Five Ways to Destroy Trust

For trust to exist in an organization, a certain amount of transparency must pervade the intentions, direction, actions, communication, feedback, and problem solving of particularly, executives and managers, but also of all employees. Consequently, these are ways in which people destroy trust.

Employees tell lies of commission: They fail to tell the truth, often with the intention to deceive or confuse. This powerfully impacts a whole organization when the lie is perceived from leaders, but even coworker relationships are destroyed by lies of commission. A lie is a lie is a lie.

If it's not the whole truth, if it requires preparation and wordsmithing, if you need to remember the details to ensure you don't change your story in the retelling, you are probably telling a lie. Or, at the very least, part of your story is a lie. People who are untrustworthy derail their careers. Can you imagine the impact of lies on an organization when the liar is a senior manager?

Employees tell lies by omission: A lie of omission is a deliberate attempt to deceive another person by omitting portions of the truth. Lies of omission are particularly egregious as they give people false impressions and attempt to influence behavior by omitting important details.

Once again, the more powerful the perpetrator of the lie in the organization, the more significantly trust is affected. But, an individual can derail their career by using this deception ploy, when caught.

More tomorrow