Over the past couple of weeks, we did a deep dive into the first pillar of trauma-informed leadership, safety. Over the next three weeks, we’re going to dive into the second pillar in the “Four Pillars of Trauma-Informed Leadership,” trust. Trust plays a critical role in supporting positive organizational culture. What is trust? What does it mean to be a leader who embodies trust? How do leaders cultivate teams characterized by trust? This week, we’ll dive into providing a general overview of Trust and Transparency and why it’s important to cultivate as a trauma-informed leader. Next week, we’ll talk about how leaders can examine their own relationship with trust. The following week, I’ll share some concrete steps that leaders can take to cultivate trust in their teams.
Trust Defined
Trust is a term that we use a lot, but what does it mean, anyway? Trust can be defined as, “Choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” (Feltman, 2021, pp. 17-18). Feltman identifies four components of trust:
· Care: The assessment that you have the other person’s interests in mind as well as your own when you make decisions and take actions. This may be the most important dimension of trust. When people believe you are only concerned with your own self-interest and don’t consider their interests as well, they may trust your sincerity, reliability, and competence, but they will limit their trust of you to specific interactions or situations.
· Sincerity: The assessment that you are honest, that you say what you mean and mean what you say; you can be believed and taken seriously. It also means that when you express an opinion it is valid, useful, and is backed up by sound thinking and evidence. It also means that your actions will align with your words.
· Reliability: The assessment that you meet the commitments you make, that you keep your promises.
· Competence: The assessment that you can do what you are doing or propose to do. In the workplace, this usually means others believe you have the requisite capacity, skill, knowledge, and resources to do a particular task or job.
Feltman emphasizes that trust is not an all or nothing concept. Someone can be trustworthy in one domain, but not in another.
It is impossible to discuss Trust without discussing Distrust. Distrust is the general assessment that something that I value is not safe with this person in this situation. When we distrust another person, team, or situation, we engage in activities that protect ourselves. These very activities impede our ability to effectively engage at work and with our colleagues, be productive, and get the job done. In turn, the climate of distrust will continue to grow. For example, if I distrust someone, I’m less likely to engage in honest conversations with them to break down barriers and address key issues. I might even avoid them and begin interpreting all their actions through a lens of distrust, which will only reinforce my feelings of distrust.
The following highlights how trust and distrust differ in terms of how people think, feel, behave, and what is going on in their brains and nervous system.
· Assessments about the other person
o Trust - I can trust this person, I am safe with this person
o Distrust - It is dangerous to trust this person, this person poses a threat to me
· Assessments about self
o Trust - I am safe, I can handle whatever happens, I can be open and forthcoming
o Distrust - I am not safe, I can’t handle what this person might do, I need to protect myself
· Associated emotions
o Trust - Hope, curiosity, generosity, care
o Distrust - Fear, anger, resentment, resignation
· Behaviors
o Trust - Cooperating, collaborating, engaging in conversations, dialog and debate of ideas, listening, communication freely, supporting others, sharing information, offering ideas, expecting the best, willingness to examine own actions
o Distrust - Defending, resisting, blaming, complaining, judging, avoiding, withholding information and ideas, expecting the worst, justifying protective actions based on distrust
· Neurophysiology
o Trust - Normal to elevated levels of oxytocin, Full availability of neocortex (the “thinking brain”) and limbic system brain structures to make decisions and act, ability to intervene in and change pre-programmed neural patterns
o Distrust - The brain’s primary defense system (i.e., the amygdala) is “warmed up” and primed for any sign of imminent danger, elevated levels of adrenaline, cortisol, and other flight/flight/freeze/fawn chemicals, limited use of neocortex, greater reliance on defense-related pre-programmed neural patterns for making decisions and taking action
Often, we are not particularly conscious that all of this is happening without our minds and bodies. These are immediate reactions generated in the face of the situation. When we are faced with distrust, how our brains and nervous systems react is essentially the same mechanism that occurs when we experience stress and threat, which can activate or re-activate our trauma responses.
The Role of Trust in Trauma
When it comes to trauma, individuals who have experienced trauma have experienced a profound rupture in trust. While it’s not the same as safety, the two are deeply connected with one another and trust builds on a foundation of psychological safety. Trauma is a violation of safety, which is a violation of the trust we have in a specific person, a specific situation, or our larger environment. For example, most of us trust that the environment within which we live is relatively safe from a major disaster, such as earthquakes, fires, floods, etc. This doesn’t mean that these things don’t happen, just that we usually trust that these things won’t happen today. When they do happen, that trust has been violated. Similarly, most of us trust that a cherished parent, coach, or another significant person in our life is not going to hurt us physically or sexually. However, when it does happen, we can lose trust, not only in that specific person, but in people in general. If our close relative is going to hurt us, who will be next?
When someone has experienced trauma, they often develop a complicated relationship with trust. I have seen individuals who have experienced heart wrenching trauma easily trust everyone around them in a way that made others uncomfortable in their presence. They trust others too quickly without assessing if the person is truly trustworthy. I have seen others vow never to trust anyone again, and they stick with that promise. Both practices of inconspicuous trust and denial of trust come from the same place. If the important people in your life were not trustworthy, how do you know if you can trust someone?
Trust and Distrust in the Workplace
Trust in the workplace is the feeling that staff members have that their leaders are fair, respectful, and treat them well. Trust is built on a foundation of transparency, openness, and positive relationships between employees and leadership. While trust is distinct from psychological safety, work environments characterized by trust are also considered to feel safer for employees. Organizational cultures characterized by trust are more resilient and can tolerate change and uncertainty, because team members feel like their leaders are reliable and honest with them. There are several benefits for cultivating trust and transparency on your teams:
• Team members have clarity on what’s expected of them
• Team members understand why the organization has made certain decisions (even if they don’t agree with them)
• Team members are less likely to make unfavorable comparisons to others, “why did XX get this, but I don’t?”
• Team members know that their leader will do what they say they are going to do
How do we know if our teams are high trust or low trust teams? As a leader, you probably have a sense of whether your team has high or low trust. According to Feltman (2021), High Trust Teams:
· Use conflict productively, focusing on processes, not people
· Engage with each other and the team’s work
· Commit to each other and the team’s success
· Hold one other accountable to each other and outside stakeholders
· Develop innovative ideas and approaches
· Collaborate effectively
· Communicate in open, honest, and transparent ways
· Get results – delights customers
· Demonstrate true camaraderie
On the other hand, Low Trust Teams:
· Avoid conflict completely or engage in destructive conflict
· Disengage from other team members
· Demonstrate low commitment to the team goals
· Avoid accountability
· Lack innovation
· Demonstrate poor collaboration and duplication of efforts
· Withhold information, have a hidden agenda
· Miss deadlines and have poor output
· Demonstrate false camaraderie, disinterest, and disrespect
At times, a specific event might trigger our team members’ trauma response and send them into actively distrusting their peers. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of my peers and team members were at consistently activated levels of response and constantly on edge. As a result, when directives came down from leadership that they disagreed with, they were more likely to interpret negative intent to those actions and begin the cycle of distrust. In the past, they may have felt close and connected, but when something scary happened, they went into their own activated response and behaved in ways that seemed out of character, which negatively impacted trust across the team more broadly.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll dive more deeply into providing some concrete strategies you can use as leaders to create an environment defined by trust and cultivate it in your teams.
What are some ways that you have seen trust and distrust play out in your work environments? Comment below.