Distrust and the Often Preventable Risk to You

'Would you buy you' if your actions made it impossible to trust yourself?

Michele Levine

We usually receive some level of trust at the beginning of a professional relationship. That relationship capital balance, so to speak, can remain steady, grow as an investment, suffer losses or move into a state that you don’t want — distrust.

“It is not simply a low reputation, nor merely the absence of trust,” recently wrote Michele Levine, the chief executive officer at Roy Morgan Research.

“Distrust is an active negative condition measured on a negative scale.”

It impacts interactions in ways, noticed and unnoticed.

“It changes interpretation. It lowers forgiveness,” Levine wrote.

We take correct interpretation of our words, actions and intent for granted. When that’s off track or incorrect and there is resistance to accuracy, it’s a difficult or frustrating and possibly, painful experience.

Forgiveness isn’t just lowered. It can become denied and the end to important and valued interactions. People shut down or decide punishment is in order.

People’s minds can spiral, willingly or subconsciously, in beliefs about you. You are now either considered a threat or having breached acceptable, social or personal respect and boundaries.

“It increases readiness to believe the worst, complain, hesitate, switch, discourage others and read future communication through a lens of suspicion,” Levine explained.

That’s a bitter cocktail of unwanted, problematic and costly reaction.

While trust opens doors, keeps them open and is a glue for connection, distrust is an erosion or at times, worse, a wrecking ball.

You, whether as an organization or individual, don’t want to be doubted, not given the benefit of it, have people freeze on you, move away when you want or need them, communicate poorly about you, always presume the worst, as in “know” in their minds that they can’t trust you and won’t trust you.

Oftentimes, we end up in this pit of problems and expensive costs due to self-inflicted wounds. Other times, less common yet still a reality, people’s assumptions, without credible evidence and proof, are in error.

Yet, the trouble is still the same as the distrust that we brought upon ourselves.

“A brand can remain relatively well known, even broadly respected in some quarters, while still becoming newly fragile as distrust escalates,” Levine explained.

A brand means you as a person as much as a product, service and organization.

Years ago, I listened to a salesman who asked, “Would you buy you?” You wouldn’t if you didn’t trust yourself. The same goes for stakeholder relationships. Distrust is a gap, a sizeable one. It results in fragility or full rejection.

“Organizations … need a distinct instrument capable of detecting the escalation of negative sentiment before it becomes a crisis,” Levine wrote. “In other words, they need an early warning system for distrust.”

I’m not going far out on a limb when I contend there are almost always signals that trust is decaying. Catch it then by paying attention and responsibly address it, promptly and as thoroughly as possible, before it becomes broken trust.

The road back to trust that will benefit and comfort you can be painfully hard or impossible.

Years ago, a friend at the time said that “the signs were always there” for relationships that were becoming rocky or ended and that people “either didn’t look closely at them or they didn’t care.”

Point: pay attention to the road signs, traffic lights and when they are there, the alarms. They’re there. Almost always there. And care when you identify them.

“Reputation tells management how a brand is broadly regarded. Distrust tells management whether that brand is moving from stability to fragility,” Levine wrote.

It’s a visual description and a helpful one.

We like and pursue stability, sometimes doggedly, because most humans crave it. Fragility is stressful, can create anxiety and be overwhelming. The issue is, sometimes, we have advanced notice and the capability to preserve trust, yet we don’t intrinsically or extrinsically move on it and that omission leads to distrust.

Don’t get to that point of hardship or worse, the point of no return.

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