How Values Impact “Know, Like, & Trust” Relationships

Let’s set any leadership responsibility we hold to the side briefly and think about how much an organization’s values - specifically, how each team member does or does not uphold those values - impacts our desire to do business with them. As regular Joe’s, clients or even just members of the community where a particular company operates, does the example each of those team members set effect how well we know them, how much we like them, and how much we trust them?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes. In wrapping up part one of Leading With A Clear Purpose, I shared the stated purpose behind the golden arches - and how much my last experience purchasing what vaguely resembled fast food from one of their restaurants about two hours away from home. It’s been several years since and I still have a very clear picture in my mind of how the behaviors we saw contradicted the organization’s stated purpose and values. Interestingly enough, society often overlooks missteps from employees in a large company like that while dropping a small business like a bad habit for anything remotely similar. I believe that difference is almost always driven by the sheer convenience provided by the bigger ones, or maybe just a lack of willingness to take a stand on principle. Either way, employees (at any level) who fail to live up to their company’s values send their customers and the community they’re a part of a distinct message.

We’ve all heard the saying that “we do business with people we know, like, and trust.” I believe I was introduced to this idea more than two decades ago and I’ve always viewed it as a fundamental truth in business relationships. As we’ve worked with and studied the DISC Model of Human Behavior over the last decade, though, I’ve learned that this is only one variation of the truth behind building great business relationships. Two out of every three people we interact with on any given day will indeed need to like someone - at some level - before they’ll begin to trust them. Those people-oriented folks place a high priority on enjoyable interaction. If there’s no personal connection, they may never get to a point where they build trust. That said, the remaining one-third of us who are more task-oriented will generally need to trust someone before they’ll ever begin to like them. When I first learned this simple but profound difference, it was like the heavens had opened! I had previously seen the folks who appeared to automatically like everyone, whether or not they had any reason to believe they could trust them, as naive. And I’m sure those same folks saw my lack of interest in being friends with anyone I didn’t trust as just plain cold. While this is a subtle variation, it still plays a key part in how displaying company values impacts relationships.

As a task-oriented client or customer, we wouldn’t likely move forward with a transaction if we see the person we’re dealing with as not aligning with their company’s values - or our own values for that matter. Even in a longstanding business relationship, a mismatch between values and behavior can destroy trust right away. The people-oriented customers and clients may maintain some trust a bit longer, but seeing the disconnect between actions and values have a negative impact on their relationship with the person they deal with directly will eventually burn the bridge. (Remember the thousand bridges from before?)

While the timing may vary slightly, failing to uphold a business’s core values will impact the relationships with its customers. But it won’t stop there. Although everyone in the surrounding community may not be existing customers, how members of an organization exemplify the stated core values will certainly be something that they all pay attention to. And regardless of their people or task focus in the equation, few of them will ever line up to be new clients without being able to like and trust the organization - or the people it’s made up of!

However, standing firm on our core values and consistently working to serve the people who depend on us for that can earn passionate support that exceeds even the best marketing initiatives so we’ll dig into how we can do that next.