Why Trust Me? Making Trust Your Competitive Edge: Put the Power of Trust to Work for You, Your Team, and Your Customers

WHY TRUST ME?

MAKING TRUST YOUR

COMPETITIVE EDGE

Put the power of trust to work for you,

your team, and your customers.

BRUCE LEE

Copyright © 2016 Bruce C. Lee.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

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Cover Design by: Bruce Lee

Editing: Eric Daly, Tony Wooster, Aline Peters, Ken Drabinsky, Eva Cherniavsky, Bruce Lee

Final Proof: Bruce Lee

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5197-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5196-1 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 6/23/2016

CONTENTS

Foreword

Making Trust Real

Our Daily Exposure to Trust in the News

Putting the Ideas, Strategies and Goals of this Book to Work for You

Introduction to Part One

Part One - What is this Thing Called Trust and Why Does it Matter?

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more.

Oprah

What is this Thing Called ‘Trust’ and Why Does it Matter?

Trust on a Customer Service Perspective

Creating the Wow Trust Experience

Who Do You Trust?

Trust in the News

Advertising that You are Trustworthy

Industry Trust Issues

Trust Becomes Influence

Which Professions Do We Trust?

Which Individuals Do We Trust?

Can We Trust the Media?

How Do We Create Trust?

Trust is About Predictions

The Book: The Speed of Trust Reviewed & Explained

The Least Trusted Professions

The Least Trusted Professions in the United States

Careers Going From Trusted to Untrusted!

Trust: ‘The Blind Side"

Introduction to Part Two

Part Two - Increasing Employee Productivity With S.A.M.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but to reveal to them, their own.

Benjamin Disraeli

Increasing Employee Productivity With S.A.M.

S in S.A.M. is: Set High Expectations!

Coaches: An Additional Way to Set High Expectations

A in S.A.M. is: Appreciation is Key!

M in S.A.M. is: Making a Difference!

Introduction to Part Three

Part Three - Customer Service is All About Trust

In order to be big, you have to think big. If you think small, you’re going to be small.

Emeril Lagasse

Introduction to Customer Service Is All About Trust

Creating Trust from Mistakes

Turning Bad Service Into a Good Experience: Mess Up - Fess Up - Dress Up

Trust is All About Client Retention and Referrals

How to Increase or Decrease Revenue

The Power of Customer Surveys

Self-Tests That Power Up Loyalty, Retention, Accountability

#1 Rating Your Soft Skills Leadership Attributes

#2 Confidential Leadership Empowerment Satisfaction / Retention Survey

#3 Coaching Skills Self-Assessment

Conclusion Why You Need To Have Trust

Additional Ideas for Implemention of this Information

Part Four - Addendum of Additional Resources

Winning depends on where you put your priorities. It’s usually best to put them over the fence.

Jason Giambi

Addendum Introduction

#1 The Trust Walk

#2 83 Successful Supervisor to Manager Terms

#3 5 Check Lists on Personal Success and Productivity

#4 Corporate Retention Strategy – Effective Benefits Packages

#5 Who Do You Trust By Industry and Product?

#6 What the Best CEO’s Know Book Review

#7 Time Management Strategies and Time Saving Tips That Work

#8 Additional Keynotes, Workshops and Webinars

#9 Who Do You Trust?

About the Author

FOREWORD

Trust is your key to opening the doors of opportunity for you.

Trust is created by everything we do and say.

Our reputation and careers are built on it.

The big question to ask yourself is: Are you trustworthy?

If you are, you have character, integrity and probably a great reputation.

You are sought out to help others and be a part of growing organizations.

You can be relied on time after time.

Your opinion matters and it is highly valued.

Trust is about honesty, transparency, effective communication and consistency, doing the right thing, every time, with everyone. Trust is hard to build, but easy to lose. Trust is an all important ingredient to life-time success. Trust motivates, encourages, engages, and supports. When someone gives you their trust, it is a hard earned bonus to a relationship. When you lie to someone, you lose their trust and they will have a hard time believing you in the future. Trust is like an eraser, it gets smaller and smaller with every mistake.

