Trust is foundational to relationships with people. In order to produce anything meaningful, you have to work with people. Below I've pulled together some thoughts on how to better manage your trust cache with people, so you can have a more enjoyable work-life and execute more effectively in the process.

Building trust with Product:

Act like a pro. Until I’ve built rapport and trust with a product partner, I’m well known to go overkill with formality and documentation. If you want to be taken seriously, be serious.

Read between the lines. Don’t take feedback literally. Ask a lot of questions to understand the ‘why’ behind their thinking.

Have clear rationale. Your subjective opinion is no better than anyone else's, so be prepared to defend anything you're pushing. Few things build trust faster than consistently backing your work with due diligence.

Share credit. Whenever you get the chance to give away credit, do so! You don’t have to be someone’s boss to give meaningful recognition. 

Be the expert. Dive deep into your industry and understand it. Don’t lean on your partners, or they’ll just see you as a pair of hands. Gather data from other team, document industry insights, make your team smarter. 

Building trust with Engineering:

Understand the tech. What stack is it built on? What services are connected? What 3rd party products does it leverage? Go deep into exactly what makes your product tick.

Share and align earlier. Don’t wait until you have approvals to hand designs off. Get feedback early and often, and never assume someone will do something just because your boss signed it off. 

Embed yourself. Go where the action is. Understand release cycles, and how your product gets updated. Integrate yourself into existing meetings, and be engaged.

Make em’ proud. Get them invested and excited about the future of your project. If they contribute early, they’ll be more likely to see things through.

with anyone, really:

Talk their language- we are often self-indulgent when discussing design with non-designers. Talk their language, not yours.

Don’t assume- that they understand design, how to work with design, or what you do all day. Educate them in a respectful way, and show interest in their discipline as well.

Buy them a beer- or coffee, or small thoughtful gift- anything to hit a reset button and be human.