Brief Overview
Key Points:
Trust consists of four distinct assessments: sincerity, reliability, competence, and care
Care is particularly critical for broad, lasting trust relationships
Trust is a choice to make something valuable vulnerable to another's actions
Environments of distrust create defensive behaviors that impair productivity
Practical Applications:
Regularly self-assess against the four distinctions of trust. Ask yourself weekly: "Where might gaps exist between my words and actions? Have I kept all my commitments? Am I transparent about my limitations? Do my decisions reflect care for others?"
Address distrust directly through conversation rather than avoidance. When you sense distrust brewing, initiate a focused discussion about specific concerns. Use phrases like: "I've noticed some hesitation about this project. Can we talk about what might be causing concern?"
Pay attention to how your words and actions align (or don't). Maintain a decision log that tracks what you said you would do versus what happened. Review it periodically for patterns and blind spots.
Recognize when organizational structures undermine trust-building efforts. Audit your team's incentive structures, meeting practices, and communication channels. Identify and modify elements that inadvertently encourage competition over collaboration.
Building Trust: The Heart Leadership
As a leader, you've likely heard countless times that trust is essential for effective leadership. But how often have you had the opportunity to deeply examine what trust means in practice or develop concrete strategies for building it when relationships have been damaged?
"We're never so vulnerable than when we trust someone—but paradoxically, if we cannot trust, neither can we find love or joy."
The Trust Equation: Four Distinct Assessments
Research reveals that trust isn't a monolithic concept but instead comprises four separate assessments that people make about others' trustworthiness:
Sincerity: This is about alignment—between what you think, say, and do. As a leader, your team constantly evaluates whether you "mean what you say and say what you mean." When you express opinions, are they backed by evidence? Do your actions match your stated values?
Practical Application: Record key messages before and after meetings to check for consistency in what you intended to communicate versus what you actually said. This practice helps identify gaps between thoughts and words.
Reliability: Simply put, do you keep your promises? Team members assess whether they can count on you to follow through on commitments, large and small. A pattern of reliability creates psychological safety and predictability, allowing people to focus on their work rather than worrying about whether support will materialize.
Practical Application: Use a shared tracking system for commitments where you and team members can see what was promised and when it was delivered. Celebrate consistent delivery and discuss any patterns of missed commitments.
Competence: This assessment centers on your capability to perform your role effectively. It's not about being perfect at everything but about knowing your strengths and limitations. Importantly, competence includes being transparent about what you can and cannot do, as captured in the statement: "I know I can do this. I don't know if I can do that."
Practical Application: Create a "Skills and Gaps" inventory with your team where everyone (including you) honestly assesses areas of expertise and development needs. Normalize phrases like "I'll need to learn more about that" or "Let me find someone who knows this better than I do."
Care: Perhaps the most transformative element of trust is the assessment that you have others' interests in mind alongside your own when making decisions.
Practical Application: Before announcing decisions, explicitly document how the interests of different stakeholders were considered. Share this reasoning to demonstrate that others' needs are factored into your thinking process.
"Of the four assessments of trustworthiness, care is in some ways the most important for building lasting trust. When people believe you are only concerned with your self-interest and don't consider their interests as well, they may trust your sincerity, reliability, and competence, but they will tend to limit their trust of you to specific situations or transactions."
The Cost of Distrust
One of the most compelling insights about organizational trust is the precise cost of distrust:
"The disaster of distrust in the workplace is that the strategies people use to protect themselves inevitably get in the way of their ability to effectively work with others."
Consider your own organization. How much time and energy is spent on defensive behaviors—avoiding, withholding information, documenting every interaction, double-checking others' work, or engaging in political maneuvering? These protective measures directly reduce productivity and innovation.
Practical Application: Calculate your organization's "distrust tax" by estimating hours spent on defensive activities (duplicate checking, excessive documentation, bypassing problematic relationships). Convert this to financial terms to make the cost visible.
In environments of distrust, people's neurophysiology actually changes. The brain's defense system activates, stress hormones increase and access to higher-level thinking becomes limited. By contrast, trusting environments allow full access to the neocortex and foster collaborative behaviors like open communication and productive debate.
Practical Application: Monitor meeting behaviors for signs of the "distrust cascade"—defensive body language, circular arguments, or withdrawal. When observed, call a brief pause to reset the physiological response before continuing.
The Truth About Truth-Seeking
For leaders committed to building trust, truth-seeking becomes an essential practice. This goes beyond simple honesty to actively pursuing accurate understanding, even when it challenges existing beliefs or exposes uncomfortable realities.
Practical Application: Institute a team practice where someone is specifically assigned to challenge assumptions and find flaws in a proposal. This normalizes constructive dissent and demonstrates a commitment to finding truth rather than confirming biases.
Research shows that leadership approaches to truth have dramatic impacts on team performance. Leaders who check facts before speaking and base opinions on shared evidence create environments where team members feel safe to share ideas, debate productively, and take appropriate risks. By contrast, leaders who avoid the truth—blaming others for mistakes, arguing against factual corrections, and creating cultures where self-protection trumps collaboration—often lead the lowest-performing teams.
Practical Application: Regularly acknowledge your mistakes publicly, explaining what you learned. This "fallibility practice" signals that truth is valued over ego protection and creates space for others to be similarly honest.
Building Trust: Practical Steps
1. Recognize trust as a choice. Trust is "choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person's actions." This framing reminds us that trust isn't merely an emotional state but an active decision about risk management.
Practical Application: Ask team members what they feel is at risk when collaborating with others. Their answers will reveal what they value most and what might prevent deeper trust relationships.
2. Assess your trustworthiness honestly. Research shows that most people rate their trustworthiness higher than others. This suggests that people you work with may judge your trustworthiness differently than you imagine.
Practical Application: Conduct a personal trust audit using the four distinctions. For each category, collect specific examples of when you demonstrated—or failed to demonstrate—each quality.
3. Address the four distinctions intentionally. When trust issues arise, get specific: Is the concern about sincerity, reliability, competence, or care? Targeted diagnosis leads to more effective interventions.
Practical Application: When facing resistance or tension, ask direct questions to identify which trust component might be at issue: "Are you concerned I don't have the right expertise for this? (competence)" or "Are you worried I won't follow through? (reliability)"
4. Create organizational structures that support trust. Your organization's environment may make it difficult for you to be consistent. Consider how compensation structures, reporting relationships, and team configurations might inadvertently foster distrust.
Practical Application: Review how your recognition and reward systems might pit team members against each other. Replace zero-sum achievements with collaborative goals that require mutual success.
5. Talk about trust directly. When distrust exists, address it explicitly rather than hoping it will resolve itself. Frameworks exist for having productive conversations about trust breakdowns.
Practical Application: Normalize trust conversations by adding "trust velocity" as a regular team discussion topic, not just when problems arise. Ask: "What's helping us trust each other more readily this week? What's creating friction?"
The most potent leaders understand that trust isn't just a nice-to-have—it's the foundation upon which all effective collaboration rests. By approaching trust-building with intention and understanding the distinct elements of trustworthiness, you can create environments where people and organizations thrive.
Reference
Feltman, C. (2009). The thin book of trust: An essential primer for building trust at work. Thin Book Publishing Co.
I love that you gave practical applications after your main points; it really helps busy leaders turn ideas into action.
Be true and follow through .... from a position of care and support. Pretty good message there.