What baked goods can teach us about client relationships

This post is part of our Weekly Tips series.

Five years ago I was surprised by a knock at the door—an unexpected delivery of baked goods from a local sweet shop. The package included a hand-written note from Kacy, the office organizer I had hired exactly one year before. The sweets were to commemorate my first anniversary in my new home office, with a reminder that she was available should any lingering piles be in my way, and a no-obligation request to tell others about her services if I was so inclined.

Your #1 predictor of personal success in the new year

This post is part of our Weekly Tips series.

I’m writing this message from the lobby of a schwanky hotel in Washington DC (my home town), where my colleague Nicolette and I have dedicated a day to writing stuff that supports our respective businesses: weekly tips and blogs for me, and a book for her. This is the result of a pact we made late last year to help each other take time out to do what would otherwise fall by the wayside. We chose the hotel setting thanks to inspiration from my friends at Valuable Content, who advise that writing great content is most likely when we step away from our usual surroundings, and also go somewhere we’ll look forward to.

Real Moments: Three Good Reasons to Let Them See You Sweat

Business people want speakers to motivate their staff with pep talks on innovation, creativity, and change. Thought leader Brené Brown upends that approach by making a case for being—gasp—vulnerable.

Brene’s years of study show vulnerability (the “V” word, which I wrote about on forbes.com) is the key to making progress in our business and personal lives.

Today’s Real Moment features Brene’s 24-minute TED lecture in which she acknowledges that it goes against modern society’s grain to show anyone weakness, ignorance or doubt. (If you don’t have 24 minutes, watch the first 2:30.) Then she asserts that admitting we’re not perfect, we don’t have all the answers, and we can’t do it ourselves are the very things that allow space for something new to be born.  And she channels Teddy Roosevelt whose “Man in the Arena” speech underscores that you can’t wait till you’re bulletproof before you step into the fray.

When you have those real moments—those “this is who I am and how it is” moments—you’re actually becoming more trustworthy. In the parlance of the trust equation, being vulnerable is a trust trifecta: you’re simultaneously improving your scores on credibility, intimacy, and self-orientation.

So there you have it: three good reasons to let them see you sweat.

[Tweet “@ProjectGetReal Tip: Being vulnerable pays off both personally and professionally. http://goo.gl/5lserx @AndreaPHowe #getreal”]

 

 

I bet you’re guilty of this trust crime (and don’t realize it)

This post is part of our Weekly Tips series.

Of the 63,000+ people who have completed Trusted Advisor Associates’ Trust Quotient™ survey (a self-assessment), Reliability comes out 21 percentage points higher than any of the other three elements of the Trust Equation. This isn’t really surprising, given that reliability is the easiest to grasp and execute. Reliability is logical, concrete, and action-oriented.