FeistyFemale

28/08/2008 In Entrepreneurship, Lessons from Combat by feistyfemale

“The way I see it, if you can’t trust someone, why do you want to do business with them in the first place? Or work for them? Or employ them? Or whatever…”

My friend, the brilliant Darren Gorton wrote a thought-provoking post on Trust vs Control. It’s a must read if you are in business - big or small.

A week or two ago I decided that I was going to start implementing a no-strike, non-negotiable rule when it comes to collaboration, working with business associates and choosing clients. Strangely the universe and my friends have been reinforcing and reaffirming my thoughts on this.

Some scattered thoughts:

• A company can have a big team, lots of money and a solid brand but ultimately it will be damn hard, if not impossible to build a working relationship if your values don’t align to that of the company. This includes facets such as beliefs, trust, control and honest communication.
• My paramedic once told me that “You can’t sell your soul and dreams for anything, especially money”. Perhaps it’s the foundation of moral soundness and happiness.  To not sell your soul and to realise your dreams,  you ultimately need to stay true to yourself and your beliefs. Generally those are  prerequisites of trust.
• You need to be 100% honest with yourself. You yourself will only trust if you have good values and are both trusting and trustworthy. Compromise on your dreams, values or integrity and you will end up a bitter, dissatisfied and unhappy person.

Then, like Darren points out “good faith” is really difficult to find nowadays. So where do we start?