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the application of trust in construction

the application of trust in construction

On Building Trust - and Building Houses

trust diagram

This intriguing graphic was found in this article on trust models by Paul English 
"She had never been able to tolerate dishonesty, which she thought threatened the very heart of relationships between people. If you could not count on other people to mean what they said, or to do what they said they would do, then life could become utterly unpredictable. The fact that we could trust one another made it possible to undertake the simple tasks of life. Everything was based on trust, even day-to-day things like crossing the road — which required trust that the drivers of cars would be paying attention — to buying food from a roadside vendor, whom you trusted not to poison you. It was a lesson that we learned as children, when our parents threw us up into the sky and thrilled us by letting us drop into their waiting arms. We trusted those arms to be there, and they were."

From "The Full Cupboard of Life", by Alexander McCall Smith, p. 62

We are all living in a time when we are forced to watch the steady erosion of trust between people. War always increases distrust and our new state of perpetual war promises to continue to sacrifice trust in the name of security (fear). It is surely the erosion of this trust that threatens the civility of life more than the actuarial threat of a terrorist act.

Trust is the mild mannered little brother of love. It is a freely given and received type of mini-love that forms the foundation of all our greater emotions and feelings. Citizenship, grace and respect all imply the granting of a high degree of trust. Civilization itself cannot exist without the assumed and unspoken shared trust we extend to and receive from others in the daily business of life.

Many people have an interest in moving to a smaller town or country location and then building or remodeling a house to live in. This dream is often based on a desire to simplify a life that has grown too complex, but it is also an unspoken desire to increase the amount of trust in our lives.

Often the dream of building ones own house starts as an exercise in self-sufficiency - we imagine ourselves fashioning our own shelter with our own two hands. Only later, as the complexity of the project grows, do we come to understand all the help we will need — and that much of this help comes from a complex web of interactions based on trust.

• I might help my neighbor unload a tiller and he tells me about his cousin who has a trencher I can use for my waterline.
• A casual conversation at the lumber yard gives you a lead on a painter or roofer who knows just how to do what you were talking about.

I get to know the community and the community gets to know me through the people I hire and buy materials from. I get a reputation for fairness (or not) and I am treated the same way by those who will help me build my dream.

This is why the process of building your own house is such a life changing experience. Many of us who try it look back on the time spent as one of the most engaging things we have ever done. The levels of aliveness you feel during the times you are working this "network of trust" are hard to match in the normal work-a-day world. You are spending money fast - and that in itself is exciting - but you are also providing income, encouraging creativity and making friends with those who are working on the project with you. You are growing, the project is growing and you are helping others to grow. Is this not the definition of win-win?

If you are "trust-worthy", and the people you hire are also trustworthy, then you will find that you can build using an unspoken network that still exists in many smaller communities. This network can often replace many of the competitively bid hard contracts that come from the world of lawyers.

• Agreements of trust are flexible, responsive and interactive - they start with a feeling of shared empathy.
• Legal contracts are rigid, authoritarian and combative - they come from a feeling of fear.

The best you can hope for from LawyerLand is the feeling of winning or beating out the other guy. This is a bitter and sad substitute for knitting yourself into your new community and making those three of four new lifetime friends that always seem to come out of a house project.

Instead of contracts, how about writing up and signing an "understanding of project expectations" or some such thing?

If your goal is a full and rich life, I vote for exploring the model of trust. The rewards of the process are likely to far outweigh the few times when trust was extended and not reciprocated. Allow yourself to be made the fool of once in a while. If you can let the bitterness slip away unanswered it won't taint your ability to trust again.

Isn't this also the time-tested recipe for finding love and building long-lasting relationships?


Related article: Politics Made Easy

the application of trust in construction

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