Leadership Horizons

How Leaders Gain and Maintain Trust

• Lois Burton • Episode 16

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Trust might be a small word, but it carries enormous implications for leaders at every level. When trust flourishes, teams achieve remarkable outcomes and navigate challenges with remarkable resilience. When it falters, even the most brilliant strategies and innovative ideas wither on the vine.

Drawing from decades of executive coaching experience, I explore the seven fundamental elements that allow leaders to build deep, sustainable trust with their teams. 

We begin with the critical alignment between words and actions - that space where trust either flourishes or dies. Through real-world examples, I demonstrate how leaders who meticulously align their stated values with daily behaviors create environments where trust thrives naturally.

The journey continues through often-overlooked dimensions of trust-building: the counterintuitive power of appropriate vulnerability, creating psychological safety while maintaining high standards, demonstrating competence while continuously growing, communicating transparently (especially during uncertainty), showing genuine care for people as whole human beings, and modeling constructive accountability. Each element is illustrated with practical examples from my coaching practice, revealing both the pitfalls of trust-eroding behaviors and the transformative impact of getting trust right.

You'll discover why the highest-performing teams combine psychological safety with extremely high expectations, why information vacuums are so dangerous during uncertain times, and how shifting from blame-focused to learning-oriented accountability can revolutionize team performance. 

Whether you're looking to establish, strengthen, or rebuild trust, this episode provides concrete, actionable strategies you can implement immediately.Trust isn't built through grand gestures or declarations - it's cultivated through consistent behaviors day by day, decision by decision. The leaders who understand this fundamental truth create environments where both people and performance flourish together. 

What step will you take today to strengthen trust with your team?

Leadership Horizons - Helping You Lead Beyond Boundaries

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to Leadership Horizons, where we explore leadership at its most transformative. I'm your host, lois Burton, an executive coach and leadership specialist who is passionate about helping leaders and their teams become the best they can be. I started this podcast because, in this changing world of ours, leaders matter. It's only with great, transformative leadership that we can navigate both the challenges and the immense opportunities we have right now. The way we led yesterday is not going to lead us into tomorrow, so we need to explore our horizons, and that's precisely what this podcast aims to do.

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Today, we're talking about one of the most foundational aspects of effective leadership trust. How leaders gain, maintain and sometimes rebuild trust. This isn't just another soft skill. It's the bedrock of all meaningful leadership relationships. Trust, a small word with enormous implications. Without it, even the most brilliant strategies fail, the most innovative ideas wither and the most well-intentioned changes meet resistance. With it, teams achieve remarkable outcomes, navigate challenges with resilience and create cultures where people thrive.

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In my decades of working with executives, I've observed that trust isn't something you can demand or decree. It must be earned moment by moment, decision by decision. And that's our focus today the practical, actionable ways leaders can build deep, sustainable trust. Let's start with a fundamental truth. Trust is built on consistency between what you say and what you do. It sounds simple, but how many of us have experienced leaders whose words and actions don't align? The gap between pronouncements and practice is where trust goes to die. I worked with a CEO who would declare people are our greatest asset, while simultaneously making decisions that clearly indicated people were disposable resources. The executive team saw through this disconnect immediately and trust eroded to the point where even genuinely good initiatives were met with scepticism. By contrast, I coached another leader who made fewer grand statements, but ensured that every action aligned with her expressed values. When she said well-being mattered, she modelled it by respecting boundaries and encouraging recovery time. When she said innovation was welcome, she created psychological safety for people to take risks without fear of punishment for failure. The result a team that trusted her implicitly, even when facing difficult decisions. So the first principle of building trust as a leader is align your words and actions meticulously. Be vigilant about living your stated values, especially when doing so is challenging. If you remember, in the episode when I talked about values, I said that one of the barriers to people expressing their values was that then they face the challenge of living them. So, when you express your values already have thought about how am I going to model these values on a day-to-day moment-by-moment.

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The second crucial element in building trust is vulnerability. Not weakness, but the courage to be authentically human. Leaders often feel pressure to project unwavering certainty, yet research and experience show that appropriate vulnerability creates deeper connection and, counter-intuitively, greater confidence in leadership. What does this look like in practice? It means acknowledging when you don't have all the answers. It means admitting mistakes promptly and taking responsibility without defensiveness. It means sharing your thinking process, including doubts and considerations when appropriate. I coached an executive who transformed her team's performance by simply changing how she approached uncertainty. Rather than pretending to know everything, she began saying things like here's what I know, here's what I'm still figuring out and here's how I'm approaching these unknowns. The team's trust in her skyrocketed because they were no longer navigating the dissonance between what she projected and what they observed. Remember, authentic vulnerability doesn't diminish authority. It humanizes it in a way that creates deeper, more resilient trust.

