How do you build a stronger relationship and more trust with your team? Cultivating relationships and building trust can be hard. When you don’t have trust in your organization, innovation and productivity drop. Sometimes employees actively sabotage a company. However, when companies do have trust, they have more productive teams, more innovation, and higher employee retention. 

After 25 years of leading teams, leadership speaker Jennifer Prince has become an expert in trust and relationship building. She has led teams in both technology and sports buildings, always focusing on relationship-building and partnerships. At Twitter, she was the Global VP and Head of Content Partnerships, and today she is the Chief Commercial Officer of the Los Angeles Rams. 

Here are Jen’s three principal ways to build trust and strong relationships.

Be Human

Always remember, business is about people—not products and services. How you treat your team and your customers is also how you will be treated. If you want people to respect you, then you need to respect the people you work with. If you want them to listen to you, you first need to listen to them.

Jen suggests leaders and co-workers always start by building a personal connection with someone before any type of business connection. A personal connection shows the nature of your relationship isn’t just transactional, and it builds more trust. You can do this by being humble and communicating clearly and openly.

Be Honest

The basis of building a good relationship or partnership with any co-worker or client is honesty. Honesty fosters trust. Jen suggests you can demonstrate your honesty in four ways.

First, work transparently so people understand what your motivation and reasoning are for your actions. Second, always respect the time of your colleagues and clients, and try to conform to their work styles. Third, be an attentive listener so you can listen for and relieve any pain points they might have. Finally, honesty is about connection: try to communicate face-to-face and in person as much as possible so people can hear your tone and see your body language.

Be Authentic

Finally, you need to be ‘authentically authentic’ in order to build trust and stronger relationships with your partners. We hear the word ‘authentic’ a lot in business, but what does it mean?

For Jen, being authentic comes down to your word. People who act authentically do what they say they will do. They don’t overcommit or overpromise. They follow through on their commitments. In short, an authentic person is a reliable person in word and deed.

Building trust and relationships can be hard and requires a lot of work and commitment. However, when you stay human, honest, and authentic, you can build the kind of relationships and partnerships that will last not just for a transaction but for a lifetime.

If you would like to learn more about building trust and relationships, contact BigSpeak Speakers Bureau to book Jennifer Prince or another leadership speaker.

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