Keep promises, keep trust

The first secret to trust is keeping promises. Trust depends on promise and fulfillment or what lawyers call contracts. Few realize that corporate profit and loss statements consist of promises not money. To build trust we also must be willing to make promises and this is the second step. One of the most difficult management challenges I ever encountered was getting others to use goal language. We often assume that if we don’t make promises we will never have to worry about breaking them. The third secret to establishing trust is to under commit and over deliver. Over promising is the flip side to under promising and just as damaging. Negotiating up front is far more effective in creating and maintaining trust than the inevitable excuses that arise when a promise is not fulfilled.