Building Trust to Create Change

Whether it’s in the workplace or in our personal lives, trust is key for strong relationships. To brew good chemistry comes down to getting to know one another. It is never as simple as merely spending time around a person; after all, hundreds of couples get divorced every year, saying after it’s all over, “I was married to Jane for twenty-five years and never knew she loved Frankie Valli!” We can’t simply absorb these pieces of knowledge through osmosis.

Our co-workers, friends, family and significant others must allow us to learn about them. In order to do that, they must trust us. Being effective in your relationships means knowing how to build trust. The stronger that bond of trust is, the more straightforward and open your channels of communication will be. It’s about understanding one another and how pushing buttons can increase trust or derail it.

Catalyst for Positive Change

People are always thinking about what they’re feeling, or feeling about what they’re thinking. In a relationship for example, a problem doesn’t have to result in negativity. It is just a catalyst for positive change. Building trust to create change. Patrick Lencioni speaks of the importance of “vulnerability trust’. It’s the type of trust where you feel safe enough to expose your vulnerabilities. For the new employee it may be a willingness to ask the unasked question. Without this type of safe environment those around you may be too afraid to share what may be that highly sought after solution.

Let’s say you have a friend who is driven by his/her achievements; always striving for higher and higher goals. Driven people like this tend to lash out if their buttons get pushed and often will react with an ‘I’ll-do-it-by-myself’ attitude. Taking away responsibilities, such as a simple cooking chore from a spouse or child, can insult that person because it implies that they are bad at it. The reality is that hundreds of buttons exist within each of us and some are larger or more sensitive than others. So it’s important to observe your own behavior and assess how you react in certain situations.

To truly RESET your buttons you must ‘Know thyself’ and you will accomplish this by continuing to raise your level of self-awareness. Our relationship between thoughts and feelings is strong because our needs drive our values and beliefs which drive our thinking and feelings which create our behaviors or actions.  Ultimately, it will be your actions, your behavior in your relationships that will build or destroy, trust.