Brokering Thoughts, Edition # 7 - TRUST

Anecdote for Work and Life – Trust

Today, a slight break from my standard model and the story of my path into adulthood. You’ll have noted the subheading of my newsletter that ?????????????????? ???????????????? is a mix of professional and personal, so sometimes my stories from life and work will overlap. Like this one.

Let’s talk about trust.

What percentage of the world would you say is trustworthy? 50% – only half the population? Would we not have, say, more people in jail if it were only 50%? Surely it’s safe to assume way more than 50% are trustworthy, right?

Ok, but trust is complex, so you may ask: “hold on,?are you talking about trusting a person’s honesty, or trusting a person to do a job property?”? Well, I’d say both.

I once lasted a year in a job where it seemed I had unlearnt things. I achieved nothing because I wasn’t given the space to achieve anything. The rare opinion asked was ignored, the reports written were double-guessed, and then ignored. Free rein and creativity were not required.

If you have a person in front of you to whom you wish to give an assignment, it means another someone, maybe you, hadn’t choose that person at random. Maybe you had interviewed them. You chose them because there was some evidence that they could do the job. It is reasonable to assume you or someone in your organization had the skills to choose that person. Therefore, the probability is in your favor that the person is trustworthy.

Why is it, then, that so many of us cannot trust our teams to do their job? Why do many micromanage?

Trust has logically got to be a starting point. Oh, patience, too.

Six years ago or so my wife and I bought a small farm. Strictly speaking, it's not small, but 95% of it is jungle and only 5% is usable. And strictly speaking, it is not even a farm, because we don’t really do farming. We do have a small plantation of Pupunha Palm, which we sell locally. Pupunha provides the palm-heart which small local factories pickle and sell – very popular in Brazil.

To help maintain my farm – let’s call it that – I needed a caretaker. It hadn’t been well maintained, the brush was heavily overgrown, riparian forest needed replanting, a garage was unfinished. The caretaker on site at the time of the purchase came across as arrogant and messy, so I didn’t ask him to stay. But other stars aligned in my favor – I was recommended a name of a guy, I called the guy, and that guy had just happened to quit his other job that very same day. We arranged to meet the next day. He was of simple background, had experience of all sorts of hand labor. Seemed physically fit. He had a wife and two young boys. All positive signs so far. The signs that suggest showing trust is warranted. You don’t really need more than a few signs to go for it, and once you hire someone, it’s on you.

Over time, I came to learn that life hadn’t been easy for him. Middle son of a family of 14, he started subsistence work at the age of 12. He didn’t finish school. I had access to his labor history; he hadn’t lasted more than a year in most of his jobs. He had worked for a doctor who didn’t give a concern for a healthy work environment, and for a judge who didn’t care about his labor rights. In Brazil we have paid leave – he had never had that. For him to give trust was obviously going to be difficult – as far as he was concerned I would just be another in a long line of battles. My wife and I noticed this early on about him and his wife. They were very, very wary. Life was beating them down.

My wife and I acted as much as we could to show trust. We allowed him full access to all my tools, no questions asked. We allowed him to drive my jeep to pick up manure for the plantation and vegetable garden. If there was a tool he needed, I would show trust in his judgment by buying it. Very soon into the partnership – that’s what relationships like this are – we told them we’d leave cash in a drawer for any emergency or material they might need. They had never seen that level of trust, yet they are extraordinarily honest and correct. Slowly he realized I assumed he knew what he was doing, so he went and did it. He has an exceptionally broad range of skills, perfect for such a job, from bricklaying to using a chainsaw, from scything to plumbing work.

It wasn’t always easy. At one point he was getting stressed and anxious, and wanted to quit, and we couldn’t understand why. We eventually found out why: I have a habit of coming up with crazy ideas of things we “might” do on the farm, but mostly these ideas were just for my own mental enjoyment and maybe, only maybe, they might come to fruition over a decade or so. He interpreted my ideas as wishes, and my wishes were seen as commands. (This suggests a later article: disagreements are more often than not an issue stemming from bad communication and not realizing the life context that drives another person’s actions and words.)

They have now been with us for 6 years, by far the longest they have been with anyone, and it seems they have no desire to leave.? Their boys are healthy and well brought up.?? It took them time to trust us back even with something as simple as the key of their house (on the farm ground right next to the main house), or with the care of their children when they went into town,? Now they invite their relatives over for vacations, and we allow them the use of the main house for their guests to stay. For some reason I cannot fathom, people seem to think this is weird. And they trust us with anything.

Show trust and humanity first, and you will earn trust in return.

I hope you enjoyed this story. Thanks for subscribing, until next week.

Next Week

Next week I will continue the third part of our journey into science.? Join me then here at ?????????????????? ????????????????.

About Me

A philomath but not a polymath, I have a love of learning earned from the love of teaching scouts, added to my questioning skeptical/scientific background and a desire to understand how things work.? I love a good adventure – life is one.? I'm a walking contradiction and mind changer.? Other interests include woodworking, fact-checking, and arguing. ?Real estate agent by day.