The Joyful Performance Model: Trust - The Foundation
The essential base of any healthy relationship - including those at work.
In my last post, I shared the third step to joyful performance management: Celebrate & Enhance. It's time now to discuss the foundation that makes the entire model work. Trust.
So far we've discussed tangible actions you can take to manage performance. The thing is, none of them work well without a strong trusting relationship between the employee and leader. You could follow the model, execute the best practices, and still see only mediocre results if there's no trust between you.
So how do you build it?
Trust as a concept can feel nebulous. Why do we trust some people and not others? Why do employees connect with one leader and not the next? Ultimately, I believe there are a few key actions that build trust. I curated this list through years of experience, study, and engagements, and I believe in the power they bring to any relationship.
See people as people and get to know them.
Do what you said you would do.
Make it safe at work.
Advocate - Stand up for them in rooms they're not in.
Help others improve their performance.
Employees are people too.
Have you ever stepped back to imagine what an employee's life is like? Pick the person you're struggling with most at the moment. Imagine what their morning was like. From the alarm clock to entering the building, what might it be like to be them? Did they herd a group of kids to school? Do they have a dog that needs help getting outside? Do they have a parent who lives with them and needs breakfast before they leave? Are they in a troubled relationship? Really feel what that might be like for a moment.
Thinking about them in this way enables empathy. It creates an opportunity to understand their motivations and behaviors. We all have our own goals, priorities, and experiences. It's easy to get caught up in how we feel or what we need. To build trust, we must see our employees as people with their own goals, priorities, and experiences. The opposite is to see and treat people as things that need to be moved or manipulated. This is one of the fastest ways to break down trust.
I'm a rule follower. I love a good set of rules and standards to guide my work. I like "this is how it's done" SOP documents. I've shared quite a few best practices in my posts. I'm a fixer, and I love solving problems, especially if it helps others. I would guess many leaders have a natural tendency to want to fix things and get things done well. For some, it can become a problem rather than a strength.
Imagine an employee comes in two minutes late. The manager says, "You're late; work started two minutes ago." The employee responds, "Sorry, it won't happen again," and shuffles to their desk, head down. Was trust built in that moment? No. The manager treated their employee like an object that had to be manipulated (mission: prevent them from being late in the future) rather than seeing them as a person.
Replay it with the manager seeing them as a person, and watch how that changes the approach. "Hey, is everything okay? You seem a little flustered, and it's the second day in a row you've been a little late. Is there anything I can help with?" The employee responds, "I'm sorry I'm late again. My daughter is having a hard time at school, and she's refusing to get out of the car when I drop her off. I feel horrible about carrying her out of the car, and her tantrums are making me late. I'll leave earlier for the rest of the week to give myself more time. It won't happen again." Was trust built in this moment? Yes. How do we know? The employee felt like the manager cared about them and what was getting in the way, so they opened up about a challenge, inviting the manager to trust them as well. They articulated a plan to ensure they're not late again, accomplishing the business need while building trust.
For more on treating people as people, check out the Arbinger Institute. If you're a leader who may be acting more like the first example, read Leadership and Self-Deception.
Trust takes vulnerability. It requires opening yourself up to being let down, but it's the critical component to achieving goals with others.
Get to know your team.
I get it. We're all busy. Finding time to "chit-chat" with the team might feel like the least useful way to use your time. I'm not recommending hour-long team coffee breaks. I'm asking you to take a few minutes every day to see how your team is doing and find out what's important to them.
Great ways to do this:
Start your day with humans instead of a machine if you're in person. Take your coffee to the group and catch up on everyone's lives for just a few minutes once or twice a week. Do you know if someone's kiddo just started school? Do you know if someone is caring for an aging parent? Do you know if someone went on a first date after a messy divorce? Let your team share what they are comfortable sharing with you. Not everyone will tell you their life story, but many will want to connect and share.
Welcome the new hires, for real. Set up intentional team and one-on-one time with your new hires. This time should be on top of job training, not one and the same. Maybe it's a welcome lunch with the team or a quick breakfast on day two. Make time to learn about your new hires, and intentionally create time for them to get to know the team as well. I still remember making my "about me" poster for my first corporate team, and I built some great friendships that endure today.
Regular team-building time. When I was leading a team of sales leaders, we met weekly for business and monthly for development. We also planned a team outing once a quarter. My teams developed quickly and delivered results because I took the time to ensure they were a true team, and that meant knowing how each other preferred to work, how they liked to be celebrated, and much more. We didn't spend a lot of money, and we had a lot of fun together too. For info on intentional team building, see the link at the bottom.
