Moving from building client rapport to developing client trust involves a deep awareness of the process of Holding in Trust. What does it mean to hold something in trust? The answer is a deeply personal one. It involves being responsible for something (or someone) that we don't possess, own, or have ultimate control over. It is knowing that when our responsibility is completed, we will have contributed to improving the capability and health of individuals and organizations and to enhancing conditions for those we may never know, for a time we may never see.
Leaders who have had the experience of being held in trust realize the gift it is in their own lives and know that, in order to hold others in trust, they need to remember and know what it is to have been held in trust. Someone genuinely cared about them, saw their potential, and nurtured it. Their care and involvement helped them to become capable, successful people. Remembering what it was like to have been held in trust reminds us of the deep sense of gratitude that resides within us for the experience and of our obligation to keep the gift moving through holding others in trust.1
1 Excerpted from the Inner Work of the Leader Manual. To Hold in Trust© is a registered copyright of TLD, Inc; author, Katherine Tyler Scott, Ki ThoughtBridge, LLC