Trust Breeds Loyalty – 4 Ways Strong Leaders Build Trust

Most People Know that Strong Leaders Build Trust
We know from people manager assessment center data that top leaders inspire trust with and among their teams.  High levels of leadership trust act as a cultural immune system that builds loyalty and employee engagement.

Yet, we know from organizational culture assessment and project postmortem data that too many leaders underestimate how much their credibility and consistency shape team norms and results. When employees trust their leaders, they bring their best ideas forward, make better decisions, and commit more fully to shared goals. When they don’t, performance eventually erodes, innovation stalls, and top talent walks.

What The Research Says about Leaders and Trust

• Recent Korn Ferry research found that 22% of the difference in financial performance relates to trust in senior leadership of an organization.
• A 2023 study by Deloitte Insights found that organizations with high levels of trust report 74% less stress, 50% higher productivity, and 40% greater loyalty among employees.
• Research from The Center for Creative Leadership shows that teams led by transparent managers exhibit 30% higher engagement and significantly stronger collaboration scores.
• According to research published in the Harvard Business Review, credibility accounts for over 80% of a leader’s perceived trustworthiness.

How Leaders Build Trust
Whether you are an experienced team leader or just out of new manager training, the following tenets for engendering trust from proven management training programs hold true:

1. Make it Personal
   Get to know your team members and let them get to know you — not just on a professional level but on a personal level too. You don’t need to become best friends, but they will appreciate knowing what you care about when you leave the office and vice versa.
2. Support and Encourage Rather than Dictate
   The more latitude you can give your team when you assign responsibilities, the more they will respect the confidence you show in their abilities. But first, you must set clear goals and performance expectations regarding how you expect people to both behave and perform.
3. Follow Through
   Show that you take your commitments seriously and they will know they can depend on you.  Do what you say you are going to do each and every time.  Without a culture of accountability, it is difficult to create trust at work.
4. Keep it Fair and Open
   Encourage open dialogue and honest questions. Respect the opinions of your team, and they will offer their ideas for improvement — often the difference between success and failure.  When it comes to trust, the more transparency at work, the better.

The Bottom Line
You will know you are on the right path to gaining the trust of your team when they believe you are setting the right course, leading the team to future success, acting honestly and trust-worthily, and demonstrating integrity.  You will know you are on the right path to creating trust among your team when they:

• Have a close and trusting relationship with one or more coworkers.
• Feel loyal to their team.
• Know they can depend on the other members of the team in both good and bad times.

To learn more about how strong leaders build trust, download 29 Research-Backed Ways that Strong Leaders Build Trust

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.