Trust Series: Trust isn’t built in boardrooms. It’s built in conversations.
The biggest leadership skill nobody talks about is how you talk to people
When was the last time you thought about how you had a conversation at work, rather than just what you said?
Most leaders spend their time thinking about strategy, targets, restructures, and results. Rightly so, that’s a large part of the job. But none of that will land without trust. And trust doesn’t come from your job title, your PowerPoint deck, or your annual engagement survey.
Trust is built in conversations. The real ones. The messy Tuesday morning check-ins. The feedback you give after a presentation. The way you respond when someone tells you something’s gone wrong. The tone you use when the pressure is on.
What the research tells us
Last year, as part of my MSc in Organisational Psychology, I spent months researching this question: how do leaders build trust through the way they approach conversations at work? I interviewed eight experienced leaders across healthcare, education, retail, insurance, utilities, and small businesses. Between them, they had an average of 22.5 years of leadership experience. These weren’t hypothetical discussions. These were real stories about real conversations, including the ones that went well, the ones that didn’t, and the ones that changed relationships.
What emerged was that trust isn’t a trait. It’s not something you either have, or you don’t. It’s something that’s continuously created, tested, and sometimes broken through everyday dialogue. And the good news is it can be developed deliberately.
Four pillars. One big idea.
My research revealed four interconnected pillars of conversational trust:
1. Demonstrating Credibility Through Conversations – Are your words and actions aligned? Do people experience honesty, fairness, and follow-through when they interact with you?
2. Creating Human Connection and Psychological Safety – Do people feel safe enough to speak up, challenge, and admit mistakes? Do they experience you as someone who genuinely cares?
3. Adapting to People and Context Whilst Remaining Authentic – Do you flex your communication style to meet different people where they are, without losing yourself in the process?
4. Sharing Meaning, Ownership and Repair – Do you explain the ‘why’ behind decisions? Do you involve people? When trust gets damaged, because it will, how do you repair it?
Over the next five blogs, I’m going to unpack each of these pillars and share the insights, real quotes, and practical takeaways that came from my research. I’ll focus on grounded, useful thinking I hope you can apply in your next conversations.
Trust really matters
Organisational trust has been declining for years. People are more sceptical, more exhausted, and more attuned to whether their leaders mean what they say. You can’t fix that with a values poster in reception. You fix it one conversation at a time.
Day-to-day conversations are where people decide, “Can I speak up here? Do I feel respected? Do I trust this leader’s intent?”
If you’re a leader who wants to make trust more than a buzzword, do look out for more details over the next series of blogs.
What I’ll be sharing
In Blog 2, I'll unpack the first pillar: credibility. Why doing what you say you'll do is trust's front door, why owning your mistakes is one of the most powerful things a leader can do, and why consistency (boring as it sounds) might just be your greatest leadership superpower.
If you want the full picture now, you can also download my white paper,Building Trust Through Conversations: What leaders actually do to strengthen workplace relationships, which gives an overview summary of the research findings.
Trust isn't built in policies, values statements, or leadership programmes alone. It's built in the conversations you have every day. If you'd like support in developing those conversations across your organisation, whether through workshops, coaching, or team development, I'd love to help.
Hi, I'm Sarah Harvey, the founder of Savvy Conversations and creator of the STREETCREDS framework. My MSc Organisational Psychology research into how leaders build trust through everyday conversations directly underpins the work I do with leaders and teams, helping them have the right conversations, in the right way, at the right time.