Opinion: Winning the hard-fought battle of trust

Thomas Douglas

You don’t realize how impactful tangible trust is in life until you reach a pivotal part of your life. When we are young, we trust easily (for the most part). However, as we age, we realize that people let us down, people lie and people manipulate. Some have the best intentions but just can’t follow through with commitments.

As we progress in our lives and our careers, this concern or fear of being misled is a weight on our shoulders. We are conditioned to be skeptical of being sold a bag of goods and as a result, we become resistant to trust people in business and think that we must forge ahead only focusing on what we know, what we can validate and what we can control.

In our businesses, it is this resistance that we must fight through to grow. We have to overcome the odds so that we rise above the doubt and are able to develop relationships based on the foundation of a vulnerable and sometimes fragile state. However, we cannot take it for granted. The gift of trust is also one of the greatest gifts an individual can receive.

I once had a mentor tell me that “no sale will ever occur unless there is a transition of trust.”

I think this wisdom can be applied to personal relationships, business relationships and with our elected officials (a conversation for a different discussion).

One of the most important lessons that I have learned in relationship management is that when we extend trust based on honesty and candor, we don’t enter the relationship expecting perfection. Instead, we enter the relationship believing that despite challenges, flaws and imperfection, we can work together to solve the problem based on the trust extended. Problems are expected, but so is alignment toward a shared vision of success.

Being a Trusted Adviser in a community that you care about is a gift of seismic proportions. It means that there are others in your community that believe you have exhibited these characteristics consistently over time. It means that you have fought through resistance and won by delivering on your promises, not once or twice – but for years.

For me, being among the few that gain the title of Trusted Adviser is validating and humbling. We know that trust is hard to gain and easy to lose. We know that trust isn’t a permanent fixture you can put on your wall. You must earn it each and every day.

We also know that these individuals are critical to our own success. We need these people to help us fill in the gaps that we have in our businesses. When I first started in business, I didn’t know how much I would rely on others – both internally and externally – to make our dreams become a reality. Today, I’m confident in sharing that these people, our Trusted Advisers, are truly the foundation of business and our economy. Help us celebrate their accomplishments and how hard they have fought to earn something we hold so close to our chest – our trust. 

Thomas Douglas is the CEO of JMark and Springfield Business Journal’s 2023 Legacy Adviser in the Trusted Advisers award. He can be reached at tom@jmark.com.