Is a lack of trust holding you back in business?

Employees:

Do you trust your employees that they will do the job they are employed to do? That they will turn up on time or that they will be honest in all of their dealings?

Clients:

Do you trust that they will pay their invoices on time? Do they tell you the information you need to know in an honest and reputable way? Do they will hold up their end of the bargain.

Trust is something that every person in life has to deal with. I am a country girl, so my immediate reaction is to trust everyone until they do something that makes me not trust them.

I trust my employees wholeheartedly. They do a brilliant job. They may turn up late on occasion, but I have learnt to detach myself from thinking that they have broken my trust because I have been overseas or away. Instead, I give them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps their trains were late or the traffic was bad.

Some employers don't trust their staff. Micro-managers for instance, often don't trust that anyone can do a job as good as they can. The reality is that they can, but you just have to trust them and perhaps adapt your expectations because they may deliver the same thing in a different way.

One of Australia's leading Psychologists, Kylie McCullough says that trust is a choice.

"The things we experience in life are a reflection of ourselves," she says.

"The number one person you need to trust is yourself. If trust is being broken, perhaps it's time to look at ourselves and where we are being unreliable and where we are making choices."

"You can trust a liar to lie and a thief to steal. People are going to let us down from time to time and we have two choices: to detach ourselves from the situation or to make different choices next time."

What that means in business is that as a professional services firm like Marketing Eye, we need to trust our clients that even though we are marketing their businesses, that they too will hold up their end of the bargain and do what they need to do to ensure that sales occurs.

With our employees, it is imperative that we trust them to do their jobs and to represent our brands in the way we need them to do so. If they do not, then we need to look deeper into how we are choosing these people and make changes in order to not make the same mistakes again.

"What you will find is that if you are consistent, then others around you will be consistent too," said Ms McCullough.

"And know that people will let you down, but you need to detach yourself from the situation."

If our trust is being broken, it might be time to look at the areas of where you are being unreliable. If you keep being surrounded by people who keep breaking your trust, you need to be more consistent in yourself.

Women in business are different to men in business when it comes to trust. Women are more likely to think the worse in a situation and build up a story in their heads that seems logical at the time. Whereas men, are more likely to not care. So if someone breaks their trust, they quite simply, don't care. Women do, so it is very important that they learn mechanisms in which they can better manage situations. Address it, sure. Find out the answers, by all means. But do not dwell on it.

Knowing that you cannot always predict what other people do and having the detachment to move on when they do let you down is important. Sometimes it is a hard choice - but it has to be made. It is no different to having personal relationships where people break your trust. You can choose to detach and not think the worse, or you can choose to cut your losses and move on.