If you had to pick the mostly critical element for any prosperous relationship--business or otherwise--what would it be? Well.

If you had to pick the mostly critical element for any prosperous relationship--business or otherwise--what would it be?

Well, what was your answer?

The couple most common answers I hear are trust and venerate and for me trust originates first. Without trust there can be no regard And without respect, the best you can trust for is interaction, and you probably already know the difference between a relationship and an interaction.

I gues that's with what intent I find it so curious that a potential supplier would approach a service dealer with an proffer to partner, predicated on abandoning all other relationships for the promise of time to come success resulting from an all on the contrary exclusive first-call relationship. It doesn't make any feeling because it defies the true nature of trust, and now that same proposal has draw near across my desk more times than I care to consider.

In my seminar work, I employ a great deal of time discussing the accountability, reliability, responsibility, predictability and integrity--i.e., the five pillars I be moved support a trust-based relationship. All five of these foundational simple bodys share one critical component. They all rise from an exchange of value that has already taken place in the past; they are all the consequence of prior performance.

by the agency of definition, predictability implies that I can calculate upon you to act the way you have acted in the past and without a shared history, I can't know that. Consequently all I have is your promise that you will do that which you said you would do. The question of reliability inclines down the same track. I have no way of determining your reliability unles or until you have had the opportunity to fail and you won't have that until I give you that opportunity.

The same keep possession ofs true for responsibility, only I accompany to hyphenate the word to read response-ability, and define it to mean the ability to rejoin as well as an awareness of what the appropriate reply must be. Furthermore, I can't know if you will accept that responsibility--if you will keep possession of yourself accountable--unless or until there is a point in dispute and again, that won't happen until I afford you the opportunity.

Integrity, the central pillar of trust, is all about a willingness to do the right thing--regardless of the possible cost--simply because it is the right thing to do. It is all about holding yourself to the highest possible standards of ethics and morality, something I will in no degree be able to witness or experience until we have interacted; until a relationship has begun.

That means someone will have to make progress first and since the prize is my backroom business, that someone will have to be you. It also means that in order for that relationship to become an enduring one--one that will stand against the perils and puzzles trials and tribulations that are certain to be found in any relationship of consequence--each of the five pillars should be built incrementally and with great care.

That's for what cause lasting relationships are forged. That's by what means you become a first-call.

Mitch Schneider is co-owner of Schneider's Auto Repair, Inc., Simi Valley, Calif., and is an ASE Master Technician.

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