“Responsibility” by Helen K., Creative Commons license, Flickr

Trust is fragile. A bond of trust, once broken generally makes re-establishing a relationship tougher. Identify those behaviors and attitudes to avoid that can fracture the bond of trust. These examples are generally pretty obvious, yet happen far too often:

The Lexicon of Trust Busters – Part Three

1. Disrespect:  Even adversaries can trust each other, to some extent, if there is respect. When an individual, product or organization is minimized, trivialized, or humiliated there is a sense of uneasiness and discomfort that leads to frustration, anger, and public negative response.

2. Ducking Responsibility:  In the old days, a major incident or accident triggered a company to send a crew to paint or cover over its company logo and name. Today, the ambulance attendant has already videotaped and uploaded the scene before helping the victims. Responsibility is tough to duck.

3. Failure to Seek Forgiveness or to Apologize: Often even the best public and private approaches are diminished in value when – either for reasons of arrogance or stubbornness – a direct, overt approach for seeking forgiveness from the parties harmed or indirectly affected is avoided. Failure to quickly say, “We’re sorry,” diminishes trust and leads to litigation.

4. Holding Back:  The essence of trust is having information before it’s needed so that whatever what happens, those in the relationship can count on the behaviors and attitudes of others. Deliberately withholding support, withholding admiration, withholding cooperation and collaboration, but especially withholding information, corrodes trust.

James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, Fellow IABC; APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus

If you have questions, or would like to dive more deeply into the subject of this blog, you can reach me 24/7 at jel@e911.com; 203-948-7029 (voicemail, email, text). I look forward, as a friend and colleague, to helping you achieve the objectives you’ve set for yourself for having a happier, more influential, successful and meaningful career.

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