How to Gain Trust and Build Relationships

What is the most important aspect of your business? 

If you didn’t think of people, your answer is incorrect. 

Not only does people skills involve how you engage with your team, but also how you engage with your customers.

Today we will focus on achieving trust and building relationships.

Let’s get started.

Personal Development & Self-Awareness 

Before we embark on building trust, I want to outline that gaining trust is a journey. 

Gaining trust involves not only your personal growth, but also your growth in personal awareness. 

Only a person who has worked on their personal development will achieve high level engagement with others.

Understanding yourself, helps you understand others better and then gives you the ability to communicate more effectively.

When you understand others better, you can deliver a better experience to anyone you interact with.

Early on in my career of operations management, I learned whether my intended delivery was received with the intended perception I was aiming for. 

Have you ever heard that, one learns by teaching? Well, this is very true. 

Be mindful that when delivering any message, comprehension to your message and comprehension to your intent is also being received.

The best test of knowing if you comprehend something well, is to teach it. 

When teaching something, you will not only acknowledge portions of any process that you need clarification on, you will also learn if you can deliver information in a easy to understand format.

If you can deliver a message that is well understood by the majority of your audience, you have done well.

This not only shows you comprehend what you are delivering, but that you also know how to deliver a message that people will understand. 

Be mindful that when delivering any message, comprehension to your message and comprehension to your intent is also being received.

Effective communication involves understanding people. When you understand people, you will understand communication styles that resonates with different individuals.

These are the initial stepping stones to building trust through your interactions. Your self-awareness, and your understanding of others, strengthens your ability to communicate effectively.

Trust is the Most Important Attribute

Following your journey of building high self-awareness and understanding communication styles well, you will be poised to deliver your intentions within your message next. 

Intent comes across in how you deliver a message within your words, body language and expressions. It is true that most communication is perceived through body language. 

If what is coming out of you mouth does not match your body language, the receiver will not believe the words you speak, due to lack of honesty.

Most people think that people who are very good with engagement, were just blessed with this skill. False.

Whether the person realizes it or not, they were either taught healthy communication tactics early on, or they developed better communication tactics over time through self development. 

Those who don’t know themselves well; haven’t worked on personal development, or are unaware of these applications of growth, have no choice but to deliver an ignorant engagement experience. 

• “Ignorant” meaning they do not know whether their interaction will breed a positive experience or a negative experience because they have lack of knowledge of self, of others and experience.

Delivering an experience that will resonate with another individual, involves people skills, trust and intent.

Intent Carries A Lot

Being genuine, trustworthy, knowledgeable and honest is all wrapped up in the receivers’ perception of your overall intentions. 

When you understand peoples’ communication styles, you can do your best to make sure your intent is received accurately.

• If the receivers’ perception is that you mean well, and you have good intentions, trust will be initiated.
• If the receivers’ perception is that you are not readable and your intent is unknown (or negative), you will fall into the status quo with the majority of people and trust will not be established.

When people trust you and know you are genuine, more doors will open up for you.

Trust grants a lot of grace and allows people to feel comfortable even if they may be vulnerable.

If they don’t feel trust, they will not grant you any vulnerability. Therefore, hiding the truth.

• Here is a great source at beginning to understand yourself and others from the Effectiveness Institute. 
• For another good source in improving your skills, at a lower price tag, check out Versatile Selling by Wilson Learning Library.
• Both of these sources teach peoples’ communication styles.

A key catalyst to growing yourself, is to do your best at working with people in a trustworthy environment where teamwork is high and people are very good at what they do. 

A trustworthy atmosphere allows people to let their guard down, be vulnerable, and learn what they do well versus what they don’t do well. 

No one wants to let people know what they don’t do well unless they trust them. Simple, but true.

This simple, yet very effective trait, is what will allow you to achieve trust, better relationships and more effective communication.

Conclusion

Start your journey in becoming a person who can be trusted first by knowing yourself and others well. 

This will support your development in becoming an effective communicator where your intent is shown and trust can be established. 

Trust will then compliment your business acumen and professionalism. 

With trust, your business will not only grow, it will have longevity.

Thank you for joining us today faithful readers – future leaders. We wish you great success. 

Love ya and keep striving for growth.

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Please comment how achieving self development has helped you gain trust and better communication skills.