Build Trust With Someone By Asking The Right Questions

Build Trust With Someone By Asking The Right Questions

If you want to build trust or just practice being more charismatic, it helps to ask questions. Questions show the other person you’re listening and interested. However, if you really want to get to know someone, you have to ask questions that actually matter.

Photo by Cole Hutson.

We’ve told you before that questions can help build rapport. However, you won’t get very far if you take the advice too literally and just ask a series of random questions or interrogate the other person. As author Carl Richards explains in a recent podcast, it comes down to asking valuable questions:

The difference is the quality of the experience and I think to a large degree as it applies to our jobs as real financial advisors that is a function of the quality of the questions you ask. My friend and someone I consider a mentor, John Bowen, used to say that people will judge you by the quality of the questions you ask. I would contend that the fastest way to build trust as an asset on an individual level is to ask really good questions and listen, and all that comes down to is treating somebody like you’d like to be treated. Right, asking really good questions and then listening really carefully.

Richards makes an interesting point about asking questions seeking advice, too. The better questions you ask, the better valuable your answers will be. In the context of social interaction, though, it’s about empathy: trying to get a glimpse into the other person’s point of view so you can understand them a little better. For more, head to the full episode at the link below.

Trust on an Individual Scale [Behaviour Gap]


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