of successful interpersonal relationships . Trust is easier to break than to build. Once your interpersonal relationships are plagued by suspicion and fear, trust is difficult to establish.
Building a strong healthy relationship between two people takes work, but it also … Telling the truth enough becomes a habit and there is nothing to fear when the … When trust is lost in a relationship, more often than not, that relationship is over. Thanking you 🙂
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Building a strong healthy relationship between two people takes work, but it also … Telling the truth enough becomes a habit and there is nothing to fear when the … When trust is lost in a relationship, more often than not, that relationship is over.
May be my last comment was captured by akismat 😉
Not only in business but in every where every place in you life you need trust some people make trust in years and lose it just in a minute. web world is a place where all works done on trust base it gives you everything but can take all also.
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nice article about relationships, its very essential for everyone to know this. thanks for sharing this information
Building a strong healthy relationship between two people takes work, but it also … Telling the truth enough becomes a habit and there is nothing to fear when the … When trust is lost in a relationship, more often than not, that relationship is over.
Communication is such a critical skill but also underutilized. Keeping your client updated is an important part of the component of trust.
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The 7 Secrets of Highly Effective People books are great for information about how to best execute business relationships involving marketing ventures. I appreciate the Covey videos and information you posted here. Thanks!
Establishing and building trust is also important for attorneys and financial planners. Clients do not immediately know whether to trust you, so you must give them indications of trust they recognize. Showing you are a Member of the Better Business Bureau is a good example, or that you are Board Certified is another. The more evidence you provide clients at the beginning of the relationship, the more they feel they can trust you.
A business is built on the character of those behind it. Besides wanting to trust people or businesses that they are reputable and honest, we are selves should want to walk around with a character of being able to be trusted. I certainly want and have worked for a reputation that is straightforward and always honest, and in doing so know that however my success is measured, it was done the right way.
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Building Customer trust is another factor to online success. As builiding customer trust helps you to gain offline and online both refrall trafic !
Very well written article. While selling affiliate products without adequate research would not amount to rosket science, it is your duty to let hin know about all the pros and cons of doing so in a hurry.
I once bought a cream for tattoo removal for $17, using an affiliate link on my friend’s blog.
Though my small sale would have meant an easy $2-5 for him, I do not visit his bog any more after seeing that the product I’d bought from there had failed to live up to its claims.
In Affiliate marketing, reputation is everything. So, take care to choose your products careful.
This is excellent Gail,
You know it’s like a Saturday Night Live sketch out there these days.
I see more and more businesses using bait and switch tactics all the time RUINING TRUST then they wonder why they’re struggling.
Customers shop with who they like and no one likes someone you can’t trust to give you a fair deal.
This starts with honesty. Please folks if you advertised $25 sell the thing for $25 stop trying to jam people for service fees processing fees and fee fees.
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This is SUPER timely as I am currently working on a small business communications package and was really praying for direction. I want to help small business owners connect with their clients through newsletters and blogs, and I needed at least three benefits. You gave me my answer and I truly appreciate you!
Hi Marcie,
Great to see you here. Perhaps that is why God commissioned this particular post yesterday. Lots of other things I was working on when He did. Communication is so very important – and one of the hardest things to do well.
Gail,
Some of the most painful business discussions in my life have been the most productive. Not all of them turn out the way I want, but it is better than not knowing and waiting and wondering and clamming up that something worse might happen in the future.
Andy
Of course in any walks of life, trust is a meaningful trait every person must possess. In business if every person involved is trustful then most probably they will build a successful honest company. Because trust can simply make or break the business in one single action.
I have more experience about it but not to share, when i thought, i sad.
Nice sharing, nice to meet you.
Share more and take more replies, thanks.