Trust in the Workplace
The Foundation of Everything that Matters in Business
The Trust Crisis We Can't Ignore
Trust is hemorrhaging from our workplaces.
Gallup tells us that only 23% of employees strongly agree that they trust their organization's leadership. The result? Disengaged teams, innovation paralysis, and cultures where people protect themselves instead of contributing their best work.​
​We've built organizations where people feel safer keeping their heads down than speaking up, where mistakes are hidden rather than learned from, and where psychological safety is a buzzword rather than a lived reality.
When trust erodes, everything becomes harder - communication, collaboration, change, and growth.
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But here's what most leaders miss: trust isn't built through competence alone. It starts with something much more fundamental, and much more human.
The Four Pillars of Trust
(and why Care comes first)
Charles Feltman's research identifies four essential elements of trust: care, reliability, competence, and sincerity. Most organizations focus on the last three - being good at what we do, doing what we say we'll do, and meaning what we say.
But without the first element - care - the others remain transactional at best.
Care is the belief that others have your best interests at heart. It's where trust and love intersect in the workplace. When people feel genuinely cared for - not just as employees but as whole human beings - they experience the psychological safety that enables vulnerability, innovation, and authentic connection.
This is where love becomes a business imperative.
Love in the workplace isn't sentiment; it's the active demonstration of care through our choices, conversations, and leadership. When we lead with care, we create the conditions where people can trust us with their ideas, their mistakes, and their humanity.
What Happens When Trust Exists
ACCELERATED INNOVATION​
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Teams that trust each other share half-baked ideas, build on each other's thoughts, and iterate fearlessly.
RESILIENT PROBLEM SOLVING​
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When trust is present, people surface issues early instead of hiding them, leading to faster resolution and learning.
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP​
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Leaders who are trusted can be vulnerable about their own mistakes and uncertainties, modeling the behavior they want to see.
SUSTAINABLE HIGH PERFORMANCE​
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Trust eliminates the energy drain of self-protection, freeing people to focus on results instead of politics.
ADAPTIVE ORGANIZATIONS​
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Trusted teams navigate change together rather than fragmenting under pressure.
The Hard Truth About Rebuilding Trust
Trust, once broken, doesn't heal with time.
It heals with intentional action. And that action must start with care. People need to believe you genuinely have their best interests at heart before they'll trust your competence, reliability, or sincerity.
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Rebuilding trust requires:
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Acknowledging harm without defensiveness
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Taking responsibility for your part in the breakdown
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Demonstrating care through consistent, small actions over time
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Creating new patterns that prove things have actually changed
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Being patient with the process; trust rebuilds at the speed of safety, not urgency
Who This is For
Leaders whose teams are withholding their best work because they don't feel safe to be vulnerable or take risks
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Organizations dealing with the aftermath of layoffs, restructuring, or leadership changes that have damaged trust and need intentional rebuilding
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High-performing teams that have hit a plateau because they're operating from self-protection rather than collaboration
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Leaders ready to do the courageous work of examining their own trustworthiness and making the changes necessary to earn and keep trust
Build unshakeable trust in your organization.
What Your People Will Experience
A Clear Framework for Trust
Understanding the four pillars and how to build each one systematically in their relationships and teams.
The Care Connection
Discovering how demonstrating genuine care creates the foundation for all other trust-building efforts.
Practical Rebuilding Tools
Concrete strategies for repairing damaged trust relationships, both individually and organizationally.
Self-Assessment Skills
The ability to honestly evaluate their own trustworthiness and identify specific areas for growth.
Difficult Conversation Navigation
How to address trust breakdowns directly and constructively, turning conflicts into deeper connection.
Sustainable Trust Practices
Daily habits and behaviors that build and maintain trust over time.
The
Love-Trust
Connection
Here's what most trust workshops miss:
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You can't build sustainable trust without care, and you can't demonstrate genuine care without love. Not romantic love, but the kind of love that sees people as whole human beings worthy of dignity, respect, and growth.
When leaders operate from love - choosing to see the best in people, extending grace during mistakes, and prioritizing human flourishing alongside business results - they create the conditions where trust can flourish.
Love is what transforms trust from a business transaction into a human connection.
This is why trust-building without love feels hollow. People can sense when your care is performative versus genuine. They know the difference between a leader who sees them as a resource to optimize and one who sees them as a human being to support.
Trust-Building Options
Keynote Speaking
Inspire your conference or organization with a research-backed, heart-centred approach to trust.
Leadership Development
Work intensively with leadership teams to assess and rebuild their trustworthiness.
Trust Repair Workshops
Facilitate healing and rebuilding after organizational trauma or significant trust breakdowns.
Culture Transformation
Partner with Ila to create organizational systems and practices that build and maintain trust at scale.
Individual Coaching
One-on-one support for leaders committed to becoming more trustworthy and effective.
Build unshakeable trust in your organization.
About
Ila Edgar
Ila has spent two decades helping leaders build the kind of trust that transforms organizations. Her approach goes beyond tactics to address the human heart of trust-building - the care and love that must underpin all sustainable relationships.
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Having faced her own mortality twice, Ila brings a unique perspective on what really matters in human connection. She's learned that trust isn't just about competence or reliability - it's about the courage to care deeply and show up authentically, even when it's messy.
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Ila works with leaders who are ready to examine their own trustworthiness honestly and make the changes necessary to build cultures where people feel safe to contribute their best work.
The Bottom Line
Trust isn't a nice-to-have - it's the operating system that determines whether everything else works.
In a world where talent is scarce and change is constant, organizations that can build, maintain, and rebuild trust will outperform, out-innovate, and out-retain everyone else.
But trust without love is fragile.
Trust with love is antifragile; it gets stronger under pressure.
"Trust begins with the belief that others have your best interests at heart. Everything else builds from there."
