Trust in leadership

by Jamie Ward

Non-executive Director of FMLM Applied and Global Head of Organisation Development, BBC Studios

In these challenging times of pandemic, the issue of trust has never been more in evidence: trust in the NHS and the healthcare sector is at an all-time high – the clap for the NHS every Thursday is not just a sign of thanks for everything you do, it is also a sign of trust in all of you who put others’ interests in front of your own.  Then there are politicians – we know who they are - where trust is at an all-time low. And then there are other organisations like my own, the BBC, where trust seems to oscillate from one end of the spectrum to the other.

But is there anything we can learn about trust from this situation, that we can take back to our roles as leaders, once this crisis is over? I would like to suggest some of my own key observations:

• It is critical for organisations, as it is for leaders: it is a key part of successful collaboration at work. It is also the first step in building an atmosphere of psychological safety in your teams
• It is hard: you need a good dose of authenticity, but you are often standing in front of people who are very different to you, so it is often hard to build that connection
• It takes a long time: building trust does not happen in an instant, it takes time and commitment
• It is fragile: the wrong word or misplaced action can destroy the work of months or years in a moment
• It is repairable: I believe in the redemption of people’s relationships and the possibility to rebuild trust.

So how do you do it?

Fortunately, there are some academics who have done some thinking about how trust is built – and destroyed. This is useful for us as leaders to take back into the workplace, not least because if we can think about where we are particularly strong – or weak – we can do something about it; to become trust-architects and builders, rather than trust-demolition-experts.

One really helpful way of thinking about this is the trust equation, by David Maister:

T = (CR + R + I) ÷ S.O.

Where T = Trust, CR = Credibility, R = Reliability and I = Intimacy.  In other words, our action and behaviour that positively builds trust is rooted in our credibility, how believable we are and whether what we say holds water; our reliability, whether we do what we say and we can be depended on; and our intimacy with others, how good our relationships are and how likeable we are.

S.O. stands for self-orientation. That means if others perceive we are acting in our own interests, or if there is a whiff of selfishness around our actions, it not only destroys trust, but also negates all the positive benefits of credibility, reliability and intimacy. 

So there you have it: we can see this playing out at the macro level all around us in these times of pandemic, but we can also think about how this relates to our own teams and workplaces and where we personally might wobble as leaders. 

Additional resources

• Amy Edmundson, TED talk: “How to turn a group of strangers into a team”
• David Maister, The Trusted Advisor
• Frances Frei, TED Talk: “How to build and rebuild Trust”