Trust Might Be The Most Important Thing in Life

By: Bradley Binversie

Trust is a difficult thing to quantify but nothing is more important. It’s the fabric that keeps teams, relationships, and societies together. In today’s world, it’s never been more difficult to build trust. We’re constantly bombarded with information, text messages, news, social media, email, ect…Even our governments and news media have never had lower trust ratings.

Here are just a few, simple principles that I have tried to identify to help build more trusting relationships with my family, friends, co-workers, and customers.

1. Consistency- Do you do what you promise again and again? There are no short cuts to building trust, but if you consistently do the right thing it will go a long way. Trust takes a long time to build, but can be broken quickly if your actions don’t match your promises.

2. Alignment of Interests- Having a conflict interest (especially financial), creates mistrust. If your family, friends, or customers do not believe that you are acting in their best interests it becomes difficult to trust.

3. Competency-Can you deliver what you promise? If you don’t have the capability to follow through, trust will be lost.

4. Own Your Mistakes- All people, companies, and even government leaders will make mistakes. Own those mistakes by acknowledging them and sharing how you’re going to do better.

Exclusivia is a big trust exercise. We are trying to transparently share ideas, tools, experiences that we think would benefit others. If we take shortcuts or break the trust of our members, Exclusivia could not exist.