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Why trust is essential
Table of contents:
- Why so serious?
- From a professional standpoint though?
- From a personal standpoint though?
- Final conclusions?
Intro
One of the most important concepts in life I have learned over the years, is the simple value in trust. When it comes to working with team members, to talking with friends, to spending time with your family, nothing makes one feel more special than knowing the person they are with trusts them, and there is nothing more devasting than knowing you no longer have that trust.
It is something I think important enough to write about, because it has constantly been the common factor in not only my decision making about others, but also their opinion and views on myself as well. It is such a simple concept, that many of use forget just how important it is, and how losing it can be so easy, but gaining it back is one of the hardest tasks there is.
Why so serious?
As Mister Roger’s once put it in front of Congress, “One of the first things that a child learns in a healthy family is trust.” This principle follows us throughout our life, and its importance never loses its value.
To have someone’s trust, is incredibly invaluable. It comes with a level of responsibility and acknowledgment that means
From a professional standpoint though?
Whenever you find yourself working within a team structure, you must have trust between team members. I have been asked several times, when do you know that something will not work out anymore? And the simply answer I have to that is, when you no longer have trust in whatever that something is. And that isn’t to say you develop some form of animosity or negative feelings about someone or something, it could just mean you no longer have your heart where it needs to be to make it work.
Layoffs, for example, are a difficult topic. For the individuals laid off, they must now face a new reality and go back to searching for a new path. But what happens to the individuals remaining? Undoubtedly, some form of trust is eroded. Even if you consider yourself ‘safe’, the thoughts will creep in. What happens if there is another round of layoffs? Is my work satisfactory enough, or do I have to start killing myself with extended hours to prove my worth? Are the higher ups not telling us the truth about our ability to stay open?
Suddenly, several team members are silently panicking, and you risk losing good people to a decreased level of trust in leadership.
As a manager, it is crucial to assure your team members and be first and foremeost, honest and frank with them about any changes and updates regarding the company status, but also, make sure that the trust between you and them remains strong. You may very well be the thread holding everything together.
Without trust in leadership, there is no organization to build upon.
From a personal standpoint though?
Trust plays as crucial a role in professional life as it does in personal life. Any relationship without trust, or eroding trust, is one in a truly precarious situation.
Regardless of spouse, friend, family members, or whomeever in your personal life, being considered a trustworthy individual is something we should all hold ourselves highly accountable to.
We all, hopefully have not but probably have had, our trust broken, and have broken others’ trust several times as well. Many of those breaks vary in degree, and most can be repaired, but some cannot.
Mistakes happen of course, we are all guilty of it, but we must always remember, we never truly understand the value of something until we lose it. Well, how about we just go ahead and understand that trust, is one of those things we should know the value of without losing it?
Final conclusions?
Take a moment to sit back and think about all the people in your life. How many of those individuals do you trust? To what degree do you trust them? Would you trust them with your life? Your secrets? And vice versa with how they think about those questions regarding you?
Being trustworthy and being held to a high level of trust, is a true privilege that I think we often forget the value of. When someone asks why something is important, why you take your responsibilities to others so seriously, why you got out everyday to do your best work, just remember, someone somewhere is trusting you.