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What Is Trust?

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That Was the Question

Some of you will click away before you read this — for whatever reason — we can’t invest in every message offered us or every person who brings it. For those who stay, thank you.

About a week ago, I spent time with someone I’ve known since I was 7. By the time one day had turned well into the next, we had caught up our lives and were well into our thoughts. Our friendship has lasted a life-time and we share in both silence and conversation. Picture two introverts not concerned with sharing thoughts aloud … a no-filter conversation.

In that amazing context, she looked me in the eyes to ask, “What is trust?”

That question is still with me.

Trust Is the Conversation

About a week before I sat with my life-long friend, I watched world leaders discuss how to get the world turning properly after we’ve undone so many things. Each speaker brought a message and each listener could choose whether to trust what he or she said. Trust, candor, and truth were common themes.

Trust has become the conversation. We talk about it with family, friends, business partners, clients, and journalists … online and offline. Seems reasonable that world leaders might talk about it too.

We’re defining it, outlining it, and promoting it to each other, but the how to seems less than firmly drawn. As I watch and listen I become more aware of what moves me to trust and what undermines that.

What Trust Is Not

I’ve never been one to trust or distrust power — the power of print, the power of a microphone, the power of office, the power of your signature on my paycheck. I am surprised and sometimes frightened by those who are.

Trust is a relationship not an office. It’s not situational.
Power and position get an opportunity, the same opportunity as anyone, not a better one. Politicians might even get less.

Trust is not good deeds, good looks, or the right t-shirt. Context helps, but doesn’t guarantee it. If you come in a context I trust, I listen more easily. If some way you look like me or sound like me, I might offer trust more easily. Still the trappings don’t make the real thing. My decision to trust you does.

And trust isn’t unilateral or blind. One-way trust is a handing over of power. Blind trust goes against self-preservation.

What Is Trust?

Trust is a decision, a commitment, a pact and a bond that builds and connects. Trust is shared values. Trust empowers by the questions it removes.

Trust is brave and vulnerable. Trust is not sparing my feelings. Trust is the hard truth spoken gently.

Trust is knowing and believing, giving and receiving without hesitation. Trust is not wondering whether what I say is true, whether I will follow through, whether my thoughts and feelings will change when I’m talking to someone other. Trust is knowing you are safely invested and protected.

We can lose it before we have it or find where we least expect it. Trust can be given, but not invented, stolen, or demanded.

Trust is a delicate sculpture we build through relationship, communication, thoughts, and behaviors. Once it’s shattered we can’t glue it back together. The only replacement is remaking the sculpture. Like wellness, generosity, or kindness, we’re most reminded of its value when it’s gone.

In the end trust is knowing you are the same when I’m not there … Trust is keeping promises, even the unspoken promises. Not every trust relationship is that of two life-long friends who communicate with or without words. But imagine if that were so.

Trust is a risk, venture capital. It’s a gamble with a friend, a lover, or a business. Trust is us leading and leaning on each other when the outcome isn’t clear.

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When I don’t ask, when I’m not present, when I don’t even know that your actions might have been different,

when the reality is consistently …

I bet on you and I won.

trust is.

What is trust … to you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Order Anything You Put Your Mind To by Liz Strauss today!

Hate Self-Promotion? … Could Trust Be the Issue?

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Deliverables Depend on Trust

Ask a venture capitalist what moves him or her to invest, what you’ll hear is a definition of the word trust. How could it be otherwise? A VC is betting on an investment to pay off. It’s a trust situation. A sure thing doesn’t exist in business.

Trust is part of most every purchase decision we make. We trust that we get what we paid for in working order. We trust that the people who offered it will stand behind their offer.

Trust is also part of the offering. Marketing and promoting what we do also requires trust — trust in ourselves, trust in our products and services, and a bond of trust with the person we’re telling about them.

  • If we trust ourselves, we’re confident that we’ll deliver on the promises we make.
  • If we trust our products and services, we know they’ll meet and surpass the expectations of the person who invests in them.
  • If we have a bond of trust with people about what we do, we’re not worried about our credibility. We talk to them as we talk to our friends, fully expressed and enthusiastic to share something we believe will help. They hear us as we want to be heard.

Do you hate self-promotion and marketing? Could it be that you’re trying to sell before you know the potential buyer trusts you?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your irresistible offer.

If I Don't Trust Me, Can I Trust You?

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I've been thinking . . .

about trust again.

Is trust confidence in me, confidence in you, or confidence in both of us?

Some say trust is entirely internal, and only confidence is observable. If I trust in myself, then I can trust in the world. I trust the person who stated that fact in Wikipedia. Or is it the person who edited the fact to read correctly?

Trust is influence. People who trust are easily persuaded. People who don’t trust don’t listen long enough to hear the argument.

Do I trust because I agree? Maybe.
Do I agree because I trust? I don’t think so.

My dad used to say, Only believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.”

