Why trust erodes when guardrails are breached

🗣️“It’s just one missed 1:1, no big deal.” 🗣️“It was just a joke, they’re too sensitive.” 🗣️“Let’s keep this between us, no need to involve the whole team.” None of these break a team on their own. No raised voices. No visible drama. Just small signals. But these moments compound and quietly teach people in a team: → Don’t expect space. → Be careful what you say → Your input is optional This is what the Broken Windows Theory in Teams is about as a concept inspired by the original concept from social psychology. It’s not about dramatic failures. It’s about micro-signals and provoke more negative behaviors. The ones that go unnoticed and unspoken. Over time, they form a quiet cycle: 1. Small breaches are normalized (“don’t take it personally”) 2. Voices become filtered (“why bother saying it”) 3. Engagement narrows (decisions happen in smaller circles) 4. Trust erodes quietly 🧠That’s why team psychological safety isn’t just “nice to have.” It’s the invisible infrastructure of any effective team. It’s also the heartbeat of inclusive leadership. In my work, I help teams and leaders notice these early signals and rebuild the structures that support bold thinking, shared decision-making, and real collaboration. If your team is quietly holding back, the solution sometimes isn’t louder motivation. It’s deeper safety.

Trust erosion isn't about big betrayals. It's about tiny cracks no one addresses. Your leadership team looks perfect on paper: 🧠 Smart people 🎯 Shared goals 💪 Strong skills But something's off. ⚡ Meetings feel tense. ⏸️ Decisions stall. 🏜️ Innovation dries up. The culprit? Trust microbreaches - those tiny violations that silently poison executive teams from within. ⚡ 7 microbreaches destroying your leadership team: 1. The hijacked idea that loses its original owner 🎭 ↳ "Great suggestion from Marketing" becomes "As I was saying earlier..." ↳ Creates invisible scorecards no one discusses 2. Feedback shared about colleagues, not with them 🗣️ ↳ "Between us, I'm concerned about Sarah's approach" ↳ Makes psychological safety impossible 3. The subtle eye roll during someone's presentation 👁️ ↳ Non-verbal disagreement without accountability ↳ Signals to others which ideas are actually valued 4. Selective listening during team discussions 🎧 ↳ Full attention for some, emails checked during others ↳ Establishes whose input "really matters" 5. Showing up late to only certain people's meetings ⏰ ↳ Time becomes a weapon of priority ↳ Patterns speak louder than apologies 6. The side conversation after meetings 🚪 ↳ Real decisions happen in hallways, not boardrooms ↳ Fragments your team into information silos 7. The pre-meeting lobbying for decisions 🎪 ↳ "I wanted to get your thoughts before the group discussion" ↳ Transforms collaboration into theater The danger? These moments happen so frequently they become invisible. But your team keeps score. Always. 🌟 Breaking the pattern requires immediate action: 1. Name the pattern in real-time ↳ "I noticed that idea was dismissed, then accepted when restated" ↳ Visibility disrupts what thrives in silence 2. Create microrepairs daily ↳ "I interrupted you earlier - I'd like to hear your complete thought" ↳ Small fixes compound faster than offsite retreats 3. Document specific trust behaviors ↳ "We address concerns directly with each other, not about each other" ↳ Reference them when breaches occur ❌ High-performing teams aren't perfect teams. ✅ They're teams that repair trust faster than it breaks. Which microbreach is quietly eroding your leadership team today? Please share below ⬇️ ♻️ Repost to help your network build leadership teams that last. 🔔 Follow Eva Gysling, OLY for more.

I've spent years studying what builds and breaks trust in teams, and one thing is clear: the small, everyday behaviors matter more than grand gestures. Quick check: Which of these trust-eroding behaviors have you observed in your team? ✓ Saying they'll do something but not following through ✓ Arriving late to meetings (or leaving early) without acknowledgment ✓ Interrupting or dismissing others' ideas ✓ Avoiding difficult conversations ✓ Making decisions without appropriate consultation ✓ Speaking about colleagues behind their backs ✓ Responding defensively to feedback In my work with teams across sectors, I've found these "micro-betrayals" gradually erode psychological safety and team cohesion. They're often unintentional, which makes them harder to address—the person breaking trust may not even realize they're doing it. What fascinates me is how differently team members interpret these behaviors. What feels like a minor oversight to one person ("I forgot to send that document") can feel like a significant breach to another ("They didn't value my need for preparation"). Trust isn't just about warm feelings—it's the foundation that makes everything else possible. Research shows that high-trust teams: • Make decisions faster • Implement with greater commitment • Communicate more efficiently • Experience higher engagement • Retain members longer Even more revealing, when one of these trust-eroding behaviors becomes a pattern, team performance can measurably decline within weeks, not months. The good news? Trust can be rebuilt through intentional practices and consistent behavior. I've seen teams transform their culture by focusing on specific trust-building habits and creating accountability structures that support them. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate trust in your current team? What's one thing that could improve that score? If you comment, I'll give you an idea! P.S. If you’re a leader, I recommend checking out my free challenge: The Resilient Leader: 28 Days to Thrive in Uncertainty  https://lnkd.in/gxBnKQ8n

Over the past few days, I’ve seen growing discussion around #jailbreaking frontier models. As a CEO building with #AI every day, I want to be clear about where we stand and why it matters. Innovation without responsibility isn’t progress; it’s risk rebranded. Every model ships with constraints for a reason - to prevent harmful outputs, protect IP, and reduce systemic misuse. Circumventing those protections erodes trust across the entire ecosystem. The right question isn’t “Can we break it?” but “Should we be deploying systems that can be broken this way?” Builders must embed safety-by-design, red-team continuously, and treat jailbreak resilience as a core product requirement, not a compliance afterthought. Open research and community audits are essential, but so are norms. Sharing reproducible jailbreak techniques without context or mitigation guidance creates asymmetric risk, where bad actors often benefit more than defenders. Regulators will eventually catch up, but reputation and responsibility must lead now. Organizations that treat AI safety like security, measurable, testable, reviewable, will earn lasting trust. AI is powerful. Meaningful guardrails aren’t about limiting possibility; they’re about preserving it. If we get this right together, we’ll unlock durable value for consumers and society. If we don’t, we’ll spend years rebuilding trust we could protect today.   At Centific, we’re committed to raising the standard for AI safety by: Running rigorous pre-deployment testing and continuous post-deployment monitoring to catch and close jailbreak vulnerabilities before they reach real-world use. Implementing layered defenses including policy alignment, retrieval governance, prompt hardening, and anomaly detection to reduce misuse and data leakage. Bringing together engineering, security, legal, and policy experts from day one, so safety is built into the foundation of our products, not added after the fact. This is how we protect trust while pushing the boundaries of what AI can do. A special thank you to Abhishek Mukherji, Ph.D. for sparking this important conversation. His work is a testament to the strength of Centific’s #AIResearch arm, where we are advancing safety, resilience, and #ResponsibleAI so the industry can build and deploy #FrontierModels with confidence. I’d love to hear how other leaders are approaching jailbreak resilience and model safety: what’s worked, what hasn’t, and where you’re focusing next? If you’re exploring safety research, red-teaming, or responsible disclosure programs, let’s connect. Building what’s next requires building it safely. Let’s raise the bar together