How to Increase Trust in the Office
With trust playing a pivotal role in the success of your business, learning how to build and maintain trust becomes a business essential. This post, the fourth and final installment of our series exploring trust, will help you do just that.
Thus far, we’ve analyzed the three key components of trust and have shown how to measure trust in your organization. Now we’re going to take those three components and provide three ways you can strengthen each. Hang with us folks. Paydirt is near. Let’s dive in.
Strengthening Faith in Your Intent
As a quick reminder, intent helps answer the question “Does this person have my best interests at heart?” The intent remains key to building trust, as it helps people frame your every action. And with these three tips, you can make sure your intent comes across as intended.
Be Authentic
No offense to used car salesmen, but there’s a reason they have a negative stereotype; historically, they’ve had a reputation for sacrificing truth for the sake of a sale. You can counter this by prioritizing authenticity and transparency in your relationships. Focus on altruistically caring for those around you, both in and outside of your organization.
Shoot People Straight to Increase Trust in the Office
Fewer things can damage trust faster than an outright lie. But trust-building isn’t as simple as telling the truth either. Always focus on communicating the truth in a way that’s easily understood. We all know individuals who master truth shading or telling the truth while misrepresenting the intent of what happened. Kick truth shading to the curb. Shoot people straight.
Admit Mistakes…and Make Them Right
In today’s society where we all strive for perfection, admitting you screwed up is a hard thing to do. Admitting our mistakes validates our imperfection, which helps explain why we so rarely see people fess up. However, admitting mistakes can go a long way in restoring credibility and proving your intent is genuine. So admit your mistakes, but then focus on how you can make them right. That’s the second piece of the puzzle.
Capitalizing on Your Ability
After laying the foundation with good intentions, you can take the next steps in building trust by improving confidence in your ability, which is the confidence that you can get the job done. These steps will help you realistically approach your relationships and capitalize on your ability to follow through.
Confront Your Reality
Getting the job done requires you to do a few essential things, one of which is honestly assessing if you can get it done. Over-promising and under-delivering sinks relationships every single day. Honestly assessing your capabilities to manage a task and sharing that assessment will ultimately help you establish deeper trust in your abilities…even if it’s admitting someone else may be a better fit for the job.
Do it the Right Way to Increase Trust in the Office
If we’re honest with ourselves, we can all think back to projects where we did enough to get by and called it a day. And sometimes, a deadline forces you to assess what level of perfection you can devote to a task. But adopting this mindset day in and day out can crumble trust in your ability. Instead, each day should be an ongoing effort to maximize your energy and deliver high-quality work.
Get Better Every Day
Seth Godin’s renowned philosophy that expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice typically rings true. But even after you hit 10,000 hours, you don’t stop improving. By committing to a lifetime of learning, you can consistently increase your skills and capacity. The result? Ever-increasing confidence in your ability to get the job done.
Becoming the King of Follow-Through
And finally, intent and ability mean little if you don’t actually follow through. Execution, the final component of building trust, is simply getting the job done. And to close this series, here are three sure-fire ways to increase your “get it done” reputation.
Clarify Expectations to Increase Trust in the Office
Expectations play a massive role in whether you’re viewed as a reliable follow-through person. And expectations need to be addressed when an assignment first comes to life. How something will be done and when it will be delivered are two pieces that deserve ample clarity from both the requester and recipient. Always flesh these out in conversation to not only save time on the back end of a project but also to drive trust in your ability to execute.
Commit to Commitments
With expectations clarified, now comes the tough part: doing what you said you would do. When you commit to something, you are purposefully limiting your freedom to serve someone else. And once a commitment is made, the other party expects you to make good on that promise. Keep following through and you’ll have a track record of commitment to help you build better trust.
Get Accountability Help
Once you have clear expectations and a commitment to follow through, accountability is a logical next step. Reach out to someone you have a good rapport with and encourage them to circle back with progress checks. You may cringe at the thought of micro-management, but at some point, you have to embrace accountability. After all, if you’re getting the job done, there’s no reason to fear a check-in. As a result, you’ll continue to hit deadlines and trust will continue to grow.
Reaping the Rewards of Relational Trust
There you have it, folks. Nine straightforward ways to help improve others’ trust in you, and as an extension, your company. You’re probably facing some of these and ailing in others, and that’s OK. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t.
However, by analyzing the level of health within your organization, you can identify the areas in which you can improve. And with enough improvement, you can begin to see major repercussions within your business, including better employee engagement and healthier customer relationships, both of which drive a better bottom line.
So what are you waiting for? Get to work. And if you decide you’d like a friendly hand, feel free to schedule a call or email marketing@wildsparq.com. Whether it’s helping you hire leaders or developing your leaders already at the table, we’re here to help.