Every leader eventually meets this moment. It might arrive after a promise undone, a decision that blindsided people, or a change that left colleagues feeling small in the scheme of things. You know it has happened because the air in the room changes. Where there was once energy, there is a hush. Where there was once easy dialogue, now people weigh their words. You still have the title, but the bond has frayed.

It is one of the loneliest experiences in leadership. You walk into the room and sense the distance, eyes cast down, polite nods, the careful silence that says more than words ever could. Some leaders try to push past it, as if trust will return on its own. Others double down, speaking louder, promising more, convinced that explanation will erase the gap. Rarely does either approach work.

What makes this moment so unsettling is that trust is invisible until it is gone. We assume it will always be there, a natural by-product of working together. But trust is less like the air we breathe and more like the ground we walk on: unnoticed when firm, painfully obvious when it gives way. And when it does, the leader is left asking: do I repair, do I defend, or do I retreat?

This question is not theoretical. I recently saw it in a software leader who had to face her team after being involved in reversing the company’s remote working promises. The work still had to be done, the deadlines still loomed, but the foundation had shifted. The question from the team was not, “How do we deliver the project we are committed to?” It was, “Do they even know or care about what this costs us?”

Trust broken is not the end of the story, but it does change the story. The task of leadership shifts from giving direction to something quieter, harder: to create the conditions where trust might grow again.

The science of trust: five insights from psychology and behavioural research

Trust may feel intangible, but decades of study in social science give us a precise vocabulary for how it works. These insights play out in meetings, emails, and quiet side conversations. They are visible in the smallest choices leaders make.

1. Trust as ability, integrity, and benevolence

Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) identified three elements of trustworthiness: ability, integrity, and benevolence. Their language is academic, but the meaning is simple. People ask of their leaders: Do you know what you are doing? Will you do what you said? Do you care about more than yourself?

The software leader I was coaching reflected on this after her company reversed its remote working promise. “I thought my record would protect me. I’ve delivered for years.” Her ability was unquestioned. But her people now doubted whether her word could be relied on (integrity) and whether leadership cared about their disrupted lives (benevolence).

The same framework explains why Mattel survived a recall crisis in 2007. Millions of toys had to be pulled off shelves due to lead paint. The company acted swiftly, recalled products before being forced to, accepted responsibility, and prioritised children’s safety. Competence was proven in decisive action, integrity in owning mistakes, and benevolence in putting customers above profit. Trust held.

Trust does not require perfection. It requires these three qualities to be lived consistently enough that people believe in them. When any one of them falters, suspicion takes root.

Reflective questions:

 • Where am I relying on past competence instead of showing it now?

 • What promise have I broken that needs to be named?

 • What act of care would shift how people experience me?

2. Trust breaks faster than it builds

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (1979) revealed a principle of human behaviour called loss aversion. It shows that people feel losses more deeply than they feel gains. A £20 note found cannot cancel the sting of £20 lost. Trust follows this same principle.

The software leader discovered this when her team dismissed years of reliability after one reversal. “Doesn’t my record count for anything?” she asked. It did, but not enough. The broken promise loomed larger than a decade of delivery.

Wells Fargo provides a public example. After years of cultivating a reputation for reliability, it collapsed in 2016 when it was revealed that employees had opened millions of fake accounts. Past consistency offered no protection. Betrayal spoke louder.

Trust is asymmetrical. It accumulates slowly but can disappear in an instant. You cannot stockpile it. You cannot draw on yesterday’s consistency to excuse today’s breach. Repair begins again in the present, with small, visible, reliable acts.

Reflective questions:

 • Where am I expecting history to outweigh a present fracture?

 • What am I avoiding naming, hoping people will move on?

 • What is one modest promise I can keep, visibly, this week?

3. Psychological safety: the ground for trust

Amy Edmondson (1999) defined psychological safety as the shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Without it, honesty recedes and silence takes over.

The software leader experienced this after the RTO reversal. On hybrid calls, cameras went dark. Questions stopped. Meetings felt like formalities, with less laughter and fewer new ideas. “They aren’t pushing back,” she said, “but they aren’t giving me much either.” The absence of resistance was not trust; it was fear or possibly resignation.

Google’s Project Aristotle confirmed this across hundreds of teams. High performance was not explained by talent or goals but by safety. Teams where candour was permitted, where people could risk saying what was true, outperformed those where silence prevailed. Safety was the soil in which everything else grew.