Why Trust Me? is designed to show you practical, real life examples of the power of trust that can advance your career and fast track the development of the people you work with, manage, or supervise. This book also examines how well you perform your job, promote your company, and how you can ultimately make it easier to sell your company’s products or services. It illustrates how trust will help you create a competitive edge over anyone else.

When the ideas, strategies and examples in this book are adopted or adapted by you, they will help you effectively manage, maintain, sustain, empower and engage you and your team and will enhance the culture of your workplace. Trust is about building up your leadership skills and credibility. It is about creating the ultimate customer or patient experience. Why Trust Me? will show you how to achieve this goal and much more!

Trust affects the top and bottom line of every organization. Why Trust Me? defines trust, what it looks like, and what derails it. More importantly, it explains what the antidote to what the derailment is. You will find out who can be and is trusted and those that are not trusted, by industry and profession. You will see and learn how to build trust that fully engages employees and customers by the trust that they see and feel from you. This is about best practices and how you can adopt them for your continued success.

As a bonus, there are several powerful self-tests, checklists and exercises provided in Why Trust Me? that will help you drive up and apply actionable activities to apply to yourself, your department and even the organization you work for or consult to. There is a strong focus on accountability, measurement and results. For improved results, you need trust in order to delegate to allow your people to take on new tasks and grow. This means that you have to have a level of trust in yourself and your leadership abilities, knowing that you have trained them well and have faith (trust) that they will do it right.

Over the past 24 years of delivering keynotes and workshops all across North America, I have found that audiences tend to remember stories that they can relate to or that impact them on a personal level in a meaningful and lasting way. Because they are meaningful, the stories or examples help remind them that they can do the same to help others. Several of my personal stories in this book influenced my behavior, opinions and attitudes – giving you practical examples of how my trust of others has affected me positively or when I have lost trust in others, by what they did that I do not like or condone or what that they didn’t do that was needed to be done, that has affected me negatively. This is the same for you. There are stories in this book that come from recent world news and from news stories many years ago that I am sure you will recall. The objective of both is to help remind you of past news events that affected you over the years which can be brought back as great examples for you to confirm the impact, and share with others.

Why Trust Me? is divided into three sections that build on each other and then there is a bonus section of additional articles and tests to implement the ideas generated through-out the book:

Part One: What Is This Thing Called Trust?

- Includes details on how to create and maintain trust, why it is so important to your success, examples of trust being broken by key people in the news, and who is trusted by industry

Part Two: Increasing Employee Productivity with S.A.M.

- To be successful, you need engaged employees. This is how to inspire and motivate anyone to action, to help them succeed to become the best that they can be. This can be the people you work with or those that you have as clients.

Part Three: Customer Service Is All About Trust

- The reality is that your success in business is based on the trust your client, patient, customer or citizen has in you and your organization. This is generated by what you do, how you do it - and doing it consistently to meet your service promise.

Part Four: Addendum

- This section includes additional articles and tests to implement the ideas in Why Trust Me? such as:

▪ How to lead a ‘Trust Walk’ exercise

▪ 83 Successful Supervisor to Manager Terms

▪ 5 Check Lists on Personal Success and Productivity

▪ Corporate Retention Strategy with Effective Benefits Packages

▪ Who Do You Trust By Industry and Product?

▪ What the Best CEO’s Know Book Review

▪ Time Management Strategies and Time Saving Tips That Work

BONUS: There are two additional e-books listed in Part 2 with their links that will allow you to download them immediately and are free. Both of them will add to the impact of portions of Why Trust Me? even further. One e-book identifies what it takes to create and maintain customer service and the other is all about the retention of healthcare employees.

MAKING TRUST REAL

Trust is everything!

Trust is the most important attribute we can develop in ourselves.

Your personal and business success is based on how trustworthy you are.

Trust is what most people find important for themselves and will measure you against. Trust opens doors, has you seen a true leader, and lets you lead with confidence.

This book is about the power of creating, building and maintaining trust. It becomes what you are known for, which is your character and reputation, for your personal success and for your business and career advancement. Above all, it is about customer service and satisfaction. When fully understood, trust will help you maintain your current customer base, grow it into more business with you, create loyalty so your customers want to come back - and even brag about you to their friends. Who can use more business? More repeat business? We all can. Why Trust Me? will show you how in many examples that you will be able to relate to.

