How much do you trust people? Do you trust others utterly and totally with your life? What about with your reputation or your work? Which is easier for us to do?

Our ability to trust others determines our success. If we find it difficult to trust our team then we can never release their true potential. In some areas we demonstrate a lot of faith and trust people daily with our lives. In others areas we don’t.

Trusting somebody with your life is not rare and most people trust a doctor or the armed services or the police (in a crisis situation) or a pilot. If you consider it carefully, we often put our lives in the hands of others. How well they do their job can determine our life span.

Falling out of a plane over Dhekelia in Cyprus was not the best place to start thinking about whether I trusted the person whom my life depended upon. At the time of the training, most of the Instructor’s words had been drowned out by the excitement of preparing for the jump. “Your life depends on how well the parachute is folded. If it is packed in the right sequence then it will open fully. Most deaths are caused by the parachute not opening correctly’

Spread-eagled and plummeted by the force of the wind, I raced to seemingly embrace the ground, and prayed for my parachute to open. Thoughts crashed and tumbled in my mind. One flashed into my conscience above the other adrenalin rushed thoughts. Did I trust the person who had packed my parachute?

I had not even met my parachute packer!

If I had the presence of mind I should have asked was he conscientious? Did he know his job? And was he the ultimate professional that I hoped for?

Or was he a moody, could not care less, inconsistent worker, who just turned up to take the money, too lost in his own problems to care about what he was doing?

My parachute opened and I landed safely. But other parachutes have not. People have paid the ultimate price for poor work by people they place their trust in.

We often have to trust people with our reputation, our name, even our future at work. If they didn’t do their job properly there could be a risk of them seriously affecting our performance, rewards, promotion and pay. If we are owners, our team have a direct impact on our personal wealth. At some point we have to trust others to represent us in their work, in their skills and in their attitude. How much do you trust people?

The trust you show people is reflected in the trust that they place in you. You cannot expect people to trust you if you don’t trust them.

Growing Trust
The way to grow trust is to identify clearly the people you would like to build trust with. Then you have to start communicating in a fuller and more complete way with them.
The areas that you can grow communication are in:

1. Goals
What are the goals that we are trying to achieve? Lets be clear about what we both want, as we probably have overlapping goals.

2. Challenges/Needs
Understanding his challenges/needs and then explaining some of your challenges/needs you face. Asking him how he would solve them. Looking deep into your needs and feelings. Explaining how you feel about some of the issues and showing him more depth into your emotions and asking him how he feels about those issues.

3. Desire for Trust Achievement
To examine whether there is a desire or need to improve trust. If there is no need, then it’s simply a waste of time. Getting yourself to put a measure on how much desire you have for a solution.

4. Action-Plans
Look at the path forward and creating an Action-Plan on the way to improving trust for both parties.

5. Consequences of Non-achievement
To explore understand and realize what would happen if the trust relationship was allowed to deteriorate.

6. Revue Date
To look at when both parties should revue the Action-Plan to see whether progress is being made.

Click here to download the 5-Stage Tool that guides you on how to improve Trust in a relationship and to get logic to triumph over emotion.

Guidelines for succeeding with the TrustAchieve Tool.
You need to:

1. Both be calm-If you are not calm, postpone your meeting until you have thought about the consequences of not getting it right.
2. Be in an environment where you will not be interrupted.
3. Have time in front of you to be able to talk through things fully.
4. First try to understand the other person’s point of view before you express your own.
5. Paraphrase back to the person what you have heard, to demonstrate that you have understood and do check understanding. Then he is more likely to listen to you.
6. Stay focussed. Keep on thinking about the end result of what you would like from the meeting. Don’t get sidetracked.
7. Fill in all the boxes and as much detail as possible. That forces closure and implementation.

Trust is the binding energy force that keeps organizations and Teams together. Its what keeps people believing in you and loyal to you. We need to constantly work at it as it’s critical for success in business.
If we trust somebody implicitly then they can influence us in a powerful way. The more we are trusted, the more people will follow our direction and our words. Therefore building up trust is a critical skill in inspiring people to perform.