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The third essential aspect of trust building is providing psychological safety, creating an environment where people feel they can speak up without fear of embarrassment, rejection or punishment. Many leaders I've worked with initially confuse psychological safety with lowering standards or avoiding tough conversations. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the highest performing teams combine psychological safety with extremely high expectations. Here's what this looks like. When someone raises a concern or points out a potential problem, do you respond with curiosity or defensiveness? When someone makes a mistake, is the focus on blame or learning? When dissenting opinions emerge in meetings, are they welcomed as valuable perspectives or subtly or not so subtly discouraged? I worked with a leadership team that transformed from potentially dysfunctional to exceptional by implementing a simple practice listen to understand before responding to be understood. This fundamental shift suspending the rush to judgment long enough to truly comprehend another's perspective dramatically increased psychological safety and, with it, trust.

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The fourth element of building trust involves competence and growth. People trust leaders who demonstrate capability while continuously developing themselves and others. This isn't about knowing everything. It's about having the core competencies your role requires, while maintaining the humility to keep growing. It's also about investing genuinely in others' development rather than seeing their growth as a threat to your position. A senior leader I coached realized that they had been subtly undermining talented team members out of insecurity. When they shifted to actively sponsoring these high potential individuals, not only did the team's trust increase, but the leader found their own influence and respect growing throughout the organization. Demonstrate competence. Commit visibly to your growth and invest it authentically in developing others. This combination builds trust through respect, reciprocity and results.

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The fifth crucial element of trust building is transparent communication, particularly around decisions, changes and challenges. In times of uncertainty or difficulty, many leaders make the mistake of communicating less when they should be communicating more. The trust eroding formula looks like this information vacuum plus uncertainty equals people filling the void with assumptions, often negative ones. Many leaders that I work with will say well, we've nothing new to tell them. It doesn't matter if you've nothing new to tell them. You need to keep speaking to them and telling them you've nothing new to tell them, because otherwise that information vacuum arises and those assumptions will come in. And in the absence of information, people don't assume nothing, they assume the worst. And in the absence of information, people don't assume nothing, they assume the worst. Fill that void with transparent, timely and truthful communication, even when the message is difficult.

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The sixth element of trust building involves demonstrating care for people as whole human beings, not just productive resources. This doesn't mean becoming a therapist or best friend to your team members. It means recognizing and respecting their humanity beyond their job functions. I coached a director who prided himself on being results focused and not getting into the personal stuff. He was genuinely confused when engagement surveys showed his team didn't trust him, despite his competence and integrity. Through our work together, he realized that his strict compartmentalization of professional and personal had created a perception of coldness and indifference. As he began showing genuine interest in people's well-being, recognizing significant events in their lives and demonstrating flexibility when personal challenges arose, trust flourished. People didn't need him to be their confidant. They just needed to know that he saw them as humans, not merely production units. Consider this Do your team members feel that you care about them as people? Do you know what matters to them beyond work? Do they believe you would support them through a personal crisis? These questions reveal whether you're building trust through demonstrated care.

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The seventh and final element I want to explore today is accountability Both holding yourself accountable and creating a culture of constructive accountability within your team. Nothing erodes trust faster than leaders who exempt themselves from the standards they impose on others. Conversely, leaders who visibly hold themselves to equal or higher standard build deep trust through modeling. Integrity To equal our higher standard build deep trust through modelling integrity. This extends to how accountability functions throughout the organisation. Is accountability in your team experienced as punitive and fear-inducing, or as supportive and growth-orientated? Do people feel micromanaged or appropriately empowered with clear expectations?

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I worked with a leader who transformed her team's performance by shifting from a blame-focused approach to a learning-oriented accountability framework. Rather than asking who messed up, she began asking what conditions allowed this to happen and how can we improve our systems. This simple shift again created psychological safety while maintaining high standards a powerful combination for building trust. So, as we wrap up, let's review the seven key elements we've discussed Align your words and actions meticulously. Practice appropriate vulnerability. Create psychological safety. Demonstrate competence while continuously growing. Communicate transparently. Demonstrate competence while continuously growing. Communicate transparently, especially during uncertainty. Show genuine care for people as whole human beings. And model and foster constructive accountability.

Speaker 1:

Trust isn't built in grand gestures or declarations. It's cultivated through consistent behaviours that demonstrate reliability, integrity, competence and care. It's earned day by day, decision by decision, interaction by interaction. The leaders who understand this, who treat trust building not as a soft, optional skill but as the foundation for all effective leadership, are the ones who create environments where people and performance flourish. Before we end today's episode. I'd like to leave you with a reflection question which of these seven trust building elements represent your greatest strength as a leader and which presents your most significant opportunity for growth? I invite you not just to think about this question, but to act on it. Identify one small, concrete step you can take this week to strengthen trust with your team in that opportunity area. Thank you for joining me today on Leadership Horizons. I'm Lois Burton and I believe that in this changing world, leaders matter, and trustworthy leaders matter most of all. Thank you.