It was on one of my operational tours in the Balkans that the importance of trust in the workplace really came home to me. At short notice, I was deployed to an existing multi-national mission. I was given a team, drawn from various parts of the military, which had come together at equally short notice. As a leader, I was facing trust issues both externally and internally.

Externally, the other international partners were dubious about our commitment. The UK had been involved before but had then withdrawn. The new team was therefore met with scepticism by the very people I needed to establish good working relationships with.

Internally I had a group of people who had never worked together before and, coming from different branches of the army, were naturally prejudiced against each other. The tribal nature of the regimental system creates in-group/out-group biases that can be challenging to overcome. I knew I had work to do to change this mindset and culture.

To address these issues, I made sure I was honest about previous failings and transparent about what we wanted to contribute. Then, I picked challenging tasks, but ones we could deliver on, to help build my team together while delivering tangible results to the international headquarters. I also gave my team leaders latitude as to how they would achieve their tasks; I just mandated what they needed to do. It was not all smooth going but we did manage to develop a culture of trust both within the team and with our international partners, and because of this, we achieved our mission.

This is just one example where I have faced important issues of trust in the workplace. I can think of many more – both good and bad – where the whole culture of an organisation is affected by the trust people feel for one another.

What do we mean by trust and why is it important?

So hopefully, with the example I have shared, we start to get an idea of why trust is important. But before we get ahead of ourselves let’s just check what we mean by trust. Which words come to mind when you think about trust? How would you define it?

Trust can be thought of as faith, belief, hope, conviction, or confidence. From these synonyms, we can start to see that trust has both a logical and emotional quality. We choose to trust a thing because of how we think and how we feel.

In relationships, trust is foundational, whether that is with friends and family, or with colleagues at work. In this context trust can be defined thus:

“Trust is the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the action of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action.”

Aljazzaf, Oerry, Capretz (2010)

So, whether we are starting to get to know someone and building rapport, or maintaining a long-lasting relationship, trust is critical. But, knowing this, how do you develop a culture of trust and psychological safety in the workplace?

The neuroscience of trust

The first thing we need to understand is how our brains work when it comes to trust. Paul J. Zak has spent many years studying the neuroscience of trust (HBR, 2017). His research has centred around how the hormone oxytocin is related to trust. His work demonstrated that higher levels of trust are linked to the brain producing higher levels of oxytocin.

It is great knowing that oxytocin helps to develop trust, but it is unlikely that we will be wanting to dose ourselves with synthetic hormones just to be more trusting! Fortunately, during his research, patterns emerged of actions that promoted oxytocin levels (positive behaviours) and things that inhibited its production (such as high stress). These were narrowed down to eight key behaviours that foster trust.

The 8 behaviours that foster trust in the workplace

So here are the eight behaviours, identified by Paul Zak, that can help to release oxytocin naturally and build a more trusting culture in the workplace:

1. Recognise excellence
2. Induce “challenge stress” (difficult but achievable tasks)
3. Give people discretion in how they do their work
4. Enable job crafting (let employees choose projects to work on)
5. Share information broadly
6. Intentionally build relationships
7. Facilitate whole-person growth
8. Show vulnerability

It is worth taking some time out to reflect on these. As a leader or manager, what are you doing to foster these behaviours? As an employee, how would you rate your team on each of these behaviours?

With these eight behaviours, we have started to link the neuroscience of trust to the psychology and practice of trusting cultures. As with the cultural iceberg, we are linking what is seen in an organisation with what is unseen. But there is another model that is worth being aware of, and that is the trust equation.

The Trust Equation – understanding the psychology of trust

Charles H. Green developed the Trust Equation, along with David Maister and Robert M. Galford, co-authors of The Trusted Advisor. They explored the psychology of trust by looking at professional services and how people relate to one another. The result of this study was the Trust Equation.

The equation is actually a measure of trustworthiness, in other words, how much trust we are willing to invest in a person. In this context, to have trust between two parties, you need someone who is trusting and another person who is trustworthy. The equation gets to the heart of that relationship.

Equation of Trustworthiness:

Trust (or Trustworthiness) = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy)/Self-Orientation

For clarity, it is worth exploring the terms that Green uses in the equation. Here are some questions you can ask to think about how someone might score against each of these terms.

Credibility (words)

• Is the person professionally credible; do they live up to their CV?
• Do the person’s words fit their actions?

Reliability (actions)

• Are they dependable?
• Will they do what they promise?

Intimacy (feelings)

• Do you feel safe or secure around the person?
• Do you trust that person with confidential or personal information?

Self-orientation

• Is a person self-centred, putting themselves before the needs of the vision and team?
• Are they self-obsessed (always framing an issue from their own perspective) or do they look at a situation more broadly?

If you want to quantify each factor you can give a numerical value (1-10) for the answer to each question. You can score someone you are thinking about (to better analyse that relationship) or you can score your team culture to examine the levels of trust within your workplace. Finally, you can also use this as a self-reflection exercise and examine how you perform in each area. Remember to think of evidence – of actual experiences – to back up your scores.

The steps to building trust

So, those are the steps to building trust. Understand the trust equation and you can quantify the levels of trust that you have with an individual or team. Then you can implement the eight behaviours to develop a more trusting culture in your workplace.

Therefore, which behaviour do you most need to work on today?