Communicating for Trust.
This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what it takes to truly communicate well — not just to deliver a message, but to make it land. To communicate in a way that changes how someone thinks, feels, or acts, and deepens trust in the process.
It's on my mind this week because of a challenge recently posed by a new executive — someone who stepped into a role where trust had been damaged and now needs to earn his team's trust while rebuilding what was previously lost.
It's hard enough to earn trust among a new group. But how do you do it when you're starting from a deficit? It's like trying to save money while paying off a debt — you're not sure how or when you'll turn it around.
Whether you're building trust with a new team, engaging a wider audience in your cause, or conveying a difficult message to a specific person, how you communicate matters. In fact, most leaders don't lose trust because they said something wrong. They lose it because what they meant and what people heard were two different things. So how do you close that gap — and make sure your next communication earns trust rather than quietly erodes it?
For the last 20 years, I've been tracking the practices of high-impact communicators. The throughline always comes back to three core tenets: Care, Courage, and Clarity.
As we found in our 2023 research, From Soft Skills to Hard Truths, too many leaders still treat communication as a soft skill: something the communications department handles, and that often takes a back seat to strategy and finance. Of the 800-plus purpose-driven leaders we engaged for that research, we found that even those who highly value communication dramatically under-invest in it — 42% dedicate fewer than 10 hours a year to developing their own skills. And most said they struggle hardest in the challenging moments when communication matters most.
That gap is where trust is lost. Care, courage, and clarity are the tools to help win it back.
1. To earn trust, start by showing you care. When a leader walks into a room — or a hard conversation — the first thing people sense is whether that leader actually cares about them. Not the data or the outcomes, but the people.
A few years ago, I worked with a leader who wanted to guide her team through a major change management process. She started with good intentions, but soon felt she was losing her team's trust. We had a simple "what if" conversation: What if you stopped trying to have all the answers about how to navigate through this process change, and started asking more questions of your team instead? What if you engaged them more closely in the process? When she shifted from solutions provider to genuine listener, her team's trust deepened. They had a role to play. And together, they made a bigger impact.
Care, communicated well, looks like presence. It looks like asking real questions — and actually caring about the answers.
2. To build trust, display moral courage, especially when it's uncomfortable. Trust is built when people see you are willing to say or do the hard thing, hold the difficult line, or take a risk that others wouldn't.
Think back to REI's 2022 decision to permanently close on Black Friday. At the time, many industry executives thought they were being shortsighted to put people over profits. But REI said, 'Our people matter more.' Rather than losing ground, they gained loyalty for standing by what they believed, even when it was costly.
Courage in communication is the willingness to say, clearly and consistently, what you stand for, and back it up with action.
For the executive I mentioned at the start: his work to earn trust doesn't begin with some polished talking points. It begins with the courage to name what happened, acknowledge the gap, and make a visible, consistent commitment to something better. Trust will be earned, built, and kept through courageous, repeated action — and the communication that makes those actions visible.
3. To maintain trust, communicate with clarity so your message can be understood widely. Brené Brown says it best: "clear is kind," And yet clarity is where most leaders struggle, because we soften our messages to protect people. We hedge and over-qualify, and the core message gets lost.
Clarity removes ambiguity. It tells people exactly where you stand and what they can count on from you. In the absence of it, people fill the silence with their own assumptions — and those assumptions are rarely more generous than the truth.
Back to the executive at the start. He asked how to build trust from a deficit. The answer I gave him is the answer I give every leader in his position: start from the same place every trusted leader does — with care, courage, and clarity — and deliver them consistently over time.
Each act of care, each moment of honest courage, each clear commitment followed through — these are the deposits in your trust bank. Over time, they compound into something much stronger. And the savings can start with your very next conversation.
If you're looking for a partner to help you communicate through a current situation with care, courage, and clarity, drop me a line. I'd love to help.
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