Building trust to improve your profits

Barbara Craven, Home and Small Business Centre:

Trust is a core ingredient relationships need in order to work properly. Our work relationships are no exception.

The nature and quality of the relationships you have with your partner, colleagues and even business advisors has a direct impact on how you function and, therefore, on the results you produce.

Particularly, as we believe trust is the ability to be confident that somebody will do something by behaving responsibly and fairly.

It follows that healthy trusting relationships enable people to function well under a variety of different situations. The more secure our confidence, the more likely we are to undertake new ideas, new behaviours and new ventures.

For our relationships to directly contribute to the success, and therefore profits in our business, it is important to consider the quality and depth of trust you have in your core business relationships.

Trusting relationships support risks and enable profits

Relationships are bonded by the expectations we have of each other and how well or consistently these are met.

They are dynamic and under pressure all the time. We intend to trust our partners but in reality we are always waiting for further evidence to back up our expectations.

To be trustworthy we need to balance our self insight and our behaviour when meeting the needs of others. Knowing, rather than assuming, what you consider to be critical when implementing your goals helps you to trust yourself.

As early as 1999, Peter Drucker reported the clear correlation between improved self insight and performance. This is why feedback usually leads to improved performance.

When we combine our own self awareness with that of our partners or colleagues we are able to work together more effectively, thereby delivering better results.

Building trust that lasts

Building trust starts with you - what you do and the effort you are prepared to put into understanding the other person. The moment you hear yourself say "Why don't they?" you are focusing on your needs, not the needs of the relationship.

Do you

* Seek to understand your business colleague as a person before you see them for their technical expertise?

* Deliver consistently what you say you will, faster and better than they expected?

* Consciously seek to understand and exceed their expectations?

* Seek to understand their point of view before you give them an answer to their problem?

* Help them to think through their issues using a process, rather than separating their emotion from logic?

* Act like a real person, rather than a person who has a particular role to play?

The lesson is clear. If you want your partner and colleagues to achieve great things at work, you must earn and keep their trust.

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