As more corporate and political leaders are taking to Twitter as a platform for their latest messaging, we're confronted, sometimes assaulted, by the way they can do this in ways that challenge and destroy trust in 140 characters.
There is a reason why many leaders benefit from messaging experts and media appropriate to the enormous and volatile signal-sending that even the smallest leader communication can create.
Leader tweets threaten and damage trust when people read something on Twitter that they feels puts them in an untenable spot in the public limelight. The leader puts them between the rock of responding in public to something that belongs to a private conversation and a hard place of not publically responding.
Taking a personal conversation or matter onto social media will put trust and trustworthiness at risk. Some leaders are so socially unconsciousness the dynamics of these cues elude them and trust will fail.
It's a call for more public conversations on if and how leaders should use Twitter and any social media in trust-sensitive contexts.