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Trust-Building Communications

Guest post by: Peter deLisser

Article Overview: The Speaking and Listening skills needed to develop trust in every conversation.

Trust-Building Communications

I will never forget the first day of sales training I received from an old time sales manager. He started by saying, "There are two axioms I want you to remember: (1) try never to lose the sale before you open your mouth, and (2) once you open your mouth, people decide whether to trust you or not."

What is Trust?

Communication research verifies what that sales manager said. For example, people decide in the first 2 to 20 seconds whether they will listen to what we have to say or not. As conversations continue, there is no middle ground; trust is either growing or shrinking.

The problem for most of us is that we can see, hear and feel our trust of other people and their trust of us changing from moment to moment. We are very perceptive about our communications. However, we may not be exactly sure how to influence trust.

The result of being uncomfortable with trust is clearly evidenced in communication workshops. At an appropriate time in each workshop - when I think I have established my ability to be trusted not to embarrass or make fun of people - I ask the question: "How many people in the world do you truly trust? You know, the people that you would call in the middle of the night to talk about your most intimate problem or ask for significant help." Answers usually are one, maybe two. Webster defines trust as "assured reliance on another's integrity, veracity, justice, etc.; confidence. Assured anticipation; confident hope." But trusting others starts with our ability to trust ourselves, to trust our own ability to communicate with others.

How Can We Communicate Trust?

Communicating trust is a challenge. It requires us to be responsible for both sides of our conversations. When we speak, we need to speak in a way that induces people to trust us. When we listen, we need to listen in a way that we trust our ability to know what we heard.

Like any other technical skill, be it playing the piano or tennis, making a sculpture or balancing a financial statement, there are fundamentals that have to be mastered. The fundamentals essential for trust-building communications are:

• Modifying current habits in order to open communications

• Responsible speaking so people will listen

• Responsible listening so people will provide accurate information

• Declaration speaking so people will modify their behavior to meet our needs

• Reducing resistances so people come to mutual agreements

The highlight of each communication skill follows:

Modifying Current Habits In Order to Open Communications

Trust-building communications begin effectively only if we reduce our use of non-verbal and verbal techniques for communicating non-acceptance of another's comments. Communicating non-acceptance causes other people to become defensive toward new ideas, resist changing behavior, justify certain actions and/or remain silent. We need to identify and be constantly on guard for our use of current habits which block open communication, one of which is interrupting people before they have finished speaking.

Responsible Speaking

Trust-building communications require that when we speak to others we accept responsibility for how well other people understand what we say. Responsible speakers need to know a listener's attention span is usually between 2 and 20 seconds. Thus, responsible communications are focused on speaking only of things of personal interest to the listeners. A few fundamentals skills of a Responsible Speaker include framing the progress of the other person's listening so that he hears what we want him to hear, providing only 30% of the information the speaker thinks is necessary, and speaking only of things of direct interest to the listener.

Responsible Listening

Trust-building communications require that when we listen to others, we accept responsibility for understanding what the other people say. We choose to listen responsibly when another person has a problem and requests help, when we need accurate information with which to make a decision, and when we want to develop a trusting relationship. Responsible listening is used to give both the speaker and the listener opportunities to explore their feelings and thoughts, thus fostering acceptance and building a trusting relationship. A few of the fundamentals of a Responsible Listener include focused silence, clarifying and confirming statements, and decoding/reflecting emotions.

Declarative Speaking

Trust-building communications require that, when our performance is being affected by the behavior of others, we respond in a way that demands and expects the change of behavior without attacking the character of the listener. Some of these skills include techniques for use with a persistent, stubborn person, to end or avoid an argument, and to get something we are not getting or to stop getting something we are getting.

Reducing Resistance

Trust-building communications expect us to be willing to Listen Responsibly to resistances and to acknowledge that we have heard, and then switch to Speaking Responsibly so that the other person is willing to reduce or stop his resistance. This continuous cycle of changing roles from speaking to listening and back again to speaking requires the use of all the basic communication skills. Experiencing resistance over a period of time in which sufficient information is exchanged to say yes is a communication confidence building necessity.

Which Comes First - The Managerial Process or Trust-Building Communication Skills?

Both are essential. Knowing how to conduct a performance review, provide performance feedback, set goals and objectives, as well as manage meetings, are all important managerial skills. The real question is how much time or importance do organizations spend assisting executives to develop their communication skills to successful carry out management processes.

Executive well trained in the variety of management processes are more likely to be successful than those with no training. But how much more successful and profitable could an organization be if the success was not gained solely on the power of the superior's ability to communicate but other ability to gain trust and respect. It is a question worth considering.

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Article Tags: communicate trust, listening skills, managerial skills, reducing resistance, responsible listening, responsible speaking



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