Building trust

Do you inspire trust?

First, we make a judgement on their attitude towards us. In the jargon – do they seem benevolent? At work we judge this by how open they are, whether they involve us in decision-making and seem to trust us, and how aware they are of our needs and interests.

Do you over-promise?

Second we judge how able they are to deliver what they say. How straight are they being with us? Are they spinning us a line to keep us quiet? In other words, the bull**** factor.

Do you have a good track record?

Third, and most important, we look at their track record. Have they kept their promises in the past? Have they kept confidences? Have they done that consistently over time?

On a team level, if team members are open with each other, have honest and candid discussions, don’t over-promise but deliver what they do promise, then the team will have high levels of mutual trust and commitment.

Fail on any one of these and trust is diminished. And rebuilding trust is much harder than destroying it. If a particular event has caused mistrust, we can try to explain or apologise to restore people’s trust in us, but it may be a long haul.

But why is trust particularly difficult to sustain as a leader?

Why trusting leaders is hard

Partly it is to do with what you have to do as a leader, and partly it is to do with how people interpret your behaviour.

Leadership involves dealing with change and shifting priorities. Maybe people above you in the hierarchy have changed their minds, maybe circumstances have changed, maybe different customers with different preferences have become more important. As a leader you respond to this by being flexible. Perhaps change priorities for your own team. But unless you keep people fully informed of the what and the why, your team’s imagination will go into overdrive.

There is a well-researched psychological phenomenon known as "sinister attribution". Basically, we are inclined to assume the worst motives for someone else’s bad behaviour (whereas if we showed the same behaviour it would be because the circumstances forced us to behave like that). Hardly fair, but it's a fact.

The importance of consistency

You could almost conjugate a verb around change: I respond flexibly to changing circumstances, you are inconsistent, they can’t make their mind up.

And consistency is a major factor in trust.

So the odds are stacked against leaders being trusted, unless you make a real effort to communicate regularly and openly. Trust is built on decent behaviour, candid communication and delivering on promises.

Trusting the team

Trust is also ‘exchanged’ between people. The more you show me you trust me, the more will I trust you. So it is also important that you show people you trust them - by being fair with them, trusting them with new responsibilities, trusting people to act on their own initiative, and treating every single member of the team as an important individual in their own right. You can find out more about these topics in the 'support and recognition' and 'developing people' sections of the 'Empowering people' page .

1. See eg recent meta-analysis of 600 research papers in Ng, 2017, Transformational leadership and performance outcomes, The Leadership Quarterly, 28 385 - 417