How trust develops

What have you learned this year about trust? What have you learned about how you cultivate trust with clients and colleagues? 

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In my newest book, Arise: The Art of Transformational Coaching (July 2024), there's a short section about trust—what it is and how we build it—and this got me thinking about how, at the end of the school year, we often reflect on how our relationships developed. We might think back to what it felt like to start coaching a certain teacher or managing a certain staff member, and how we initially misjudged them, and now we really love them, and how initially they were standoffish, and now they’re open and vulnerable. This is a reflection on the development of trust. 

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Here’s the most important thing to know about trust: It is something you can create. It’s an emotional experience—you can create the conditions in which someone can trust you, and you can expand this capacity internally so that you can trust yourself more and trust others more. 

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As you reflect on your experience building trusting relationships this year, perhaps you’re also identifying things you’d like to do differently next year. Keep track of those insights.

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As you close out this year, consider inviting clients and/or managees to offer you feedback on how you created the conditions in which they could trust you. You can ask them directly: I’m curious what allowed you to trust me? I’m curious if there’s anything else I could do that would allow your trust to deepen? Just asking these questions will increase their trust in you.