Think about the last time you let someone borrow your car, babysit your kid or go on vacation with you. What’s the one thing in common with all these scenarios? You trust the person you let borrow your car, babysit your kid, or go on vacation with. Trust is the foundation of human interaction, and leadership is interacting with humans to accomplish a shared mission.
As training leaders, we know trust is the foundation for leadership and sets the tone for the manager-employee relationship. Building trust takes consistency, effort and time. Luckily, there’s a formula you can use to train your managers to build trust and develop high-performing teams faster.
The Trust Formula: Show + Do = Trust
At the core of trust are behaviors and actions. Leaders model the behaviors they expect to see in their employees. They show employees what “right” looks like. Leaders also do what they say they’re going to do. When leaders say they will do something for an employee, it’s a promise, not just a statement. And leaders need to deliver on those promises.
Demonstrating how easily this formula can be implemented is key to its success. Training professionals should leverage realistic stories from their workplace to enhance application.
SHOW: Training Leaders to Model Behaviors
Leaders showcase their commitment to the organization and its values through their observed behaviors. Teaching leaders how to model their behaviors isn’t as difficult as it may seem. There are examples everywhere. The best way to train leaders to model behaviors is through effective storytelling. You need to find real-world examples of behaviors in the workplace. Here’s a story I use when I train new leaders:
I remember a time when I was working in a warehouse full of pasta and rice. Someone had dropped a pallet of spaghetti. Imagine dropping over 800 boxes of spaghetti. You get the picture — there were a lot of noodles all over the place.
Someone else saw it happen, laughed and drove off. Then, another person cautiously skirted around and said, “Have fun with that.” Could I really blame them when they have hourly metrics? (That’s a topic for another time.) I also noticed the noodle avalanche as I was walking around. So, I stopped and helped him clean it up. It wasn’t a big deal for me. I was the supervisor. I didn’t have hourly metrics, but I didn’t expect to see the impact it had on the team.
Everyone else who saw us after I stopped by to help also stayed to help. It was then that I began to realize the power of modeling behaviors. And we got everything cleaned up in less than five minutes!
I use this example when training because it shows how small acts have a big impact. This method helps leaders understand that this formula is meant to be applied to everyday tasks. As trainers, we need to make leadership a daily function, not a chore. The best way to do this is by providing leaders with guidance to align their daily behaviors with the organization’s mission, vision and values. Think of your job as a trainer as maximizing the impact leaders have through deliberate actions. It’s not just for behaviors — you can also leverage this same model for actions and follow through.
DO: Training Leaders to Follow Through
Nothing is worse than hearing one thing only to see something different. Enlightening leaders on this mindset can be tricky. Leaders have limited time for critical work, but they must never forget their priority: their employees. Making promises that fail to come to fruition degrades trust. It leads to animosity and harms the chances of a productive relationship.
When I was an early leader, I struggled greatly with this. My default mode was to overpromise. I’d put myself into sticky situations because I spoke before realizing what I was saying. Once, an employee came to me asking for help to prepare for an interview with another division in our company. Of course, I was willing and capable of helping but was busy. So, I told my employee we’d reconnect during the last 30 minutes of the shift to discuss. Well, with about 45 minutes left in our shift, my boss’s boss came in. He asked me to walk him around the building for an inspection. It lasted over an hour. I didn’t see that employee before their shift ended.
The employee came in the next day and was visibly disappointed. I knew I had let them down, but I figured we could catch up. After all, it was only a day later. But his interview had already happened earlier that day, and it didn’t go well. Not only did I fail my employee, but I also gave the impression that my words wouldn’t always match my actions.
We must train leaders to prioritize employees. Employees value their leaders’ words. You can’t emphasize this enough when training new leaders: Only promise what you can deliver.
This formula helps leaders use daily interactions to build trust without much extra effort. As trainers, implementing this model is much easier than most because of its simplicity. Implement these ideas through role-playing exercises. This simple formula gives leaders an easy-to-remember tool for their leadership toolbox.
Conclusion
Building trust sets the conditions for high performance. You wouldn’t trust a stranger to drive your car or babysit your kids, and you didn’t immediately go on vacation with your spouse as a first date. All of those things came after you already built trust with another person. You want your employees to produce on behalf of the team. You need to show them they can trust you as the leader by showing the behaviors you expect and doing what you say you will do.
For training professionals, the Trust Formula (Show + Do = Trust) offers a concrete framework that can be easily implemented into existing leadership training. When consistently practiced, this approach transforms both individual leaders and organizational culture.