Do I trust you because I know you? I think so.
Do I know you because I trust you? That seems so too.

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If I don’t trust me, can I trust you?

It’s an interesting thought.

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How Do You Decide Who Is Trustworthy?

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I've been thinking . . .

about trust.

I look at the drops on this flower and trust they’re water.

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Truth changes. Water evaporates. Other clear liquids last longer in camera lights.

With the water, I would see it, feel it — I’d recognize water without thinking.
If it wasn’t water, it would feel and react wrong, suspect, inauthentic.

It’s the same with people.
Trustworthy people, I recognize without thinking.
The ones I don’t trust feel and react wrong, suspect, inauthentic.

Trust can be bravery, instinct, learned experience, or blind stupidity.

How do you decide who is trustworthy?

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Using Sales Techniques in Relationship Management

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Long Term Customers With New Needs

Most sales people have experienced that moment when a customer says, “Oh, you have that? I just ordered one from someone else!” Often this happens because we have failed to continue to treat existing customers as prospects.

Even with a reliable customer, we may miss opportunities when our product line or their responsibilities change.

woman-phoneOn every call be sure to:

  • Find out what’s changed for them since you spoke last
  • Alert them to any changes in your product line or services
  • Make sure they have your latest catalog or product list
  • Go back and ask again, “I know you said you don’t need _____, has anything changed since we last spoke about that?”

Even our most loyal customers won’t buy from us unless they know we can fulfill a need when they need it fulfilled, and they don’t have our catalog memorized.

Ever Been in a Community on the Same Frequency?

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My SOBCon09 ROI

relationships button

Long before there was a SOBCon, I fell in love with a character in a book Radical Edge by Steve Farber.The character was so humanly written, the first question I asked Steve when I met him was whether Agnes is a real person. He said, “No,” and looked off at a vision. To this day, I’m thinking he got off on a technicality. Not important. What matters is her message. Here’s a dialogue between the character Agnes and Steve (also a character in the story.)

“I don’t know how much of that I could have accomplished if I hadn’t found my frequency.”

Steve questioned the idea, “Human beings are more complicated than than that.”

He got this answer.

“Yes they are, But it’s not about finding your frequency by ruling out everything else; on the contrary, it’s about finding the frequency that includes all those other important values and ideals. The very act of trying to wrap it all up is what’s really important, because in order to do so, you have . . . define them, think them through, understand them to their core, and evaluate your life against each one.”

A bit of challenge to say the least. Every year SOBCon brings that conversation back to me.

A Community on the Same Frequency?

Putting on an event that is not the usual has its downside. How do you explain to sponsors, speakers, attendees what they’ve never experienced? Ever tried to explain Cirq du Soleil to someone who doesn’t know it? I have such respect for the street team who first launched it.

Words alone aren’t adequate. Images are ambiguous. Even the passionate vision of an evangelist drawing details and answering questions is only a promise of a future reality. I can talk about what happens. I can talk about the value propositions and the offers. But until people experience it, I have to believe that a big part of their investment is trust.

In business you can contract schedule and budget. You can write specs and standards, but you can’t define human experience. The quality of experience is a function of how people invest their time, energy, and trust. I saw trust in every step of SOBCon

  • Trust with the planning. I trust myself. I trust my integrity. I trust my advisors who get relentless phone calls about the content ideas that change, evolve, grow, mutate like living organisms. I trust their honesty, patience, and good will for the conference.
  • Trust in my partner. Trust in Terry means I never think about whether he’s there to support me, whether I’ll need to defend my ideas. I trust that he’ll tell me when I’m off my rocker. I trust that he’ll be there in the dark of night when everyone else is sleeping.

  • Trust in the folks who offer the time to the project. It’s more than delegation when your house payment counts on it. It’s more than getting help when your name is on the letterhead. Trust is a big word when it’s possible that people could be making more work not less. It’s even bigger when some volunteers disappear or soon show they want the benefits of participating without much investment.

  • The mutual trust with the sponsors, speakers, and attendees. We all trusted that we all would deliver.

  • Trust that serious work can be fun. Being in a room where we can finally ask unabashed questions and get solid answers … or create new solutions is invigorativing and reminds us that we can do things we forgot we knew how. Our minds release different chemicals when we play with ideas.

  • Trust in ourselves. Letting go, asking unabashed questions to get solid answers … and creating new solutions … is invigorativing. How cool is it to be reminded that we can do things we forgot we knew how.

SOBCon runs on trust and produces actionable ideas.

It was 130 people all set on learning this new world of ours, all set on helping each other out. That kind of energy is electric, spontaenous, and self-generating. In a high trust environment, we talk and think faster and laugh more. The ideas come at the speed of the Internet with humanity and just don’t stop.

Trust doesn’t rule out everything else. It wraps up the other values … competence, integrity, generosity, comaradeship, and so many others. But trust is the fuel and the frequency of SOBCon.

Ever been part of a community on the same frequency?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!