Building and maintaining trust with the people in your life is one of the most important skills you will ever master. Whether it is trust with your co-workers, customers, vendors, friends, children, or spouse the level of trust that you establish, earn, and enjoy will make your life and your ability to serve those around you a much easier task. There are 5 key things that every person evaluates you against when they are deciding to trust you or not.
#1 is Strength. Are you a person that projects strength and gives a person peace of mind that if you are on their team you will be a strong ally and help ensure a win?
#2 is Confidence. Are you a person that projects confidence? People will follow a leader that projects confidence and maintains a positive attitude and gives maximum effort in all that they do.
#3 is Smarts. Are you a person that projects intelligence? Are you able to master a topic and relay the content to someone else in a palatable manner that they can understand? The smartest people in the world can explain difficult topics simply.
#4 is Honesty. Are you a person that someone can trust? Honesty and integrity is a lost art in today’s world. Doing the right thing is not always the easiest thing, or the most profitable thing, or the quickest thing. However, you must always do the right thing and remember that a person’s integrity is measured when no one is watching.
#5 is Tenacity. Are you a person that has tenacity. We should all aspire to work harder than everyone else around us. The victory in a project, or a relationship, in a sport, or in the gym always goes to the one who is willing to work the hardest.
As you engage with a person the first time, they will measure you on these 5 things and determine if you are someone that is worthy of their Trust. If you pass the test, then be ready….you must prove yourself worthy in every interaction going forward!! There will be times when you fail their Trust but don’t give in to that failure. Get back up and work hard to regain their Trust and be vigilant to keep it always!
I am reminded of Theodore Roosevelts wise words delivered over a hundred years ago: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
My challenge to anyone reading this is to live your life as a man or woman in the arena!