Do what you say you will.
Not everyone will like you, but you can still earn their trust.
Authenticity is much more than just “being yourself” or putting yourself out there. It’s about being consistent in those behaviors over time. - Rich Diviney
In his book The Attributes, Diviney describes an officer he worked with who was always grumpy and gruff, without fail. Undoubtedly, this disposition made him hard to like, but he could be trusted to be exactly who he was. This is true for all of us. My first team thought I was "too teacher-like." That's not all that surprising, given that I had spent the previous year teaching grade school music. However, the team knew what to expect from me, and through their feedback, I learned how to tone down the teacher vibe and bring out other strengths instead.
Building trust with authenticity means doing what you say you will. Do you say you want "real talk" and "open communication"? Good. Now, when someone comes to you frustrated about how an interaction with you went, you can't clam up, turn red, and point fingers. You have to hear them, own the feedback, and yes, thank them for giving it. Otherwise, you'll lose trust, and people will stop coming to you, believing your desire for "real talk" was just lip service.
Make it safe at work
I have news for you. You're not going to like it, but you need to hear it...
You are going to make a mistake.
We are all human. None of us has all the answers. It may feel like climbing the leadership ladder means you should. But there's a dirty secret the most toxic cultures don't want you to know. Even the CEO doesn't have all the answers. A strong leader leverages the expertise of their team to find the best answers; they don't dictate from on high. There's a reason each team member was hired. As a leader, it's your responsibility to find out what that was, and then use it to make the organization better as a whole.
When I took on the Daily Operations team at my last employer in early 2025, that's exactly what I had to do. I'd worked in retail and ops previously, but not at this company and in a different retail sector. My team was my one invaluable resource, knowing where to find answers, how processes worked that I'd never run before, and who the best contacts were, to say the least. My plan from the beginning was to let their strengths shine. Since that time, every single one of them has been promoted, and the team is adding a ton of value to the org. I couldn't be more proud of them and the work we did together. If I had tried to own it and run the whole thing "my way," things would have turned out very differently for all of us.
The best leaders, who are able to build true trust with their teams, admit when they make a mistake, AND they apologize when that mistake has a negative impact. I had my fair share of mistakes on that team too. I had my own habits and ways of working which were different than my new environment. My team would gently let me know when I'd stepped out of bounds, and I would work to recover what I'd messed up. Sometimes that was a communication issue, and sometimes it was a relationship. We're all human. The fastest way to build trust is to acknowledge and apologize after a mistake and work to correct it.
The other big component to making it safe at work is advocating for your team. There's nothing more frustrating than hearing your boss take credit for your idea or effort. Give credit where it's due. As the leader of a team, you're responsible and accountable for the work getting done, and the recognition for outstanding work needs to go to the individual or team doing it, not just the leader.
I have yet to lead a team where at least most of the employees didn't want to move up in the organization. The simplest way to help those employees take that step is to advocate for them in the rooms they don't have access to. When the CEO compliments a recent project, it's the perfect time for the team leader to acknowledge the individuals on the team who made it so successful.
When this doesn't happen, and the leader takes the credit alone, the bottom falls out of trust, and it's extremely hard to recover. Be the advocate for your people in the same way you would want someone to advocate for you.
Help others improve their performance.
We've come full circle in the model. Investing in the improvement of your team in a way that makes them feel valued and capable is one of the most impactful ways to build trust. Implementing a performance management process where employees feel like their leader truly wants them to be successful creates engagement and improves outcomes.
Why? Investing in another person's success is not a small thing.
Think of all the messages we see each day on social media, in the news and advertising, and even at the office. Most of them are negative in some way. Even the inspirational ones are about someone "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps." It's easy to feel isolated, even when we are sitting right next to others. The message is clear: the only way to get anywhere is to do it yourself.
But that's not necessarily true.
In Gallup's 2025 Report, State of the Global Workplace, they note that Managers trained in coaching experience a 20 to 28 percent improvement in performance and an 18 percent increase in team engagement.
That's proof that improving your employees' performance in a healthy, dare I say joyful, way creates trust, engagement, accountability, and results.
Trust is the foundation of the Joyful Performance Model for a reason. It's also the hardest to fix if it goes wrong. If there's one thing you take away from the model and implement today, let it be building trusting relationships with your team. The rest you can add from there, but without the credibility of trust, all the other pieces fall flat.
If you're interested in learning more about Trust and the rest of the Joyful Performance Model, check it out here. All you have to do is join the site as a member, which is totally free.
If you'd like to learn more about implementing the Joyful Performance Model in your organization, schedule time with me below.
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