The keys to mastering the Trust Game lie squarely in being very intentional about bringing clarity to how you express yourself with the outside world, and then sticking to it – over time.

We all know you don’t trust someone overnight and you certainly need many points of reference that help to make a decision about engaging to work with someone.

We must remember to marry our limbic (gut) instinct that says “yes, I want to work with you” with our more logical, frontal lobe that desperately wants you to verify that instinctual decision with hard facts.

Simon Sinek’s “Infinite Game” theory teaches us that playing the longer game of finding a win-win for everyone for the long term is the way to go and I completely agree. Especially where I feel like today, “trust” is so very much a loose, wobbly term that is thrown around like a badly planned, messy finger painting.

In my humble opinion, for someone to choose you – as the consultant or specialist that they want to work with – you have some work to do in providing your prospective audience / clients with enough to attract their limbic gut instinct and also satisfy their fact-seeking logical brain.

Here are my three rules to the Trust Game:

#1 Alignment

To instil trust and come across credibly – you need to be crystal clear. Ensure that what you are putting out into the world actually aligns with what you want it to.

When I say crystal clear – I mean about knowing:

• what you want from your working lifestyle,
• how you want to come across, and
• how you want people to feel.

Once you have established this – do a sense check with other people to see if you are being perceiving and experienced in this way. If not, make adjustments. Once that’s done – you will have found your rhythm, the one that people pick up on, on a subconscious and conscious level.

Your tone of voice, choice of words, decisions you make, moves you make, conversations you have – you name it…this affects how people are experiencing you. See it like your ‘theme music’ that people instantly connect and resonate with, when they see or hear you. If you suddenly change the music, go off-key or mess with the volume – people will notice and it can cause unease and bring on their indecisiveness. Be aware.

#2 Resonance

I think one of the things that help to bake in trust for people is if they can actually resonate with you, your story, your why or how you do something. This is how you manage to get your tribe or your ideal clients to notice you and want to spend time with you (reading, listening, talking). For me, if I cannot completely resonate with someone – I probably feel a bit unsure whether they are the person for me.

I guess what I am saying is: to help people to resonate with you, there’s another level of clarity you need to work on and that’s around context and perspective. To get someone to resonate with you – think about the elements that will help them to work out whether (a) you are the professional for them (because you’ll understand them) and (b) whether the problem you solve – is what they need right now.

You can help them out by adhering to this trust game rule by:

• sharing more of yourself (based on your origin story, your strengths, your journey, your human-ness)
• educating them about where you fit in solving their problem (give them a landscape understanding of where you come in on what you do, and what it is that you actually do)

#3 Consistent persistence

In short: do not give up easily. Just when you think you can’t carry on, keep going.

It takes people a while to get to know you, to work out you are for them and it takes multiple touch points before it happens. A good example to help with this is if you are doing a podcast show, or are building your speaking career – it takes a while to get good at the “thing” as well as in getting enough eyes and ears to find you. Also, sometimes people just purely need to “hear” you at the right moment when they are in their space of “need” (for whatever it is that you do).

Remember: sometimes people need to hear or see things multiple times – so that it actually gets through. We live in a highly convoluted and content-and-newsfeed-polluted world. Attention is the currency of the day – people literally have to make the time to concentrate on something. Just make sure that you haven’t given up before then. Keep going.

If you have done the work in rule #1 – then you know you are doing the right thing. Just be persistent and consistent. It will work out.

The Genius of You

You are a gifted, brilliant human that more people to know about. Take the time to work on your personal brand strategy which is really asset-building time you will never regret doing. The time and effort you put into your personal branding strategy is what will energise and help you to do things quicker and more comfortably into the future. You will make decisions quicker and know exactly what fits you and what doesn’t. That’s priceless.

Need help with your personal brand strategy?  Book a conversation.