Credibility Builds Trust

I recently attended an exhibition that my eight-year old Victoria was in. She is taking gymnastics at a local college and the event was a combination of the little kids showing their skills and a highly professional show performed by the college students.  I went to see Victoria and she was on stage for about three minutes and she did a great job. However, we didn’t leave when she finished and, thank goodness, stayed for the rest of the show—it was spectacular!

I’ve been fortunate to see Cirque du Soleil several times and these kids could easily move right into those shows and perform with the professionals. If you’ve ever seen a gymnastics performance you get where I am going with the idea of trust.  Several times in the performance, the performers jumped into each other’s arms or climbed onto someone’s shoulders or other ways where they were depending on each other to catch them or hold them up.

 I thought about how it must feel the first time you do something like that when you aren’t sure what is going to happen but you have to trust that it will work out ok.  In life, we have to trust other people all the time. Children trust their parents and teachers.  We put trust in our elected officials and we hope they will do the right thing (and we too often learn we were wrong!).  We trust the important people in our lives to be there for us.

Trust is built on credibility.  In our business lives, we don’t usually trust people without proof that they mean what they say or that they will do what they have promised.  It may take us a long time to learn to trust a new manager or co-worker. We observe them in action to see if they keep their promises and live their values.  Hopefully, once the trust is established, it lasts for the life of the relationship but trust can be destroyed much quicker than the time it took to build it in the first place.

Trust is a necessary building block for any successful relationship—be it professional or personal.  How do you demonstrate trust to your employees or friends?  Do you live your values? Do you keep your promises?  Can people depend on you like the gymnasts do on each other—will you be there when they fall?