“In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust” – says Ben Horowitz in his book ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things‘.
Thus, one way to improve communication is to develop trust beforehand. The reason is obvious – it removes a lot of filters and also, adds a number of assumptions that do not need to be verbalized again during actual communication.
It is actually what marketing often tries to do: by develop trust in a brand or a person, it makes communication easier by removing obstacles to communication.
Without going into the techniques of marketing, there are a number of occasions where developing trust first before attempting to communicate a complicated message is probably the most effective way to communicate – even if that requires an investment of time and interaction.
It is possible to build trust effectively and with limited effort and time, so do not skip that step. Next time you have something complicated or difficult to communicate, do not hesitate to build trust first!
