How to Build Trust as a Leader (and Why Most Executives Get It Wrong)
Trust is the one thing most leaders say they want more of. It is also the thing most of them are quietly getting wrong.
The common assumption is that trust is something you earn once. Prove you are competent, show a little charisma, win people over, and then move on to the actual work. Then the team goes quiet in meetings. The executive room turns political. Somewhere along the way, the organization stops fully believing what leadership says. Kim Bohr, President and CEO of SparkEffect and host of Courage to Advance, recently explored this gap with executive coach Andrea Butcher. Their conversation cut past the usual advice about being authentic and landed somewhere more useful: trust is not a milestone you reach and bank. It is built or eroded in every interaction, including the small ones you forget you even had. This article distills that thinking into a practical guide for leaders who want to understand what actually builds trust, and what quietly erodes it.
🎧 LISTEN: Hear Andrea Butcher’s Full Conversation
Want the full episode? Listen to Andrea Butcher on Courage to Advance, where she and host Kim Bohr break down the difference between predictive trust and vulnerability-based trust, why labeling a colleague as “difficult” quietly shuts down your ability to lead them, and why the smallest, most forgettable interactions are usually the ones actually building or eroding trust on your team.
About Sarah Harris
Andrea Butcher is an executive coach, keynote speaker, and the founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Abundant Empowerment. She’s also founder of Next Gen Talent, a program for emerging HR leaders, host of the Being at Work podcast, and author of The Power in the Pivot and HR Kit for Dummies. Her work centers on what she calls the being of leadership rather than the doing: equipping leaders to be more of who they already are, instead of performing against a checklist of competencies.
The Difference Between the Two Kinds of Trust
Most trust advice collapses two very different things into one word. The first is predictive trust: will you do what you said you would do? It’s reliability, competence, follow-through. It matters, but it’s the surface layer. The second is vulnerability-based trust, the messier and more human version that comes from being willing to say “I am not sure,” “I got that wrong,” or “here is what I am struggling with.” As Andrea put it, real trust often forms “through vulnerability,” which gives people the space to learn, grow, and recognize mistakes while still showing up with their values intact.
Predictive trust keeps a team functional. Vulnerability-based trust is what makes people want to engage.
SparkEffect’s 2025 State of Organizational Trust research draws a hard line between these environments: in high-trust organizations, 97% of people say their company performs well financially. In low-trust organizations, only 46% say the same, a 51-point gap that doesn’t come from reliability alone. It comes from the deeper trust that gets people to speak up, flag problems early, and stay.
Why Your Greatest Strength Can Undermine You
Leaders are usually told to lean into what they do well. That advice has a blind spot. Andrea works with leaders whose defining trait, the very thing that got them promoted, starts working against them when they over-index on it. The driven executive who moves fast can steamroll the room. The decisive leader can stop listening. In her words, this is “not a capability issue as much as it is an intentionality issue.” The fix isn’t a new skill. It’s noticing when your strength is firing too hard and choosing a different response in the moment.
She shared the example of a fast-paced CEO at a healthcare technology company who realized he didn’t actually know the leaders on his newly grown team. Rather than lead the way he always had, he deliberately held back: he got curious, sought out the quieter voices, and asked people directly what they thought. He built trust through restraint, against his own instincts.
That tracks with what Andrea sees across her coaching practice: trust concentrates in the direct relationship, not the org chart. People extend trust to the leader in front of them, not to the organization in the abstract, which is why the daily choice to hold back and invite in the quieter voice isn’t a soft nicety. It’s where trust is actually won or lost, and it’s the pattern executive coaching is built to surface before it costs a leader something bigger.
The Story You Tell Yourself About the "Difficult" Person
Every leader has worked with someone they found hard to deal with. What you do with that judgment matters more than you think.
Kim named the mechanism underneath it: “We tell these stories in our heads and they become so true. Then we just start to believe them.” The moment you decide a colleague is a bulldozer, or difficult, or impossible, you’ve stopped being curious about what’s driving their behavior. Andrea’s point sharpens that: “as soon as we put that label on someone, we have disempowered ourselves.” Kim’s follow-on is the reframe leaders actually need: “it’s few people that walk in with that as their goal every day,” so the more useful question is why we’re perceiving the behavior the way we are.
Psychological safety, a core dimension of the SparkEffect Trust Score, depends on people feeling safe enough to be honest with each other, especially across friction. Teams that can name tension and stay curious about it build trust. Teams that quietly sort each other into heroes and villains erode it. The difference is a question instead of a verdict.
