There is research and logical evidence that trust accelerates communication, decision making, alignment, action and learning. Here are notes on trust from a project I did with an organization a few years ago. It speaks to building trust at work among leaders and teams.
Trust is a feeling, not a skill. One cannot "learn" how to trust people they don't. And even the absurd command to "trust more" actually lowers trust in the culture because the implication has no credibility.
Trust builds for two reasons. Leaders become more trustworthy and employees develop more realistic (read: fulfillable) expectations of their leaders. Lack of trust obviously emerges from non-trustworthy actions and unrealistic expectations.
If we agree with this construct, we take an approach where trust building becomes the shared responsibility of leaders and employees. It is a construct that explicitly implies that neither is able to bring trust about, in the same way that one person cannot build or renew a relationship.
