Trust is simply one of the most important facets we can work on as leaders and entrepreneurs. Aside from working on your business and your customers businesses, you really should work on “you” by reading, watching and understanding how you can do small things that will make you much more effective.
The following resources are well worth your time investment:
Simon Sinek – First Why and Then Trust – Beginning as a student in anthropology, Simon Sinek turned his fascination with people into a career of convincing people to do what inspires them. Through his struggle to rediscover his excitement about life and work, he made some profound realizations and began helping his friends and their friends to find their “why” — at first charging just $100, person by person. Never planning to write a book, he penned Start With Why simply as a way to distribute his message. With a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people go home everyday feeling fulfilled by their work, Sinek is leading a movement to inspire people to do the things that inspire them.
My thoughts on this video:
Many times I speak about the “gut feeling” people get that leads them to make sales decisions. We have all experienced that time when we were shopping for something, the time when we thought to ourselves, I do not like this salesperson. Unless we were simply on a time crunch or without options, that experience typically resulted in us not purchasing the item we were considering. Simon sums it up in this video nicely:
Technology is fantastic for the exchange of information and ideas. It is terrible for creating human connections. You cannot build trust using technology like you can in person. Mirror neurons in our brain control how we relate to one another and how we empathize. This is necessary to create trust. It is a very human bond. Nothing replaces human contact. – Simon Sinek (excerpt from Ted Talk)
Media cannot replace in-person – I love his example. As we all know, while we can certainly have all of our interactions via the internet, we often go to live events to connect with people. That is still one of the best ways to gain trust and exert authority. I speak at 4-6 events per year and nothing beats being there with my students and colleagues.