An Amazon Leader Shares Her Steps for Mastering Trust

You trust us.

Trust is the fuel behind any relationship. Each week, you trust the information we curate for these articles is accurate and factual…even insightful. You trust your friends to support you in good times and bad. And your team trusts you to support them and guide them to success.

In fact, trust is the cornerstone of effective leadership. Without it, you can’t inspire your team, and they can’t rely on any information you give them. When your organization loses trust, it also loses customers, partners, and staff.

So how do you build trust?

Catherine Teitelbaum, Amazon‘s Head of Family Trust, shared the hard-won insights she’s gained overseeing (even founding) safety and trust programs for various tech firms.

First, understand that trust-building is incremental. Think of trust as a decorative wall, and each positive action or interaction adds another gleaming brick. The wall grows slowly and steadily. But negative actions are overpowering; each one is like a sledgehammer that swings in and shatters that wall. So be consistent: make sure your actions align with your words, and be a reliable presence for your team.

Lead with authenticity and transparency. Bad news in itself doesn’t erode trust; hiding it does. Teams (and customers) need open communication. Without it, you send the signal that you don’t trust them, so why should they trust you in return? For leaders, authenticity becomes self-transparency, being honest about your shortcomings not just with your team, but just as critically, with yourself. When you know and express your limits, your team will be more open to stepping in to fill the gaps.

Be resilient and adaptable. Leaders must expect challenges; they’re inevitable. Navigating them is part of leading – we wouldn’t need leaders in the first place if everything always ran perfectly and smoothly! The best leaders go beyond resilience, and actually embrace challenges, seeing them as opportunities to learn and grow. That enthusiasm readily spreads to your team, making setbacks a mere crouch as you prepare to spring forward. In fact, this aspect of trust makes your team more innovative. As they see you adapting and welcoming new ideas and approaches, they’re more willing to share their own ideas and insights.

Spread trust throughout the organization. Customers keep organizations alive; their transactions with your company are relationships. Violate their trust, and the relationship goes away. To value and nurture trust organization-wide, clearly communicate the firm’s values and the behaviors expected from all staff. Just as important, demonstrate that leadership trusts the staff: give them some degree of autonomy, and the ability to take ownership of their work.

We really can’t overstate the value of trust for leaders. It keeps your crew steadfast as you navigate every storm, and helps the full team surge ahead in clear weather. Morale, loyalty, productivity: they’re all bolstered. Just remember that building trust is far more than simply keeping your promises; it’s about clearly demonstrating, every day, that you have the best interests of your team at heart.

We’ve all experienced the extremes of trust at work: both the violation of trust and exceptional examples of genuine trust. What’s your story? If you ever lost trust, how did you rebuild it? Help other readers by sharing your wisdom in the comments.

This article was adapted by Dan Mushalko from our podcast episode Four Key Lessons on Trust & Safety from Amazon’s Head of Family Trust.

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