"Trust is built at the speed of a snail and lost at the speed of a racehorse"

I came across this quote a long time ago, somewhere in the depths of Twitter. I don’t know who the originator was but the quote has stuck with me ever since because it goes to the very heart of how fragile trust is.

Trust isn’t just some one-off thing that you can build at some one-day team build at some fancy hotel. It requires constant attention and effort. A bit like a gardener tending their prize roses, a leader needs to tend to the conditions that build and maintain trust.

Trust goes to the heart of why some organisations are brilliant and others are sub-par. Trust between a leader and their employees. Trust between peers. Trust between partner organisations. Trust within and between teams.

We know that people working in teams with high trust tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction and loyalty to the team and organisation, both of which help performance. Individuals in high trust teams tend to be more open in their communication, proactively sharing ideas and knowledge along with helping to solve problems. And they’re more likely to exhibit lower job stress.

And the impact of trust goes far beyond the walls (real or virtual) of an organisation. Aaron Spinney, writing for Which 50, says,

“All around us, institutional trust is in freefall — across every category, industry and geography”

Spinney draws on the latest findings from the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual global trust survey which measures attitudes about the state of trust in business, government, NGOs and the media. The results of the 2019 Barometer, suggests that while trust in the news and institutions has dropped in the past year, more people are now turning to their employer to be a “source of information about contentious issues”. 

In other words, if ever there was a time that organisational leaders and managers needed to work extra hard at building trust with employees, it’s now. As Brendon Burchard says, in his book High Performance Habits: How extraordinary people become that way,

“In organizational settings, often the greatest thing you can give to others is trust, autonomy, and decision making authority”

What drives us to trust (or not)?

Trust is a multi-faceted thing. There are all sorts of things that drive how trusting we are (or aren’t) and it can be useful for organisational leaders to understand the nuances around trust. Here are some of the main psychological concepts which look at trust in an organisational context:

• The integrative model of trust, developed by Roger C Mayer and James H Davis, suggests trust is the function of a person’s tendency to trust people in general combined with their perceptions of others’ overall trustworthiness. Perceptions are powerful.
• Cognitive and Affective trust foundations, developed by Daniel J McAllister, look at how we use knowledge and emotion. The cognitive trust foundation is where people use the knowledge available to them to make decisions about how trustworthy others are. The affective trust foundation is based on the emotional investment made by a person, and assumes that their effort will be reciprocated by others and hence, build trust.
• Felt trust, a concept developed in 2008 by Sabrina Salamon and Sandra Robinson, is about our need to feel trusted by others, particularly management, in order to engage in trusting behaviour such as sharing knowledge and information. In other words, you need to give trust in order to be trusted.

And if you work in a competitive industry or environment, that needn’t be a barrier to building trust.  A 2018 study published in Science Advances, found working in a competitive industry fostered a greater level of trust among workers. The researchers found that more intense competition in an industry can lead to more prosocial behaviour, such as sharing, co-operation, and volunteering.

Our ability to handle ambiguity might also impact how readily we trust. A study published in Nature Communications looked at the link between a tolerance of ambiguity and prosocial behaviour. Researchers performed a series of experiments in which 200 volunteers (106 female and 94 male participants) first completed a solo gambling game to assess their risk and uncertainty tolerance. The volunteers then played social games in which they had to decide whether to cooperate with or trust other players. Cooperation potentially benefited both players, but cooperators risked being betrayed and losing out. Those people who were tolerant of ambiguity—a kind of uncertainty in which the odds of an outcome are unknown—were more likely to cooperate with and trust other people.

Trust needs to be built at different levels

In 2018, a group of researchers led by Ana Maria Costa, examined 125 studies looking at trust in teams. The researchers found trust is fed at three levels – the individual, the team and the organisation.

At the individual level, trust comes from our personality, i.e. are we high or low trusting? And also comes from the quality and depth of our interpersonal relationships with colleagues.

