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How do you earn trust?  This is going to be beyond a few trust falls.  Real trust is built over time.  It can be hard to earn, but also easily lost. So why put in the work to establish trust? As a leader without trust of your employees, you will struggle to achieve a productive workplace.  People stay, are loyal, and put in the extra mile when they feel safe, when they believe their boss has their back. I’ve seen many highly intelligent professionals struggle to succeed in a team or to move the next level of their career, and often it is lack of trust and mutual respect that is holding them back. For teams, having psychological safety is absolutely foundational to be a high performing team. The sense of camaraderie, the ability to move faster because your not watching your back, and the certainty of knowing you can count on the other person doing their part while you do yours is what enables the team to perform faster and better than any other team.

Let’s first talk about what we mean by trust.  There are many types of trust, each addressing different levels of relationships. Starting first with self, trust can be seen and is needed on an interpersonal and organizational level for companies to thrive.  Market level trust is needed for the external relationship organizations have with their customers, shareholders, and community. In the broadest context, societal trust is the general belief in people and that your community and the tribe or nation you belong to will support and protect you.

In this article, we will focus on interpersonal trust and how to strengthen it. Interpersonal trust is what you as a leader and an individual in an organization and team have control over. However, as you read through the elements of trust and how to build trust, it’s worth exploring how this relates to trust within yourself and the level of trust you are building for the organization as a whole. 

What is Trust?

What is trust exactly? It may seem like an enigma.  You know when you have it but you also spend plenty of time in the middle ground, where it’s not quite there. Something's missing and you’re just not sure what it is.  Describing it seems ambiguous. It is almost easier to define when you don’t have trust, to be able to identify what went wrong, rather than the steps taken to build trust in a relationship.   If we were to interview people on the street and ask them to define trust, likely the responses would be ambiguous and abstract using words like “belief”, “vulnerable”, “safe”.   Thankfully, David Maister in his book, The Trusted Advisor, introduced a construct called the Trust Equation to help explain what contributes to the feeling of trust. For us analytical folks, having an equations that can put feelings into words is a stroke of genius. 

So what is the trust equation?  There are now a few versions and many iterations out there.  The one we use has five variables that contribute to how credible and how connected you feel towards other individuals.

Trust =  (competence + reliability + sincerity + empathy) / (self-orientation)

In the equation, competence, reliability, sincerity, empathy are all ways to build trust, where as self-orientation is a destroyer of trust. 

• Competence relates to the quality of your work. Are you able to do it?
• Reliability relates to how responsible you are. Do you do what you say you will do?
• Sincerity relates to how honest you are. Do you tell the truth?
• Empathy relates to how vulnerable you are. How comfortable are you showing emotions?
• Self-orientation relates to where your interests lie.  Do you care more about your own interests than others?

The trust equation can be seen as comprised of two parts: the components that build credibility and the components that build relationships. Trust requires both belief in credibility and a feeling of connection.

Looking at credibility, what makes people believe you a capable is a combination of the output of your work, "competence", the consistency of your actions, "reliability", and how honest they believe you are, "sincerity". The quality of your relationships starts with the foundation of credibility, but also how you interact with others.  The quality of interactions are a combination of the emotions and vulnerability, "empathy", you bring to conversations and the perceived motivations of your actions, "self-orientation". 

How to build trust with your employees and co-workers

As a leader, the most important components of the trust equation to work on are the ones associated with developing relationships. I hypothesize this is because when you are given authority in an organization, there is a level of belief in your credibility and that is why you have been given the role. However, just because you have the authority and people believe you are credible, doesn’t mean team members feel they can trust you.  To be an effective leader and gain the trust of your team, you need to build connections with your people. They need to know that you have empathy towards them and that your orientation is for the interests of the team over yourself. 

Focusing on the relationship oriented components, let’s talk about ways you can build trust. 

Empathy

Employees feel valued when when you establish emotional trust through empathy.

• Demonstrate vulnerability by sharing your mistakes and weaknesses with your team and direct reports
• Ask about how others are feeling, demonstrating care and understanding
• Practice deep listening
• Strengthen your EQ

Self-Orientation

Remember self-orientation reduces trust. To build trust in leadership the goal is to reduce focus on self-interests for the interests of the team or other person.