Rebuilding safety is not about urging people to “speak up.” It is about demonstrating vulnerability yourself, rewarding candour when it comes, and showing that bad news is survivable.

Reflective questions:

 • When did I last show my own uncertainty in front of my team?

 • What daily rituals signal whether mistakes are safe here?

 • How do I react in the moment when someone tells me something difficult?

4. Fairness: process matters as much as outcomes

Tom Tyler (1990) and others in organisational justice research found that people judge fairness not only by results but by process. A decision can be unpopular but still trusted if the process was transparent and consistent. An outcome can be favourable but still distrusted if the process felt arbitrary.

The RTO policy faltered most in this area. Some employees were allowed to continue remote work. Others were not. The criteria were never shared. For those commuting daily, the process felt unfair. “Why them and not me?” Trust weakened further.

Severn Trent Water in the UK faced a similar challenge after being fined in 2008 for misreporting data. The company rebuilt credibility not just through improved results but by overhauling reporting processes, bringing in independent reviewers, increasing transparency, and involving staff. Within two years, it had restored public confidence.

Fairness is less about identical treatment than about clarity, transparency, and consistency. Without these, even reasonable decisions look like betrayal.

Reflective questions:

 • What feels clear to me but opaque to others?

 • Where might transparency prevent suspicion?

 • How can I involve people earlier in processes that affect them?

5. Trust contagion: how confidence spreads or withers

Trust does not live in individuals alone. It spreads socially. People look to each other to decide whether they will extend or withdraw confidence. Distrust, in particular, spreads quickly.

The software leader saw this when one engineer muttered, “They’ll just change the rules again.” Within days, it became a group refrain on Slack and in side conversations. One spark became a narrative.

Siemens faced the same pattern after its 2006 bribery scandal. Suspicion spread not only among regulators and customers but internally among employees. People began to assume corruption everywhere. It took years of leadership changes and compliance reforms before trust slowly returned.

Stories travel faster than memos. A leader’s task is to notice which stories are multiplying, to interrupt cynicism before it hardens, and to circulate examples of integrity that offer a different narrative.

Reflective questions:

 • What story about leadership is circulating most in my team?

 • How quickly do I respond when cynicism takes root?

 • What act of integrity could I make visible this week?

Convening as a practice of trust

When trust is shaken, leaders often retreat into a sense of certainty. They prepare sharper messages, issue firmer directives, and hope that clarity will heal the fracture. But trust rarely returns through explanation. It returns through connection.

Convening is the practice of gathering people in a way that restores presence and dignity. It is not about forcing agreement but about creating spaces where people encounter one another, listen, and discover that they still belong. Distrust thrives in isolation; convening interrupts it by bringing people back into relationship.

The software leader I was coaching saw this when she abandoned her slide deck and instead asked her team in small circles: “What would make this workplace worth the commute?” At first, the answers were blunt. But soon the room shifted, voices overlapped, side conversations gave way to laughter, even disagreements carried energy again. Trust in leadership didn’t instantly return, but trust in each other flickered back, and that became the bridge. Best practices for convening trust-building spaces include: 

1. Choose the right scale

Break the room into circles of 5–7. Trust rarely grows in auditoriums. It grows in rooms where people can look one another in the eye and be known. Large groups reward performance; small groups reward honesty. Circles reduce social risk and help every voice to matter.

 • Practice: in large gatherings, divide into smaller clusters and rotate people so voices mix.

 • Questions to hold: Who most needs to see and hear one another? What do I lose if I keep people in an audience instead of a circle?

2. Open with a generous question

Ask for stories, not just opinions. The first question sets the tone. Questions about blame shrink the conversation; questions that invite hopes and commitments open it. Generous questions don’t deny what has happened but create space to imagine what could be built together.

 • Practice: start with invitations like, “What do you want this workplace to give to you?”

 • Questions to hold: Does this question help people connect, or push them further apart? What do I most need to hear: defences, or declarations of what matters?

3. Step back and let silence work

Resist the urge to summarise or rescue. Many leaders convene only to take back control, reframing or validating what they hear. Convening asks something riskier: to let the group generate its own meaning. Silence can feel uncomfortable, but it is often the doorway to honesty.

 • Practice: after posing a question, pause. Notice who speaks, who hesitates, and let the room carry itself.

 • Questions to hold: Am I willing to be quiet long enough for others to step in? What fear rises in me when I give away control of the conversation?

4. End with contribution, not consensus

Ask for one action, not total agreement. Consensus is fragile; contribution is durable. Trust strengthens more when each person names what they will do than when the group reaches a tidy but shallow agreement.

