Here’s a simple framework for building trust with anyone:
This works whether you’re trying to gain more trust from someone who already trusts you or with someone whose trust you’ve lost that you’re trying to regain.
3 examples across both personal and business relationships:
In the morning: ”I'll make sure to have those worksheets printed by the time you get home from school.”
At 2pm, print the worksheets and lay them out on a desk.
Kid comes home from school at 3pm. Once they’re settled, remind them that you printed out their worksheets, like they asked.
I was invited to play in a small weekly basketball game as an extra for someone who got injured. When I asked which weeks I was available to play, I replied as clearly as I could about which weeks I could attend and which weeks I couldn’t. For the weeks I could attend, I made sure to be there 30 minutes early and was already warming up before most people arrived. After 3 weeks in a row of this, I was invited to be a regular. When added to the group chat, I saw this message: ”Let’s add Dan Mall. Dude’s decent and reliable.” I may not be the best player, but I show up and am trustworthy, and I think that made a difference.
(And, if anyone from the team is reading, I promise I'll work on my jump shot too!)
At the beginning of each week, post a weekly standup note in Slack to your team about what you intend to accomplish this week. Spend the week working on this task. At the end of the week, post a small recap (1-2 sentences) to the team about what you did. (This also has all the added benefits of working in public.)
In your performance review at the end of the year, print out and bring both the standup notes and these recaps to the review. You’ll have 50 pieces of evidence about how trustworthy you are, and people like working with people they can trust.
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