The Story Behind Trust Bricks
The concept of trust bricks came spontaneously during a job interview earlier in my career. I was interviewing for a project management position with a ‘boutique’ IT consultancy which had a great reputation of having a very highly qualified team members.
I had spent the afternoon running the interview gauntlet, being shuffled between offices and conference rooms for interviews with several managers and executives. Mentally exhausted, I made it to my final interview of the day: the one with my potential future boss. The conversation went well, and she wrapped it up by throwing this final question at me:
“How do you build trust with customers?”. I was stumped. For the first time all day.
I had done it hundreds of times: engaging in a new project with a new customer, working to establish a strong working relationship and build trust so we could deliver the project. But how did I do it, specifically? I had no idea! And how could I effectively describe the process in the next 30 seconds so I could win this job?
“Trust… is like a brick wall. If I want to build a strong wall, I need to demonstrate that I’m trustworthy many times. Each time I do that, I add another brick. Over time, this builds trust that’s like a strong, brick wall. Then when I make a mistake and break trust, break a brick, I still have all these bricks holding the wall up strong. But if I try to build that trust just once or twice, I don’t have enough bricks to hold up the wall – it will fall down, like my relationship with my customer.”