ActiveRain Challenge – The meaning of trust to me in Katy Texas January 2012
I spent a significant amount of time thinking about this topic before I started writing my article. Trust is a topic where one could write numerous pages trying to define what it means to you. I will attempt to limit my discussion as I have found long blogs are mostly ignored and not read very well.
I want to start with providing a definition(s) I found and copied from an Internet dictionary as to the meaning of “Trust”. Trust per the dictionary is a noun that can mean:
1. Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.
2. Confident expectation of something; hope.
3. Confidence in the certainty of future payment for property or goods received; credit: to sell merchandise on trust.
4. A person on whom or thing on which one relies: God is my trust.
5. The condition of one to whom something has been entrusted.
As with most nouns in the English language, trust has more than meaning depending on the circumstances and its usage in a sentence. I think all 5 definitions above fit pretty well with my own opinion and position but I like number 1 and number 4 fit the best.
Most folks are greatly influenced by many factors when growing up and I am no different. I grew up in a major city in the Mid-West and trust was not something you immediately thought of when meeting someone new, or dealing with anything unknown. Actually I start with the basic idea of distrust and then trust can only be developed after occurrences of numerous instances of a positive experience. In my case even to this day I start with a basic distrust of anyone or anything I am unfamiliar with. During the course of my own life this basic personality trait has treated me very well and when I have deviated I have had many issues or problems. My current business life as a Realtor I do not trust at all any potential client. Far too many times potential clients have painfully proven over and over again that my opinion is absolutely correct as a starting point. Potential clients have to prove themselves before I will even consider
It really does not matter to me if it is a personal or business situation when it comes to trust. I start at the same point in both instances where I have to be proven wrong in my opinion of distrust before I will even consider trusting someone or something. So when does trust start to develop and grow? Well it all starts with definition 1 above occurring on a recurring basis. Once that confidence level increases then my trust will develop. In most instances, I need to have some type of personal relationship with another individual before I can feel confidence in the situation and this includes business relationships. I will probably never have any trust in any of these cell phone service providers as I have no contacts with any of the remaining companies and I have had a lot bad experiences. I unfortunately have my personal bank accounts with a bank that I have no trust in at all in the institution or in their absolutely lousy customer service. Maybe if they assigned a personal Banker to me who then produced positive experiences I might change my mind. However, the odds of that happening are non-existent.
A business example at this point in the discussion should clarify what I am talking about when it comes to trust. I spent several years of my career working for the trading division of major energy companies. My responsibilities for almost the entire time I worked in that industry included managing credit and obtaining security from counterparties to cover their market or credit exposure. Trust became a major factor in my making certain credit decisions. Many times I would allow my company to deal with smaller organization other major players would not even consider doing a deal as I had develop confidence in this smaller company and their personnel. My company usually made a lot of incremental profits by doing these types of deals. The situation was based on trust and the trust occurred after I developed a personal relationship with a colleague in the finance department of the in question trading partner. Trust has to be a two sided coin and does not run just one way. Both sides have to the confidence in the other and this occurs after a positive history of performance has occurred for both parties for a certain period of time. Everyone I know has a different feeling as to how long the positive performance has to occur before trust develops. I will also say intuition or gut feelings fall into the trust category. Many times my gut initial feelings have been correct and are feelings I need to capture and think what they are telling me.
Trust has additional items for me in a personal relationship but I will not delve into these aspects in this article.
Trust consists of developing a personal relationship; positive gut or intuition feeling; positive experiences over a period of time; confidence in performance; and it involves a two way relationship.
This post is a submission to the ActiveRain / Adobe EchoSign Trust Contest. I could possibly win a prize. You can find out about the contest by clicking here.
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