When we get to team level, it gets a little more complex. Trust at this level is made up of a number of different factors:

• How the team is structured
• Level of similarity between team members, i.e. do they have things in common?
• Strength and depth of relationships between team members
• The extent to which people need to rely on each other to do their work – the more people need to rely on others, the more there was a drive for trust
• The quality of leadership and in particular, how open and emotionally accessible the leader is
•  The team climate, in particularly how psychologically safe the team was for people to be open and honest with each other.

And the wider organisation plays a part in team trust too. The same researchers found:

• Organisational structure and in particular, the extent to which decision making was centralised or decentralised was found to impact trust within and between teams. Highly formal, traditional power-based structures didn’t facilitate high levels of trust in the way participative structures did;
• HR management practices play a part. Reward systems which were seen as fair and motivating by employees were more likely to help facilitate trust in teams; and
• Organisational cultures with clear ethics and strong corporate social responsibility were more likely to facilitate trust. Collaborative cultures were also found to help build trust, along with innovative and co-operative climates where top managers openly shared information in their teams

Your style of leadership plays a big part in trust

In a piece for CEO Magazine, Michelle Gibbings sets out three reasons why building trust is an essential leadership skill. As well as saving time, Gibbings suggests it can help speed up progress and improve your decision making. In an article written for the HR Director, Tony Holmwood suggests that developing helps leaders to better connect with their environment and frees their mindset.

And various academic research outlines the benefits of adopting a specific leadership style when building trust.

In 2017, Neeraj Jaiswal and Rajib Dhar conducted a study involving nearly 600 employees and 48 supervisors across 26 organisations in India. They found that the those leaders who exhibited a servant leadership style inspired an environment of mutual trust in which team members reciprocated through increased creativity.

And in 2019, researchers from the University of Exeter found leaders who had a servant leadership style created a positive culture of trust and fairness in the workplace. In turn, these leaders benefited through creating loyal and positive teams. The researchers found that this type of leader has personal integrity and is also keen to encourage staff development. They also found clear evidence of a link between a servant leadership style and increased productivity.

Alex Koohang, Joanna Paliszkiewicz and Jerzy Goluchowski built a research model to examine whether effective leadership is a foundation for increased trust. They were also interested in whether increased trust led to better knowledge management and, in turn, if this led to improved organisational performance. The researchers found that:

1. Effective leadership of self, others and the organisation is a foundation for greater levels of trust.
2. Increased trust, as a result of effective leadership, contributes to the successful implementation of knowledge management practices.
3. Successful knowledge management practices, as a result of increased trust stemming from effective leadership, significantly and positively contributes to better organisational performance.

Underpinning this research was the earlier work of Joanna Paliszkiewicz and colleagues which found the 15 characteristics of effective leadership to be:

1. Leading organisational change
2. Listening
3. Seeking feedback
4. Leading innovation
5. Empowering
6. Managing time
7. Motivating employees
8. Interpersonal communication
9. Learning
10. Being grounded in values/principles
11. Influencing and being flexible
12. Understanding individual differences/ diversity and inclusion
13. Leading and resolving conflict
14. Being self-aware
15. Building/sustaining relationships among people

And as I outlined earlier, don’t underestimate the impact of how you’re perceived. Ryan Gottfredson and Herman Aguinis, from Indiana State University, conducted a review of more than 3000 studies and nearly 1million individual behaviours. They found that employee performance was more influenced by the perception they had of a leader than anything else. One positive standard deviation in relationship between employee and leader resulted in significantly more sales and better performance. This is why tools such as 360-degree feedback are such an important part of leadership development programmes.

Got an issue with knowledge sharing in your organisation? Trust issues might be a cause

Researchers from the University of Bern conducted two experiments looking at the impact of age, trustworthiness, motivation to share knowledge, and ability to receive knowledge. They found high levels of trustworthiness helped reduce the risks of sharing and receiving knowledge, such as admitting gaps in knowledge or being seen as less knowledgeable. In other words, if you are seen as trustworthy, you are more likely to get information or the knowledge you share is seen as a reliable source. Therefore, if people in your team or organisation are keeping information and knowledge to themselves, then you might want to look at it from a trust viewpoint.  

