The Circle of Trust
For anyone who’s seen Meet the Fokers, I’m sure you can picture Robert DeNiro’s character talking about the circle of trust — constantly. His idea of inclusion and exclusion takes on comic proportions because Jack is more about excluding people than trying to include people. But what does the Circle of Trust mean for us as work-at-home professionals, especially as many of us brave the e-commerce/Internet business world?
In the middle of working on a couple of entirely different posts, events unfolded that led to combining them as each issue I planned to address seemed to be elements of the Circle of Trust.
Image: iStockphoto
Trust
We aim to build trust with our friends an family, aim to build trust with our clients and with the people who are part of our network. We hope that as we go through life, we are viewed as trustworthy, honest, likeable, professional and that our reputation precedes us for all the right reasons.
What does trust do? It makes people believe in you. It makes people want to hire you or work with you. It makes people care and want to be part of your network, and when you have a problem, want to help you. But trust isn’t a one-way street. You have to build trust. So how do you do that? Keep reading.
What’s in a name?* (Or logo for that matter)
Brand Identity
Brand identity is part of building trust. We rely on brand identity for many reasons including how we assess quality, authenticity and security. This sense of brand identity is not only for big companies, who constantly remind us to look for their logos to know that as consumers we are working with a company or purchasing a product or service worthy of our trust. We see it every day… it’s as basic as the phrases “Intel Inside” or “Look for the Union Label,” or knowing that an orange circle and red circle overlapping mean MasterCard. Brands become the signifiers of for the whole entity that the image or symbol represents.
Establishing Reputation
By establishing a brand identity (or personal brand) through an image, logo, phrase (or combination thereof) that reflect your product or service and that people will immediately associate with you, your product or service. That symbol will also carry with it the weight of your reputation and your character, which Hajj Flemming, so aptly describes as being inextricably linked to one another.
Protecting Your Reputation
What does this mean for the small business or home-based business? The same thing that it means for big companies, and even more so. The same laws that apply to branding, copyright and trademarks are in effect for small companies. Having a clear, established brand identity can help protects you from the risks associated with becoming prey from entities that seek to profit (or otherwise gain) from your audience, traffic, products, services, clients or reputation. You never want to experience in business what the Cowbird does to other birds. The Cowbird is a notorius parasite that lays its eggs in the nest of another bird. (They don’t share well with others.) Maintaining a good reputation can open your circle of trust.
Your Network
There are so many ways to network: social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, professional networks such as LinkedIn, and microblogging such as Twitter and Plurk, and then there are the social/professional networks that might be niche or industry specific. No matter what the network is though, how you network is crucial to developing and maintaining your Circle of Trust. Are you listening? If you’re not, Chris Brogan gives some important pointers. Are you participating or just sending out sound bites? In other words, are you creating something of value if you’re using it for business? If you’re using it for social purposes only, or why do or should people care? Are you creating a conversation? Mack Collier gives an excellent example of how conversations lead to trust and can expand the Circle of Trust.
Maintaining the Circle of Trust
Relationships take work — whether it’s your parents, your spouse, kids, close friends “in real life,” clients, colleagues, business contacts, networking buddies — basically, everyone. How you carry yourself, maintain your principles and standards — your core — will reflect the strength and power of your Circle of Trust.
What’s your circle of trust? Do you have different but overlapping or tangent circles of trust?
Erika-Marie S. Geiss
Editor-in-Chief
theWAHMmagazine
This post is dedicated to my Circle of Trust — couldn’t do it without you.
Well, I’ve not seen “Meet the Fockers” so I really don’t quite ‘get’ the “Circle of Trust” concept. I feel like it relates to the relationship circles. You have your inner core circle, which is yourself. The next circle that surrounds you is for lovers, the person or people who are permitted to be intimate. The circle widens like a rippling river based on the closeness and trust you give to particular people and the connection of their relationship with you.
I have very small inner circles but my outer circles are few. I give a great deal of trust to my online friends, my colleagues, my associates, my clients etc. Sometimes I worry that I trust too easily. Perhaps I am the opposite of DeNiro’s character in that I let people into the outer circles easily.
I know on a personal level it is important for me to work on my inner circles. I need to open up and allow people to know me and reach out for other as well as always being available to a wider collection of friends.
It would be interesting to attempt to draw our “Circle of Trust”/”Relationship Circles”. Evaluate where each person we know falls, why, and how they accomplished that degree of relationship.
