I’m a huge fan of The Trusted Advisor by Charles Green and David Maser. In this book you’ll learn a simple formula that helps you understand how you can build trust and even re-build trust if it’s lost.
Watch this video and leave a comment below on what you think.
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Transcript:
Hi, I’m Josh Patrick. I’m the head curmudgeon here at Ask Josh Patrick. Thanks a lot for joining us today.
Today, we’re going to talk a bit about the concept of trust. I want to ask you a question, if you trust somebody, do you move faster or do you move slower? I bet, if you don’t trust somebody, you question everything they say. And frankly, you probably don’t want to really work with them very much. Well, the fact is that’s a pretty common thing. It’s true with me and I bet it’s true with you.
What I’ve learned
So here’s what I’ve learned, is that the more I trust and the more I know how to build trust, the better my relationships are, the more fun I have in business and the easier it is for me to do things. So here’s something I want you to learn today, I want you to learn a thing I call “the trust formula”. Actually, it’s not me that called it that, it is David Maister and Charles Green. They wrote a wonderful book called the The Trusted Advisor. In this book, there’s a formula. The formula basically tells you how much you’re being trusted. So here’s the formula. It’s reliability + competence + intimacy ÷ self interest, tells you how much you trust somebody.
Are you realiable?
So, let’s look at each one of those parts of the formula. First, let’s look at reliability. Well, what is reliability? For me, reliability is very simple. You do what you say you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it. It’s very simple. If you do that, you’ve got a long way to building trust. I don’t know about you but I get really annoyed when people don’t return my e-mails and they haven’t gotten back to me as to why they haven’t returned my e-mails, or they haven’t returned my phone calls. Now, I’m not calling and talking about e-mailing somebody who doesn’t know me or calling somebody who doesn’t know me. I’m talking about people I have a relationship with. Now, when they don’t do that, what do you think happens to my trust? It goes down. Why is it going down – because we’re challenging some reliability.
Competence is really important
Second, let’s talk about competence. Now, I bet you’ve had the experience in your life where you’ve gone and worked with somebody and they help themselves out at being highly competent. And guess what? They weren’t. So what happened then? Your trust went down with them. In fact, you probably got to the point where you really didn’t want to work with them because you felt you’ve been lied to.
Well, here’s the truth, if you’re competent – great, tell people you’re competent. But if you get to an area where you’re working with somebody and is not a high level of competence, do yourself a favor – tell the truth. Say, “Look, I know something about this, or I know a lot about it, or I know nothing about it.” Whatever is true is true. Your client or the people you’re talking with, or your customer is not going to care as long you tell the truth about it. If you say, “Look, I’m not very competent but here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to help you find someone that’s really good. Or, this is the level that I’m highly competent in” and you can back it up, guess what? You’re going to have a much more trusting relationship. You know, there are some things I’m world class at, some things I know a lot about, some things I know something about, and even some things I know nothing about. It’s my job to tell you where I stand in that level. And if I do so, I’m going to help you trust me.
Do you care about the person you’re working with?
The third part of the formula – and the top line of this formula is intimacy. I’m not talking about romantic intimacy. I’m just talking about whether you care for me or you don’t care for me. And the fact is, the more that you care for me, the more I’m going to trust you. The lesser you care about me, the less I’m going to trust you.
So the deal is, if you have people working in your organization and you don’t care about them, guess what? They’re going to know it. If you don’t care about them, you’ve got to ask yourself a question, “Why? Why don’t I care about this person? Is it because they don’t have the values I have? Or it’s just my nature and makeup?” And again, honesty is really a good part of thing here. You don’t want to go to somebody and say, “I don’t care about you.” But you might want to tell people, what is your basic makeup and how you live in the world and how you work in the world.
Well, a lot of people see me as being angry a lot. That’s sort of why I call myself a curmudgeon. I’m really not angry, it’s just I don’t like to waste time. To me, it drives me crazy. So, it’s important for me to tell people about that when I work with them so they realize, it’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just my nature of wanting to get things done and not wait around and have committee meetings that go on forever.
Where does self interest fit in?
So the last part of the trust formula is self-interest. Now, I’ve got to tell you, everybody is working in their self-interest more or less. Now, one of the things I do at Ask Josh Patrick is, we like to work on a retainer fee. It’s really very simple why work on a retainer fee, we set the fee – while we’re setting the fee, you know and I know it’s all about my self-interest. But once that’s done, we can put that aside.
Now, while we’re talking about fees, I can tell you 100% of the time, the level of trust with the person I’m working with is going to go down. When you’re talking with me about your fees, I can tell you, my trust in you is going to go down. But once we get past that, we don’t have to keep bringing it up, and bringing it up, and bringing it up, and bringing it up. I’m going to build my trust because no longer am I worried about your self-interest. We’re done with that. Now, we can go on and focus on a relationship and building a strong relationship. So, how’s that sound to you?
Make sure you mindfully build trust
So here’s what I want you to do next, I want you to mindfully build trust. I want you to look at this trust formula. I want you to write it down. Now, here it is again. It’s reliability + competence + intimacy ÷ self interest, will tell you how much someone trusts you.
I want you to look at the trust formula when things aren’t going very well because, you know, we all have a period where trust ebbs and flows with people. And I can promise you that when you feel trust is falling, it’s falling for a reason. And the reason it’s falling is one of those four things is out of whack.
Now, if you want to build trust back again, all you have to do is really a pretty simple thing – identify what’s going wrong. Talk to the person that you’re speaking with about where the trust has fallen down. Where has their trust fallen down with you? Where has your trust fallen down with them? Be specific. If you can do that, you’re likely to have a trusting relationship which is going to allow you to move much, much, much faster. And my bet is that that’s something that you’re going to really find attractive in your business.
So here’s what I want you to do now. We have a newsletter we send out on a regular basis. And in the newsletter, I do some curated content. I talk about books I really like. I talk about programs I really like. I talk about the best of our blogs and the best of our videos and the best of the podcast we do. And every once in a while, I might make you an offer about something you might find interesting on how to make your business better and, ultimately, more sustainable because that’s what we’re here about at Ask Josh Patrick. We want to help you create a sustainable business. So, why don’t you click on the button below, sign up for the newsletter and we’ll talk with you on a regular basis. Oh, and stop back here a lot and read some of our blogs, listen to our podcast.
So, again, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate speaking with you. This is Josh Patrick and you’re at Ask Josh Patrick. Thanks so much.
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