 • Practice: close by inviting each participant to share one gift, shift, or next step. Capture these commitments visibly so they are not lost.

 • Questions to hold: How do I move us from shared grievance to shared ownership? Am I willing to accept contributions that are small, imperfect, yet genuine?

5. Repeat the rhythm

Make convening a habit, not a fix. Trust isn’t repaired in a single event. It is cultivated through continuity, regular opportunities to connect, not just occasional interventions.

 • Practice: set a cadence of circles—monthly, quarterly—where the focus is on connection and contribution, not just updates.

 • Questions to hold: How do I weave convening into the fabric of our work? Am I treating trust as a project to fix, or a relationship to keep tending?

Closing: what becomes possible

When trust breaks, it feels as if the ground has given way. Convening shows that the ground can be rebuilt, not by erasing what happened, but by choosing to gather again in honesty. Each circle, each generous question, each small act of contribution becomes a stitch in the fabric.

What emerges is not a return to what was, but something sturdier: a team that knows it can endure disappointment and still choose to lean in. An organisation that understands trust is not automatic but cultivated. And a leader who recognises that their most excellent power lies not in persuasion, but in convening the conditions where trust becomes possible once more.

As you consider your own leadership, three questions remain:

 • What do we need to name honestly before trust can be rebuilt?

 • What small but visible commitments can I make, and keep, that will signal repair?

 • How do we want to use this loss, not to return to what was, but to create something stronger?

Recommended reading

Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace: Building Effective Relationships in Your Organization, Dennis S. Reina & Michelle L. Reina (1999): A foundational, deeply practical guide to understanding how trust is broken and how it can be consciously rebuilt using structured, relational tools.     

Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace: Seven Steps to Renew Confidence, Commitment, and Energy, Dennis S. Reina & Michelle L. Reina (2010): A hands-on sequel offering a clear, step-by-step framework for renewing trust and sustaining change in organizations.   

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, Amy C. Edmondson (2018): A rigorous and readable exploration of psychological safety—showing how creating spaces where people feel safe to speak up can be transformational for trust and performance.

Community: The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block (2018): An inspiring invitation to leadership as convening: teaching how community emerges through conversation, invitation, and shared ownership.

 

References

Block, P. (2018) Community: The structure of belonging. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Edmondson, A. C. (1999) ‘Psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), pp. 350–383.

Edmondson, A. C. (2018) The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Google (2015) re:Work – Guide: Understand team effectiveness. Available at: https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136/ (Accessed: 2 September 2025).

Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A. (1979) ‘Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk’, Econometrica, 47(2), pp. 263–292.

Mayer, R.C., Davis, J.H. and Schoorman, F.D. (1995) ‘An integrative model of organizational trust’, Academy of Management Review, 20(3), pp. 709–734.

Reina, D. S. and Reina, M. L. (1999) Trust and betrayal in the workplace: Building effective relationships in your organization. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Reina, D. S. and Reina, M. L. (2010) Rebuilding trust in the workplace: Seven steps to renew confidence, commitment, and energy. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Coyle, D. (2018) The culture code: The secrets of highly successful groups. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Kramer, R. M. (1999) ‘Trust and distrust in organizations: Emerging perspectives, enduring questions’, Annual Review of Psychology, 50, pp. 569–598.

Mattel, Inc. (2007) Mattel recalls 1.9 million potentially dangerous Chinese-made toys. The Guardian, 15 August. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/aug/15/usnews.china1 (Accessed: 2 September 2025).

Reuters (2006) ‘Wells Fargo fake accounts scandal detailed in board report’. Available at: https://www.wellsfargo.com/assets/pdf/about/investor-relations/presentations/2017/board-report.pdf (Accessed: 2 September 2025).

Severn Trent Plc (2009) Annual report and accounts 2009. Coventry: Severn Trent Plc. Available at: https://www.severntrent.com/content/dam/stw/ST_Corporate/Investors/results/2009/2009%20Annual%20Report.pdf (Accessed: 2 September 2025).

Dietz, G. and Gillespie, N. (2012) ‘Rebuilding trust: How Siemens atoned for its sins’, The Guardian, 26 March. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/recovering-business-trust-siemens (Accessed: 2 September 2025).

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (2008) ‘SEC charges Siemens AG for engaging in worldwide corruption’. Available at: https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-294.htm (Accessed: 2 September 2025).

Tyler, T. R. (1990) Why people obey the law. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.