Focus on high-trust relationships in your business, like Warren Buffet did…

It’s hard to understate exactly how important trust is to your business.

As a business owner, be aware that a lack of trust will be your biggest expense. Some costs are monetary, others are emotional; some costs can be measured, some cannot.

But where there is low trust there are high costs.

Trust is the natural result of thousands of tiny actions, words, thoughts and intentions. It does not happen all at once – gaining high trust takes work, but it can pay dividends.

Like it did for Warren Buffet…

Imagine how nerve-wracking and difficult it is to start and conclude a billion-pound business acquisition. This type of transaction normally take months of wrangling and legal arguments, costing millions. Yet Warren Buffet completed the £1billion purchase of McLane Distribution from Walmart, with its 14,500 workers, based on a two-hour meeting.

How? High trust between Warren Buffet and the Walmart executives made a quick deal possible.

 In your business, low trust is a tax, while high trust is a dividend. Just as the diagram below shows, low trust slows everything down and increases costs, whereas high trust speeds everything up, keeping the costs low.

In the McLane Distribution deal, both Warren Buffet and Walmart experienced the benefits of their relationship of trust in the form of a speedy negotiation with its associated lower costs.

Work on building high-trust relationships in your business – high trust makes you better at everything you do as a business leader.  When you build trust, you increase your ability to grow revenue, profits and capital value, and you might also enjoy your work more too.