Part 1: Trust at Work—What Are We Really Relying On?

A Series on Trust — Part 1

By Kristin Schleicher

Early in my career, I had a boss who used to say:

"Employees never leave their companies. They always leave their bosses."

That sentence stayed with me for years.

I don’t agree with it entirely.

People leave for better opportunities, different working conditions, family reasons, or simply because it is time for something new.

But it left me with a question: when someone does leave because of their manager, what happened to their trust along the way?

Was there one broken promise? A difficult conversation handled badly? Or a series of small moments that gradually taught them, “I cannot rely on this person”?

I don’t agree with it in its totality. People leave for better opportunities, family reasons, working conditions, or a company whose direction no longer fits their own. A good manager cannot compensate for everything.

But it made me think: what happens in a working relationship that makes someone stop wanting to be part of it?

Often, I come back to trust.

What happens after you leave the room?

Imagine a team meeting. The manager is friendly, thanks everyone, and says the door is always open. All very reassuring.

Then someone raises a concern about an unrealistic deadline. The manager brushes it aside. A promise made last week goes unmentioned. Nobody asks a second question.

The meeting ends politely. The real conversation starts afterwards.

This is why I find one question so useful for leaders: What will people feel when I leave the room?

Will they feel clearer about what comes next? Confident that their concerns have been heard? Able to get on with their work?

Or will they feel they need to protect themselves?

The aim is not to make every conversation comfortable. A leader may deliver disappointing news and still be trusted. People can dislike a decision while believing it was made fairly and explained honestly.

Trust means something is at stake

In their influential organizational trust model, Roger Mayer, James Davis, and David Schoorman describe trust in terms of willingness to be vulnerable to another party. Their model identifies three important judgments about trustworthiness: ability, benevolence, and integrity. It is a theoretical framework, rather than a promise that three good intentions will produce better performance. An Integrative Model of Organizational Trust

In everyday language, I would translate those judgments into three questions:

• Can you do what I am relying on you to do?

• Will you consider my interests as well as your own?

• Will your actions hold up against the principles you say matter?

  
  

A colleague may be warm and considerate but repeatedly miss a critical handover. Another may be technically excellent but take credit for someone else’s work. Both relationships can leave people reluctant to rely on them, for different reasons.

Trust also has a scope. I might trust your technical judgment without trusting you to handle confidential information. That is a useful distinction for leadership development: asking someone to “be more trusting” is much less helpful than understanding what they are being asked to rely on, and why they hesitate.

A good manager needs a credible organization

Employees also depend on systems: how promotions are decided, how concerns are handled, and whether workloads match the resources available.

A manager’s reassurance carries little weight if the organization repeatedly rewards the opposite behavior. If teamwork matters, individual targets cannot be allowed to quietly punish collaboration.

What a trustworthy working environment looks like

Imagine returning to that meeting about the unrealistic deadline. This time, the manager pauses.

“Tell me which part looks unmanageable.”

The employee explains. The deadline may still be fixed. But now there is a conversation about priorities, resources, and what will have to move.

That is where I would start building trust: in the ordinary moments when someone discovers whether their reality matters.

Respect begins with taking people seriously. You do not have to agree with every concern. You do need to understand it before dismissing it. Ask what someone is seeing that you may have missed. Acknowledge the contribution specifically: “You’ve identified a dependency we haven’t accounted for.”

Watch what happens afterwards, too. An employee has not truly been welcomed into the conversation if raising a concern later costs them opportunities.

Clarity means explaining where people stand. What is expected? What is negotiable? How will decisions be made? People should not discover the rules only after they have broken them.

In our deadline example, a useful explanation might be:

“The delivery date is fixed. The scope is still negotiable. I need your assessment of what we can deliver reliably with the resources available.”

Dependability means closing the conversation with something people can use. Name the next action, its owner, and when an update will arrive. If circumstances change, revisit the agreement openly.

Then check your understanding together:

“What have we agreed—and what still needs an answer?”

A leader cannot guarantee that everyone will feel reassured. But they can make sure people have been treated with dignity, understand the decision, and know what happens next.

That gives trust somewhere to grow.

This is where HR and leadership development belong in the same conversation. We need to develop leaders who build dependable relationships and examine the processes those relationships sit within.

If I could choose one subject to explore with all my future clients, it would still be trust. It reaches into delegation, feedback, learning, conflict, and change. But I would start with something smaller than a company-wide declaration: the next conversation in which someone needs something from you.

Give their concern your attention. Explain where they stand, including what you cannot yet answer. Agree on what happens next—and keep that agreement.

Then ask yourself: When I leave the room, will this person feel respected, understand their situation more clearly, and know what they can depend on me to do? In Part 2, we’ll explore how expectations, power, and culture shape trust between people—and how leaders create shared understanding when the same behavior carries different meanings. Part 2: Trust Between People—Expectations, Power, and Culture