Build Relationships & Trust by Tapping Into Others' Expertise

Source: Noam Galai
Copyright: 2015 Getty Images

Jennifer Hyman co-founded Rent The Runway and currently serves as the CEO. Recently, she spoke to Stanford University students about her experiences as an entrepreneur and leader. Hyman described a critical meeting when she was first beginning to conceive her idea for the business. She landed a meeting with fashion-giant Diane Von Furstenberg.   During that meeting, Hyman asked for feedback about her idea, and she tried to learn as much as possible about the fashion business.   She asked many questions and listened actively.   Hyman explains the lesson she takes away from that remarkable encounter: 

Now also in that meeting, I asked her, “Hey, could you introduce me to a few of your friends, and I’d love to meet with them and talk about this idea,” because every meeting has to get you to like three other meetings. And so never leave a meeting with someone without asking them for that introduction. Now those other meetings led us to other people in the fashion industry, some of which were designers, some of which were publicists, but people that actually could give us real feedback on this idea and people that could see that like we were interested in listening. It was helping to build trust in an industry where we had no experience, where you go in and you actually allow someone else to give you feedback, like “How does that work?”

What ends up happening in a situation where I sit with you and I ask you questions and I ask you for your advice, you end up walking out of that conversation feeling awesome. You end up liking me in that conversation. Like whenever you make someone else into the expert, like that builds a relationship right away. And we needed desperately at the beginning of the business to build trust so that anyone would actually trust us to like take their currencies and inventory and not cannibalize their business.

Hyman highlights two key lessons here. First, don't leave a meeting such as this one without soliciting an introduction to others who may be helpful to you.   Second, people love being put in the position of expert sharing wisdom with others.  They want to help, provided you demonstrate respect for their expertise, come extremely prepared, ask great questions, and listen actively.   Treating someone else as the expert sets the tone for a productive conversation.   You don't have to grovel or patronize others; you simply have to acknowledge what you do not know and point out how they can help.   Very often, others will find the time to share their wisdom with you, even if they have a very busy schedule.  I've certainly found that to be the case in my career as well.