As companies must be fast, adaptable, agile, and courageous to compete, one of the most important elements is the ability to trust.

In our age of disruption, your company must be agile and courageous–and gain employee trust-yet it’s easy to react to today’s business climate with fear and indecision.

by Industry Week Staff

According to Amanda Setili, author of Fearless Growth: The New Rules to Stay Competitive, Foster Innovation, and Dominate Your Markets, trust is more important than ever before because without trust, “you will never create the deep engagement and sense of safety people need to take risks, disagree, and innovate.”

Employees must be able to trust leaders—and vice versa—as well as each other. Trust must permeate the entire culture. And because trust begins with leaders, Setili says it’s important to make sure we’re not inadvertently doing things to squelch employee trust.

When things go wrong, your impulse may be to keep information to yourself, hoping the problem will go away. This not only damages trust, it vastly reduces the chances that the problem will be resolved quickly, since problems swept under the rug tend to get worse, not better. Better to tell it like it is. Just say, “I’ve got some bad news to share.” (You may actually feel a surge of relief just to have said the words.) Then explain what the problem is and suggest two or more alternative actions that might be taken to address it.

Click to see slideshow and 7 more mistakes!

The slideshow reviews eight common trust-squashing mistakes leaders make.