T.R.U.S.T.

A five-step framework for building trust faster with the stakeholders who matter most to your leadership effectiveness.

Most executive teams obsess over numbers and systems, but neglecting trust is the silent killer of growth—no CRM or sales dashboard can compensate for a deficit in genuine stakeholder confidence.

Growth is often on our agenda. We want to develop as a person. Or we want to grow as a professional. It can also be that we want to develop our business to the next level. Whatever it is: you have a product, offer a service or we’re selling ourselves. However, what really fascinates me is the lack of attention that we give to the importance of trust in our ambitions.We break our minds over how we are going to grow. We invest in expensive CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software that not everyone is using. We're counting the number of visits of our sales colleagues. We train our people to open more new doors. But we fail to invest in the basis of every exchange: trust. My deep personal experience of 30 years is that trust usually is the real differentiator to move things forward. When there’s trust, most other things will fall into place too. It helps us to reach agreements and navigate through conflicts.

Key takeaways

• If you want to accelerate growth—personally or professionally—focus less on tools and more on building genuine trust with your stakeholders, because trust is the real catalyst for progress.
• Leaders often overlook trust while obsessing over CRM systems and sales metrics, but investing in trust consistently delivers better results than any software or training program.
• Before pursuing ambitious goals, use a trust self-assessment to gauge your relationships; if mutual trust is lacking, your growth strategies will likely stall or fail.

Trust usually is the real differentiator to move things forward. When there's trust, most other things will fall into place too.

The trust self-assessment

Therefore, I’ve created this self-assessment as a checklist to nudge you and to see where you are when it comes to trust.Self-assessment

Instructions: For each statement below, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means "Strongly Disagree" and 5 means "Strongly Agree."

Imagine yourself in a professional situation. Now rate:

I trust the person I am dealing with.

1: Strongly Disagree

2: Disagree

3: Neutral

4: Agree

5: Strongly Agree

I believe the other person trusts me.

The other person knows what my added value is.

The person I am dealing with has decision-making power.

The person I am dealing with has a regular need for what I want to achieve.

I am on this person's radar in a positive way.

Look at your lower scores. These could be areas that need further exploration and thought. Feel free to use this self-assessment to measure where you are today and identify areas for improvement. Discuss it with someone you TRUST…

The T.R.U.S.T. framework

Looking for growth? Step one: I propose to look at T.R.U.S.T. as acronym:

Target your audience (what is your fishing pond?)

Respond and listen to their needs! (not yours!)

Understand (really and deeply) their pain points

Show your value; be realistic and pragmatic

Transform your relationship

If it’s not working (yet)? Make peace, let it go for now, quickly move on and maintain the relationship you’ve both invested in!

Over to you.