How in the World Do You Build Trust?

TRUST is the Glue in Your Relationships.*

Photo by Fred Kearney on Unsplash

We are constantly reminded that people hire consultants, freelancers, and independent workers that they trust.

But what is trust? Or a trusted relationship?

As I put pen to paper for this blog, I remembered a conversation I had years ago with a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partner. After meeting with a client, the partner asked for a few minutes of my time. He was concerned that “I was a little too honest.” He felt I needed to be more aware of what it took to maintain a positive relationship with a client.

I apologized to the client, however the client explained to both of us that it was refreshing to work with someone who was “honest and blunt” because blunt worked best in their organization. She had no concerns what-so-ever and it was her trust in me that led to add-on work.

That day I learned several valuable lessons about trusted relationships.

The first being that I wasn’t too honest; however, my style was too rough. I’m softer now when presenting difficult messages, at least I am most of the time, but I’ve never stopped being honest. Trusting relationships require honesty and being able to deliver the bad news in a manner that does not offend. It was that incident and additional conversations with the PwC partner that helped me realize the words I used impacted my credibility and actions my reliability.

Overtime, my professional and personal experiences as well as books such as The Trusted Advisor by David Maister, The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey, and Business Relationships that Last by Ed Wallace impacted how I regard building trusted relationships. Each author’s view on how to earn trust varies slightly but there are common themes starting with the observation that trust is multi-faceted and balances several essential qualities.

When someone asks me what I mean by a trust relationship, I fall back on my earlier training and, just like the authors, talk about the multi-faceted aspects, necessary qualities, and the balancing act of a trusting relationship. The balancing act begins with three common everyday behaviors-talking or the use of words and images to convey a thought; actions and how we…