While catching up with a friend over coffee I was recently asked, “Jas, how do you build and grow trust in a relationship?”  In answering his question, it occurred to me that this would be a good topic for a blog as well. 

Trust is the lifeblood of all relationship – business or personal.  It is the foundation of all mutually satisfying and sustainable long-term relationships. More than just a concept, it is also a feeling state – based on our experience of other’s behavior over time – which is taken as evidence of their trustworthiness or not.

“If you don’t have trust, you don’t have a relationship.”

So how do we build and grow trust?  The following seven behaviours are vital in building trust:
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From time to time, in our personal and professional lives, we come across people and opportunities that seem engaging, exciting and worthy of further exploration.  Sometimes the best things in life are those we stumble upon or that seem to come quite serendipitously out of nowhere!  And indeed, explore we must as new horizons and development only arise through venturing into the unknown, pushing the envelope and taking an “experimental” stance towards such invitations.  As the old saying goes, if we do what we have always done, then we will get what we have always gotten!

At the same time, though, it is worth being mindful of the following questions to guide your explorations:
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Good business and personal relationships are based on trust.  We like to interact and do business with people we feel comfortable with and have some degree of trust and rapport with.  Where there is high trust and resonance, in time, some of these relationships ripen into long lasting friendships. 

And yet sometimes – in both our personal and professional lives – we   get betrayed in our trust.  We can be left feeling shocked, angry and hurt as we try and make sense of what just happened and why this might have happened.

When trust gets broken, the range of reactions can vary from total shock – the common expression of “I didn’t see that one coming” to as another client put it, “I had a strange feeling that things were not quite stacking up but I just didn’t have the evidence so gave the person the benefit of the doubt but with disastrous consequences.  Now I would never do that and would instead slow the process down, buy more time and do  rigorous  due diligence.”

So what is this intangible concept called trust and why does it matter so much?

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Can you recall a time recently when clearly you had been “done wrong” by someone – a colleague, team member, manager, friend or even a loved one?  In some way they had “failed to deliver” what was either normal, expected, within the bounds of that relationship. Worse they had “done a dirty” either knowingly or unknowingly?  How did you feel?

And when you talked   to them about it, how did they react?  Were there excuses, explanations, denial or blame or did they acknowledge what had happened, took responsibility and proceeded to put it right?  (more…)

Values and behavior are a core part of fulfilling our purpose and manifesting our vision.   The clearer we are about living our values, the more engaged we are with our life including work.  And when our values are mirrored in the organizations or business that we are part of, there is even greater energy, engagement and flow. (more…)