If you see someone across the room that you’ve never met, could you build trust with them in ten minutes?
In ten minutes you couldn’t build enough trust to hire them, marry them, or invest your money with them, but you CAN move the trust needle.
Here’s how:
- Reach out. Waiting and hope are not good trust building strategies. Introduce yourself. Put yourself out there.
- Extend trust. People either distrust you until proven otherwise or trust until you proven otherwise. You’ll have a much better chance of building trust when you come from the latter approach.
- Be curious. Instead of trying to impress and be interesting, put your focus on being interested. Ask questions. Seeking to understand through listening to find common ground is one of the best ways to make deposits in the trust account.
- Demonstrate Caring. You can’t fake this one. If you don’t care, people will sense it, and if people know you care they are more likely to reciprocate trust. Demonstrate caring by remembering names and showing concern about what’s going on in their life. But when you care you don’t have to worry about demonstrating it. It will naturally come through.
