Trust Is Built in the Trenches, Not Boardrooms
Why Real Partnerships Are Built Through Action, Not PowerPoints
Picture your inner circle. The friend who never spills your “tea”. The sibling who has your back. The colleague who gives you a heads up before things get messy. Even that frenemy whose drama you can rely on like clockwork. Each relationship is built on trust.
Over the years, I have seen the consulting industry shift from strategic architecture to crisis management. While responding quickly when clients encounter difficulties shows commitment (platform adoption issues, anyone?!), this reactive approach often leads to patching problems rather than addressing fundamental needs. The instinct to respond to every challenge with an overwhelming amount of solutions may actually be counterproductive and can prevent the development of sustainable, long-term solutions.
Sure, we could keep throwing features at those adoption problems. Keep suggesting new rollout plans. Keep pushing best practices. But that's just slapping band-aids on much deeper wounds.
Think about your last tough conversation. Remember how good it felt when someone really listened, not just waited to respond?
That's what our customers need. Not quick fixes. Not instant solutions. But someone who gets under the surface.
Real solutions start with uncomfortable questions. With (sometimes awkward) silences. With letting customers share their struggles before we jump in to “save the day”.
In other words: Less fixing, more active listening.
A Case Study In Trust:
Let me share a story that illustrates why trust matters so much in large-scale change.
A major financial services company was going through a massive reorganization, and they made a bold decision: transform their 3,000+ technology workforce into full-stack developers. While these employees worked with development teams, some as QA engineers, others in ops roles or as system admins, most hadn't done hands-on Java development. Now they were being asked to become full-stack developers, starting with learning Java from the ground up.
The company's first instinct was to invest heavily in an enterprise learning platform. On paper, it seemed like the perfect solution. But reality showed plummeting adoption and engagement rates and resistance to change bubbling up across teams. Despite the significant investment in this platform, developers started quietly finding their own learning solutions elsewhere (yikes).
When organizations face transformation challenges, our instinct is to add more - more training, more modules, more requirements. But that approach just adds layers to an already shaky foundation. It's like trying to teach someone to run before they've learned to walk. What these teams needed wasn't more training, they needed someone to understand why the current approach wasn't working.
This is where the lessons in trust come in; We stopped pushing solutions and started asking questions.
Through conversations with team leads, we uncovered the real issues:
Developers lacked time for foundational learning
Training was pushed top-down without understanding needs
Technical prerequisites weren't considered
Teams felt overwhelmed by the pace of change
Although we are still actively working on this solution, by making team leads architects of their own transformation vs. passive participants, we're seeing the early sparks of real change: higher engagement, active buy-in from team leads, and developers who finally feel heard instead of just handed another mandate.
Three Trust Building Moves
What we learned through this process boiled down to three essential moves that transform relationships from transactional to transformational:
Show, Don't Tell: We chose to start with a team with the widest skill gap to bridge. If we could make it work here, where the learning curve was the steepest, we could make our solution work across the organization where they were facing the same challenge. We let them break and rebuild their training, turning their challenges into our long term roadmap.
Address Pain Points: We tackled the obvious first: those 10-hour training blocks they created were not going to be good for anyone so we broke them down and let teams set their own pace. Making sure learning fits their day, not disrupting it.
Stay Present: We showed up consistently. Quick support, weekly check-ins, clear escalation paths. We built credibility through constant action, not promises.
The Trust Equation
Trust might seem like one of those intangible things you can't measure - you either have it or you don't. But in my years of working with enterprise transformations, I've learned that trust is actually more like a force multiplier. The more you have, the more impact every other effort makes.
This isn't just intuition - it's backed by decades of research. In 'The Trusted Advisor,' David Maister, Charles Green, and Robert Galford developed a practical equation that captures exactly how trust works in professional relationships:
Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation
Credibility: Can you do what you say?
Reliability: Do you consistently deliver?
Intimacy: Can you handle difficult conversations and can they trust you to guide them through those conversations?
Self-Orientation (or Self-Interest): Are you in it for them or just yourself?
The Path Forward
Next time you're working on a strategic partnership, resist the urge to fast-track to solutions. Understanding trust is one thing; building it is another. Here's how to apply these lessons in your next strategic partnership:
Map the middle: Who are the key implementers?
Listen for past scars: What went wrong before?
Show up early: Build trust before you need it (ie- this is a day 1 non-negotiable)
Stay present: The real relationship starts after the contract.
Remember: Trust is always built in the trenches, not boardrooms.
Trust-building isn't a one-size-fits-all process. Each organization, each team, each transformation has its own unique challenges. What's your experience? Have you seen deals succeed or fail based on trust?
As always, don’t boil the ocean-
Anita