Building a Culture of Trust | Live from the Global Leadership Summit

This article summarizes the key insights and actionable equation shared by Craig Groeschel at the Global Leadership Summit (GLS), emphasizing that in an era dominated by distrust and skepticism, building a culture of trust requires intentional, strategic leadership. Groeschel presents the fundamental truth: If people don’t trust you, they won’t follow you. The future of leadership is trust.

The Challenge: Distrust is Society’s Default Emotion

The current leadership landscape is characterized by deep skepticism and cynicism, far exceeding that of previous generations. Groeschel points out that decades ago, people were more inclined to trust leaders, the media (like the “Evening News”), and print publications. Today, however, due to “fake news and scandals and lies and deepfakes,” most people are not just skeptical but “full-blown distrusting”.

This pervasive lack of trust presents a massive problem for all leaders, as people generally distrust politicians, the media, CEOs, social media, AI tools like ChatGPT, and even mega-church pastors. According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, a key source for studying trust, more than half of the population won’t trust someone or something until they see evidence.

Leaders must recognize that their teams and even those closest to them will not naturally trust them. This requires heightened intentionality on the leader’s part to bridge the gap and close the distance between skepticism and commitment.

The Trust Equation: T + E + C = Trust

To intentionally build a culture where people trust the vision and give their “whole hearts” to it, Groeschel provides a powerful, three-part equation:

$$\text{Transparency} + \text{Empathy} + \text{Consistency} = \text{Trust}$$

All three contributing factors are necessary to create trust; lacking even one diminishes a leader’s “trust quotient”.

1. Transparency: A Truth to Share

Transparency means leaders must be willing to share truth—both professionally and personally. The natural inclination for leaders is to be protective or selective about what they share, often driven by insecurity or fear.

The Danger of Withholding Truth: A key problem is the tendency to hold back communication when things are not going well, often because the leader does not want the team to worry. However, whenever communication decreases, uncertainty increases. When something is unknown, it feels unsettling at best and threatening at worst.

The Power of Radical Honesty:

• A Hard Truth is Better than a Lie: It is better to disappoint your team with a hard truth than to deceive them with a lie. Acknowledging problems builds trust, while failing to acknowledge a problem (which the team likely already knows) leads to a significant loss of credibility.
• Inclusion Drives Commitment: If team members don’t feel “in the know” or like they are “a part,” they will never bring their whole heart to the mission.
• The Fear of Insecurity: Groeschel personally admitted that the challenges of the COVID season, coupled with criticism from trusted leaders, significantly shook his confidence, dropping his leadership quality from a seven to a two. He broke down and apologized to his staff, confessing he had been leading out of fear and not by faith—the “unforgivable sin as a leader”.
• The Result: Trust Built: This difficult, raw apology did not cost him credibility; it built trust. People may be impressed by a leader’s strengths, but they connect with their weaknesses.

Three Outcomes of Transparency: When a leader leads with “raw transparency” and brings their whole heart: teams get closer, problems are solved faster, and trust grows stronger. If a team doesn’t see what the leader sees, they cannot think or care like the leader thinks or cares.

(Note: Strategic transparency is key. Avoid sharing inappropriate personal details, such as medical ailments, which should be kept for trusted prayer friends).

2. Empathy: A Heart to Care

Empathy means having a heart to care for the team. A team will never care about the leader’s mission if the leader doesn’t care about their team. Team members will not give their lives to a cause if they are not led by someone who cares about their lives.

Listening Your Way to Trust: Leaders often believe they must prove their competence and talent through talking. Counter-intuitively, the opposite is true: to build trust, you must talk less and listen more. You don’t talk your way into trust; you listen your way into it.

• Personal Connection: Groeschel demonstrated this by personally meeting or calling all 63 of his top-level leaders (campus pastors and central group leaders) after recognizing decreased trust in the organization.
• Asking Deep Questions: He asked questions designed to understand their personal hearts, such as: “What are you most excited about personally in this season?”, “What would you love for me to know about you that I’ve never asked before?”, and “If I could do one thing to make your life better, what would it be?”.
• “I Notice and You Matter”: Empathy is summarized by four words: “I notice” and “you matter”. A leader must show they care not just about what people do, but about who they are. This requires remembering personal details and following up on them (e.g., asking about a four-year-old or a lost mother).

3. Consistency: A Culture to Trust

Consistency is the third factor, and its absence is detrimental. Most people have served under a leader who was “sporadic and inconsistent,” creating a lack of emotional safety and clarity.

The Problem of Inconsistency:

• Which You?: Inconsistent leaders cause their teams to constantly wonder “which you is gonna walk into a meeting” (e.g., “hummingbird you” versus “seagull you,” who swoops in, “poops on everyone,” and flies away).
• Unclear Expectations: The number one reason team members don’t meet expectations is that the expectations are rarely clear.
• Sporadic Efforts Fail: Inconsistency doesn’t work anywhere else in life—spiritually, physically, or maritally. Telling the truth only 65% of the time, for instance, destroys a marriage.

The Consistent Leadership Strategy:

• The Three-Step Rule: To build a great organization, leaders must be clear and consistent, following this simple model:
  1. Be clear what you expect.
  2. Reward it when you see it.
  3. Correct it when you don’t.
• Boring is the New Sexy: The best leadership is often “boring leadership”. Groeschel models consistency by maintaining the same mission, same values, and same plan, recognizing that it is not what a leader does occasionally that matters, it’s what they do consistently.

Three Outcomes of Consistency: Consistency creates emotional safety, organizational clarity, and exponential impact.