Trust between supervisors and employees has a number of specific advantages. Here are just a few from research:

• Trust encourages taking risks. Whenever employees decide to deviate from the usual way of doing things, or to take their supervisor’s word on a new direction, they are taking a risk. In both cases, a trusting relationship can facilitate that leap.

• Trust facilitates information sharing. When managers demonstrate they will give employees’ ideas a fair hearing and actively make changes, employees are more willing to speak out.84

• Trusting groups are more effective. When a leader sets a trusting tone in a group, members are more willing to help each other and exert extra effort, which increases trust.

• Trust enhances productivity. Employees who trust their supervisors tend to receive higher performance ratings, indicating higher productivity.85

What key characteristics lead us to believe a leader is trust-worthy? Evidence has identified three: integrity, benevolence, and ability (see Exhibit 12-6).86

Integrity refers to honesty and truthfulness. When 570 white-collar employees were given a list of 28 attributes related to leadership, they rated honesty the most important by far.87 Integrity also means maintaining consistency between what you do and say.

Benevolence means the trusted person has your interests at heart, even if your interests aren’t necessarily in line with theirs. Caring and supportive behavior is part of the emotional bond between leaders and followers.

Ability encompasses an individual’s technical and interpersonal knowledge and skills. You’re unlikely to depend on someone whose abilities you don’t believe in even if the person is highly principled and has the best intentions.

Trust propensity refers to how likely a particular employee is to trust a leader. Some people are simply more likely to believe others can be trusted.88 Trust propensity is closely linked to the personality trait of agreeableness and people with lower self-esteem are less likely to trust others.89

Does trust look the same in every culture? Using the basic definition of trust, it certainly does. However, in the work context, trust in an employment relationship may be built on very different perceptions from culture to culture. For example, a recent study in Taiwan indicated that employees responded to paternalistic leadership, when it was benevolent and ethical, with increased trust.90 This positive response to paternalism may be unique to the collectivistic context of Taiwan, where the Confucian values of hierarchy and relationship predominate. In individualistic societies (see Chapter 4), we might expect that paternalistic leadership will rankle many employees who prefer not to see themselves as part of a hierarchical family work group. Employees in individualistic cultures may build trust according to the degree of leadership support and consistency instead.

We come to trust people by observing their behavior over a period of time.91 To help, leaders need to demonstrate integrity, benevolence, and ability in situations where trust is important—say, where they could behave opportunistically or let employees down. Second, trust can be won in the ability domain by demonstrating competence. Third, research with 100 companies around the world suggested that leaders can build trust by shifting their communication style from top-down commands to ongoing organizational dialogue. Lastly, when leaders regularly create interpersonal conversations with their employees that are intimate, interactive, inclusive, and that intentionally follow an agenda, followers demonstrate trust with high levels of engagement.92

Managers who break the psychological contract with workers, demonstrating they aren’t trustworthy leaders, will find employees are less satisfied and less committed, have a higher intent toward turnover, engage in less OCB, and have lower levels of task performance.93 Leaders who betray trust are especially likely to be evaluated negatively by followers if there is already a low level of LMX.94

Once it has been violated, trust can be regained, but only in certain situations and depending on the type of violation.95 If the cause is lack of ability, it’s usually best to apologize and recognize you should have done better. When lack of integrity is the problem, apologies don’t do much good. Regardless of the violation, saying nothing or refusing to confirm or deny guilt is never an effective strategy for regaining trust. Trust can be restored when we observe a consistent pattern of trustworthy behavior by the transgressor. However, if the transgressor used deception, trust never fully returns, not even after apologies, promises, or a consistent pattern of trustworthy actions.96