Trust Archive - The Art of Communicating

The missing element to trust

Trust can thrive when people say what they mean and mean what they say. Easy, isn’t it? Well, not quite …

Here’s the bit where everything can still fall apart:

Clarity!

Or lack thereof.

Saying what you mean doesn’t guarantee that the others get what you mean. But the equation only works if it’s clear to both sides what is meant.

Keep that in mind the next time you’re frustrated when someone didn’t do what they seemed to have promised.

Did they really promise what you thought they’d promised?

Or how about you? If you asked the others, what did they really understand?

But what do you do when there’s that subtle feeling that maybe, just maybe, they didn’t catch your point?

Why not just cut through the guesswork and ask them? Straight up.

It’s not rocket science, but it’s often missed: making sure you’re on the same page.

That’s key: If in doubt, ask!

How to build trust

Say what you mean and mean what you say!

It’s that simple.

Who’s responsible for that?

What empowerment means:
The leader trusts the team with making choices.

How it’s often done:
The leader trusts the team with making choices as long as it’s the same choice the leader would have made.

The worst version might be this:
The leader trusts the team with making choices as long as it’s the same choice the leader would have made and unfairly assigns responsibility for any negative outcomes to the team, even when the leader would have made the same choice.

Do you work for a leader who truly trusts their team? Please drop me a note! I’m assembling a list of leaders who light the path.

Leap!

Venturing into the unknown requires bold steps, not just detailed plans.

It’s one thing to say: “Here’s the plan.”
It’s another to say: “I believe in you. Take the leap!”

Your team might have all the answers. But they might need you to believe in them. You’re the person who sees potential in others even when they don’t see it themselves. You’re the one who challenges them, cheers for them, and sometimes you might even have to be the unpopular voice that says: “We can do better.”

A leader’s real job isn’t to have the perfect plan. It’s to light the path and empower their team to take the bold steps.

Making the right choices

Ultimately, the course of an organization is determined by the sum of thousands of choices that each member in the organization makes each and every day.

Some of them are tiny, others gigantic. From the intern jotting down minutes to the CEO making acquisitions, everyone plays a role in the journey. Each choice, each action collectively determines whether the ship sails smoothly or veers off course.

How often do we see organizations with strong visions crumble? Not because of external threats or market turbulence, but from the discord within. The failure often isn’t in crafting the vision but in aligning the thousands of daily choices towards it.

It’s a myth that the course of an organization could be shaped by a handful of boardroom resolutions. It’s more likely to be the result of an intricate web of choices that spans the whole organization.

Aligning those choices across the organization and empowering each member to make the “right” choices is the actual purpose of a strategy.

And it can only work when it’s communicated in a way that makes it easy to translate it into how choices are made. It’s what I call lighting the path and it’s one of the most powerful tools a leader can have.

How do you align choices in your organization?

Truth shaping – the dark side of marketing

The dark side of marketing is what I call “truth shaping”.

It leads marketers to exaggerate the pros and hide the cons in order to shape a truth that fits into the marketing story.

Essentially, the dark side of marketing leads businesses to spend huge resources on inventing promises that sound irresistible for products that aren’t.

Which inevitably leads to frustration when the product doesn’t meet the buyer’s expectations. That, in turn, leads the dark side to make even bolder promises which leads to more frustration … which leads to … a vicious cycle …

Great marketers understand that it’s the other way around and that a virtuous cycle is possible.

The best products are those that customers love even more when they know the complete truth. Those that are not irresistible because the promise sounds irresistible but because it is irresistible.

Those that have been built with the customer in mind and that solve a specific problem they have.

These products might not be perfect. But that’s not the same as irresistible.

It basically reverses the shaping. Rather than build a product and then shape the truth so that the irresistible promise can somehow fit the product, you start with an irresistible promise and shape the product to fit into the promise.

If it eventually does, you’ll need to merely tell me a true story about your product in plain English.

The dishonesty of paid speaking

Something’s wrong in the professional speaking world and it’s paying to speak.

There’s a significant number of large scale events where many of the speakers in the lineup pay to speak on the big stage.

In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with this. Businesses pay to get in front of people all the time. It’s basically an advertisement.

Like with other forms of hidden promotions, the problem is when it’s intransparent.

If you buy your speaking slot, say so. If you’re the organizer of such an event, say who paid to speak and who got paid by you to speak. If you’re sitting in the audience, demand transparency.

It’s a simple rule that applies to any kind of advertising.

Just be transparent!

Would they still buy?

This week, I’m asking one simple but important question each day for you to ponder (on your own or with your team):

If you told your customers the full truth about your product, would they still buy? What do you need to change so that you can tell the full truth?

Being right

It’s easy to win forgiveness for being wrong; being right is what gets you into real trouble. – Bjarne Stroustrup

As a leader, it’s your job to create an environment where everyone can say what needs to be said.

Repeating yourself

Say something often and people will start to believe it.

Repetition doesn’t make the thing you repeat any more true or false but people are more likely to believe a statement when they hear it more often (that’s true even for smart thinkers).

Bullshitters know and embrace that. For them, that’s easy because true or false doesn’t matter the least bit to a bullshitter. The only thing they care for is whether a narrative serves their goal. And so, they repeat whatever statement serves them best.

It’s party time for them when others chime in to the repetitions, preferably mass media, the press or the social media mob.

In light of that it breaks my heart every time I speak to brilliant people who say that they don’t want to repeat themselves, e.g. because they think it’s impolite.

I don’t think it’s impolite at all. If it’s true it deserves to be said repeatedly. Looking at how often bullshitters repeat their bullshit, it might even be necessary.

Don’t shy away from putting your best thoughts on hot rotation.

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