“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” – Abraham Lincoln
Building trust is an incremental and cumulative process.
It’s incremental because it won’t happen overnight. There is no ‘instant trust easy button’. It takes time. It’s a slow drip strategy.
It’s cumulative because you need a ‘little bit of trust’ before you have ‘a lot of trust’. Each interaction that builds trust adds a little more into your trust account.
And, here’s the real pickle about trust. Although it can take a long time, and a lot of energy, to build…it can be destroyed in an instant. Vaporized. Poof!
Sometimes you might only destroy a little of your trust account. And, other times your whole balance can be wiped clean.
Being open, honest and transparent builds trust. Being secretive and deceitful destroys.
Being sincere and authentic builds trust. Being fake and schwarmy destroys.
Adding value builds trust. Wasting your audience’s time destroys.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post, Mike. I think trust also ties in tightly with integrity. Without trust you cannot have integrity and vice versa. People trust those who they respect and have confidence in. In many cases trust is built based on previous experiences or the promise of actions performed in a sincere manner. This is the ultimate goal of marketing when it comes to establishing a brand – Establishing trust and confidence in the integrity of a company/product to fulfill what is desired.
Harley,
Thanks for your comment!
I think integrity is a table stake of trust. It gets you a seat at the table (and keeps you there) but I think to build trust you have to go further. Integrity is a little like 'Free Colour TV' at a motel…you just expect it now.
Cheers,
Mike
So true, so true.
Being transparent is a scary thing, even for those worthy of trust. In our time of rapidly changing media and the many ways to get our message across, people are as worried about how they will be perceived (potentially negatively) as they are about how to do things “the right way”. In a way that will preserve and gain goodwill.
In some cases we don't have a convincing and proven method to measure and guarantee ROI. Depending how original a proposed strategy is we may not even have a precedent, so convincing people that they can build trust by trusting that an audience will respond to new ways of connecting is a challenge.
The reluctance to put faith in an approach which may garner trust can be attributed to a lot of things – not just fear of exposure or technology. It depends who you are and what you're trying to accomplish. Ultimately, we're all human and at that basic level we all appreciate open and honest communication, fair treatment, respect and value for our money. When we get these reliably, trust is easy.