Trust is a valuable objective of our business relationships, it is the foundation of a sustainable marketplace.

Managing the quantity and quality of relationships and conversations on the web requires a sophistication of competencies. Whilst a combination of metrics, statistics, monitoring software reveal and manage trends, the ultimate arbiter of quality is trust and human engagement.

Social relationship management is about engaging in relevant conversations with clients, customers, prospects and brand champions. Essentially everyone is a customer of someone and the very experience of engaging with a brand be it in the real world or virtually, has a powerful underpinning sourced in experience and trust.

Relationship Management is most commonly associated with Customer Relationship Management (CRM).  The standard understanding of CRM is as a strategic business strategy which relate to techniques and methods for attracting and retaining customers.

According to Henk Akkermans, a co founder of Minase:

‘Most firms, especially in innovation-driven industries, operate as part of one or more supply networks. Here, they have to collaborate with various other organizations, both in a role of supplier and of customer. The speed that is required for this collaboration to be effective requires a great deal of openness about internal activities and future plans. “Transparency” is the word used these days to denote such openness. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of transparency in most supply networks. Information technology, security and language differences are the usual suspects, but the real root cause is a lack of trust, which I have found in a number of industry settings, ranging from electronics to chemicals and aerospace . If you do not trust the other side you will not share your information openly with them.’

The Public Affairs Council is the leading international association for public affairs professionals. Doug Pinkham President of  Public Affairs Council.  says:

‘That’s because openness creates opportunities for dialog with customers, shareholders, employees, local communities and government officials. If you make the effort to engage your critics – and those who may become your critics – you can correct problems before they get out of hand. Listening is the first step toward rebuilding trust.’

Without high-levels of trust, the long-term viability of businesses and organizations are in question. In creating a ‘Standard of Trust’,  Rob Peters is defining the new Trust Index, a core element of measuring relationship capital.  Rob states:

‘In this fast moving digital marketplace, relationship principles by which firms and organizations compete and collaborate are taking an increasingly important role in enabling business success. Today, do most leaders, individuals and organizations have the mindset of “Doing The Right Thing” not just for maximizing profit and revenue, but for optimizing long-term mutually beneficial relationships?’

Physicist, David Bohm once said that society is based on shared meaning, which constitutes the culture. This shared meaning is the “glue” or the “cement” that holds society together. Shared meaning is necessary for society to function properly and for it to survive.

In his essay Dialogue and Coherence, William van den Heuvel describes Bohm’s ideas of the binding effect of sharing  common meanings and the challenge of achieving  shared menaing.

Through the media  we all get the same incomplete information and, therefore, we all come to the same distorted conclusions.  When communicating from person to person; is not only about what has happened but also why it happened. What are our beliefs, our opinions and  assumptions? What is important to you and what is important to me?

Understanding ourselves is the first step to better self expression.

Self-concept is the basis for intrapersonal communication, because it determines how a person sees themself and is oriented toward others. Self-concept (also called self-awareness) involves three factors: beliefs, values and attitudes. How they express that state is fundamental to building qualitative relationships.

When we know each other we are better able to understand each other.

Communication can be carried out by auditory means, such as speaking, singing, and sometimes tone of voice, and nonverbal, physical means, such as body language, sign language, paralanguage, touch, eye contact, or the use of writing. Whatever the medium, though, communication still means that one or more individuals are transferring information. The question becomes whether the information transmitted can be received and correctly interpreted.

• How you speak to people shapes how they view you and relate to you.
• The language you choose, the tone in which you express and the behaviour you adopt, all play a significant role in peoples perception of you.
• Your words, voice tone and inflection can elicit powerful emotions from others, without you realizing it.

We build relationships through our interactions.   How we choose to engage  in each and every interaction determines the quality of the relationship.   Be mindful of what you are saying, why you are saying it and how you are saying it.    Express yourself appropriately, constructively and concisely.

It matters.

” I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel”

Maya Angelou

Currently relationship management, across all it’s various attributions, is poorly understood and even more abysmally executed. If the current understanding of relationship management is simply to monitor and respond to negative commentary on your reputation, your brand, your business or your services, or to follow up and cross sell when the customer or client has fallen off your radar, this is no better than shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted it. It’s about listening, responding, reciprocating, acknowledging, modeling ethics and values, everywhere you are or your business is active.

The value of building and maintaining a reputation built on the seven principles of human givens (accountability, boundaries, respect, responsibility, honesty, support and trust) means creating cooperative alliances and rewarding relationships. This cannot be short cut, avoided, undeserved or manipulated. We are each being held to account on our behaviours in regard to our commitments and on this we stand or fall in peer assessment.

There is no excuse now, given the quantity and quality of tracking technologies and social media assets, not to create a formidable and very manageable strategy to build and sustain quality relationships and use all positive testimonials, word of mouth recommendations and quality referrals to build personal and professional capital as well as business advantage. To fail to implement such a strategy is to be asleep at the wheel in a fast moving and competitive world.

Reputation is generally an outworking of character or behaviour, i.e., what an individual or organization is reknowned and is different from image or branding for the fact that the earlier can be created and the former is an identity that evolves. Reputation management is customarily executed in the monitoring of commentary, often derogatory, around dissatisfaction. However, true relationship management should seek to leverage the good testimonials to augment the standing and perception of a brand, person or service.

