Your ‘build trust’ checklist to help you build, maintain and restore a high level of trust in your business

You might think that trust is expected in any business relationship, that it doesn’t need special attention.

But sadly, this is not the case…

Trust is fundamental to the future and growth of your business, but it is hard to earn and easy to lose. Because trust is vital to every aspect of your business, it pays to understand and use the language of trust and to use the frameworks that signpost trustworthy behaviour.  Here is a checklist to help you get started:

1. See trust as an economic driver of business success – a high level of trust lowers costs and increases speed, ensuring happier customers and a happier team and increasing profits.

2. See trust as a learnable set of skills to build both character and competence – rather than dividing people into two camps – trustworthy and not trustworthy – start improving your trust behaviours and trust skills.

3. Choose a relationship or team where you want to improve trust – put this trust-building to practical use and focus on a relationship which you want to improve.

4. Use Covey’s 13 trust behaviours to identify areas that need attention, time and effort – choose the behaviours that will build trust fastest and easiest with the relationship you have chosen.