The Habits of High-Trust Teams and High-Trust Organizations

Jonathan H. Westover, PhD
Jun 19
6 min read

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Abstract: This article explores how trust serves as the cornerstone of effective organizational performance in today's rapidly changing business environment. Drawing on extensive research, it outlines specific trust-building habits exhibited by high-performing teams, including clear expectation-setting, transparency in communication, consistent reliability, and psychological safety. The article detail how these practices must be modeled at leadership levels and embedded throughout organizational systems to create sustainable high-trust cultures. Through practical examples from a technology services company case study, the article demonstrates how intentionally cultivating trust-building behaviors led to measurable improvements in employee engagement, retention, and financial performance. The comprehensive framework presented offers leaders across industries actionable strategies to transform their organizational culture and achieve superior business outcomes through the strategic development of trust.

Trust is the foundation on which effective teams and organizations are built. In our fast-paced, digital world where collaboration is key and change is constant, trust has never been more important. Yet trust does not happen by chance - it must be intentionally cultivated through consistent habits and behaviors.

Today we will explore the research-backed habits of high-trust teams and organizations and provide practical examples of how leaders can implement these habits to drive performance in their unique industry context.

Building a Foundation of Trust

Trust starts from the top down. Leaders set the tone and establish the environment. Research has shown time and again that leadership behaviors have a significant impact on the level of trust within a team or organization (Mishra & Mishra, 2013; Dirks & Ferrin, 2002). For trust to permeate across teams and departments, it must be modeled and championed by executives and managers. Leaders must walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to behaviors that build trust such as reliability, transparency, integrity, and care for others.

The Habits of High-Trust Teams

At the team level, certain habits have been found to greatly contribute to the development of trusting relationships that increase engagement, collaboration, and results. Let's explore some of the key habits exhibited by high-trust teams:

Clarify Expectations: High-trust teams take the time up front to have open discussions clarifying roles, goals, priorities, decision-making processes, and how performance will be evaluated (Gilson et al., 2005). With expectations out in the open, team members feel more empowered and supported to contribute to their fullest ability.
Foster Transparency: These teams operate with a high level of transparency, regularly sharing information, status updates, and challenges openly with one another (Costa et al., 2017). Documents, budgets, schedules - nothing is kept hidden. This breeds a sense of psychological safety for team members to bring forth ideas without fear of repercussions.
Demonstrate Reliability: Members of high-trust teams consistently deliver on their commitments and do what they say they are going to do. Deadlines are met, responsibilities are fulfilled, and others can trust that the work will get done (McAllister, 1995). Dependability is key to developing credibility between teammates.
Promote Psychological Safety: Perhaps most importantly, high-trust teams cultivate an environment where it is safe to take risks, admit mistakes, ask questions, and challenge assumptions without feeling embarrassed, insecure or stressed (Edmonson, 1999). When people feel safe bringing their whole selves to work, creativity and innovation thrive.

These habits lay the groundwork for trusting relationships to develop between teammates. Strong interpersonal trust paves the way for cohesion, information sharing, flexible coordination, and peak performance.

Sustaining Trust in Organizations

Many of the same habits that foster trust at the team level must be duplicated and role modeled at the organizational level. Some key habits of high-trust organizations include:

Communicate Strategic Vision: Sharing the overarching vision and strategy in a compelling, consistent manner helps employees at all levels understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012). This fosters meaningful work and alignment.
Demonstrate Integrity: Upholding strong ethical practices and following through on commitments to employees, customers, and shareholders builds credibility and earns trust over time (Mayer et al., 1995). Integrity permeates decision making.
Empower Decision Making: While structures and oversight are needed, empowering employees to make decisions autonomously within boundaries where possible instills confidence and increases engagement (Kirkman et al., 2009). Micro-managing breeds mistrust.
Care for People: Beyond compensation and benefits, caring about employees' wellbeing, growth, work-life balance and truly listening to understand their perspectives goes miles in developing loyalty and trust between workers and leadership (Gillespie & Mann, 2004). People first cultures thrive.
Pursue Continuous Improvement: Continually monitoring metrics, piloting new initiatives, and making adjustments based on feedback signals to the organization that leadership is committed to getting better every day (Ready & Truelove, 2011). Change is embraced, not feared.

These habits of high-trust organizations help nurture trusting relationships across teams, departments and divisions. Trust acts as a force multiplier to streamline processes, accelerate innovation, retain top talent and delight customers at a higher level.

Building Trust in Action

Let's explore how a technology services company implemented the habits of high-trust teams and organizations to transform their culture and performance.

