I have a confession to make: I have broken people’s trust in me before. I have also lost trust in some people some of whom I work with.

Have you ever been asked to “practice” trust? The exercise looks like this: you have a partner, and you stand about five feet in front of the person with your back facing him. You close your eyes, and on a count of three, you fall backward toward the person so that he can catch you. When you’re caught, everyone enjoys a laugh and is thankful neither person wiped out.

If only trust were a matter of good, strong arms and steady balance. An unknown author said, “Trust is a peculiar resource; it is built rather than depleted by use.” Trust is something that takes time to build, can be lost in seconds, and may be our most important and most difficult objective in managing our relationships.

“Where are you John”, I asked. I was in a training room in Mbale waiting to conduct a training. John was supposed to have come to the room to help out with the operations before I stepped on stage.

“I am here in the toilet within the hotel. Sudesh I should be there in a minute”, John answered. A minute became a minutes. I was forced to go to the toile to call him out or find out whether he was fine. To my amazement John was never in the toilet. He had lied to me. Sadly a week ago he had told me the same lie when we had a client meeting. My trust was broken. How was I to rebuild this trust?

How is trust built? Open communication; willingness to share; consistency in words, actions, and behavior over time; and reliability in following through on the agreements of the relationship, just to name a few examples.

It’s ironic that, for most relationships, a certain level of trust needs to be present in order for you to develop trust. “Trust is a peculiar resource; it is built rather than depleted by use.” To build trust, use your self-awareness and self-management skills to be the first to lay some of yourself on the line and share something about you. Remember, you should share parts of yourself at a time; don’t feel like you have to be a complete open book up front. To manage your relationships, you need to manage your trust of others, and their trust level of you is critical to deepening your connection with others.

Cultivating relationships and building trust takes time. Identify the relationships in your life that need more trust, and use your self-awareness skills to ask yourself what is missing. Use your social awareness skills to ask the other person what needs to happen to build trust—and listen to the answer.

Asking will show you care about the relationship, which will help to build trust, and deepen the relationship.

I confronted John, “You have lied to me twice and that makes it hard for me to trust you. This is something you have to address if we are going to work together”