Recently I have been thinking a lot about trust and how it is a vial ingredient for success in both life and business. In my book The Alchemy Of Change I have two chapters dedicated to trust as it is the glue that holds everything together. Without trust business falters and without self trust we are unlikely to develop our true potential.
In The Speed of Trust, Stephen M..R. Covey identifies fives waves of trust and the first is self-trust. It is all about being credible and developing integrity, intent, capabilities and results that make you believable to both yourself and others. But how do you develop self-trust?
Building trust starts with the small things in life, like doing what you say you will do and keeping appointments with yourself. It might seem obvious but every time you fail to keep an appointment with yourself you are effectively saying that you are not important enough and something else is. In this way you start eroding your self confidence and your self worth.
Research has also shown that a person’s level of self-confidence impacts their performance. This is why Jack Welch felt so strongly that “Building self-confidence in others is a huge part of leadership”. Just think about it. If you don’t have any confidence your own abilities to do the job then you are unlikely to do a great job.
The classic example of this shows up in sales because if the sales person is not confident about the benefits of the service/product they are offering, they will not instill any confidence in the buyer that the product./service will meet their needs. And the end result is that no sale is made. Contrast this with the confident sales person who instinctively knows that their product/service will meet the buyers needs. Every fibre of their being knows this is the right solution for the buyer and invariably that translates into a sale. The buyer also just feels confident that the sales person knows what they are talking about and trusts that they will offer them the right solution.
So how as leaders do we build trust with others? It is by how we act. We need to continually demonstrate our credibility and integrity to others and keep our own standards, thereby acting as a mirror of how we want others to act.
So as you go about your week please think about how you can increase you own levels of self-trust so that you can be credible, inspiring and compelling to those around you and therefore elevate their level of trust in you. Trust me the results in your business will shift immeasurably when you are seen as a trusted adviser to your clients.
