TRUTH AND TRUST BY PREYE MIEBI

A young man was in is final year in the university and He had to face the school disciplinary committee for examination malpractice, it is the most dreaded in the school environment. There was a document to prove He was guilty but he new the contents of that document had no correlation with the examination he was being accused of. He had a choice to deny that the documents isn't his, but if He does that the panel would concentrate on the handwriting and match it with His examination script, or He could accept that the document was His and place emphasis on the content, pointing out his innocence. He had a had choice to make, he had been lucky in the first panel where he denied the documents and was about to be expelled until bias was sensed and a new panel reconstituted. He told the truth and he was cleared of all wrong doing.

People talk about truth without fully understanding the weight of it. They think truth is just about saying the correct things and be adjudged spiritual. Truth goes beyond that.

There is need to balance our lives with truth, the lack of truth is why people don’t often trust others. Truth is a component of trust. “The most and effective ways of earning a man’s trust is to be truthful at all times”.

According to M.R Covey, there are three compelling question to be asked about trust. First, is there a measurable cost to low trust? Second, is there a tangible benefit to high trust? Third, how can the best leaders build trust in and within their organizations to reap the benefits of high trust?

Once trust is betrayed, in can hardly be regained.  Trust has to be guarded jealously. It could be trust in a relationship, trust in business, trust among relatives and even trust among politicians. Every aspect of trust must be held up high.

One can build himself to gain trust from his environment and being truthful is a part of gaining ones trust. It is no wonder that the developed economies are growing bigger. (read Economics of trust)

Steve Knack, a senior economist at the World Bank who has studied the economics of trust for over a decade suggests that trust is worth $12.4 trillion dollars a year to the U.S., which, in case you are wondering, is 99.5% of this country’s income (2006 figures). If you make $40,000 a year, then $200 is down to hard work and $39,800 is down to trust. While the developing economies continue to suffer from the deficiencies of trust.

As a developed nation we must continue to keep the trust that has brought us this far both economically and politically. While as developing nations we have been raped over time by the absence of trust or the lack of it, and that has to change. We must see trust as a part way to succeeding and taking the nation to that height using the developed nations as a tool for measurement.

There is a complex similarity between truth and trust, They have to be built and earned respectively. It is a prerequisite for both personal and and developmental growth. Therefore we must consciously walk the part to create an environment where we will not be looked at suspiciously by the very same people we hoped to serve.