In celebration of their Centennial this year Harvard Business School added a discussion section to their website.  The current discussion is Leadership in the 21st Century.

“The Conversation is question- or topic-based dialogue between two conversation leads and our Centennial- site visitors.”

One of the current topic leaders is Nitin Nohria, who says, “Leaders (in business and government) have lost the public trust. … What has caused this loss in trust and how can it be best restored?”

The discussion engendered is intelligent, interesting, and well worth reading.

I find, looking at just the first part of the question, why did I lose trust, that my response is relatively simple.

When I see ego as the trump card, influencing and overshadowing all other considerations, then I no longer trust that person to make valid decisions.

This applies whether

• the person is my neighbor, who only thinks about what works for her;
• the President, who turned a blind eye to anything that didn’t agree with his preconceived ideas;
• the corporate heads, who focused on improving their compensation with no consideration for the fallout; or
• Wall Street, which has deified short-term actions that raise stock prices while gutting the long-term viability of companies.

What actions make you lose trust?

Your comments—priceless

Don’t miss a post, subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Image credit: flickr

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 6th, 2008 at 5:30 am and is filed under About Leadership, Ethics, Followers, What Leaders DON'T. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Tags: harvard business school, Nitin Nohria, trust
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.