Leadership Trust: Build It, Keep It

TYPES OF TRUST

Trust is often thought of as having depth or degrees. And people often experience a range of trust—from a high level to a low level, or even an absence of trust. On the positive end of the scale, you may use words like capable or highly confident. The negative end of the scale calls to mind terms such as distrust (negative expectations regarding someone’s conduct), suspicion, or even betrayal. Finally, some people view trust as necessarily including caution or safeguards.

This is called bounded trust—or, as President Reagan once famously remarked, “Trust, but verify.”

When people think about trust in organizational life, the first place to ground themselves is in whom or what they are trusting. In most cases this is interpersonal ...