The Hidden Efficiency of Trust: Building Stronger Relationships Through Your Strengths
Imagine you need to send a short email to a colleague; a simple update, a question, nothing high-stakes.
Now imagine this colleague is someone you don’t quite trust.
You pause. You think through every word, soften your tone, reread twice, maybe three times. You hesitate before clicking “send.” You might even ask someone else to look it over, just to make sure it “sounds okay.”
Now picture sending that same message to a colleague you do trust. You write, send, and move on. You know if something’s unclear, they’ll ask. You know they’ll assume good intent.
Same message. Two entirely different experiences.
That’s the invisible tax of low trust — the extra time, energy, and mental bandwidth it takes to work with someone when trust isn’t there. Trust is not just about being nice or getting along. It’s about efficiency. It’s the oil that keeps the gears of collaboration turning. When it’s missing, even the smallest interactions become energy drains.
Why Trust Matters More Than Ever
Gallup research shows that employees who strongly agree they trust their leaders are four times more likely to be engaged at work. In Strengths Based Leadership, Rath and Conchie identified trust as one of the four key needs followers have of their leaders (alongside compassion, stability, and hope).
Trust, they found, isn’t something that comes from authority or charisma. It’s built through consistency, doing what you say you’ll do, communicating clearly, and showing care in everyday interactions.
And in Gallup’s It’s the Manager, the data goes further: teams that trust their managers experience higher productivity, better retention, and less burnout. In short, trust isn’t a “soft skill”, it’s a strategic advantage.
How Strengths Shape Trust
CliftonStrengths gives us a lens for understanding how we each naturally build (and sometimes break) trust.
If you lead with Responsibility or Consistency, you may build trust by being reliable, doing what you say you’ll do, every time.
If you lead with Empathy or Individualization, trust may grow through understanding, people feel seen and valued in your presence.
If you lead with Command or Self-Assurance, trust might come through confidence and decisiveness.
If you lead with Relator or Developer, trust deepens over time through authentic connection and shared progress.
There’s no single “right” way to build trust. The key is awareness, using your natural talents intentionally to communicate sincerity, competence, reliability, and care.
The Four Dimensions of Trust
In The Thin Book of Trust, Charles Feltman defines trust as “choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.” He breaks trust into four dimensions: sincerity, reliability, competence, and care.
These align beautifully with what Gallup’s decades of research have shown. When leaders communicate sincerely, follow through reliably, demonstrate competence, and show care — people feel safe. And when people feel safe, they perform.
The Ripple Effect
When trust grows, everything else does too: engagement, innovation, collaboration, and speed. Teams that trust one another don’t waste energy managing perceptions — they use that energy to solve problems, create, and move forward.
That’s why trust isn’t just a “soft” leadership quality; it’s a measurable efficiency factor. It’s what turns a group of capable individuals into a cohesive, high-performing team.
So the next time you find yourself overthinking an email, take it as a gentle signal — not about your writing, but about your relationship. Where trust is high, work flows. Where trust is low, friction follows.
And the best news? Trust is something you can build — one conversation, one follow-through, one authentic connection at a time.
Trust isn’t something you check off a to-do list. It’s built, moment by moment, conversation by conversation, until your team’s rhythm becomes smooth, confident, and collaborative.
At Aspen Root Collective, we craft customized training that integrates trust, CliftonStrengths, and leadership habits into daily work so teams communicate faster, collaborate deeper, and lead with confidence. Whether through a team session or an individual coaching experience, we help people build the kind of trust that frees up energy for what matters most.
Research Spotlight
📗 Gallup’s Strengths Based Leadership identifies trust as one of the four universal needs of followers. Teams that report high trust in their leaders are more engaged, more resilient, and more productive.
📗 In It’s the Manager, Gallup researchers found that leaders who regularly show care and communicate expectations clearly create stronger trust — and that trust directly predicts retention and performance.
📗 In The Thin Book of Trust, Charles Feltman breaks trust into four distinctions: sincerity, reliability, competence, and care — each of which leaders can intentionally develop.