Reputation is either:

Excellent

This mean that the organization have obtain the highest position on the spectrum that makes its reputation to be impeccable and this mean that all the indices that ensure the best corporate governance are present; high quality of service/product, strong corporate compliance, strong brand values and communication, anticipate and manage risk properly, relate well with all stakeholders (internal and external) without any major friction, fulfills contractual agreements, communicate effectively, learn from others mistake and above all have clear and transparent vision, strategy, plan and be trustworthy.

Good

Organizations that belong to this category have almost everything that were mention in the excellent category but one or two of them may be missing, this is where some of the companies belong to and example are Johnson & Johnson.

Bad

Organizations that belong to this section are numerous in number this is primarily because they continuously break people trust in them and they e.g. the insurance industry.

Ugly

This is the lowest depth of reputation, it always happen as a result of a high level of deception by an organization or an individual it either ruin the organization or the individuals that surround it e.g. Enron in U.S.A.

It is possible for organization to be boxed into any of the categories that they do not necessarily belong to because of being misunderstood or the fact that they are not transparent enough in their dealings with the stakeholders and this can be disastrous for the organization, proper management is needed for a company to be properly align with its reputation and justify where and how the intervention should take place.

Identifying the state of your reputation Either excellent, good, bad or ugly every reputation requires attention, the attention require are however different from each other and in other to identify the position of an organization on the reputation spectrum there are things that can serve as pointer, here are some of them; 1. High or low employee turnover 2. Reduction or increase in market share 3. Waning or increasing shareholders confidence 4. Quality of product/service 5. Customer retention is high or low 6. Media report good or bad 7. Third party rating and award is high or non existence 8. Competitors perception of your organization 9. Host community perception

All these and other pointers that contribute to indices such as corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, organization ethics/culture and the society norm are what an organization will be measured with in other to situate its reputation. With all these it should be now be clear that reputation deals with three things and they are:

1. What you do or do not do

2. What do you stand for

3. What you say, do not say or perceive to have said

This are what the stakeholders will use in judging the pointers earlier mention in order to situate your reputation, so question such as; how do you treat your staff? How does the organization respond to crisis? What is your rating like? How much confidence do your shareholder/ bank have in you? How well do the consumers accept your product/service? It is now left for your organization to know what is being said of you and align it with your brand. Reputation management is therefore cyclic and the one to be use must fit the stage in which an organization is in.

The cost of managing the reputation of an organization will adequately reduce if your preparatory reputation level is very high, reputation management could therefore take place at any of the stages of the development of an organization.How then do we manage reputation whether excellent, good, bad or ugly or in different stages of the cycle? The organization must identify all the issue that affects its reputation (reputation audit)

It must analyses each one of the issues properly to ascertain the past, manage the present and protect the future.

Reaching out to trusted friends or peers for guidance, information or recommendations around topics that bring confirmation and confidence, such as someone you might need to build a website or provide a service, has been generally restricted to people we have known or met socially. However, since the exponential expansion of virtual socialisation, it is now commonplace to solicit the opinions of those who exist within your extended network despite the fact you might barely know them. If you are lucky enough to get worthwhile responses from people who take the time to reply and guide you to some valuable providers or some new opportune connection, this is the genesis of a trusted relationship. They have stepped up and generated some ‘relationship capital’ with you.

It is important to understand how relationship capital is developed because it is along the same lines as Keith Ferazzi’s clear vision of enterprises as networks. It is a daily practice of providing a goodwill gesture to someone who maybe a friend or a complete stranger, a sort of ‘pay it forward’ philosophy at work. Trust is a beautiful yet fragile creation. Guard it well by only commiting to that which you truly believe you can execute or recommending an excellent service, person, business. This is what makes the world a better place and restores our confidence in one another against a tide of lies and corruption that have driven us to the brink of cynicism.

Trust-based Networks In this first of four segments, Myra Gorman, President and CEO of Community Analytics, explains how trust plays a role inside networks. You can find all the videos in this series on the same Blip TV link.

The quality of relating brings significant value to every interpersonal exchange. It’s the feeling you walk away with when you have met or exchanged with another person. The ‘feelgood factor’ or ‘not so much’.  We all do it, tacitly, continuously. A kind word and a smile might be all it takes to change a preconception of someone into a positive opinion. We are highly attuned to every word, nuance, timbre of a conversation. We ‘feel’ peoples intentions or agendas through each word spoken. Taking the time to build quality relationships requires us to invest the effort, the attention, in order to build a network of friends, associates and colleagues that add meaning and richness to a life.

Today, we suffer from bandwidth deficiency in an attempt to cram as much productivity to sustain our livelihoods. Yet, we must endeavour to sustain those meaningful interactions that maintain those relationships that make it all worthwhile. And it can be tough, demanding and we don’t always succeed.

The Relationship Capital Institute wants to help the development, understanding and evolution of building relationships. The one’s that last, whether social or professional. As with all things, the motivation came from the notion that ‘there must be a better way’. We ‘d like to make that journey together with fellow professionals from every discipline, who feel the same.

You can join our dedicated group to discuss topics and themes, as well as meet others who seek clarity around the emergence of relationship capital and associated capitals, human, social, economic and knowledge.