Credibility
Until you are credible, your clients will not be interested in trusting you or exploring how you can help them.

Integrity
Establishing credibility can help you work toward displaying your integrity. As your clients learn to trust you, they begin to share their goals, passions, and struggles, and they ask you to deliver on various commitments.

Authenticity
Finally, after you’ve delivered on those commitments, authenticity comes into play. During this stage your client welcomes your help, even when it is unsolicited or when you have been honest about not having all of the answers.

When you make worthy intent your going-in principle in your business relationships, then credibility, integrity, and authenticity—the three essential qualities for creating relational capital—will be more easily and readily expressed, and you will be well on your way to advancing every business relationship.

Authenticity is about being honest with ourselves and our clients regarding who we are and what we know; it is the quality of being genuine.

I believe that authenticity is sometimes the hardest of the three essential qualities of relational capital to demonstrate, and it requires the highest degree of bravery on our part.

Why? Because at times in business we can get caught up in our image and how we look in front of clients, especially when we do not have all of the answers.

The Power of “I Don’t Know”

The three most powerful words in business are “I don’t know.” This simple admission that you don’t have all of the answers is refreshingly honest in today’s economy.

Too often we put a lot of energy into keeping up a façade in our business relationships…..an appearance of strength, expertise, influence, knowledge….. for fear that others will see us as weak or vulnerable.

One of the hardest things for business people is to openly admit that they don’t have all the answers. Saying “I Don’t Know” can open the doors to a healthy discussion about possible and even better solutions. The fact that the individual may be admitting he/she isn’t the ultimate source of wisdom is not the point; the point is that now everyone is able to focus on the need itself and how to meet it most effectively together as a team.

Sometimes just saying the authentic magic words “I Don’t Know” can result in amazing things!!!

BUSINESS EFFECTIVENESS TIP

When in a business meeting, listen with more than just your ears. Sincerely acknowledging points by nodding occasionally, making eye contact, taking notes, and being fully engaged all demonstrate genuine concern for the person speaking. Watch his or her facial expressions, eye contact, and hand gestures” to pick up on unspoken messages.

Integrity is, quite simply, being trustworthy in our actions and character.

Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching, like leaving our business card on the windshield of a car we just bumped in the parking lot.

It is saying what we are going to do and then doing it. Integrity is the quality of having honest and truthful motivations for our actions. This translates directly into applying the principle of worthy intent in all of our interactions in the business world.

Everyone wants to believe they can be trusted and can trust others in life and business. Many clients gauge our integrity by the way we make our commitments and deliver on them. After we have established that we are credible, our clients will begin to ask us to make commitments to them in the form of contracting for goods, services, and solutions.

When we deliver what we promised, we display our integrity and reinforce the client’s trust. In doing so, this opportunity further advances the business relationship and increases the distinctive value of our relational capital.

Integrity is also about expectations, making sure we set them appropriately and then consistently delivering on them.

The old phrase about commitments, “under promise and over deliver,” actually contradicts the worthy intent that we should strive to bring into our business relationships.

BUSINESS EFFECTIVENESS TIP

Trust begins with commitments which are the promises we make in business. Don’t make promises you can’t keep during business discussions. Even if they are made casually, somewhere along the line you’ll be held to your word. Failing to produce what you’ve promised will create atrophy in the relationship and close the door to any future opportunities.

It’s simple, JUST KEEP YOUR PROMISES!

Three Essential Qualities

Relational Capital
The distinctive value created by people in a business relationship.

Your ability to advance business relationships by creating relational capital with your clients is the most impactful way for you to distinguish yourself in your client interactions. In my book, Business Relationships That Last, I discuss the principle of worthy intent as the foundational, or “going in,” approach to every business relationship.

In the next series of blog posts, I will explore the three essential qualities that are at work as you create relational capital in every one of your business relationships.

Your credibility, integrity, and authenticity constitute the essential foundation upon which you build relational capital in the business world. These qualities impact how you are perceived and valued, and their convergence results in the relational attributes that attach to you in every business relationship.

Credibility, integrity, and authenticity are present in every business relationship to some degree because each of us possesses. these qualities. In outstanding business relationships, however, these qualities form the very basis of the relationship, leading to many competitive advantages and rewards for client-facing professionals.

And while each quality is important in its own right, understanding how the three converge is the key to creating relational capital with each business contact.

Many businesspeople perceive these qualities to be very similar; in fact, my clients routinely substitute one for the other during our discussions.

Looking closer, however, we can see that there are important fine distinctions among the definitions of each term, as well as a distinct order in how each one manifests itself in a business relationship.

I recently watched a video on BusinessWeek.com that shocked me. BusinessWeek’s David Kiley explored the importance of trust when it comes to the reputation of brands as part of BusinessWeek’s Best Global Brands 2009. In his report, David Wiley states that these brands are having to “get back to trust” in with their marketing strategies: “Trust is now at the center of every marketer’s strategy.”

Get back to trust?

Why do they have to get back to trust?

How did they lose trust in the first place?

In his report, Wiley states, “Consumers want to know the truth.” The report uses McDonald’s as an example. Having survived the backlash against it’s fatty fast foods and beef farming practices, McDonald’s now engages PETA on a variety of issues, has not fought against posting calorie counts on its menu boards, and is called partner by Greenpeace for it’s efforts to save South American rainforests.

Whether your corporate brand lost trust or not, you don’t have to fall prey to that same mistake because it’s all about distinguishing yourself through your relationships. In your business relationships with others, you create your own level of trust.

The Great Places to Work Institute, a research firm that studies the dynamics that make a workplace great for employees, recently shared that there are no trust-neutral interactions. Every occasion in which you have the opportunity to interact—that is, to listen, to provide information, to do a favor, to follow up on fulfilling a promise—represents an opportunity to build trust or to damage trust, either by not following through or not proving to be true to your word.

So the question remains – why do we need to get back to trust?

How did we lose trust in the first place?

I think perhaps it’s because we got wrapped up in the fast way of doing things and fell away from cultivating relationships. And if we get back to relationships, being credible, displaying integrity, and being ourselves in the process, we can take control of those parameters on ourown. So that no matter what the brand does from an advertising aspect, trust is something we can take control of – and build – in each of our business’ partnerships and relationships .