Trust: the second key feeling

Welcome back to the series on the CTR-C method for complaint-free consults.

Before I took a break, the series covered the first essential step in perfect consults – establishing a connection. Now, let’s look at the next essential thing our clients want to feel in their dealings with us – trust.

Think about your own dealings with other professionals – whether you’re buying your morning coffee, having new down lights installed by the local electrician or booking your spinal surgery. Somewhere in your head the following questions are probably floating around:

• Do you know what you’re doing?
• Will you do your best work for me?
• Are you telling me the truth?
• Are you going to try to screw me over?

Well, your clients are asking the same questions. So how do we address their unspoken concerns?

The great news is that because you’ve already established a connection with them, they desperately want to trust you. They like you, and they want you to be the vet to fix their problem. Now, let’s cement that connection by establishing trust.

In keeping with our theme of acronyms, let’s look at the three Cs of establishing trust – Confidence, Competence and Communication.

Confidence

How do you expect your clients to trust you if you don’t trust yourself?

Clients can sense uncertainty like a Labrador retriever senses treats in a pocket. They may still smile and be nice, but they’re probably thinking “I think I need to look for a real vet…” Does this mean you’ll only be able to have perfect consults once you’re a few years into practice and know everything?

The truth is that experience does indeed do a lot for your confidence, but it’s also true that it’s entirely possible for a recent graduate to be confident, just like it’s possible to be five years qualified and still struggle with a serious lack of confidence.

I’ve had to work quite hard on my confidence, so here are my favourite confidence boosting tricks.

Appear confident

This one is close to “fake it till you make it”, but I’ve learned about a much better way of looking at it: “Be it till you see it.”

If you consciously adopt the posture of a confident person – standing straight, shoulders back, chest out; like your gran told you – not only will others perceive you as confident (and, therefore, trustworthy), but you’ll also convince yourself.

An upright confident posture plays around with your serotonin levels to make you feel more confident; you’re tricking your brain into thinking: “We’re standing up straight – we must be feeling confident.”

And when others perceive you as confident and start treating you like someone worth respecting, you’re subconscious will notice this, which sets a lovely little hormonal feedback loop into motion.

Be confident about your intentions, skills and training

A confidence grows from being clear with yourself and others about your intentions, even when you don’t have all the answers and skills.

And let’s be clear – you will never get to a point in your career where you know everything. Ask any specialist and he or she will tell you the more he or she learns, the more he or she realises so much exists that he or she doesn’t know.

So, when you’re faced with that conundrum in the consult room and feel like a total fraud, you’re not alone. But be confident about what you do know, and be clear about your Intention to help and figure it out, no matter what it takes.

Be confident about your plan (sometimes this may mean, for example, finding an excuse to leave the room to sit somewhere quiet and scribble down a plan on a notebook). For example:

“Wow, this is a tricky one. I’m not 100% sure what’s going on here, but we’ll get to the bottom of it. Here’s what we’re going to do… And if I still haven’t figured it out I’m going to phone Dr X, who is the guru on this.”

Remember, you’re not an idiot. You’ve graduated from one of the toughest university courses, and you’ve proven you have problem-solving skills and grit, which is an unbeatable combination. So back yourself a little bit.

There’s one more important confidence builder, but it deserves its own heading as the second C of trust. So, the next part look at how to leverage Competence as a confidence and trust building tool.