“In business, to trust yourself is one of the most empowering decisions that you can make because when you trust yourself, other people will trust you.”
To make a difference in the business world you need to trust yourself first and foremost as many of the great business leaders of our time have attested to. It’s a story we’ve heard before, but how do we learn to trust ourselves in business. To find out what we can take with us into the New Year in terms of self-trust, 99FM’s MYD Smart spoke to Business Woman and Youth Activist, Marie-Jeanne Ndimbir, to ask her how she gets this fundamental life issue incorporated into her business life, Trust.
Learning to Trust Yourself in Business by Marie-Jeanne Ndimbira
I recently read an article by Forbes which said that “The traditional workplace was created to exert control – control over people, control over resources, control over capital. The new workplace – and the new employee – gives up control for influence and membership in a larger community. You begin to regain your identity by trusting yourself.”
For me, trust has always been a critical component of business as much as it is of life. In business you need to first be a business partner to yourself and to do this you need to be the kind of business partner you would want to have.
Trust is a cornerstone and more than just an important factor in business, for many reasons. For one in business you not only need to trust in yourself but often you’ll have others that trust and depend on you, sometimes for learning and sometimes for livelihoods. In addition, who you represent yourself to be is now something that can be verified. The internet has changed the way people do business since I entered the working world, it has changed dynamics. Nowadays who you say to are can be checked or verified, we are held more accountable to be who we say we are and do what we say we will do. This level of accountability means not only do we need to be more trust worthy but also, we need to be more trusting.
In business, to trust yourself is one of the most empowering decisions that you can make because when you trust yourself, other people will trust you. It works like this, once you are authentic with yourself and clear on who you are, and this means all of who you are, this knowing of self is what builds trust. By knowing who you are, you are more inclined to share who you are and when you share who you are; the world is more inclined to trust you. This trust is what brings in more business, as we like to do business with people we trust.
But trust is not limited to bringing in more business, trust is a critical ally in the path to success. A fundamental truth of life is that you will never know the outcome of any transaction before you get into it. This is why we need a combination of our intuition and our gut (trust in ourselves) as well as experience. It is the trust in ourselves that will help us identify with our own opinion and know which steps to follow.
So, in my opinion I would advise that the first step we all take in our business lives this year, is to reflect on our own career and business processes. With reflection you start to acknowledge each time you do something right and what your role was in the process of things going right. You are always contributing to your success, no matter how small or large that contribution is. The more you can recognise your role in your growth, the more you will see that you can trust yourself.
Marie-Jeanne Ndimbira is the founder of Twamanguluka, a business that aims to empower young people throughout Africa, through capacity building and edutainment. She is also the co-founder of the Physically Active Youth program in Katutura. Take a look at their website here : Twamanguluka