This Common Leadership Habit Will Harm Your Credibility. Are You Guilty of It? As leaders, we're always looking for ways to build credibility among peers and employees. But this easy-to-make mistake can ruin it in an instant.

Talk is cheap. It's far easier to say we'll do something than it is to actually do it.

Executive coach and speaker Amy M. Chambers is an expert in this topic. "In my experience, the fastest way to build trust is to make and keep commitments," she says. "When people say what they'll do and then do what they say, we instantly feel more bonded and connected to them. Because this isn't always common in leadership and life, consistently keeping your word can dramatically differentiate you from the rest. But what about when the reverse happens? Some argue that making a commitment and not keeping it damages trust more than never having made it at all."

Building credibility is a long process, but it can easily come undone with one big mistake. This excerpt from Chambers' recent book, the 7 V.I.R.T.U.E.S. of Exceptional Leaders, aptly conveys the importance of accountability as a leader. It also serves as a warning to other leaders: Your audience is always watching, and your actions can have unintentional consequences.

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We've all probably had that manager or boss or teacher who talked about how important it was to do something and then turned around and did the opposite. Invariably, we lose respect for these people, and what they say loses meaning. This doesn't always happen consciously. Instead, for most of us it's a subconscious response, but one we somehow remember.

While getting my MBA in 2008, I saw this lesson in action. We attended class in the evenings, and during our first year of instruction, we took two classes at a time. Our program was divided into two "cores," and we'd take our classes in adjacent but separate rooms. In the middle of each evening, there would be a short break when the two professors teaching us would switch rooms while we stayed put. By the end of the night, both groups had been taught both topics by both professors.

During spring semester, my first class was taught by an especially vocal and passionate professor named Carl. As he began class one evening, he pulled down a dry-erase whiteboard to use it, only to find that it was covered in writing from a professor who had taught earlier that day. To add insult to injury, he couldn't find any spray to go with the paper towels, so someone had to leave the room to go grab him some so he could effectively erase the whole board. Carl tended to become impatient whenever there was any delay in the advancement of learning, and as he waited for the student to come back with the spray, he had a hard time containing his irritation. Carl loudly complained, "This is the classic sign of a terrible professor. They don't clean up after themselves. There's a rule in academia: You always erase your board." When the board was finally erased, he spent a majority of class drawing and writing all over it, and after the formal lecture was over and we moved into Q&A, Carl rolled that board up into its place.

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At the break, he and the professor switched classrooms as usual, and early in our class with the second instructor, she, too, pulled down the whiteboard to use it. Sure enough, clear as day, was Carl's writing all over it. The whiteboard was even more marked up than when Carl had found it some two hours prior. The entire room burst into laughter.

Fourteen years later, I still remember this moment. We were all in stitches. "He didn't erase the board!" many of us howled. I also remember the sheer confusion on our second professor's face. She hadn't been there for Carl's earlier rant, so nothing was amusing to her. To us, it was everything.

Carl had made such a stink over the failure to erase the board. Then he turned around and did the same thing only an hour later. One thing that stands out to me was how immediately funny everyone thought it was. The room that night was filled with ethnic, racial, religious, gender and age diversity, but we all cackled away. The concept of hypocrisy or double standards is universal. As Larry the Cable Guy would say, "That's funny. I don't care who you are."

But there was also a sad reality to it. Many of us, including me, viewed that professor as a leader until this moment — someone I could trust to do the right thing; someone who knew a lot of things. I had placed an expectation on him to lead by example and show me the way. Sure, he was only there to teach us a particular subject, but I had viewed professors as pseudo-experts on life too. My mother was an educator for 36 years and taught me from a young age that we should always respect those who teach us.

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That day, what I observed was not leadership but stupidity. Carl had made such a show out of being irritated by someone else's behavior but engaged in the same behavior immediately afterward. I might not have been able to put it into words then, but it was the ultimate betrayal of accountability. For years now, my definition of accountability is that "We do what we say." When people do the opposite, it becomes difficult to trust them. Without trust, we have nothing.

Leadership is hard work. Some say "You're always on stage," and that's true. Others aspire to be you or be like you. They, too, want to know and understand how they can rise the ranks, make more money and have the corner office — which many believe comes with respect and a feeling that you've made it. They watch you so they can learn from you and figure out how to mirror your behaviors. It's a compliment of the highest order, but as immortalized in the Spider-Man comic books, "With great power comes great responsibility," and sadly, some are not ready for that responsibility. And those who aren't really shouldn't be in leadership.

This story was written with excerpts from the book 7 V.I.R.T.U.E.S. of Exceptional Leaders. Buy it now from Good Reads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Walmart