An issue of Trust

Disclaimer: This article is written in a Papua New Guinean context, for Papua New Guineans, and may not be entirely applicable to or useful to you, if you're from another country.

My trust issue

The reason I had a picture of a hand holding onto a fuel pump as the cover picture for this article is because, I don't know about you guys, but I have serious trust issues with fuel pump attendants. I mean no disrespect to them, and I have mad respect for them, but that's just an habit I developed.

Whenever I go to a fuel station, one hundred per cent, without fail, as soon as I open my car's fuel gauge and request the amount of fuel to be pumped into my car, my eyes are glued to the meter reading until it reaches the amount I have requested. If it's not me, and if there is someone with me in the car, I ask them to look at the meter and ensure that the exact amount of fuel requested is pumped into my car. I do this every time without fail.

I always think to myself, if only I would just bring myself to trust that, none of them could ever do that, or to trust that the fuel pump machine is designed in such a way that, they could never do that even they wanted to, how much simpler life would be. I would never have to go through the trouble of trying my hardest to lean back and stretch myself to ensure the correct amount of fuel is pumped into my car, every time I go to the fuel station to refill my car.

Laying bare my "trust issue" out there for all of you to see, I want to talk about "earning trust" and "giving trust".

Earning Trust

We all probably heard of that, at some point in our lives, and it's a bit of a cliche, but there's a point to be made and I'll come to that later. How do you go about earning other people's trust? You exhibit trustworthy characters.

There was this time when one of my colleagues came up to me and gave me my office car keys. But the problem was I wasn't the one who gave him the keys. He got it from management, whom I left the car keys with. So I told him, "go back to whoever you got the keys from, and give the keys to them. This is how you build trust. This is how you get people around the office to trust you."

He seemed a bit annoyed by it, as it was just a matter of me getting the keys and alerting management that I already got back the keys from him. But it's these kind of little things that earn people's trust. If you develop and portray these little trustworthy characters or habits, and you get enough people to trust you, you become a trustworthy person.

Giving Trust

This is probably the main idea that got me started writing this short article.

A colleague of mine once told me that, "if you treat someone with greatness, he will show you greatness." I don't know where he got that from. Whether it was his own quote or someone else's quote, but I really believe that. It can be very hard to treat someone a certain way, particularly when they give you absolutely no reason to, but if you can take a chance on them, they might surprise you.

If you treat someone with greatness, he will show you greatness.

So if you can take a chance on someone, even where they give you absolutely no reason to, to trust them with what they do, one, you give that person a chance to be a trustworthy person, and that is probably what most people do every day, with their loved ones, friends and families or even strangers.

More importantly though, if that person was always a trustworthy person, but because of your own prejudice and experience, you don't give that person any chance at all to be trusted at what they do, when you actually take that chance, you give yourself a chance to let go of your "trust issue" and allow that person to be the person he ought to be or deserved to be.

One might say, it doesn't really matter whether someone trusts me or not, if I give people no reason for anyone not to trust me. But as I said above, if you can get more people to trust you, you build trust and become a trustworthy person. Similarly, because of your own prejudice, if you unfairly maintain your distrust over someone, you are more likely to influence other people closer to you to unfairly distrust that person also. Soon enough, if enough people are influenced into thinking that person is untrustworthy, he undeservedly becomes an untrustworthy person of your prejudice.

Coming to the Point - Building a trustworthy brand

It takes two to build a trustworthy brand. It takes giving trust and earning trust to build a trustworthy brand.

One problem Papua New Guinean businesses have, which unfairly prejudices them against their competition in more trusted international or overseas businesses, is that they are untrustworthy. And it comes back to "earning trust" and "giving trust".

I came across a Facebook post sometime ago from a "take-back-PNG" fan demanding that Papua New Guineans ceased buying from foreign-run or foreign-owned businesses and buy from PNG businesses. I commented that we would be happy to do that, only if these PNG businesses are able to match the quality and standard.

Rather than complaining about Papua New Guineans not patriotic enough to buy from you, and expect them to just buy from you just because you're a Papua New Guinean, you work hard on improve your standard and quality to match and rival or even exceed your competition, and you give Papua New Guineans are real choice to "take back PNG" for you.

Of course, there are other trustworthy Papua New Guinean businesses who unduly suffer, because of our own prejudice that the foreign businesses do a much better job than our own nationals. We need to start letting go of our own "trust issues", and help build or allow trustworthy businesses to thrive. The more trustworthy businesses we have in our own country, the better for our nation.

Some brief points to think about:

• Wherever you are, whatever you do, strive to build trustworthiness in your business;
• Continue to find room to help build others' trustworthiness - if you trust a business, it might repay your trust, and you would have helped built a trustworthy business;
• Do not let your prejudice unfairly and undeservedly disadvantage a trustworthy business;
• There are some trustworthy brands out there - you just need to get yourself to trust them and they will stand out to you and to everyone.

I am not looking at the meter the next time I visit a fuel station. I might do so occasionally, out of habit, but certainly not intentionally. I have decided to trust the fuel attendants.