Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa July 2013 | Page 74

LESSONS

BY ANN NUROCK

In Business
It’s all about

T

hese days it’s hard to trust anyone.
Government, business leaders and even
sportsmen have let us all down and trust
has now fallen to disturbingly low levels.
Let’s take a look at South Africa: while we may
trust the institution of government, we don’t
trust government officials and the main reason
for this is corruption. No surprise there but what
is surprising is that, South Africa aside, people in
the world simply don’t trust CEOs. In fact they
would trust government officials more than they
would CEOs.
All over the world, the business sector with the
lowest trust scores is a sector in which we should
trust the most – financial services. People do not
trust the very institutions where they put their
money? Shocking! Now, in South Africa, we’re
lucky that regulations are so strict that it has
almost forced a trust culture of financial services.
What I found so enlightening from all the
research and with working on some of the world’s
leading brands, is that trust is not some elusive,
intangible concept. Trust is a basic instinct. It can
be taught, established, built and restored. Trust
holds every relationship together. We know that
without trust, there is nothing, be it business or
personal!

Why is trust important in business?
When you have trust, you have a whole load of
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July 2013 SA Real Estate Investor

proven benefits. One of them is speed. In his
book, “The Speed of Trust”, Stephen Covey
talks about the fact that when there is trust in an
organization or any business relationship, there is
collaboration, transparency and loyalty. And it is
true, because people recommend you more; they
place more orders and employees want to work
for you.
Relationships with trust are then based on
commitment and everything speeds up … this
results in costs going down. The reverse applies
when there is no trust. There is friction and
politics, and everything slows down … resulting
in costs going up.

The new world order
People are fast realising that what they used
to trust and their reasons for doing so have
changed. They don’t have to trust the same
source, the same opinion formers, and the same
leaders. They can form their own opinions based
on the shared experiences of like-minded people.
Statistics show that 93% of people trust people
just like themselves more than anyone else and,
even more surprising, 70% of people now trust
the word of strangers more than anyone else.
Take a look at how we get our information today
– from people we don’t know on Twitter. We go
to ‘TripAdvisor’ for holiday advice from strangers
and when we want to recruit someone, we use
LinkedIn for recommendations - strangers.

In business, this means that leaders now
have to be more respectful; not only to their
employees but to their customers as well. It
is more than just about the bottom line; it is
also about how you achieve it in terms of your
leadership skills and ethics.

Social media
We live in a social, transparent and sharing world
that requires trust to function effectively. When
it comes to brands, social media has given the
customer power. They can instantly tell if a brand
is not authentic. It’s simple, if your brand does
not have the right intent, they won’t trust it.
And this means, your brand is vulnerable and
can be exposed by just one tweet. And through
careless messaging, a familiar brand can lose the
trust it has built up over years - the consequences
of which can be severe, if not fatal.

Trust is no longer a ‘nice to have’ … it’s
an absolute imperative
People want to work for and with people who
have the competence and who can deliver.
Results are not only the reason why we are in
business, but also serve as one of the greatest
motivators of trust. But these days it’s also about
how we get to those results that matter. It is about
your intent, your integrity and how you treat your
employees and customers.

RESOURCES
Relationship Audits and Management
(RAM)
www.reimag.co.za