Trust is one of the most critical elements you need to succeed in your career if you need to partner with someone at your work. Your manager needs to trust you to assign new responsibilities, your customers need to trust you to buy your products or services, your team members need to trust in your leadership to join you and your stakeholders need to trust you to engage with you so that they can succeed in their endeavor. However, trust can only be earned, it cannot be bought or rewarded to someone. You can only build it over a period of time. So how do we build that trust? I believe these are the 4 principles that can help us earn trust from the people that we engage with.

1. Let your bat do the talking: I am a lifelong fan of Sachin Tendular. For me the debate for the best cricket batsman in the world ended a long time ago (a fan speaking). More than a billion people on this planet call him the God of Cricket. During his 2 decades plus career for India, he helped his team win many matches. During the same time, India lost many games where he did not do well. However, everytime he went on to the field to bat, the crowd always had a sense of assurance that India had a chance to win regardless of how tough the situation was. Why was that? It’s because they had seen what he was capable of in previous games. During one of the interviews, he was once asked to comment on his critics’ assessment of his failures. His response was “I will let my bat do the talking”. That’s exactly what one needs to do to succeed in their career. Simply by delivering results consistently. You cannot win hearts and minds by just doing the talking. Nothing earns more trust than the positive impact your work brings to your stakeholders. Understand what is expected of you, set specific time bound goals, demonstrate the value add of your work via metrics, build an identity for yourself and/or your team and iterate. You will see people gradually gravitating towards you for your expertise and they will rely on you to get something done. Let your work speak for itself.

2. Listen: In my opinion, the world will be a better place if we all can listen a bit more and speak a little less. It doesn’t matter whether you are a people manager or an individual contributor, have the patience to listen. And the way you listen to someone is by hearing what the other person is saying and taking sometime to process and then respond. Don’t be in a hurry to reply back, defend or provide a solution right away if you do not have one ready to go. Also, don’t just listen to people who heap praise on you, have the courage to listen to your critics. They will help you get better at what you do in most of the cases. When you are dealing with an uncomfortable conversation, make the other person heard and supported. A simple gesture of taking notes, acknowledging an issue and following up with concrete actions demonstrates a strong listener’s attitude. If you are hearing something that you don’t agree with, look for the data to show the reality but don’t dismiss it just because you think it’s wrong. A good listener will always get a second chance.
3. Be humble: The world is moving so fast that it’s impossible for anybody to know everything that we do. So have the humility to say “I don’t know” or “I am wrong” or “I missed this”. It is okay to not be the best at everything you do, at least when you start. No need to defend your misses or explain why something went wrong unless asked. When you receive unpleasant feedback from your customers or your peers or your manager for something that did not meet their expectation, take that feedback in a constructive way. You cannot take feedback constructively if your first instinct is to explain your way out, or defend the situation. If you want to earn someone’s trust you have to trust that person. So give the other person the benefit of doubt because you may not be fully aware of his situation. In a tough conversation, be curious, ask for details or specifics which will help you root cause the issue. More importantly, have the humility to ask yourself this question, “What could I have done differently in the exact same circumstances?”. This will help you learn from a miss, address the situation and meet the expectation in due course of time, ultimately building trust. Humility drives open mindedness.
4. Be an optimist: The best part of the world is that it is not perfect. It gives us the opportunity to think differently and solve some big challenges every single day. You are hired to get things done and make things better for the business. You are not hired to just complain. So keep the drama out of the equation. If you are in a fast paced environment, take it for granted that there will be chaos, things won’t go exactly as planned, you will get pushback and even may not get all the credit you deserve. Don’t get depressed. You are not expected to solve all the problems on the very first day. Take the time to understand the problem space, write down what frustrates you in the system and go solve them one challenge at a time and solve it well. Think big while creating a plan for solving these challenges but start small so that you can demonstrate progress and earn others’ trust as fast as possible. A job is a journey to perfection but you may never hit that perfection. So don’t get too bogged down when things don’t go as you expected. Take it as an opportunity to make something better. Believe in yourself and in your team. If you are a leader then the onus is on you to inspire your team and make them realize that with the right prioritization and focus, things will get better overtime. Be infectious in your optimism.