And in a survey of over 1,100 people across Norway, a group of researchers led by Christine G L Nerstad examined perceptions of mastery, climate and trust. At an individual level, knowledge sharing was driven to some degree by a perceived mastery climate where success and failure were based around co-operation, helping, learning and effort. This in turn was underpinned by people feeling trusted by their manager. This aggregated up to a team level, where a mastery climate was a direct predictor of the collective team feeling trusted by the manager and therefore, being prepared to share information and knowledge more readily.

And if you’re still not convinced, then perhaps heed the words of Brene Brown, in her book Dare to Lead,

“We ignore trust issues at the expense of our own performance, and the expense of our team's and organization's success”

What can you do to build and maintain trust?

1) Improve your communication

A group of researchers looked at how employees in two (nearly identical) manufacturing factories responded to unwelcome and unexpected news. Researchers surveyed employees immediately after the announcement and found it provoked widespread dissatisfaction, stress, and distrust in both factories. In one factory, employees received only vague communications during the subsequent three months after the announcement was made. In the other factory, a detailed communication plan was implemented. As the change went on, employees in the high communication factory felt much more secure about their jobs, less stressed, more committed and reported better job performance compared to colleagues in the other factory, where no such improvements occurred.

As Paul Jarvis says in his book, Company of One,

“Marketing is simply building a sense of trust and empathy with a specific group of people by consistently communicating with them”

While his focus is on marketing and building a company, I’d say this quote is also relevant for just about anyone who leads a team.

2) Implement a programme of regular team-building activity

A UK research team, from Norwich Business School at the University of East Anglia, examined the kind of interventions that were said to help build good social environments in the workplace. In particular, they were interested in the notion that good social work environments can help well-being and performance. They looked at the following kinds of interventions:

• Focus groups;
• Team-building activity;
• Participation in improving an appraisal system;
• Group training followed by individual coaching; and
• Mentoring to foster collaboration.

The researchers found that for any of the interventions to have a chance of success the following four conditions need to be in place:

1. The activities needed to be sustained over time, i.e. shouldn’t be a one-off;
2. External facilitation was required;
3. A variety of complementary activities should be used (formal versus informal); and
4. Employees should have positive attitudes toward activities.

3) Show you care about what people say

In a video filmed for the Kellogg Business School, at Northwestern University, Harry Kraemer sets out the four ways leaders can build trust. He says good leaders are able to “establish trust because they demonstrate they really care about what each person has to say”

In fact, trust is seen as such an important organisational issue that Kellogg Business School has created The Trust Project, which brings together research, insight and practical advice to help leaders build trust.

4) Remember the Trust Triangle

Developed by John Carter, from the Gestalt Center for Organization and Systems Development in the US, the 'trust triangle' offers a useful framework for thinking about trust.

The three foundation stones of the triangle are:

1. Straight talk
2. Listening for understanding
3. Making commitments

Straight talk means direct, honest conversations and sharing all the information you have available. This includes sharing information that might be counter to the argument a leader might be trying to make.

Listening to understand supports straight talk. This brings to mind the work of Stephen Covey and his habit of 'seek to understand before you can be understood. Listening to understand means suspending your own arguments, thoughts and biases. This is the opposite of what many of us do when we half-listen because in the background our minds are working to come up with a clever response.

The final foundation stone is about committing to a course of action. Trust is built when commitments are kept. In the event a commitment can't be kept, then see foundation stone one - have a direct, honest conversation about why things have changed.

Without all three of these foundation stones in place, you can’t hope to move up the triangle. You won’t be seen as reliable. You won’t gain trust. And you won’t be respected.

In my experience of teaching leaders the triangle, it can evoke feelings of vulnerability. Whether it’s vulnerability caused by fear of having an honest, difficult discussion; or whether it’s vulnerability around giving up a bit of power – because to listen and make commitments means having to let go a bit. But remember,

“Vulnerability doesn't come after trust - it precedes it. Leaping into the unknown, when done alongside others, causes the solid ground of trust to materialize beneath our feet” – Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code

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Hayley Lewis is a chartered occupational psychologist, consultant and lecturer specialising in organisational culture and leadership. Her consultancy, HALO Psychology, provides leadership and management development, expertise around building high-performance teams and support with organisational culture change.