+++
date = "2019-03-01T18:09:26-07:00"
title = "Trust and Integrity"
author = "Jessica Frazelle"
description = "Some reflections on my recent adventures."
+++

I stated in my first post on my [reflections of leadership in other
industries](https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/government-medicine-capitalism/)
that I would write a follow up post after having hung out in the world of
finance for a day. This is pretty easy to do when you live in NYC.
Originally for college, I was a finance major at NYU Stern School of Business
before transferring out, so I have always had a bit of affinity for it.

I consider myself pretty good at reading people. This, of course, was not
always the case. I became better at reading people after having a few really
bad experiences where I should have known better than to trust someone. I've
read a bunch of books on how to tell when people are lying and my favorite
I called out in my [books post](https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/books/). This is
not something I wish that I had to learn but it does protect you from people
who might not have the best intentions.

Most people will tell you to always assume good intentions, and this is true to
an extent. However, having been through some really bad experiences where I did
"assume good intentions" and should not have, I tend to be less and less willing
to do that.

I am saying this, not because I think people in finance are shady, they
aren't, but because I believe it is important in any field. I, personally, place a lot of value on trust and
integrity.

I'm not really going to focus this post on what an investment bankers job is
like because honestly it wasn't really anything to write home about. What I did
find interesting was the lack of trust in the workplace. Trust is a huge thing
for me, like I said, and I think having transparency goes hand-in-hand with that.

To gain trust, I believe a leader must also have integrity and a track record
of doing the right thing. I liked this response to a tweet of mine about using "trust
tokens" in the case leadership needs to keep something private.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">They are. It gets hard with legal things like SEC filings and acquisitions but that’s where an already good leadership team can use existing trust tokens.</p>&mdash; Silvia Botros (@dbsmasher) <a href="https://twitter.com/dbsmasher/status/1098602904838197253?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
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I think people tend to under estimate how important it is to be transparent
about things that don't need to be private. I've seen a lot of people in
positions of power, use their power of keeping information private _against_
those under them. They don't fully disclose the "why" and it leads to people
they manage not fully being able to help solve the problem as well as not fully
understanding the problem. It also doesn't build trust.

Leaders should try to be cognisant of when something needs to be private and
when they can be transparent about information. I also really enjoyed this
insightful tweet as well:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Unlike respect, which can start from a positive value and go up or down depending on behavior, trust starts at 0. You have to earn the trust of your colleagues and reports before you can take loans out on it. <a href="https://t.co/aWRpdjAtBR">https://t.co/aWRpdjAtBR</a></p>&mdash; julia ferraioli (@juliaferraioli) <a href="https://twitter.com/juliaferraioli/status/1101572682863296514?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Just thought I would put my thoughts in writing since I said I would. This
experience seeing how other industries work has been super fun for me. I might
try to find some other jobs to check out as well in the future.
