How to Earn People’s Trust and Make them Open up to You
Want to be the type of person who people rush to tell their secrets to?
We’re social creatures. We live in a society. We spend most of our time around other human beings. If we’re not communicating, we’re sleeping, eating or crying.
It’s one thing to make people listen to what you have to say. It’s another thing entirely to make people trust what you have to say.
Trust is earned, not bought. You earn someone’s trust by being trustworthy, being a good listener, and by showing that you care.
But how should one go about it ?
We human beings are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others’ actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others’ activities. For this reason, it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.__Dalai Lama XIV
Learn how to listen
The first step to earning someone’s trust is learning how to listen. There are a thousand ways to be wrong while someone is trying to open up to you. You can jump to the wrong conclusions. You can ask the wrong questions.
If you want to earn the trust of people, it’s important that you listen to them. You’d be surprised how much people love being listened to.
But unfortunately, not many people want to listen to you unless you offer them something that’ll add value to their lives( in short, nobody’s interested in what you had for lunch last Sunday).
I’ve learned this the hard way: I used to try to bludgeon people into buying my ideas. I’d harangue people on internet forums. I’d send long emails( hint; desperation and disinterest, both are equally potent in turning people off your case).
Social-influence can scare people into filtering their thoughts and opinions
Have you ever been in a situation where someone was talking, but you couldn’t quite figure out what they were trying to say? Or where someone would talk without making eye contact, as if they were afraid that you might ask them a question they didn’t want to answer?
If so, you’ve experienced the power of social influence. Social influence is the process by which one person’s behavior, attitudes, or beliefs are influenced by the behavior, attitudes, or beliefs of others.
So, it’s better to shut-up when someone’s trying to tell you about something.
The most important thing you can do when it comes to communicating with people is to listen without interrupting.
The worst thing you can do when someone is trying to open up to you is jump in with your own ideas, experiences, and beliefs.
People love being heard. When you listen without trying to come up with the answers for them, you build trust( finishing sentences only looks cute when Google does it).
Listening without sharing our two cents can be pretty hard to do. It’s not easy.
We’re used to speaking all the time. We get defensive if someone tries to interrupt us.
When you listen to someone without voicing your own thoughts and opinions, you show them that you’re committed to hearing what they have to say.
Here’s how you can fix interrupting people without missing the sound of your own voice too much:
- Ask questions relevant to the discussion:
If you really want to know what’s going on in someone’s life, ask questions that show that you’re genuinely interested in what they have to say. The act of listening without interruption builds trust because people love being heard.
Learning how to build and maintain a relationship is to learn how to listen.
Learning to listen sounds so easy in principle, but in practice it’s incredibly difficult.
There are a lot of articles that advise on listening to people but only a few of them teach how it’s done.
Your everyday thoughts determine your personality
You need to cultivate the type of personality that people feel comfortable sharing their thoughts with.
And you do that by how you interact with your social circle regarding everyday situations that you come across.
If you’re a person who’s always making fun of something or someone then the chances of your friends sharing their insecurities with you are rare because subconsciously, your behaviour has given them a message that you're a judgemental idiot.
Have you ever noticed how most of us have multiple friends to whom we go to for different things?
A while back, I came across a meme that went something like:
“I’m panicking because I used personality no. 2 with the group no. 3”.
We have our party friends, our study friends, our Netflix and chill friends, etc.
A study has shown how we get influenced by the people around us and vice versa. So, different friend groups can mean that you don’t feel comfortable expressing every aspect of your personality to a fixed group of people because you fear their judgement.
When someone’s trying to open up and share their thoughts and feelings with you, it can be hard to not try to fix or change what they’re saying. So instead of listening, you jump in with your own thoughts and ideas.
You can jump to the wrong conclusions. You can ask the wrong questions.
This is not listening because you’re only listening so you can judge.
Never use vulnerability against people
I’ve seen people try to use the feelings and thoughts that others share with them in their vulnerable moments as a weapon.
They’ll make fun of the fact that someone was crying, or that someone was saying that they needed help.
This makes the person feel like their vulnerable emotions are not valuable enough to be treated with respect.
It also makes the person doubt themselves, which in turn makes them less likely to share their thoughts and feelings in the future(you know, once bitten,twice shy).
When someone shares a thought or feeling with you in a vulnerable moment, it’s easy to take advantage of that moment.
