How NOT To Build Trust

  • 1 min read

It just takes a few words to destroy trust and to appear shady.

Several years ago, I made plans on a Saturday night to do dinner and drinks with a business owner I had just hired to do a small project for my business. At dinner, he mentioned to me that he had also made plans to meet up with a few women later that evening at a nightclub, and he asked me if I’d like to join. Being single at the time, it sounded like fun so I accepted the offer.

However, I soon regretted my decision when he then said, “Just don’t tell them I have a girlfriend.”

Stunned by this comment about his 5-year partner, I naively blurted out, “Why not?”

His reply: “You never know where the night might take us.”

He probably thought I would somehow be impressed by his behavior, but his comment had the opposite effect.  The fact that he was open to “extra-curricular activities” outside of his 5-year relationship immediately destroyed any credibility and trust he had built with me over the prior months.

If he was willing to violate the trust he had with someone he supposedly cared deeply about (a woman he was thinking about marrying), there’s no way I felt I could trust him to do right by me in the future.

If you ever find yourself saying something like, “Just don’t tell _____” (i.e. “just don’t tell our colleague Jim,” or “just don’t tell my wife,” or “just don’t tell our customers,” or “just don’t tell the boss,” etc.), catch yourself and ask why you are doing what you are doing.

To be clear, I’m not referring to something trite like “Just don’t tell my wife I had a cheeseburger for lunch today.” I’m referring to comments that imply that you lack integrity.

It’s easy to think such behavior will ingratiate you with the person who’s in on your action. However, all this does is get people to wonder if you will be shady behind their back, too.

In the rare situation where someone is actually impressed by your deceitfulness, that’s someone who will probably think it’s ok to be sneaky behind your back, too. Do you really want to be involved with people like that?

Integrity does not have an “on/off” switch. Keep yours “on” at all times…

Author:

Pete Leibman is the Founder of Dream Job Academy and the Author of the new book titled “I Got My Dream Job and So Can You.” His career advice has been featured on Fox, CBS, and CNN, and he is a popular Keynote Speaker at career events for college students and at conferences for people who work with college students.

Picture of Pete Leibman

Pete Leibman

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

The Society of Authors just launched a label that goes on the back of a book jacket reading “Human Authored,” and it runs entirely on an honour code, which means the only thing standing between a reader and the truth is a writer’s word

The Society of Authors just launched a label that goes on the back of a book jacket reading “Human Authored,” and it runs entirely on an honour code, which means the only thing standing between a reader and the truth is a writer’s word

The Blog Herald
A song engineered with a sound therapist to slow your heart rate has been available since 2011 — and almost nobody who talks about anxiety has mentioned it to you

A song engineered with a sound therapist to slow your heart rate has been available since 2011 — and almost nobody who talks about anxiety has mentioned it to you

The Vessel
A Pew Research survey found 64% of American adults still choose print over e-books — and the reason has less to do with nostalgia than attention span

A Pew Research survey found 64% of American adults still choose print over e-books — and the reason has less to do with nostalgia than attention span

Global English Editing
For a while we assumed the slow cooling of a long marriage was just the price of time — until researchers found that couples who spent about seven minutes, three times a year, describing their worst fight the way a neutral outsider might see it simply stopped sliding apart

For a while we assumed the slow cooling of a long marriage was just the price of time — until researchers found that couples who spent about seven minutes, three times a year, describing their worst fight the way a neutral outsider might see it simply stopped sliding apart

The Vessel
When researchers had people confide something painful to a friend sitting right beside them, the ones whose blood pressure climbed the highest weren’t leaning on someone difficult — they were turning to a friend they genuinely love and still, just slightly, hold their breath around

When researchers had people confide something painful to a friend sitting right beside them, the ones whose blood pressure climbed the highest weren’t leaning on someone difficult — they were turning to a friend they genuinely love and still, just slightly, hold their breath around

The Vessel
The writers whose work reads as unmistakably human aren’t the ones avoiding AI on principle — they’re the ones who never stopped writing like themselves in the first place

The writers whose work reads as unmistakably human aren’t the ones avoiding AI on principle — they’re the ones who never stopped writing like themselves in the first place

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore