Guideline Five: Be Honest About Your Views
A trusting relationship with your Client requires that you are honest about your views when you are discussing things with your Client. You can express your views in a way that is honest but without being critical or judgmental. Being honest in your relationship does not mean you have to share your political and religious views. It is particularly important that you avoid discussions of your beliefs when you are aware that the beliefs of your Client differ greatly from yours.
Guideline Six: Ask Your Client How You Can Best Help To The Client
Ask your Client how you can best be of help to your Client. In response to this question, your Client might suggest something like, “It would help me if you could point out different options to me and we could discuss possible outcomes.”
Asking how you can best help your Client will typically make the Client more trusting with you. Because your Client will view your asking this question as showing that you have a genuine interest in helping your Client.
Guideline Seven: Try To Get Your Client Into A Comfort Zone
Your Client is more ikely to trust you if you can get your Client into a comfort zone. When not in a comfort zone, your Client may set up trust barriers that keeps the Client from exploring new, but potentially effective, solutions. The absence of being in the comfort zone can create conscious or unconscious trust barriers to the Client being open to doing what you have tried to get the Client to see needs to be done.
When significant change needs to be looked at by your Client, it is often difficult to get or keep your Client in your Client’s comfort zone. This is particularly true and most Clients are uncomfortable making significant changes. Change can take a Client out of the Client’s comfort zone because it clashes with their well-established order of things that are so familiar to them.
Significant change creates a high degree of unknowns and unknows make things uncomfortable for many. So when you are trying to get your Client to trust you when you bring up the benefits of making a significant change, consider ways of keeping the discussions as safe for your Client as you can when discussing the change.
If your Client shows a resistance to making a change that you have been discussing, try to determine what you can do to make your Client comfortable with the change. One way to help make your Client more comfortable with the change discussed is to explain why the change is needed and the benefits that may or will take place as a result of the change happening.
It is challenging when a Client is not open to open discussions about a new direction or avoids becoming fully committed to taking the actions to move in the new direction. When these situations are taking place, the cause may be you the Client does not want to move outside of the Client’s comfort zone. is is the case, you need to consider what you can do to help the Client feel comfortable with the change. Your Client may need respectful and reflective encouragement such as saying to your Client, “I think you have a great idea” or ‘I like how you plan to handle the situation.” to make the Client more comfortable with making the change happen or making a needed decision. Comfort Zone Atmosphere Is Like A Social Atmosphere
You don’t have to try to become a close friend of your Client for you to bring about the comfort zone needed for your Client to be truly open to discussions about moving in a new direction or making a decision that causes major change in how things are done. You can bring about a comfort zone atmosphere in which your Client is more likely to trust what you are discussing, by interacting with your Client as you would with someone with whom you want to be comfortable with you in social conversations. Follow social conversation norms such as not being condescending, not being critical etc.