He seemed sad, personally dejected. This accomplished engineer – many complex projects to his name, owner of a successful services firm, an enviable reputation with his clients – couldn’t understand why potential buyers didn’t trust him.
“How can I convince potential buyers to trust me? Why can’t I just tell them that they can trust me? I know I’m capable and responsible, my customers know it, why don’t new buyers believe me?”
To him, it was so illogical.
Which leads to the question, what is trust anyway?
Trust is a confidence about something we can’t directly control, about what is otherwise unknown.
It’s a statement I make to you about
- what I will do when you are far away
- something I will do that cannot be verified
- what I will do at some point in the future
We live in a web of relationships with different levels of trust.
Most people cannot be trusted. Well, let me put it another way. I personally cannot trust most people. Nor can you. I can only trust the people with whom I am directly connected (family, friends, business associates). Or those who are obligated to observe certain rules in relation to me through regulation or contract. Restaurants are obligated by the Board of Health to serve clean, fresh food. Banks are obligated to take care of my money. Regulators force automakers to manufacture safe cars.
As for everyone else, maybe I can trust them, maybe not. But there’s no sense of mutual obligation.
In fact, we are taught not to trust those we don’t know. Witness these proverbs from around the world:
Trust not a new friend or an old enemy. (Portugal)
Trust no one till you have eaten a bushel of salt with him. (Germany)
Trust makes way for treachery. (Arabia)
Trust was a good man; Trust-not was a better. (Italy)
Trust, but not too much. (Germany)
When the character of a man is not clear to you, look at his friends. (Japan)
These proverbs tell us to be careful with our trust, to give our trust to those we have a lot of experience with, and even with those we trust to beware of treachery.
There is really no reason for the engineer to be surprised that potential buyers cannot trust him. It has nothing to do with him. They have been taught and have learned through hard experience not to trust people they don’t know. Especially when the stakes are high, as they are when making a complex purchase like an engineering project.
What can the engineer do? Can he change the level of trust in relation to the buyer? Before we can answer that question we have look at the degrees of trust between people and see where our engineer fits.
That’s what we’ll do in the next post.
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