Communication is about a lot more than just the words that come out of your mouth. There is a great deal of interpretation that is swirling around those words — what exactly the intention was behind the words, the reliability of the speaker, the emotional content.

A lot of communication is about trust and building trust with other people. When that trust is lacking, communication suffers as well. Communication is about relationship building. With this in mind, here are a few things to watch out for, actions in the workplace that could damage trust and so make communication more difficult.

1. Rumors
Spreading rumors is a surefire way to hurt a person’s credibility, especially if the person simply gossips without regard to the truth of what he or she is saying. Gossiping about matters unrelated to work also is something that doesn’t help a person’s reputation within the company.

Another way that a person can diminish trust and credibility is by breaking agreements, divulging information that someone expected the person to keep to himself.

2. Using double standards
This is essentially when a person confers privileges on himself or herself without giving them to anyone else. For example, the person takes a long time to answer emails, but expects his emails to be answered promptly.

Or the person may help to develop company policies and exempt himself from having to follow them.
The person is eager to take credit for projects he is involved in, but he is very reluctant to praise others.

Or the person’s actions don’t align with their words; he or she is hypocritical.

3. Muddying the waters
The employee’s communication style ends up making things more difficult to understand, rather than easier. For example, the person is not forthcoming when dealing with difficult issues, and does not directly confront problems with his responses, but beats around the bush.

The person simply assumes things about other people – what motivates them or how to communicate with them.

4. Not being direct

If the person has a problem with someone else, he tells everyone but that person.

The person does not contribute to discussions about solving problems, but is quick to assign blame for those problems.

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