Individual Assignment 1: To Trust Or To Distrust

Here I would like to talk about an instance that I trusted someone but got burned out.

When I was working in my former bank as an associate account officer, I used to deal with all kinds of financial affairs everyday for tens of different corporate clients with special needs. According to the procedure, all of the financial transactions should base on original paper application sent from clients which is almost nonnegotiable. This pushes customers arrange their transactions timely in advance because it takes at least 1 day for documents to reach to the bank by express delivery.

Once a customer asked me to operate an urgent deal without written application because it is still on the way according to the clerk. Actually, it was a client who is highly familiar with us because of our long term relationship since its first established in China over ten years ago. The clerk pleaded me to carry out the transaction explaining how urgent it is and what would they lose if the deal cannot be closed. Also, they promised that the original application will do arrive by next morning. After discussed with my boss reviewing their credit record and the profit we would make from the deal, we decided to carry out the transaction without any written note. Of course, it was secretly conducted within relevant department without the acknowledge of bank managements.

On the following morning, however, I received a phone call from the client saying that they want to cancel that transaction. Actually, their application was not on the way at all. The reality was that the management who was supposed to sign the application was absent yesterday, and he disagreed with the transaction when the clerk asked his signature in the next morning. We were shocked with the news and finally couldn't but confessed the fact to managements and asked cancellation for the deal.


In this instance, my decision making process were as follows:
1.Identify level of urgency
2.Find alternatives referring to bank procedure
3.Identify trustworthiness
4.Consider about consequences and select from alternatives
5.Weigh the bank profit and loss
6.Make decision


In terms of what I have learned from this experience, I would firstly say that DO BREAK BANK PROCEDURES IN NO CIRCUMSTANCE.
Because bank procedure is a series of instructions which has been considered carefully by experienced bank experts and been modified many times in order to avoid making loss. It is definitely a reliable guidebook for staffs to follow.

Secondly, WE MUST NOT TRUST SOMEONE BLINDLY.When you are considering whether to trust a person or not, you must firstly identify if he is trustworthy.When you are asked that do you trust somebody, you would probably begin by saying, "To do what?" And saying well, I trust some of them, but not others. This is very rational. In our real life, we have to seek to place trust in a differentiated way. We don't make an assumption that the level of trust that we will have in every instance of a certain type of official or office-holder or type of person. For example, I certainly trust an elementary school teacher that I know to teach children to read but no way to drive the school minibus. Because I must know that she wasn't a good driver.
In this case, yes the company's credit record was very high in the bank which means it is an trustworthy client. But is that equals to the clerk himself could also be trustworthy? The answer was not.

Thirdly, We should AIM TO HAVE MORE TRUST IN THE TRUSTWORTHY BUT NOT IN THE UNTRUSTWORTHY. In fact, from this experience, I learned to aim to try not to trust the untrustworthy. Intelligently place and intelligently refuse to trust have to be the proper aim of trust nowadays.
So we have to judge how trustworthy people are in particular respects. This judgment requires us to focus on three things. Are they competent? Are they honest? Are they reliable? If a person who meet these aspects, we have good reason to trust him because they can be trustworthy.

REFERENCE:

Thompson Chapter Establishing Trust in Negotiation
HBR-2006-Decision to trust