Clarifying Expectations: To strengthen trust at the team level, project managers held kick-off workshops clarifying roles, responsibilities, objectives, communication norms and metrics for each new client engagement. Meeting cadence, reporting structures and how successes would be celebrated were transparent.
Fostering Transparency: The company rolled out new project management software with built-in dashboards to provide real-time visibility into project status, risks flagging, budget variances and time tracking across all engagements. Documentation was centralized and accessible internally.
Demonstrating Reliability: Leadership emphasized the importance of delivery excellence and kept teams accountable by tying a portion of bonuses to on-time completion of milestones and adherence to budgets and schedules. Client satisfaction soared.
Promoting Psychological Safety: Cross-functional "lunch and learn" sessions gave diverse perspectives air-time and encouraged candid two-way feedback in a low-pressure format. This cultivated an environment where trying new ideas was supported, not stifled.
Communicating Strategic Vision: Quarterly all-hands meetings announced new innovation initiatives, deal wins and success metrics against the long term “North Star” vision using video testimonials and interactive Q&As to increase buy-in.
Demonstrating Integrity: Compensation restructuring brought executive pay in line with employee salaries to signal integrity. A new whistleblower hotline and ethics training instilled confidence that doing the right thing would be rewarded.
Empowering Decision Making: Individual contributor roles gained more autonomy over client engagements and budgets under $50k with predefined guardrails and approval workflows. This freed bandwidth for leadership.
Caring for People: The HR team launched an internal recognition program, expanded learning paths, implemented vacation blackout periods and hosted family fun days at the office to show appreciation for work-life balance.

These intentional efforts to role model and habituate the behaviors of high-trust teams and organizations transformed the company culture within 18 months. Employee engagement scores jumped 25%, voluntary attrition dropped below industry average, and revenue surpassed targets by 10% as clients eagerly expanded work with the newly cohesive and reliable organization.

Sustaining a High-Trust Culture

While initial gains can be realized quickly, maintaining high trust requires ongoing nurturing of habits. Leaders must institutionalize structures, make trust-building behaviors part of performance management and socialize new hires from day one. Complacency can erode trust just as quickly as it was established if attention waivers. Research supports that high-trust cultures not only outperform but also retain talent and customers at higher rates in the long-run (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012; Dirks & Ferrin, 2002). With commitment to continual improvement, the dividends of trust will keep compounding for innovative organizations.

Trust is critical for teams and companies seeking to thrive in today's challenging business landscape. By intentionally modeling the research-backed habits of clarifying expectations, fostering transparency, demonstrating reliability, promoting psychological safety, communicating vision with integrity and empowering people, leaders can seed a foundation of trust that unlocks peak performance. Consistently role modeling these behaviors at all levels transforms organizational culture and strengthens relationships to sustain long-term business success.

References

Costa, A. C., Roe, R. A., & Tailleu, T. N. (2017). Trust within teams: The relation with performance and effectiveness. Personnel review, 36(6), 988-1009.
Dirks, K. T., & Ferrin, D. L. (2002). Trust in leadership: Meta-analytic findings and implications for research and practice. Journal of applied psychology, 87(4), 611.
Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative science quarterly, 350-383.
Fulmer, C. A., & Gelfand, M. J. (2012). At what level (and in whom) we trust: Trust across multiple organizational levels. Journal of management, 38(4), 1167-1230.
Gillespie, N., & Mann, L. (2004). Transformational leadership and shared values: The building blocks of trust. Journal of Managerial Psychology.
Gilson, L. L., Mathieu, J. E., Shalley, C. E., & Ruddy, T. M. (2005). Creativity and standardization: Complementary or conflicting drivers of team effectiveness?. Academy of Management Journal, 48(3), 521-531.
Kirkman, B. L., Mathieu, J. E., Cordery, J. L., Rosen, B., & Kukenberger, M. (2013). Global organizational communities of practice: The effects of country customer characteristics on community performance and member satisfaction. Journal of World Business, 48(1), 56-64
McAllister, D. J. (1995). Affect-and cognition-based trust as foundations for interpersonal cooperation in organizations. Academy of management journal, 38(1), 24-59.
Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of organizational trust. Academy of management review, 20(3), 709-734.
Mishra, A. K., & Mishra, K. E. (2013). The research on trust in leadership: The need for context. Journal of Trust Research, 3(1), 59-69.
Ready, D. A., & Truelove, S. (2011). The power of trust. Ivey Business Journal, 75(3), 23.

Jonathan H. Westover, PhD is Chief Academic & Learning Officer (HCI Academy); Chair/Professor, Organizational Leadership (UVU); OD Consultant (Human Capital Innovations). Read Jonathan Westover's executive profile here.

Suggested Citation: Westover, J. H. (2026). The Habits of High-Trust Teams and High-Trust Organizations. Human Capital Leadership Review, 22(2). doi.org/10.70175/hclreview.2020.22.2.6