I Love You also means I Belive You
By Jeanne Bliss
I believe you. With those three words, we honor the recipient. We give up control and return it back to the sender. Inside the beloved companies, they decide to believe. Trust and belief are cornerstones of their relationships.
By deciding to trust customers, they are freed from extra rules, policies, and layers of bureaucracy that create a barrier between them and their customers. And by deciding to believe that employees can and will do the right thing, second guessing, reviewing every action, and the diminishing ability of employees to think on their feet is replaced with shared energy, ideas, and a desire to stick around.
There is an energy that comes from being believed, from being trusted, and from sending that trust back to customers and employees. I felt it at Lands` End. At that time, the description I used was that "it was like coming home." For me and others that meant being in a place that felt unconditional in its nurturing —encouraging the best version of us and our work. We were trusted, more was expected of us, and we stretched to deliver it. "The opportunity to realize full potential as a person" is how the MIT Sloan School of Management`s "A Study of Spirituality in the Workplace" defines that elusive feeling. When our intelligence, creativity, emotions, and humor blend to inform our conduct without reservation, we realize our full potential. Others` belief in us and in our ability fuels this achievement.
Too often in our daily lives, it feels as if businesses hold all the cards. As employees, we are penned in by rules and regulations which seem to define our every move. As customers, we fear we don`t know the rules. Or worry that we aren`t following them. And sometimes even worse, that we will not be believed.
Let`s say you purchased a shirt, never worn, that you need to return. As the bag is handed over the counter, and the salesclerk gives it a once-over, why is there an irrational fear that often takes hold, kicking in an instinct to defend yourself for making the return? This is because, as customers, we`ve come to expect to not be trusted. In another example, let`s say you are driving your car with your child playing in the backseat. Distracted by the little show going on behind your back, you take your eyes off the road for a minute and experience a fender bender with the car in front of you. You brace for the call to the insurance company that you`ve been paying for years to cover. But what do you feel? The first emotion is usually fear the accident won`t be covered, followed by fear your story to the auto insurance claims department won`t be believed.
Source:
http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/content_display/publications/e3i5c14b307d54f1cc
