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Building Trust for Explosive Business Success

Written by: T.C. Coleman

Article Overview: Want to build strong business relationships that lead to explosive success? Focus significant time and energy on building trust with your colleagues, clients and business partners.

Building Trust for Explosive Business Success

Trust is a key component of strong business relationships. The absence of trust creates an environment in which people waste countless hours second-guessing the agendas of others. In contrast, the presence of trust allows people to have confidence in others and focus their energy on generating and executing new, profitable ideas.

Let's explore Five (5) UpwardAction® Steps for increasing trust:

1. Actively Listen. Listening is a skill that requires you to commit your full attention to what is and is not being said. It involves noticing things like tone of voice and body language. When you are actively listening (instead of just “hearing”), you can gain a genuine understanding of the speaker’s view point.

2. Exhibit Personal Integrity. When building trust, it is important to honor your commitments. Simply put, say what you mean and do what you say you will do. Some of us, even with the best intentions, find ourselves falling short of our promises. Starting today, only commit to what you know you can do and not what you wish you could do.

3. Eliminate Absolute Statements. Very few things are absolute. Even if you have vast experience in an area, realize that you can be surprised by a “remote” occurrence. Work to eliminate absolute statements from your business vernacular. This basic step will do wonders for the confidence of those who work for and with you.

4. When Talking About Issues ... Think “Our". Replacing the word “my” with the word “our” reduces the likelihood that your team members and/or employees will become (i) disengaged with a problematic issue because it is attributed to "you" or (ii) defensive because they feel "blamed". Frequent use of the word "our" begins the process of engendering commitment and ownership of “team” solutions.

5. Be respectful. Building trust requires you to exhibit a basic respect for people. You will find that being polite and acknowledging others go a long way in developing strong, profit generating relationships.

UpwardAction® Challenge for Building Trust:
Use the words “always” and “never” judiciously. Replace these absolute words with more accurate statements whenever possible.

Related Articles
  Trust in a New Age
  The Entrepreneurial "Perfect Storm"
  Trust, Abundance and Success
  A Tryst with Trust
  The Power of Trust

Article Tags: absence of trust, agendas, best intentions, body language, building trust, business relationships, commitments, confidence, countless hours, full attention, likelihood, occurrence, personal integrity, problematic issue, profitable ideas, promises, team members, team solutions, tone of voice, vernacular



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