Trust Defined

"To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved." ~ George MacDonald

Mutual trust is a shared belief that you can depend on each other to achieve a common purpose.

More comprehensively trust defined as "the willingness of a party (trustor) to be vulnerable to the actions of another party (trustee) based on the expectation that the trustee will perform an action important to the trustor, regardless of the trustor's ability to monitor or control the trustee."⁸

"People sense how you feel about them. If you want to change their attitudes toward you, change the negative attitudes you have toward them." Building relationships requires the building of trust. Trust is the expectancy of people that they can rely on your word. It is built through integrity and consistency in relationships.

Effective Listening: The Bottom Line of Trust

If you listen well people will trust you. "You cannot establish trust if you cannot listen. A conversation is a relationship. Both speaker and listener play a part, each influencing the other. Instead of being a passive recipient, the listener has as much to do in shaping the conversation as the speaker"⁹... More

Yin-Yang of Influencing People

Eye Contact

There's an old myth if you won't look at me I can't trust you. It might be true, might be not. But if they believe it, it's true!... More

NLP Technology of Achievement: Rapport

Rapport is a process of building a sustaining relationship of mutual trust, harmony and understanding. It is essentially meeting individuals in their model of the world. Rapport starts with acceptance of the other person's point of view, their state and their style of communication.

Same Reality, Different Perceptions

This happens through matching the accessing cues from words, eye movements and body language. Rapport is the ability to be on the same wavelength and to connect mentally and emotionally. It is the ability to join people where they are in order to build a climate of trust and respect.

4 NLP Perceptual Positions

Having rapport does not mean that you have to agree, but that you understand where the other person or people are coming from... More

Managing Cultural Differences

Cultural differences play a key role in the creation of trust, since trust is built in different ways, and means different things in different cultures... More

Trust-based Working Relationships

Trust has an important link with your organizational success. "Trust elevates levels of commitment and sustains effort and performance without the need for management controls and close monitoring."⁴ Trust between a manager and an employee is based on the trustor's perception of the trustee ability, benevolence, and integrity... More 

Building Trust in Global Virtual Teams

In global virtual teams, when your team is not in one building but all over the globe, you must build trust differently. "Trust takes on a whole new meaning in virtual teams. When you meet your workmates by the water cooler or photocopier every day, you know instinctively who you can and cannot trust. In a geographically distributed team, trust is measured almost exclusively in terms of reliability," says Erin Meyer¹⁰ from INSEAD.

Trust-based working relationships are an important source of your sustainable competitive advantage because trust is valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and often nonsubstitutable. The level of trust a leader is able to garner from his/her employees is contingent upon the employee's perceptions of the leader's ability, benevolence, and integrity. A study that was conducted to determine whether trust could be a source of competitive advantage⁸ showed that trust is significantly related to sales, profits, and turnover. More broadly, the study concluded that "the ability of a general manager to earn higher trust from her or his employees likely creates a competitive advantage for a firm over its rivals."⁷... More

Building Trust in Business Partnerships

With trust as a foundation, the companies – or teams within a company – can share their know-how to achieve synergy – results that exceed the sum or the parts. "Unlike formal contracts or rigid hierarchies, trust frees partners to respond together to the unexpected, which is essential for mutual creativity. Trust also fosters enthusiasm, ensuring the best performance from everyone."⁵... More

 Lessons from Jack Welch  3Ss of Winning

3Ss of Winning in Business

Self-confidence: Give people a voice, get them talking and listening to and trusting one another... More