The Power of Building Trust

The Power of Building Trust

You build trust with others each time you choose integrity over image, truth over convenience, or honour over personal gain - JOHN C. MAXWELL

When we lose trust we lose our voice

While aspiring to get to the next level, we can sometimes miss what is going on right in front of us. We miss cues, and we forget to ask people how they are going. Because they are not saying anything, we presume everything is ok.

Unfortunately, it is all too common for working relationships to sour over the issue of trust. When situations change in working relationships and one person’s focus starts to veer off in another direction, assumptions are made and we begin to take things personally when the relationship changes. In our minds, we all have a movie going on, we create pictures of how we want things to be, how our ideal day should look, and what and how we want things to happen so that we can continue to achieve the things we plan.

People don’t know our vision and we don’t know theirs

We hold our movies inside our head and then we forget to share them with others - our team, our friends or family, and others we bump into along the way. Keeping our movies in our head doesn’t help us turn our dreams into reality, we as humans weren’t gifted with the capacity to mind read. So, if we don’t share our vision or our movie with others, how can we create the steps to make our movies a shared reality, encourage each others’ progress, and most importantly communicate.

We can each have our own aspirations (movies, vision) and strive to make them come true by building trust and support in all our relationships. And then create the foundations to ensure our dreams and aspirations become a reality.

Self-Trust

Self Trust is the first secret to success – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trust begins within us -  we lose trust in ourselves when we start to question our behaviours and the decisions we make, we start to lose touch with who we are, and what’s important to us, we get out of alignment with our values and our integrity. Break the habit of questioning your decisions by starting small – decide to do something and no matter what, follow it through to the end without question. If you begin to doubt yourself, then work out where that self-doubt is coming from and keep moving forward.

Breaking Trust

Trust is fragile - takes years to build, is easy to lose and hard to repair 

Repairing trust is not a one-sided thing – both sides have to be willing to work through what’s broken to begin to repair the relationship. Working back to go forward is the first step to healing. Working out what went wrong, what was not spoken about, listening to both sides, releasing blame, having empathy for each other, and in time forgiveness. Taking time to set the rules of engagement, setting clear expectations and communicating often, speaking up if expectations are not being met, and working through what needs to change together. 

5 key ingredients to building and maintaining trust

• T = Being Transparent.
• R = Build Respect and Relationships while sharing.
• U = Understand others’ perspectives – step into their shoes.
• S = Create a Shared vision and meaning of Success.
• T = Tell the Truth – close the reality gaps.

Trust is not a finite game – it is an infinite game, everything we say and do, the influence we create, the conversations we have are constantly building trust with the people around as.

Words create worlds – always be impeccable with yours.

Ondina