Trust Is Built in the Moments You Forget
Andrea’s central claim is that trust is never finished: “Every communication, every email, every text, every slack, everything I put out there is either building or eroding.” She traces this belief to a former direct report who, years later, told her about a moment when Andrea had badly hurt her, an incident Andrea couldn’t even remember. Forgettable to her. Formative to the other person.
That’s the uncomfortable truth for busy executives. The moments most likely to shape how much your people trust you are the ones you’re least likely to notice: the rushed reply, the meeting cut short, the feedback that landed harder than you intended. It also tracks with what SparkEffect’s research shows about disruption: trust is most fragile during change, and it accumulates or drains through the everyday experience of working under a leader. Well-handled moments compound into resilience. Mishandled ones compound into the 51-point performance gap. Building that awareness across a leadership team is the work of leadership development that actually sticks, not a one-time workshop.
Kim’s own experience backs this up from the other side of it: “When I think back in my own career, I’ve grown the most” through the hardest situations. “That’s where I tell people that sometimes when they’re going through those situations, I’m like, this is where you’re growing the most.”
Where to Start
If you want to build more trust as a leader, start small and start this week.
- Circle back. When a conversation doesn’t land the way you intended, name it and revisit it. Don’t let a forgettable moment become a formative one.
- Ask the quieter voice. In your next meeting, deliberately draw out the person who hasn’t spoken. Restraint from you creates room for them.
- Trade the label for a question. Next time you catch yourself deciding someone is difficult, ask what pressure might be driving them instead.
- Make a “to be” list. Before a hard conversation, decide not just what you want to do, but how you want to show up while doing it.
- Treat the friction as the opportunity. The most challenging team dynamic in front of you is usually the one with the most growth on the other side of it.
Trust is not soft, and it’s not a box you check. It’s strategic infrastructure, built one interaction at a time, in the moments you’re most tempted to rush through.
“Every communication, every email, every text, every slack, everything I put out there is either building or eroding.” — Andrea Butcher
Related Resource
Download the Complete Research
Get the full SparkEffect Trust Study with detailed breakdowns by industry, organization size, and leadership level.
[Research link]
The Science of Trust in Coaching
Explore the neuroscience behind why trust is the foundation of every leadership breakthrough. Download the free ebook.
[Ebook link]
Leadership Development Programs
SparkEffect’s leadership development courses help organizations build the conditions where people actually stay, grow, and perform.
[Leadership Development link]
Organizational Development
SparkEffect helps organizations align culture, strategy, and leadership capability so that change efforts stick.
[Organizational Development link]
Executive Coaching
One-on-one coaching for leaders developing the awareness and capability to lead through complexity, have hard conversations, and close the gap between organizational values and lived experience.
[Executive Coaching link]
Abundant Empowerment by Andrea Butcher
Andrea’s coaching practice helps leaders build the internal awareness behind how they show up, not just a checklist of skills to perform.
[Abundant Empowerment] | [LinkedIn]
Being at Work Podcast
Andrea’s own podcast, daily doses of leadership insight for anyone doing the internal work of showing up better.
[Listen on YouTube]
Books by Andrea Butcher
The Power in the Pivot and HR Kit for Dummies give leaders practical tools for showing up differently, from Andrea’s own pivot story to the day-to-day realities of leading people.
[Find her books]
Listen to Andrea Butcher on Courage to Advance
Hear the full conversation, including the difference between predictive and vulnerability-based trust, why labeling a colleague as “difficult” shuts down your ability to lead them, and the moment that shaped Andrea’s belief that every interaction is either building or eroding trust.
[Listen to Andrea Butcher’s full episode]
Connect with Kim Bohr
[LinkedIn]
Work with SparkEffect
If trust is eroding in the small moments your organization isn’t tracking, or you want to build that muscle before disruption forces the issue, we can help. Schedule a conversation to explore how:
[Contact link]
About SparkEffect
SparkEffect helps organizations build trust that bends without breaking. Our Trust Performance Index and consulting services give leadership teams the tools to diagnose trust gaps and build the infrastructure required for lasting transformation.
The Courage to Advance podcast features leaders building the organizations they wish existed, proving that business doesn’t have to be dehumanizing.
Looking for more on what effective leadership development actually looks like in practice? Explore these conversations on the Courage to Advance podcast.