It’s tempting to use the contents of that thought or feeling as a way to make fun of the person. But this is a mistake. The moment you make fun of someone’s vulnerable moment, you’ve betrayed their trust.
Making fun doesn’t just mean taunting them, it also means discrediting their feelings by telling them how other people have it worse or how you faced a much greater problem.
Yes, someone’s always going to have it worse, but flinging the fact on another person’s face right when they’re sharing their woes with you might be insensitive.
If you can’t love someone, leave them for those who can.__Michael Bassey Johnson
Vulnerability from your side is important too
Trust is earned through vulnerability, not through competence. If you act all tough in front of people, you risk a chance of not forming more profound connections because people are easily intimidated by perfection.
When someone shares their thoughts and feelings with us, they are trusting us with their most important and private thoughts and feelings.
When we share our thoughts and feelings with other people, we are showing our vulnerability and trust. And in most cases this trust is reciprocated.
Our vulnerability shows that we can also get hurt and make blunders, it gives us originality and a sense of relatability. It doesn’t mean that you should cry about your misfortunes to everyone, it just means to admit your insecurities from time to time to let people know that they’re not alone.
It makes people feel needed and appreciated.
People will trust you because they want to, not because they have to.
A beautiful example of codependency:
There’s this beautiful story about a woman who’s poor neighbour constantly asked for stuff like oil, spices, etc.
Sometimes the woman would ask her neighbour to lend her a bit of salt. Her son saw this exchange and asked her;
“ Why do you ask for salt when you have it at home?”
She replied: “ I ask for it because I want her to feel needed as well and salt is cheap enough so I know that I’m not putting pressure on her”.
You see, how the woman didn’t need salt but she asked her neighbour just to show her that she can run out of things as well.
In the same way, you can share little intimate details about yourself just to make the other person feel useful and important.
Honour your commitments
Learning how to build and maintain a relationship is to learn how to honour your commitments.
When you honour your commitments, you are showing that you are serious about what you say. This increases your credibility and shows that you’re committed to being a good partner.
It puts weight in your words.
This is a wonderful article that explains in depth about what happens once you start keeping your word. It teaches you by referencing famous businesses and how they’ve built trust in their consumers over time by keeping a transparent business strategy.
You advertise your reliability by keeping your commitments
Let’s say that you make a commitment to someone. Perhaps you agree to meet up with them at a certain time and place, or you promise to help them move in the next couple of days. If you follow through with these plans you prove that you’re a reliable person whom your friends can trust and even look upto at times.
When you honour your commitment to build trust and follow through on your words with your actions, this shows that you’re serious about what you say.
It also increases your credibility and makes other people more likely to believe you.
When you make a commitment to someone, they will feel the trust that you have built up.
If you keep your commitments, the trust will continue to build. If you don’t, the trust will be lost. Build and maintain your trust by honouring your words and keeping your commitments.
Your greeting style tells a lot about you
One of the best ways to make someone feel comfortable in a moment is to smile at them.
Your smile will make it easier for people to let down their guard and open up to you. The best salespeople, leaders and parents are the ones who can make people feel comfortable in the moment. They smile at people.
When you’re talking to someone, don’t think of them as an acquaintance, a business partner, a colleague, or a friend. Think of them as a great person.
This doesn’t mean that you have to like everything about them or think that they’re perfect. This means that you’re trying to find the best in them, even when they’re behaving poorly.
The easiest way to make people feel comfortable when they first meet you is to be friendly.
Your smile is the key to many doors
A smile can make people open up to you easier than any words you could ever say.
When you approach people with a smile, you’re giving them a non-verbal cue that you’re happy to see them. Once they get this message from you, they will feel comfortable and open up to you.
Sometimes, when you’re talking to people, you can feel like you’re talking to a brick wall. You’ll say things, and the other person will nod their head and pretend to understand. They’ll ask questions, and you’ll find yourself answering questions that have nothing to do with what you’re talking about.
They’ll occasionally throw in the odd “yeah” or “I see”, but it’s impossible to tell if they’re being serious or if they’re just being polite.
We’re especially wired to detect undesirable changes in a person’s tone, so, even the slightest bit of disinterest shown by another person can make us want to run away in the opposite direction.
So always keep a faint smile on lips when talking to people, it won’t only increase your approachability but also open the doors of new opportunity for you.
