Trust is part of the foundation of all great businesses.
Not only does it define relationships with clients and VC partners, it also shapes the inner dynamics of an organization. For starters, think of a great boss you’ve had — and hopefully you have had one. Employees often rank trust as a top factor when evaluating their managers, with the trait being especially important in times of change or business hardship. Research from Gallup also suggests that internal trust affects how employees view their companies as a whole, with less trusting workers being more unsure that their organization will be fair to its clientele. What’s more, Gallup found, that lack of trust can be so profound as to escape the business altogether and shake consumer confidence in the brand.
So with trust being such an important virtue, how can we go about building more of it in our organizations?
The key may be in these three basic elements of trust, as laid out here in Harvard Business Review:
Consistency, the faith people have that you’ll deliver every time.
Good Judgement/Expertise, or the sense that you actually know what you’re talking about and can make good decisions.
Positive Relationships, your ability to create meaningful bonds with others.
The Review came to these three target areas through a breakdown of 360 reviews of more than 87,000 business leaders. To our eyes, the three categories make a lot of sense, especially when you consider the traits of trustworthy people in our personal lives. The findings also underline what we said earlier about trust being a major factor in positive evaluations — the researchers found that trust levels had the single strongest impact on overall ratings as given by peers.
Interestingly enough, they also found that the Positive Relationships element is more important than the others, with that likeabilty factor going a long way in winning people over. That’s not surprising, but it really drives home the larger point that relationships mold business success in some pretty deep ways.
The good news here is that we can improve ourselves in all three of these elements with a little effort and, well, consistency. Our team at Prepare 4 VC may not be able to boost your charisma much, but we can do just about everything else to get you off on a better foot with the people you need to win over to advance your startup goals.
Do you trust us? Let us prove our worth to you with an initial consultation!