By Steve Adubato, PhD

The Billy Joel song says it all when it comes to communication—It’s “A Matter of Trust.” Think about it. When you don’t trust someone, how honest is your communication going to be? When you don’t trust someone, aren’t you likely to hold back important information for fear that it might be disclosed to someone else. Without trust, you don’t take risks; and when you don’t take risks in business, rarely if ever will you solve complex problems and meet the challenges all professionals face in these unpredictable and scary economic times.

The connection between communication and trust isn’t undeniable. Many employees don’t trust their managers to do the right thing no matter what the manager says in public. That’s often because the manager’s actions don’t match his or her words. But that’s just one of the reasons why leaders aren’t trusted by their people. Here are some others:

• Leaders often play favorites. It’s okay not to treat your people the same because they are all different, but it is not okay to treat them unfairly. Simply put, some managers go out of their way to give certain people a difficult time while giving others a pass who make the same mistakes. When employees see this, they don’t trust the leader to do the right thing and therefore, morale suffers, which in turn hurts productivity and communication.

• Again, if something was told to you in confidence and you share it with someone who isn’t supposed to hear it, nothing good happens. Once you do that to someone, you lose his trust. Discipline is often lacking in our communication. Sometimes silence communicates a great deal about your communication and your relationships with others.

• If a manager and an employee agree that a certain performance level is expected and the employee reaches that level, the manager has a commitment to either make good on his promise or communicate clearly why he can’t. If circumstances have changed, that must be made clear. If not, once again, that trust is broken.

• Playing the blame game will also erode trust. If employees believe that key decision makers are more concerned about blaming people as opposed to solving problems, they’ll make sure they don’t get blamed. But again, that means not taking risks or chances. They will stay below the radar, which only ensures that an organization will become stagnant.

• A misunderstanding that goes unresolved can create mistrust. When we assume certain motives on the part of someone without confirming that we are right, we are likely to lose trust in that person. This adversely affects our communication.

• If you are working on a team project and one person tries to claim credit for the efforts of others, how can you trust that person again? Obviously the communication between the members of the group will be hurt.

• Further, if we assume that each member of a team is going to carry his or her weight, but they don’t, why would you trust them in the future? More often you will opt to work alone than with other people and very often the person who has broken your trust won’t even know why you are avoiding him.

• Poor listening. When you don’t feel that someone is really listening to you, why would you trust him with certain information? If you believe that someone doesn’t care, every aspect of your communication will be effected you will become more apathetic and disengaged, which can only hurt your relationship.

Great leaders understand the undeniable tie between trust and communication, and they work hard to build that trust with others and do everything they can to maintain it. Those who don’t, pay a heavy price and often don’t even know why.