How Low Trust Slows Every Decision in Your Management Layer

In a 2002 GolinHarris survey of employees, 69% of respondents said "I just don't know who to trust anymore." Eighteen years later, the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer report found that 66% of people have no confidence in their current leaders to address their country's challenges. Trust is being eroded across the media, through political events, environmental incidents and employer actions during COVID. The one piece of good news: employers are globally seen as more trustworthy than almost every institution except medical ones, and well ahead of governments.

The problem is that most leaders, myself included at times, are not entirely sure what trust is or how to build it. It feels like an ethereal concept. When I work with teams on this, some have an intuitive sense of trust and are already working at it. Others look away and mutter about it being "fluffy stuff." And there is a practical difficulty underneath all of that: if trust is low in a team, how do you even start the conversation? It feels circular. Though in my experience, you can.

The Edelman Barometer makes something clear that most leaders find surprising. Ethical drivers such as integrity, dependability and purpose account for 76% of the trust capital of a company, while competence accounts for only 24%. Visibly doing the right thing matters three times more to your people than financial performance and shareholder returns. There is an obvious tension there, because the business still has to make money to survive.

I have been working with the idea that trust operates at three levels: Self, Teams and Systems. To build it, you start with yourself, get your own house in order, then look to others, and then to the system you occupy. I use the acronym SERVICE as a framework for this. You can grab my free SERVICE in Trust worksheet in the free resources library.

SERVICE applies to how you frame your communications, your one-to-ones and your interactions with yourself and all stakeholders. There is considerably more to it, which I cover in my 1:1 programme (get in touch for a free session if you want to learn more), but here are the core ideas:

SERVICE stands for:

Safety covers both health and safety and psychological safety. Are you looking after your own mental health and wellbeing, and that of the people around you? Are you watching the right indicators for changes in absenteeism or incidents?

Empathy means listening to yourself and others and hearing what is being said, including how people are feeling. COVID pushed many leaders into a task-focused, survivalist mode to get through each week. Be kinder to yourself, and make space to hear the challenges your people are carrying across work, home and other pressures.

Reliability is about managing your routines and practices to keep yourself on track. Consistent habits like exercise and reflection help you trust your own mind and body to hold up. For your team, it means doing what you said you would do. They need to know you have their backs, and they respond well to communication that comes out every week without fail.

Value asks whether you are valuing yourself and the people around you. Are you making space for what matters? Are you watching for signs that your team is burning out? Are you clear on what your organisation offers and communicating it in the right way?

Inclusion covers whether your whole team is brought into decisions, changes and communications. Are you including yourself in time off and holiday planning? Are you checking in with people working remotely to make sure they are not falling behind on information that those in the office have access to? Are your clients included in your communications so they know when to expect delivery?

Clarity is the single biggest differentiator for team performance: everyone being clear on the purpose of the team. Are you clear on why you are there and what you are working on? Is everyone else? Keep your communications short, regular and simple.

Expectations asks whether you are clear and comfortable with what is expected of you, and whether that is aligned with your own balance. Do the people around you know what is expected in terms of working from home and when to be in the office?

There is a lot more to this tool, but these questions give you a starting point for honest self-auditing and for taking sensible steps towards building trust across your team.

If this sounds like your week

Your managers are not the problem. They are where the problem is stuck.

When your last leadership spend was signed off, did anyone go back to those managers' bosses and ask what changed? That question is the JBL Outcome Standard, and it is how I work.

• Find the friction. A short diagnostic that shows which decisions are stalling, and at what level.
• Am I the bottleneck? Ten questions on where your week is actually going.
• How I work with GMs. Six weeks, one hour a week, up to twelve of your managers, scored by their own bosses.
• Beat Burnout, Boost Performance. The book.
• The High Performance Leader podcast.

Managers I work with reclaim around four hours a week, and their bosses score the change 8.75 out of 10. Would it be a crazy idea to find out how we did this? Book a scoping call.

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