June 27th, 2008 at 10:30 amRebecca,
Thanks for your comment! I like the connection you made to Relationship Circles. I think the CoT is very similar, and that there can be different circles or even people/entities that fall into different categories and yet they overlap. For example, our online friends/colleagues, the people in our “network” that we share work-related and sometimes personal issues with, but it’s not nec. everyone that we encounter that way…some we are closer to than others and for whatever reasons, we trust them and let them in, and vice versa. I think when it comes to business, esp. as WAH professionals, part of the success of a biz./person doing biz. is the trust/reputation that allows others to let you into (and you to let them into) one’s circle of trust.
I think it would be a cool exercise to draw our CoTs/Relationship circles. Hey…maybe if enough people agree, we can post them here.
-E
June 27th, 2008 at 10:52 amWell, I’ve not seen “Meet the Fockers” so I really don’t quite ‘get’ the “Circle of Trust” concept. I feel like it relates to the relationship circles. You have your inner core circle, which is yourself. The next circle that surrounds you is for lovers, the person or people who are permitted to be intimate. The circle widens like a rippling river based on the closeness and trust you give to particular people and the connection of their relationship with you.
I have very small inner circles but my outer circles are few. I give a great deal of trust to my online friends, my colleagues, my associates, my clients etc. Sometimes I worry that I trust too easily. Perhaps I am the opposite of DeNiro’s character in that I let people into the outer circles easily.
I know on a personal level it is important for me to work on my inner circles. I need to open up and allow people to know me and reach out for other as well as always being available to a wider collection of friends.
It would be interesting to attempt to draw our “Circle of Trust”/”Relationship Circles”. Evaluate where each person we know falls, why, and how they accomplished that degree of relationship.
Rebecca Laffar-Smiths last blog post..Networking, Friendship, and Colleagues
June 27th, 2008 at 11:02 amICK! Sorry for the double post, had a net lag issue and thought it didn’t send.
I know it would be a labor of love to try and pull mine together. I don’t have a lot of ‘local’ friends. Most of my life is spent online for work and recreation so the majority of my friends and social situations occur online. Does an online environment encourage greater distance, or greater trust? I think that varies from person to person too. I know I can trust online easier than I can at home because the screen creates a personal boundary of safety.
We need to expand this concept to discuss how to develop levels of trust and encourage a tighter knit Circle of Trust.
Rebecca Laffar-Smiths last blog post..Networking, Friendship, and Colleagues
June 27th, 2008 at 11:21 amThat’s okay about the double post…the second one caught your latest blog post…so it’s all good.
I think you’re right about it varying from person to person about whether the online environment encourages greater distance or trust. It’s part of how you utilize it…is a person real? Do they communicate and listen? Do they give a reason to trust them, want to get to know them–either as an individual or as a business entity. I think those are all of the things that the SM experts who focus on the “social” aspect of SM get and are talking about…the Brogans, Colliers, Scobles (and many others)…and that socialization aspect is part of trust building.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:50 amPerhaps it was expressed best in The King and I in the song, “Getting to Know You.”
Completely forgot…great blog post Rebecca, and I joined…I didn’t realize you were on mybloglogs too.
June 27th, 2008 at 11:51 amGreat post, Erika, and an important topic.
When it comes to networking and social media, there should be some kind of interchange. The cowbirds miss the point by using aggression and subversive tactics to accomplish their goals. That’s just *taking. Where’s the mutual exchange?
As WAHs we can work together - even if our audiences or market segments overlap … maybe especially if they overlap. Why not work together to serve that market? Sure, when we’re in business we want to make a profit, but is it all just about being competitive and looking for what we can get? I’m sure there are people who only know that way of doing things, but I feel sorry for them.
For me, money has always been a secondary motivator in any career move I’ve made. My primary motivation has always been to make a difference and have a positive impact; in other words, to serve something of value to others.
That really, in my opinion, should be at the core of ANY business. Even large corporations profess this as their intent in marketing materials. But as WAHs, we truly have the freedom to formulate our business model to be first about service, secondly about personal, financial, or business success.
When those are truly our motives and we make them clear to our markets, we’ll be invited into their circle of trust. And the rewards will go beyond monetary gain.
Carolyn E.s last blog post..Finally! Mix-and-match magazine subscriptions
June 27th, 2008 at 1:23 pmCarolyn, thanks for your comment! …and that was so well said at the end. It is about the motives (being true/honest/sincere) sure $ is important, but if the underlying principles…the core values…are sincere, then you’re right, they can be included in the circle of trust.
-E
June 27th, 2008 at 1:46 pmI enjoyed your writing style and I’ve added you to my Reader. Keep these posts coming.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:52 am