The thought of this blog came after a few messages that got exchanged between a friend and me on Twitter. It made me thinking and I thought that the word/feeling/emotion called ‘TRUST’ needs a more detailed probing and thinking, and rightly so, as this small but powerful word plays a critical and crucial role in relationships, businesses, partnerships, negotiations, and any other human transaction one can think of.
For the purview of this blog, I would like to keep relationships out of this deep dwelling as presence of trust in that is a given and is a mandatory. It would be interesting to explore the dimensions of Trust and how it acts up in non-personal situations.
Let me start with an incident that happened a few days back and which further strengthened the idea of putting this blog: I had gone to the petrol pump to get fuel filled in my car and the attendant asked me to check the zero sign before he started filling the tank. Since I could not see the digits while sitting in the car, I got off the car to check the zero. What struck me there and then is that trust is the first thing that goes out of the window as soon as you enter a petrol pump. You will perpetually go and check the zero sign every single time even though it may be the petrol pump where you go regularly to get fuel filled.
This made me sit up and start thinking about places where trust is at the lowest level and then there are also places where trust is the highest. Let us talk of another example where trust is high.
Ever tried opening a new email account or signing up for a new account online. Chances are that as part of the registration process, you are asked to accept the terms and conditions which run into a few pages. No one and I repeat no one ever bothers to go through the fine print and immediately presses the ‘Accept’ button. This happens despite the person on the other side being a stranger and an unknown face and the risk being higher that what you are accepting may not exactly be what you agree with. So how is it that trust in such a situation tends to go up significantly? Is it lack of time, the hurry to get the registration done with or difficulty in understanding the legal language? If you sit back and ask yourself, the answer is none of these and it is our inherent trust that stems from the fact that if a site is online, it has to be reputed and hence can be trusted. Not necessarily true but the reality.
No matter how good a human being and truthful a real estate agent may be, the trust that you put on him while doing a property deal is never rock solid and it is always wavering. You are always hoping that you get what you have been promised at a rate that does not make you feel that you have been fleeced or cheated. In this case, trust gets governed not by the individual but by the perceptions that have been formed.
The word SALE often used to conjure doubt in the minds of shoppers, atleast till a few years back. One would often hear comments like “This must be their rejected goods” or “They must have increased the prices first and now they are showing it as discount”. Thankfully, due to the presence of more and more organized players, such perceptions have changed for the better and people trust Sales and Discounts to be genuine nowadays.
Every time you hand over your car keys to a valet, whether in a 5 star hotel or a small restaurant or a wedding venue where valets have been hired, you are not only handing over the keys but you are also placing implicit trust in the valet with the assumption that not only will he park your car safely, but you will also get your car back the way you gave it.
I think the above-mentioned situations should give you a drift of what I am trying to say. I am sure there would be many more such incidents in each one’s life where trust tends to go up or down depending on our experiences, our perceptions and our own approach to life.
