Coaching practices for Team Trust

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Team Trust, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• I won’t hand anyone real responsibility until they’ve completely proven themselves first
• I keep everything at work behind a polished, guarded front
• On my team nobody will admit they’re stuck or wrong or don’t know something
• I do genuinely have their back, but I assume they just know it, so I never actually show it
• I keep waiting for my manager to notice me and hand me more trust, and it’s not happening

Practices that may help

1. The Trust Triangle
   Charles Feltman’s Trust Triangle (from The Thin Book of Trust) identifies four distinct assessments that together constitute trust: sincerity (I mean what I say), reliability (I do what I say), competence (I have the ability to do what I say), and care (I have your interests at heart). Trust breaks down when any one of these assessments fails — and repairing trust requires identifying which assessment was damaged.
2. The Trust Equation, Made Practical
   The Trust Equation (Maister, Green, and Galford) holds that trustworthiness = (credibility + reliability + intimacy) ÷ self-orientation. The model is a practitioner framework rather than a rigorously tested theory, but it usefully names the levers — especially self-orientation, which is the single biggest trust-killer most leaders overlook.
3. Extend trust deliberately to invite it
   Trust others first, in bounded ways, before they have earned every dimension — it is how trust is built.
   The Trust Triangle
4. Lower your guard to raise the intimacy score
   Sharing something real about yourself makes others feel safer sharing something real with you.
   The Trust Equation, Made Practical
5. Build vulnerability-based trust
   Teams that can’t admit weakness, mistakes, or ignorance to each other cannot genuinely collaborate.
   The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
6. Demonstrate care through visible acts in the other person’s interest
   Show that your interests and theirs are genuinely aligned — not only when it’s convenient.
   The Trust Triangle
7. Invest in the relationship before you need it
   Build relational credit through reliability and initiative, not charm or performance alone.
   Leader-Member Exchange (LMX), Made Practical
8. Diagnose which trust dimension is broken before trying to repair
   Name the specific trust assessment that failed — then address that one, not trust in general.
   The Trust Triangle
9. Have explicit trust conversations when trust is at stake
   Name the trust issue directly rather than managing it indirectly.
   The Trust Triangle
10. Earn the right to deepen the relationship in stages
    Trust compounds over time — start with technical credibility and expand into intimacy as it is earned.
    The Trust Equation, Made Practical

Describe your situation in your own words to search the complete practice library.