Trust is the bedrock of all functional relationships, including those in school. Without trust it’s hard to have any sort of meaningful relationships and it’s very difficult to hear the other person because you’re always scanning for ulterior motives. You’re watching your words, you're paying more attention to the interaction than what’s actually being said, rather than focusing on pieces that are important. As such, trust is a crucial component of any functional team. 

Trust works by giving people a little bit of information and seeing what they do with it. If you share something and they maintain your trust in that they don’t spread it around or use that information to hurt you in some way, then you are more likely to trust them with a little more information. The more that you see that they protect that integrity the more information you’re willing to share with them so trust grows over overtime . In this way, there is something to be said for having to earn trust because that’s exactly how it works, similar to earning interest on an investment. 

As leaders we need to be able to make the first move to start trusting relationships. This can be a daunting task as trust can be hard to establish due to factors beyond our personal control. Sometimes people don’t trust because of previous interactions with leaders. In other places these ghosts that haunt our new relationships need to be exercised before we can move forward in a new relationship.

Even assuming that this wasn’t a factor, it remains complicated in that many leaders serve a supervisory or valuable component as well so it’s difficult to be able to wear those two hats of leader and colleague and people to trust that the things they tell you as a colleague stay as a colleague, and not necessarily in that value of sense

Some ways to build trust include: open door policies, having your words and actions match, and promising to do the things that you say you’ll do and following through with them. Trust is also built through proximity and through interactions. It is difficult to build if you are not in vulnerable spaces and not around to engage in the small interactions that help to build it.

In addition, people can help build trust for you. If you are known to have a reputation for being trustworthy, others are more likely to lend you that trust. If you have a reputation for deceit, people are less likely to trust you even if this is their very first interaction with you and they don’t know you personally. 

Fortunately, we are predisposed to be social creatures. Our ancestors learned long ago that there is a lot of power and safety in being part of the group. As such, typically, we are more likely to trust and not trust. This is one of the reasons why people believe in rumours or misinformation or fake news so readily. It is because our natural predisposition is to trust one another for the hope that society works. We make rules and laws that we all trust other people are following. As such, when these rules are violated, we tend to react strongly, because not only is it a violation of our norms, it shakes the faith in the trust we built in the system that we have together. This is as true for society as a whole, as it is for our classrooms or school where we work together to build trusting relationships within our school culture and when those things are violated it erodes that trust. 

It is important to remember that we will all make mistakes so one time events shouldn’t be a situation that erodes trust to a point of being irreparable, but look for the patterns if people have a repeated pattern of breaking trust then you may temper what you trust them with people have a bad day, and violate that trust you can work through that in restorative manner and try to bring about some sort of remediation to restore the trust that been built.

In larger organizations like schools, we often refer to the visible manifestation of trust as Accountability. Accountability is the trust that you are doing things that you’re supposed to be doing. There is a top down version, where leaders trust that people are doing what they say they will do or perform tasks assigned to them. There is a bottom up version where we trust our leaders to lead ethically and with best interests at heart. But perhaps more importantly, accountability is also lateral, in that you need to rely on your teammates in order to carry out any given task or project since they are all interrelated with one another.

This lateral accountability to one another is far more important than top down. If at a team meeting we make a plan for a student we need to trust that all members are going to carry out their part of that plan because the individual components are interdependent on each other. A lack of accountability and trust is a culture killer because it impedes our ability to work together for a common goal. 

For leaders, this lack of trust looks a lot like micromanaging since we do not trust someone to complete the task themselves. When you micromanage you signal that you do not trust somebody to do the task that was assigned, either due to willingness or competence. In this way, it is important to be supportive but you also need to ensure that it is clear they are trusted to carry the task or project.

To bring this full circle, a strong sense of trust is pervasive in a successful school or organization. Without it, we become ineffective and waste a lot of productive energy. Take a look at your own context, how are you fostering Trust in your school? Who is making all the decisions and how are they made? Do you feel you can trust your team and can they trust you? A deep look at the answers to these questions can tell you a lot about the culture of your building and what some next steps might be.