The trusting relationship between people, company & agency, doctor & patient, lawyer & client ...
Trust is existential in many relationships. We learn this from an early age. It is literally passed on to us with our mother's milk. As a child, if we cannot trust that we will be fed, we are lost. As we grow up, we develop differently. Some are more introverted and happy and content with themselves. Others, among whom I count myself, need intensive contact with their reference groups. Trust plays a big role there, too. You have to be able to rely on friends. And how bad it is as a young person when you are disappointed. The same applies to the family, parents, siblings and later one's own children.
For me, contact with my relationship groups was always very important. These were the school classes, the cliques (does the word still exist?), the scouts, the tennis club or the neighbourhood kids. When it comes to friendships, I also have a hard time letting go. I'm attached to the people I have to do with. That's why I still find facebook great for keeping in touch with people you would otherwise easily lose track of. I've moved a lot. 10 times in the last 20 years alone (8 of them around the Ammersee), partly not entirely voluntarily due to the separation from my ex-wife. That means new neighbours and a new environment every time. Here, too, I have had the most varied experiences.
Unfortunately, these experiences are not always positive. Some supposedly good friends simply never got in touch again, even though I made several attempts. Out of sight, out of mind. I find that very unfortunate. And it has also made me sad many times. Fortunately, there are other cases and very long-term close friendships. How do I deal with that? In the course of life, you become more cautious. As a young person it happens very quickly. You meet someone new and you're immediately best friends. But I don't want to be disappointed any more. Of course, it also plays a role that I have much less time available and want to spend it with people I can trust. I want to be able to rely on at least a certain consistency in the relationship. So I consciously or unconsciously choose better with whom I get involved more intensively.
Can this also be applied to business life? Yes, absolutely. Especially as a self-employed person, professional life plays an essential role in life. Here, too, the good relationship with my customers is important to me. Online marketing agency extremely important. If I notice during the first meeting that something is not right for me, I'd rather cancel in a friendly manner than waste valuable time. Fortunately, I have the privilege of dealing with many very nice and interesting people in my profession. The relationships are not friendly, and they rarely extend into the private sphere. But they are characterized by a genuine interest in the other person, his situation and his sensitivities. During the intensive exchange about the company in question, I can very often look behind the scenes and learn a lot more than one would think from the outside. This gives me a sense of trust, which I appreciate very much. And even if the relationship between the agency and the client sometimes drifts apart, it's very nice when the personal contact is maintained.
This background knowledge exists in many business relationships. Thus, an interior designer learns almost everything about how private life is organized. Is there one bedroom or two? Is the parents' area or the children's area larger? How important is eating together? How big does the television need to be? Trust is elementary here. It can't even be secured through security mechanisms like confidentiality agreements. If it's not there before the cooperation begins, it simply won't happen. This is where the Content Creation on its own website plays an essential role.
Or let's think about the big topic of nutrition, which is becoming increasingly important to all of us. The meat from the butcher I trust is important to me. I appreciate the passion from the baker who still gets up at 3 a.m. (yes, they still exist). I very much enjoy the selection of good wines and advice with incredible expertise on grape varieties etc. in my wine shops (luckily there are several great ones). And the love of cheese and the resulting fantastic selection in my French cheese shop is something wonderful. It's also very nice when I'm always greeted there by my first name and have a long chat before it's time to choose the cheese. All these relationships are no longer necessarily just around the corner in the big city (in my case Munich). I travel a bit further if it's worth it. And especially when I move to a new part of town and don't know anyone there yet, I first check out what shopping opportunities there are. There is still so much to do in this field, because unfortunately many shops have not yet understood how much it would be worthwhile for them to invest in building trust with potential customers. It doesn't take that much to show online what is important to you and to implement the appropriate trust building blocks.
Doctors are another field in which trust cannot be overestimated. Going to a doctor you don't trust in advance is a horror. And if this feeling is confirmed afterwards, so much the worse. How much nicer it is when you find your doctor who takes the necessary time, who is not only interested in making money (which is of course important) and who competently finds out the causes of a problem and does not just treat the symptoms. Let me tell you a personal story about this. A few years ago I contracted tennis elbow. Actually, it was mouse elbow from sitting at my laptop so much. It definitely hurt like hell in my arm and needed to be treated. So I went to the doctor. The first one in the nearby town. The lady didn't really look at the arm, but immediately prescribed a whole battery of treatments: Besides ointments and tablets, electrotherapy was her remedy in her practice. As a private patient, I know that she charged quite a lot for it. Unfortunately, 3 months of electricity in the arm every week did nothing. It was very frustrating.
Since the doctor and her method did not convince me, I looked for an alternative. This time I didn't go to the next best thing. I searched hard, looked at websites, read patient statements and read up on the doctor's background, experience and values. One already convinced me online. There were credible statements from cured patients on the site about how long the doctor took for them to figure out the right treatment. You could read about himself, where he has practiced, what publications he has done and how he acquired his treatment method. It was so convincing that I went.
He examined the arm carefully. His conclusion: It only needs to be stretched sufficiently, otherwise no further treatment is needed. For the stretching, he printed out a sheet for me on which the correct exercise was described in detail. He also added that I could just do it on the side and it would take a few weeks for it to go away. And lo and behold, after five weeks of stretching over and over again, the pain was gone. Without any medicine at all.
The experience for me from this is that I always look at doctors very well in advance. There are such and such. But the websites already reveal a lot about whether trustworthiness is an important value for him or her. Trust is a priceless value, especially when it comes to doctors you might not only see once. After all, it's about your own health.
The same applies to the relationship of lawyer and client, to tax advisors, architects, management consultants and many more.
The lesson for me is that it pays to choose well who you get involved with on a long-term basis. It's the same with friends as it is in business. I am very happy that I have a large number of valuable contacts that I can rely on - both privately and in a business context.
