Trust Who?

Trust is like virginity. It is precious and you want to be pretty careful who you give it away to!

I am selling my house at the moment and had an open house inspection on Saturday. I've sold places before, so I new the drill. Tidy up, make sure everything is clean, and make sure you haven't left something smelly in the garbage bin, or your underwear still hanging on the clothes airer.

When I got home a few hours after the inspection I noticed my back door was open and I thought 'Great! The real estate agents have left the door open. Well done!' Then I noticed that the ruffle of my bed was lifted up in places and I thought 'Wow, some people are really weird! I'm not selling the bed! Why would they want to look under there?'

Then I noticed it. When I turned my head towards my dressing table. There was a big gap where my jewellery box usually sits. Two of my drawers were open and, at a closer inspection, it was pretty obvious someone had gone through them.

After I got over the initial shock and called the police, I rang the agents to find out what they knew. They were adamant that they had locked the doors and checked them, and they had checked the courtyard to make sure there was nobody left floating around. As there was no sign of forced entry anywhere, we concluded that the theif must have hidden in the house and waited until everyone had left before he/she struck.

Scary, huh! It certainly got me thinking about trust. We place an incredible amount of trust in people every day, sometimes without realising the enormity of it, or the madness of it at times.

I trusted the agents to keep a close watch on whoever came into my home while I was not there. I would have assumed that was reasonable, given that it what these guys do for a living. But with 11 groups of people coming through a two storey apartment in 15 minutes, maybe that's a tall order, now that I think about it.

I trusted that the people coming through my home would be looking at the house and its surrounds, not what they might be able to nab and wondering how much they might get for it at the local pawn shop. But then I don't know these people. I've never had an experience with them, and I don't know what their intentions are. So why did I trust them?

I'm one of these people that still likes to think the best of others, that everyone has good intentions and means well. Some might call that foolish. What I don't want to do is to become a skeptic, thinking the worst of everyone, unable to trust anyone.

But then I reminded myself of one of the things I have been writing about in my book, Trust Me!. It's what I call situational trust. Just like there is a time and a place for everything, there is a time and a place to trust people.

Let me give you an example. When I was talking to a friend of mine, Guy, who runs a fraud investigation company, he told me that when he goes into companies to investigate a fraud, a common comment that is made from the boss or senior manager is 'I can't believe they would do something like this. I trusted them. My son and his daughter are in the same class at school'. Or 'We play golf together every Sunday'.

So what!! So what if the kids go to the same school, or you play golf with them, or even if they are a good friend. Does that mean you can trust them to be a good accountant? Or good at managing people? Or anything else you have entrusted them to do for you? Of course it doesn't!

Just because you trust someone in one situtation does not mean you should instantly trust them in a completely different situation. Unless you can experience and prove to yourself that they can be trusted, or you can rely 100% on someone elses opinion of them (and there are ways of asking the right questions so that you get the right assessment of someone), then be careful who you trust in specific situations.

I'm not talking about becoming a skeptic. I'm talking about realising how precious your trust is, and if you give it to people in the wrong situation, you could be heading for a painful, disappointing experience.

As for me, I'm going through the terrible process of making a list of every piece of jewellery I used to own. And for anyone who knows me well, they'd know that is one mean feat.

Take care

Vanessa