Interpersonal soft skills are significant in their ability to build relationships forged on trust. Honest communication, mutual respect, even where there are differences of world view or personal opinion, integrity and ethical behaviour, contribute to underpinning the trust factor. Trust is required in constructing healthy communities and organisations, and when it upheld, has been seen to unleash creativity, engender empowerment, optimise teamwork. Fostering a culture of trust, therefore, rewards communities and organizations that hold true to the principles as a highly valuable intangible asset. Both Jack Welch and Warren Bennis maintain it as a key component to business succcess and yet few companies or institutions seem to manage in enfranchise trust sustainably because of a failure to transmit it as a cultural norm.

The characteristics of trustworthiness include integrity, reliability, fairness, caring, openness, reciprocality and, within appropriate caveats that does not transgress a core value set, loyalty. Organizations and institutional policies might promote a culture of trust by promoting open communication, by modeling behaving in socially responsible and ethical ways to every employee.

According to Charles Green, creator of the Trust Equation, ‘the way we use the Trust Creation Process model is really just outcomes of the principles we hold.’ What I understand Charles to impute, it that who we are and what values we hold to be true, informs how we engage and behave with others across the board.

Green maintains that the only way to become trusted is to act consistently from a set of core principles and the four specific principles governing trustworthy behavior that he cites are:

1) A focus on the Other (client, customer, internal co-worker, boss, partner, subordinate) for the Other’s sake, not just as a means to one’s own ends.

We often hear “client-focus,” or “customer-centric.” But these are terms all-too-often framed in terms of economic benefit to the person trying to be trusted.

2) A collaborative approach to relationships.

Collaboration here means a willingness to work together, creating both joint goals and joint approaches to getting there.

3) A medium to long term relationship perspective, not a short-term transactional focus.

Focus on relationships nurtures transactions; but focus on transactions chokes off relationships. The most profitable relationships for both parties are those where multiple transactions over time are assumed in the approach to each transaction.

4) A habit of being transparent in all one’s dealings.

Transparency has the great virtue of helping recall who said what to whom. It also increases credibility, and lowers self-orientation, by its willingness to keep no secrets.

According to Green, applying these principles to all of our actions will develop the fullest potential of trust that bonds and binds relationships, and thereby, builds longevity and reward born from such a strong tie.

As this erudite research on trust reveals, ‘Trust has several beneficial effects. It helps build teams, where trust acts as a bond of tying people together. It reduces energy otherwise required for controls. It helps in cases of conflict. Overall, it reduces task complexity.’

The benefits trust rewards us with professionally, socially and personally, are worthy of our time, attention and investment to explore, accomodate and demonstrate. Make no mistake. your ‘relationship capital’ is being accounted for with every interaction, so it is a wise person that conducts themselves with every meritricious endeavour of creating relationships bound and bonded in trust.

The value of a business increasingly lurks

not in physical and financial assets that

are on the balance sheet, but in intangibles.

—The Economist, June 12, 1999

The reputation of your business is what precedes it in the marketplace, be you service or product. Building a reputation based on customer centric service, standing by your brand promise and placing an emphasis on happy customers sows dividends in the short and long term. Businesses and organizations must manage their reputation by communicating with their clients and customers and management must embody honesty, fairness, responsiveness and consistency in dealing, conducting business in a manner that ensures long-term success. People are loyal to companies they feel good about.

How you deal with employees and customers creates the reputation you develop.They are key to the success of every business. Many companies fail to understand the importance of developing and maintaining a consistent reputation as trusted, reliable and treats everyone fairly. The culture of the organization informs the perceptions of the public at large and learning how to assess what kind of reputation your organization has improve upon your approach each employee, customer and client, each of whom has an influential ability to impact the reputation for better or worse.

If the reputation of an organization is tarnished, it is a lengthy and expensive job to shift negative perceptions that have been created by the key constituencies. Management must strive to communicate clearly to employees a culture where they expect them to treat each other and everyone they come in contact with while representing the company in a manner that is consistent with the brand values. When employees deviate, it is important to re inforce those expectations and that behaving in a manner inconsistent with the culture is unacceptable as the values and perspectives build the reputation perception.

Today I’m interviewing Chuck Hester about his soon to be published book ‘Linking In to Pay it Forward – Changing the Value Proposition in Social Media” .

Be sure to tune in and enjoy this extract:

Online social media etiquette

‘Here’s the scenario: A person contacts you and would like to get to know you better, on a business level. You agree and start a conversation. As the relationship develops you find that you have more things in common than you originally thought. You want to deepen the relationship. You look for ways to help this other person and become good friends. Oh, and by the way, you’ve never actually physically met.

Welcome to the world of online networking. For this old-fashioned guy, it took a while to get used to meeting and talking to folks for months, sometimes years that I never actually met. Until I decide to apply a very important principal to my online relationships:

Treat your connections like they’re standing right in front of you.

By using your inherent sense of respect for others, you can develop some amazing relationships online.

Here’s a few tips to help you can treat your connections like they’re standing right in front of you:

• Be open to new relationships. I often get invitations on LinkedIn from people I have nothing in common with  an IT administrator, a blogging mom in New Hampshire and for the most part I always accept those invitations. Why? Because I never know what may come out of that relationship in the long run.
• Be polite but be honest. Respond back to invitations honestly. IF you don’t want to pursue the relationship, then say so.
• Be yourself and be who you are, not who you want other to think you are. Don’t put on an online “identity” to impress or try and influence.
• Remember the other person is real “ not just a computer connection. Respond in a reasonable time, don’t ignore them and be sure to follow through on anything you commit to do.
• Listen, don’t just talk. Listening is an art not easily mastered, especially in the white noise world of online networking!
• Finally, look for ways to develop an online relationship into a physical one. Do you like the person you’re connected to either as a friend or business associate? Then take the time to meet them if you can. Make the face to face connection.

So, my question to you is simple: Who are you connected to online that you don’t know well but who may make a difference in your life? More importantly, who are you connected to online that you can make a difference in THEIR lives?