The most precious commodity - trust

Trust - so hard to gain and so easy to lose.

After all my years in the world of communications, I have precious few ideas about how to gain and strengthen trust when it is lacking while still being acutely aware of its fragility and how easily it breaks.

Central to my relationship with managers and executives is the need for mutual trust. While respect is also part of the picture, the foundation is trust. In my view, my brand is what my manager trusts me to do, do well and do consistently. I have experienced positions where that is enormous and others where it feels microscopic.

I cannot force another person to trust me and usually it takes quite a while to figure out why they no longer trust me. What is just as frustrating is trying to clarify the reasons why they do not trust my expertise. Some people simply choose not to trust, and there is precious little I can do about it, as much as that bothers me and I agonize over it. Others react to situations of stress by becoming more controlling and less trusting. If I can figure this out at all, it usually takes quite a while.

Articles in my professional association's publications frequently focus on how to become a trusted adviser to senior management and executives. This is an essential aspect of a field like communications, which is so hard to measure and so much of an art. The rub is when my skills and experience are not trusted - even if I'm right. Then what do I do? I have yet to see a good article to address that tight spot!

I think there is only so much you can do to try to make a person trust you. At the end of the day, I do want to go home and not obsess about my work because my boss or client not liking my advice or work I do for them.

My solution is to try to be more trusting of those around me. Nice in theory, but challenging in practice. Like some of my bosses, there are people I inherently don't trust, even in spite of good work they do. I believe that seeking to build teams and foster an environment of creativity and brainstorming is the positive place to start building trust. Next comes identifying the people I don't naturally trust and the reasons why, and then trying to work through them with the individuals in question. I am far from perfect in this approach and have often failed, but you need to start somewhere, and this is the right place.

Thanks for reading!