Course Outcomes

This relationship-building course will:

  • Outline how participants can leverage trust and use it to build relationships with others.
  • Explain the stages of trust building.
  • Review steps for building credibility.
  • Prepare participants to adjust their communication to adapt to different style preferences.

Course Overview

When we find people we trust, we value what they have to say, and readily refer them to friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Why? They are reliable, credible, and have our best interest at heart. This course is about becoming a trusted advisor in the eyes of coworkers, customers, and clients. The program mixes theory with practical actions participants can put into action immediately following the workshop.

Program Objectives

At this program’s conclusion, participants should be able to:

  • Explain how trust impacts relationships.
  • Describe the trust framework and how credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-interest work together to influence how people perceive each other.
  • Demonstrate personal credibility, and explain how credibility occurs through association, qualification, tenure, and connection.
  • Describe the importance of reliability and show how to manage expectations and fulfill promises.
  • Adapt their communication to build rapport and accommodate different style preferences.
  • Adopt a customer-centric mindset.

The following outline highlights some of the course’s key learning points. As part of your training program, we will modify content as needed to meet your business objectives. Upon request, we will provide you with a copy of the participant materials prior to the session(s).

Workshop Outline

The Commitment: Understanding Trust

This interactive program kicks off with a discussion around the concept of trust. During this segment, we will reveal how participants and their organizations can benefit from building trust in their relationships. The group will then evaluate its current thinking and uncover any obvious roadblocks that may prevent them from becoming trusted advisors.

The Framework: Deconstructing the Formula

The next workshop segment explores Maister, Galford, and Green’s Trust Equation: TQ = C+R+I/SI (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy divided by Self Interest). During this part of the program, participants will discover how words, actions, emotions, and motives combine and influence how others feel about us. They will also discuss the stages that occur as people build trust and earn others’ confidence. 

The Faith: Building Credibility

How we present and describe ourselves contributes to how others perceive us. This part of the seminar reviews body language, tone, and how we position ourselves when interacting with people. During this portion of the course, participants will also evaluate various credibility statements and build their own. Following that exercise, we will discuss credibility by association, qualification, tenure, and connection.

The Promise: Demonstrating Reliability

Nothing sinks a relationship like dishonesty and lack of reliability. This part of the course examines what it means to manage expectations, keep promises, and seek opportunities to provide assurance. Participants will also review techniques for managing time in order to deliver what is expected from them.

The Click: Connecting with Others

When we have great rapport with people, we tend to enjoy them, believe them, and find ways to work with them. Using Business Training Work’s signature diagnostic tool, The Communication Jungle, participants will learn about people styles and how they can adjust their approaches to instantly connect by accommodating a customer’s or client’s communication preferences.

The Shoes: Developing a Customer-Centric Mindset

When we put ourselves in another’s shoes and think about what we can do to benefit him or her, we work differently than we do when we consider only ourselves. This final section of the workshop discusses actions participants can take to adopt a service mindset and incorporate customer-centric behaviors and language into their interactions.

By the conclusion of this seminar, participants should have an understanding of how they can become trusted advisors in the eyes of their coworkers, clients, and customers.