Can Trust Help Take Your Business Global?

How do you build a stronger business? As you read this, I’m attending The Global Trust Conference in London.  It’s fascinating how connected we are today. Several people I met on social media will be attending and several of my favorite authors is presenting today.  As serving leaders we are inherently trusting people who want to work with authenticity and serve others with our unique gifts. This conference can be the start of building trust with all the members of your teams.

Sounds simple, but is it easy? I thought it might be helpful to share several ideas on trust that may make it easier to build your team. In the last several weeks, I’ve had several friends share Roger James Hamilton’s new book The Millionaire Master Plan.  It’s a fascinating book for a number of reasons, but the key one I found is that it helps you identify your financial strengths and how you might use your unique gifts to build your wealth. Roger also has a quick test that tells you where you are in terms of wealth creation.  According to Roger, wealth is not just monetary, but what you have left if you lost all your money.  When I looked back to my past unsuccessful partnerships, I can now clearly see why they failed. I can also see that real trust was one of the key reasons these relationships never got off the ground.

The people that shared this book with me struggled with some of his concepts. It’s not because they are complex ideas. I believe it’s because they don’t trust themselves anymore. When we fail several times doing what we think we should know, it’s very difficult to trust ourselves again. The first critical element for success is trusting yourself and the direction you choose to go with your life. His test and process give you simple, implementable ideas to use to increase your trust and self-awareness.  If you’re like me, you will enjoy taking control of your life again.

I see this all the time in my work with entrepreneurs. They are capable, dynamic people, but they lack self-confidence. This lack of self-confidence shows up in many ways, but the biggest way I’ve seen it appear is they can’t trust other people.  To be successful in the trust economy, we must learn to trust ourselves.  To do this, we need tools that help us grow and accelerate into new opportunities.

The second critical element of trust I see in successful entrepreneurs is they have a high level of emotional intelligence. This means they are very intuitive and connected to others.  They know themselves and they are flexible in how they deal with others.  These are critical proficiencies in dealing with other with different backgrounds than yours. Many of my better global clients struggle with different ways that others do business. To succeed they must learn to trust others across the globe.  I’ve found that by helping people develop higher levels of trust in others, the faster their businesses take off.  This doesn’t mean my clients are naïve.  They are able to spend more time understanding their partners and the way they see the world. For this time investment, they build stronger relationships and understanding of their global partners.

The third and final critical element of trust is understanding and enjoying the different ways people see and act in any given situation. Talent Dynamics is a great assessment tool and process that helps you better understand you and your team.  It’s always challenging to put together a winning team. The Talent Dynamics system provides you essential insights into your other team members’ behavior. Since many of us are responsible for cross-functional teams throughout our career this is a great tool to help you manage team dynamics. This simple framework  can provide you with a tool that not only allows each of you to better appreciate one another’s gifts, but also a way to provide the right coaching in the right way at the right time.  You will be surprised how much more you enjoy managing your team when you’re working to their unique gifts and strengths.  Team trust is a critical element to building successful global alliances and partnerships.  Just imagine how much you could accomplish if you better understand and trust others when working with them. The results will amaze you.

We will be discussing these key elements of trust over the next several weeks here at Developing Serving Leaders. I look forward to sharing what I learn today and then helping you become a more trusting leader. See you here next week.