As children, we are very trusting.

We trust our parents, other children and the pets around us - until they hurt us and disappoint us. Think of the first time a dog attacked or bit you, or a bee stung you. Your opinion of the dog or bee changed, probably forever and especially if it was reinforced by another bite or sting soon after the first one. You became overly cautious and acted differently around them, which they can sense. Perhaps it was the first time a friend took something away from you that was not theirs, or they broke it and lied about it. Or it could have been in the school yard or on a school bus where the bully made the school experience an unhappy one – dreading going to school and home. In the recent movie, The Gift, you see the effect of bullying and how it impacted that one person his entire life. There are lots of negative experiences that take place when we are young that influences us forever. Angry and abusive parents, family or relatives. That negative influence can take the shape of someone telling us what they think of specific immigrant groups or cultures that will form our future opinion of them. The sad part of this, is that there may not have had any truth to what you were told.

The world is a dangerous place today. For security all around the world, the saying is Trust no one. Security forces and appropriate resources they put in place help us travel in confidence. Police protect our homes, the military protects our borders, consumer protection laws keep merchants honest, and financial institutions have regulatory bodies that protect our investments. But who protects our moral compass? We need to trust others. We have to trust that businesses won’t rip us off. That customers won’t steal. That products are safe. That politicians and people in general are honest.

In a workshop I deliver on conflict resolution, gossip and gab, I have an opening quote of: Everybody lies. by Dr. Gregory House from his TV show. Is that true? Yes. Then we have white lies, exaggeration, euphemisms, deflection and half-truths. Has anyone ever said to you: The payment is in the mail.? Was it? Did you blame the mail for the slow payment? Don’t lie, just tell the truth – you forgot, or whatever the real reason is. If they know you are lying, they may never trust you again.

How would you like to work at a job where almost everyone you talk to, lies to you? If you have ever watched any of the border patrol shows (Border Security – Canada, Border Security – Australia and Border Patrol - New Zealand) it seems that lying is rampant. Have you ever missed checking off a box on your Declaration card? The theme song to the Canadian one is very catchy: Would I Lie to You? Watch it and take a listen.

Everyone has had business dealings, personal relationships, and friendships that have been destroyed by someone (you or the other person) not staying trustworthy. You may find these personal examples of how I have lost trust familiar to you:

- After buying my first starter house in 1977, the lawyer I had representing me died before all documentation was in place. No one could determine how much of the work he had completed. At the time, there was no legal process available to help me. The end result? I paid for two lawyers as the first one required a substantial fee up front – which I should have seen as a warning. Did I trust lawyers for a long time after that? No!

- I bought a brand new house in 1983 and discovered two years later when it was time to renew the mortgage that the renewal rates were not as I was told they would be when I purchased the house. As a result, the mortgage interest rate went from an anticipated 6% annual rate to a renewal rate of 18%. The realtor later apologized for this due to his inexperience, and he even suggested we take his company and his boss to court, which I did. Did I trust realtors for a long time after that? No! As to the court case, the lawyer I hired said we had a great shot at winning. Two years and thousands of dollars later I spent pursuing this, we still lost. He won as he got paid. Again, a bad impression of lawyers.

- I was in handshake agreement in the early 1990’s with someone who I thought was a successful businessman. His goal in hiring me was for me to launch and manage his new business venture of a chain of convenience stores, operating 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In return I would earn a 35% partnership and ownership of the business. Five years later when we had our annual year-end review and I again queried the status of it, he told me it was not going to happen. This meant that tens of thousands of dollars of income to me would never be realized. Can business people be trusted? Based on my experience - no.

- While managing the convenience store business, as part the daily audits I completed of sales to inventory, it was evident that the day sheet total for cash due to be deposited into the bank was regularly short. By reviewing who was on each shift, it narrowed down to one or two employees who could be at fault. A little more auditing confirmed it probably was one person, a high school student. With the help of the RCMP criminal investigation department, we set up a video camera one night to watch and record how he used the cash register after a transaction. I had a friend