How do you create trust with people?

byHeidi56

1.2K followers

8 years ago

There is a lot of writing about Scam here (and everywhere) and everyday we have to decide if we trust in somebody or something, or if we don't. We probably wouldn't engage with someone whom we don't trust at all - or we would be very aware of the risk.

Now, seeing it from the other end: If we want others to have trust in us, what do we need to do? Or what do we need NOT to do? And on the bottom of these questions: who do we need TO BE?

There are several levels of building trust.

1. level: written texts (on websites, blogs, landing pages, sales pages)

2. level: published books with an compound exposition of your ideas and photos of you and a bio

3. level: Audios and videos where your voice is heard

4. level: videos where people can HEAR and SEE you and get an impression of who you are. ( Skype, Google Hangouts, Facetime etc.)

5. level: encounters in person in real life

We are still relying on level 1 and 2. We write and write - we are encouraged to do that here in the community all the time. Nothing wrong with it, BUT.....

Verbal communication, the words themselves, make only 10-15 percent of a full communication. So by ONLY writing you miss out 80% and more. It is common experience that it is easy to LIE with the written words, much less easy to lie when you hear the voice and its modulations. Many frauds you would recognize intuitively when you heard the person speaking.

While we have an intuitive understanding of the other person via their voice - remember phone calls where you could clearly understand the emotional situation of the other person by their way of speaking, breathing etc. (the acoustic parameters of communication - they tell others a lot of who we are and what our intention is).

So, level 3 communications are definitely better to establish trust between the parties, but you get to know the other person only with level 5. As we cannot meet everyone in person, level 4 is a perfect approximation.

In level 4 you can see the face of the other, their mimics, the movements of their hands and their upper bodies, there are a huge amount of features exposed of which you, intuitively, collect data. You feel attracted to the person, or not. You get to know the person fairly well, because people are not very good in controlling their mimics and other non-verbal communication hints - unless they are skilled actors.

To attract your tribe you need to come out of your hiding place and present yourself to the people who want to find out if they trust you or not. Use VIDEO where people can see you!

I know, many of you have problems of self exposure. I will write another blogpost about that soon - If I could I would speak to you via video, but this is not possible on this platform (yet?).