I started my selling career in high school. I sold door-to-door for Fuller Brush and a local cable television company. In college, I sold Grolier encyclopedias. Each of these sales positions involved “cold calling.” It was basically a form of human spamming: I called on people I didn’t know, who had not indicated an interest in the product, at times that were inconvenient for them. It was brutal work.

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Today, we live in a world of near-total transparency. Google, Wikipedia, and many other websites make it possible to check any fact almost instantaneously. As a leader, speaker, or author, you have to be particularly careful with your statistics. If you exaggerate the facts, you will be found out. And the results can be embarrassing—or worse.

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Trust is to an organization what oil is to a car engine. It keeps the moving parts from seizing up and stopping forward motion.

But trust is not something you can take for granted. It takes months—sometimes years—to build. Unfortunately, you can lose it overnight.

Some people seem to have a knack for building trust. When they speak, others take them at their word. When they are absent, people speak well of them. Even when they make a mistake, people give them the benefit of the doubt. Continue Reading