The quickest way to earn trust

What do you think of when you think of the word ‘trust’?

I often think of trust in terms of a glass-half-empty approach to life, as in ‘I trust them not to scam me/make a copy of my keys and break into my house at night/steal my laptop while I go to the loo in Starbucks.’

I’m a very suspicious person and I don’t like it; I wish I could be more trusting. It would save me a lot of time. And a lot of chucking laptops into bags and carting them into public toilets.

In business too, trust is hard but vital if you want to move from being freelance to having a fully fledged team.

Of course at first trust is given on a promise, before you’ve been proven right.

But when it is proven, it’s a delicious feeling.

It’s not just peace of mind, but the satisfaction of having delegated something to someone and having got a far better result than you would if you’d done it yourself.

Not only did they not steal your laptop, but actually, they took notice of what you wanted and acted on your behalf to create the outcome you never thought possible.

For most people – especially the control freaks among us – this is a phenomenal feeling.

And for my business it’s been a game changer.

This is what you get when you get good financial advice.

💧But trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets

I’m at the droplet stage with Barry the Fence who has half finished the job, been paid, and is now nowhere to be seen. Now I have to wrestle with the idea that he’s not coming back, and search for clues that I’m right not to trust him.

This is the opposite of peace of mind. It’s exhausting.

Obviously you’d never do this, but until the drops bed in, the worry is always there, because it’s easier to remember examples of trust being broken than created.

The simple solution to this is regular communication

According to recent research from CoreData 58% of advisers are communicating more with clients since the Coronavirus crisis, and half of those questioned think the pandemic has had a positive impact on adviser-client relationships.

It’s given them an opportunity to showcase their soft skills and the value of what they do, and with a digital first way of operating, that communication is so much more scalable.

Sometimes people worry they have nothing to say, but we often dismiss the value of our messages because we take them for granted. And trust means different things to different people. Sometimes just being proactive, putting their mind at rest or just checking in is all it takes.

I wish Barry knew that… anyone know a good fencer in Edinburgh?!

‍