Trust

A little girl and her father were crossing a bridge. The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter: "Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don't fall into the river." The little girl said:"No, Dad. You hold my hand." "What's the difference?" Asked the puzzled father. "There's a big difference," replied the little girl. "If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens, you will never let my hand go."

 

This is a lovely story and tells us how trust can go a long way in a relationship. I like a quote from an Unknown Author who says that "Trust is letting go of needing to know all the details before you open your heart." People who can do this are really gifted because they are able to trust others very easily. However, what I have noticed with people who can do this is that they lose trust as soon as something goes wrong and it takes very long to build the trust again. Most of the times, the trust is lost for ever.

 

Many a time, we take a long time to build relationships and trust in those relationships. We struggle with the question whether or not we can trust the person.  As Ernest Hemingway said, “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”  I have always been struck by these pre-nuptial contracts that people sign up before they get married. This, in my opinion (and I can be completely wrong in this), shows absolute lack of trust. Marriage is probably the biggest commitment we make in life. If this commitment to a relationship starts with a lack of trust, then, I am not sure how we can make that relationship work. I understand that pre-nuptial contracts are like insurance policies. What beats me is that we decide to get married but before that we sign a contract as to how our wealth will be split, if we get divorced.

 

As in personal relationships, we need to nurture relationships at work too. These get built over time and becomes difficult if people live across countries and don't see each other regularly. Stephen Covey says in his book The Speed of Trust, "The one thing that changes everything is trust." Trust increases speed of doing business, cuts costs and improves profitability significantly. This is more so in large multinational corporations that cut across 100s of countries. These large corporations need a very high level of trust and collaboration (apart from controls, process and technologies) to succeed. In my experience, trust goes a long way at work. It breaks bureaucracy, brings lot of freedom in to work, gets better outcomes and helps corporations win in the market place.

 

Lastly, I do want to mention trust and faith that we place on professionals, especially doctors. When faced with life threatening situations, we put complete trust on the doctor. God comes in the form of this doctor. Our life depends on this doctor and we decide to do that. When I was chatting with a friend on this topic of trusting the doctor, he said, "This is like surrendering to God." When I heard this, I was reminded of a quote of Corrie ten Boom who said, “Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.”