• Seek understanding of what the team needs
• Work with the team on defining the groups strategy and priorities
• Communicate how your priorities align to the success of the team 
• Regularly do favors that do not benefit you at all, only the other person
• Prioritize your time with your direct reports over meetings with your boss. Immovable meetings = one-to-ones with your advisees
• In times of high stress or tight deadlines, take note of your decision making, are you acting in the best interest of the group or yourself? These are the critical times that can impact your perceived level of self-orientation

Building Trust with your teammates

When you are on a team, all components are important for establishing mutual trust.  However, some are easier to demonstrate earlier, while others take time.  The relationship elements are usually the ones that take the most time, while earning credibility can be done early on in the first tasks you and the team take on.  So let’s focus on tips for building trust in the credibility elements. 

Competence

• Know your abilities, take the time to really understand where your strengths and weaknesses are so you know how you can best contribute.
• Ask for help. Be open to learning and growing, increasing your skills shows you can be trusted to take on tasks.
• Understand the expectations: agree on what success looks like. Trust is your abilities can be broken down if everyone is not on the same page of what was expected.  You give them a report that looks like X, but they were expecting Y.  They now assume you can’t deliver Y. 

Reliability

• Communicate timelines upfront and deliver.  If someone is expecting you to be done by end of the day, but you give it to them the next morning, they start thinking you aren’t reliable.  It’s on you to ask and clarify when something is expected.
• Ask for unspoken assumptions upfront. 
• Communicate early and often. Number one depleted of trust is lack of communication. Even quick status updates will show that you are giving the work a priority for the team.  
• Avoid last minute surprises, communicate issues and risk as soon as they occur.  Ever been on a project where the status is green, green, green, then the week before a major milestone, its turns red?  Jobs have been lost because of this.  Best advice ever given to me is never hide a problem and think you can solve it on your own before anyone knows. If there is risk, communicate it. This also will help build belief in our last category, sincerity.

Sincerity

• Be honest about limitations on timeframes and your capabilities. As a consultant, I have gained more long-term clients by saying no to bidding on a piece of work. Telling a client this is not a strength and that I will recommend someone but cannot do the work shows that I am honest. It also shows that I care about their success more than my own, demonstrating my orientation is not entirely towards me.  
• Explain the intent behind your actions. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions as a leader.  We may have to stop a project, move funds to a different initiative, or say no to an investment.  Being honest and upfront about why, shows your actions are congruent with your character.
• Don’t bury the lead! If you have something difficult to say, just come out with it.  If you are giving someone corrective feedback, don’t squeeze it into the ol’ complement sandwich. If you need to ask for help, don’t do after you have showered them in niceties and complements.  Ask for the help or favor, then give the complements.  You are much more believable if your praise is not seen as a condition for something in return.

Building trust takes time, effort, and a commitment to improve yourself. It is critical to remember that you can't fake it to build trust, each of the components listed above require significant effort to strengthen. If you find that you generally score low in one or more of these areas, focus on how to improve these over time to build stronger interpersonal relationships, and understand that these aren't changes that can be made overnight. There is nothing that destroys trust faster than an individual who pretends to be something they're not. In particular, for highly visible leaders, when you fake a persona of an empathetic, sincere, reliable, and low self-oriented leader then demonstrate a completely different persona in times of high-stress, trust is lost completely. This can be extremely difficult to win back. I've seen entire teams revolt against their leadership after situations such as these. With the trust equation, it can be done, starting by demonstrating vulnerability, admitting your mistakes, committing to acting differently in the future, and finally, seeing it through.

Tools and exercises: 

These help especially with building relationship part of trust

• Leaders: new leader assimilation - this is an incredible tool to use when you are a new leader taking over an already formed team
• Individuals and team members: Personal canvas (aka personal users manual)
• Teams: working agreements, team building exercises

Resources 

• The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, Robert M. Galford
• Daring Greatly by Brené Brown 
• Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni 

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