Hi everybody. And welcome back to the GAF series, Great Advice Frameworks. And today what we’d like to look at is what we call a trust equation. Now, many of the advisors that we work with call themselves trusted advisors, yet I don’t know that they are trusted by their clients, and I don’t know that they’ve developed trust. So one of the ways we like to do that is to help you work out which areas of your business and your performance do you need to improve, or perhaps even diminish.
So if we have a look at a trust equation, trust equals credibility. Do you know what you’re talking about? Now, nobody walks into your office and says, “Show me your degree. Show me your qualifications.” There’s an assumption that you are credible. But understand this: teach only what you know. So if you don’t understand what you’re talking about, get another expert in. And that’s part of what we talk about in terms of collaborative advice.
Secondly, reliability. And that is that sense of repeatable excellence. Is the quality of your work such a high standard that people know what they’re going to get and can rely on that?
And then the third piece is intimacy. We’ve mentioned this before in the [inaudible 00:01:09] model of going down into the emotional and spiritual, but intimacy is that ability to be able to have deeper conversations at greater meaning, perhaps show a bit of vulnerability yourself, but certainly allow the other person to share with you what’s really going on for them.
Now that’s fine if you want to create some trust, but remember this: there needs to be a level of self-interest. If your self interest is too high, and we’ve divided all those great things by too much self-interest, and that could be around your pricing, if your pricing is out of the realm of most people. Or it could be that you want it all your own way in this relationship. So just understanding that you need some self-interest. If your price is too low, then you probably won’t attract the clients that you want to attract. So looking at this trust equation again: credibility plus reliability plus intimacy, divided by self-interest. Have a look at your own and see which one of these do, as a professional, do I need to improve or does my business need to improve? And that way we’ve got a greater chance of developing trust with our clients.