‘I do not trust her’. It caught my attention when my daughter was describing to me the reason for not playing with one of her classmates. That made me remember a line by Stephen Covey
Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships
After taking some roles to build/ lead greenified procurement-related practices in corporate and advisory, I’ve come to recognize some common traits to achieve trustworthiness in an organization. These traits lead to better and greater performance, smarter collaboration, enhanced communication, superior innovation, focussed relationships, and the most important good spirit.
During my time to build these practices, I realized that the functions which have a base structured on building 360-degree trustworthiness have won the war for better services, functional support, in-house talent, and benefits to the stakeholders. In pursuing trustworthiness, leaders need to strive for consistency of words and actions that stand the test of time and lead to a robust relationship. A structured relationship needs to be motivated by achieving mutually beneficial needs
4 Questions to demystify the pathway to 'Trustworthiness'
While I look behind and ask myself how I was able to establish the most trust amongst the stakeholder function, It was only through being credible, reliable, empathetic, understanding their true requirement, and having less ‘self’ focus. Below 4 questions helped me to attain the trustworthy crossfunctional/service partner relationship -
- How can we introduce our function’s credentials, services, performance, references, experience, and professional training without sounding condescending?
- How can we build a realistic plan and build a delivery system that allows the stakeholder to trust that we can deliver on time and always to the required quality?
- How can we establish common ground by engaging in a dialogue about mutual interests, beliefs, and a win-win approach
- How can we ensure that our stakeholder understands that we truly believe that we can help them to reach their desired future state/outcome/result?