Trusting the wrong person

I am sure there is someone in your life (or perhaps well out of it) that you trust(ed) and they took advantage of that trust and let you down.

There are so many reasons we trust people. I for one like to start with trust and then have it removed rather than the other way round. Many people like to wait and build trust, waiting for proof.

Either way, once you have established trust, you feel that you know the person, they are someone you invest a lot of time, emotion and effort in. In one second, that can all be in ruins. It can feel like something has died. Stages of grief are discussed. That is exactly what is happening. Trust is like love, once it has gone it leaves a hole that cannot be filled. You have to give yourself time to get through it, analyse it, work through it.

Like love, if you have trusted once, it makes it easier to trust again. It is always a shame that it may make you less open to trusting someone else, but with time and a positive outlook, you can come out wiser and stronger, but no less trusting.

Ghilaine

@LadyGhilaine

How do you build trusted relationships in a globalised world?

In a globally connected world, we cannot escape our reputation. With social media and globalisation our digital persona follows us.

This post makes huge generalisations and not being an historian by profession, I make no apology for it, but the sentiment, I think you will understand.

Before industrialisation, everyone lived in a village or small town. Your family were known, your reputation, by default, often came from the reputation of your parents. Gossip was the newspaper/social media of the day. Escaping from a bad reputation or someone smearing your good name, meant uprooting your life and starting anew elsewhere. You could move to a new place and create your new persona. You could build trust from a blank slate. It would take time, but for someone with integrity it would be pretty straightforward.

With industrialisation, everything happened so fast, people moved freely, trust was low on the ground in big cities. We hear of bread being adulterated with bones, pies filled with god knows what. It was hard to know who to trust. From this era we have many groups that were created to be able to generated trustworthy trades people. Family was seen as the one way to keep those you trusted around you. Family business was a big component of the era. Business was passed from parent to child.

Now in a globally connected world, we cannot escape our reputation. It is based on hearsay and LinkedIn recommendations, the only way we can control it is by being consistent with every person we meet. The many masks we once wore, now need to be combined to be as close to the true reflection of ourselves as possible.

With this new transparency, governments, corporations and business are expected to answer questions about what they say versus what we find out they do. Isn’t it just easier to do good things that cement your reputation, rather than taking about doing good things? Isn’t it better to be a person with integrity rather than pretending you are honest? How do you build trust quickly, by doing what you say you will do or by talking about all your famous achievements?

In this globalized, connected world, you don’t know who knows whom, you don’t know who knows you. Isn’t it easier to be yourself and surround yourself with people you trust and who trust you? Nowadays it is not who you know that is important, it is who knows you and how.

At Tech Talkfest, our members are those we can trust. They are people who have great reputations within their networks. If they know you and trust you, your reputation is sealed.