A Concrete Way to Work on Trust Within Organizations
Every trust crisis is a design flaw in the system, but resolving it is a personal decision.
When “trust” emerges as a key area for improvement, whether in an executive committee or an operational team, all other topics tend to take a back seat.
The word often gets diluted among others like “alignment” or “communication,” but it is the most critical factor that determines interactions and, consequently, performance.
Despite the abundance of research, workshops, and models, trust remains complex because it is **both emotional and technical**. Emotionally, it is felt; technically, it is built through evidence.
Working on trust requires building a common language about what it means within the organization. That language must connect feeling and fact: what people perceive, what weakened trust, and how it can be rebuilt.
Trust is either constructed or destroyed. Part of its framing is understanding how this happens. Its complexity lies in the fact that while one aspect of trust is expressed in relationships with others, the internal and private process of each individual determines whether or not they feel trust.
Before moving directly to the functional and practical distinction for understanding and rebuilding trust, we need to build a brief conceptual framework that allows the process to work.
Distinguishing Knowledge from Character
Because we are always in constant change, the people who trust each other today have, explicitly or implicitly, committed to navigating certain aspects and stages of life together.
Trust serves as the framework for commitment in the face of change within relationships that persist over time.
In an organizational environment, the same happens. The additional ingredient is that cycles of uncertainty accelerate, testing the company’s ability to adapt, and, as a result, the personal relationships within it.