The Magic of Trust & Communication in Client Success

A few days ago, we went live with a new website, and ^ here's what the founder had to say in response.

The reply made the magic that happened between the Client, Client Partner & Team evident. This feedback was everything we hoped for, and it made me curious about why this doesn’t happen with every co-creation.

I explored the internet, delved into best practices, and reflected internally on what truly worked for us in successful co-creations. A pattern emerged:

1. Trust
2. Communication

While 1 is the Input, the other is the Means for your Goal.?

Perhaps because of their critical importance, these two concepts have become cliché, often taken for granted. We might assume we excel at them, yet today, we trust A.I. more in communication than we do in our interactions with fellow humans.

The following piece explores some nuanced, less-discussed aspects of Trust and Communication that we practise and which have led to repeatable success.

Trust

Research [1] says, building a culture of trust is what makes a meaningful difference. Employees in high-trust organisations are 50% more productive, have more energy at work , collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. These factors fuel stronger performance.

Trust can be defined as a belief in the abilities, integrity, reliability, process and characteristics of another party according to recent research in Harvard Business Review [2], trust is the foundation of most successful organisations.

For a Client, Trust in a Consultant can anyway range from:

??Confidence in their expertise

??Assurance of quality deliveries

to even

? Belief that the consultant will also manage unspoken expectations

Conversely, for a Consultant, Trust in the Client can anyway range from::

??Confidence in the brief

??Clarity on expectations

to even

? Understanding that the client may reject or be apprehensive about aspects without detailed reasoning

Here are few ways to enhance your Trust:

1. Build Relationships, Intentionally: Neuroscience experiments show that when people intentionally build social ties at work, their performance improves. Managers who express interest in their team members’ success and well-being outperform others. When the team and the client get to know each other deeply, it helps align goals and fosters mutual support.
2. Align on Personal Impact: When companies trust employees to choose their projects, people focus on what they care about most. This creates what Rajesh Setty calls Self-Engineered Accountability Loop (SEAL). When something matters to you, you put your heart and soul into it.
3. Facilitate Whole-Person Growth: High-trust workplaces help people develop personally and professionally. Enable the client and team to reflect on how the engagement, its purpose, and outcomes connect to their personal and professional goals. Allow and enable people to leverage each other’s strengths.
4. Trust the Process but Enable Wandering: Celebrate and stick to your proven processes but also allow the team to figure things out in their own way. Autonomy promotes innovation as different people try different approaches.

“The belief in which you start the relationship with, is what you’ll end at.” — Mahatria Ra

Communication

1. Show Vulnerability: Being authentic can be the easiest way to become vulnerable, thereby building reliability and integrity in a relationship. The path to authenticity can be tricky, but humans mirror emotions, so becoming vulnerable can quickly build trust.
2. Speak Up Broadly: Ongoing, proactive, and sometimes over-communication is key. A dense, accurate, and comprehensive brief ensures success. Creating multiple avenues to understand and align on the brief is crucial.
3. Recognize Excellence: Immediate, tangible, unexpected, personal, and public recognition has the largest effect on trust. This applies to both the team and the client. It uses the power of the crowd to celebrate successes and inspire others to aim for excellence.

"Life is about identifying the other party who is as much interested in your growth as you are in theirs." — Ashish Vidyarthi

The return on building this trust is achieving the goal of the engagement. Great work without trust and communication falls flat.

This isn’t just our experience; it’s a reality for many design consultancies out there.