Truth informs. Trust transforms.
Truth telling isn't enough. You have to build trust.
I’m not a great linguist. I keep my language simple as my vocabulary isn’t the broadest. The benefit of that tends to be that I write and speak in ways that most people can understand. Probably because I have often felt excluded from really fascinating subjects purely because of the complex language used to explain the topic (let’s park that for my therapist).
However, when I find myself using words frequently or ones that are similar, I like to dig a little deeper and understand the connection or differentiation of the words.
Enter my interest truth and trust. As you might expect, I use these words a lot but hadn’t really stopped to think about the meaning behind the words or their origins.
Super brief summary… it may not be surprising to learn that, for most of history, truth and trust were barely different words describing barely different things. To be true was to be trustworthy. A true person was someone solid you could lean on. The word “oak” comes from the same ancient roots as both words: “something solid you can lean on”. Love that!
So how are the words used today?
Truth is about reality.
Trust is about relationship
Truth is the foundation of trust. When someone consistently tells you what is real even when it’s uncomfortable and even when it might come at a cot to them them, you learn that their words line up with reality. Your trust in them accumulates kind of like track record: this person’s statements have proven reliable. Without truth-telling as a habit, trust erodes, because people start to sense that their is a gap between what they have said and what the reality is.
But it can also work the other way around: trust enables truth. In high-trust relationships, people feel safe enough to say hard things, admit uncertainty, and be honest about failure. Low-trust environments lead to people covering up the truth, not because people are dishonest by nature, but because being honest actually feels dangerous.
So the words are deeply connected but not the same thing, and their difference is particularly interesting when it comes to leadership.
Let’s start with a handful of differences:
Truth is impersonal; trust is relational. A fact is true regardless of who says it. But trust exists between some people and not others. Equally, you trust a person in one context but not another. For example, you might trust a person’s judgment in finance and not in relationships.
Truth is pretty much binary; trust is on a spectrum. Trust exists in degrees and can be created in lots of different ways: see my previous article on the trust equation
Truth can be spoken without trustworthiness. Someone can tell you accurate information while still being manipulative. Selective truth, misleading framing, or timing designed to serve their interests (high self orientation). What you say and how much you care that they understand the reality are different things.
What This Means for Leadership
For leaders, truth and trust can be a juggling act.
For starters, leaders aren’t always able to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth due to fact competitors would benefit from the information or that the information is publicly or legally sensitive. For example, if a CEO has to sack their CFO for sexual harassment, the terms of their departure are not always able to be made public. The only thing people see is the action, without explanation. They have to trust it has been done in good faith.
But not all information is legally protected, which leaves leaders with a judgement call to make about what to share.
Volunteering information generates trust. Leaders who are technically truthful but selective in what they share can destroy trust. For example, a senior leader may know that a key client is unhappy and wants to leave but they decide not to share it with the rest of the business yet, hoping they can find a solution (ideally without having to tell anyone a problem ever existed). By the time the issue surfaces, the team can feel blindsided and it can leave them wondering what else they aren’t being told. Leaders earn trust not just by avoiding lies but by volunteering difficult information, which includes bad news, uncertainty and their own mistakes.
Trust helps you discuss the reality. In a low-trust organisation, even accurate information can get ignored as people assume there’s a hidden agenda, or that they’re only getting half the story. This is why building trust isn’t a soft, optional extra for leaders. It’s integral. The higher the trust, the more honestly a situation can be discussed. For example, a leader with high trust in the bank can stand up and say “jobs are at risk, and here’s what we need to do about it” and the team will rally behind them. But if a leader has low-trust the team won’t hear rallying call; they hear a warning sign and worry that something worse is being hidden from them.
Trust will help the truth to reach you. When people trust their leader, they tell the truth upward. They surface problems, flag risks and disagree openly. When they don’t, leaders get snippets of information or none of the vital information reaches them. Trust creates psychological safety and not the other way around.
Be a truth-seeker, not just a truth-teller. The best and most impactful trustworthy leaders go looking for the truth, as much as they love sharing it. They are genuinely curious, try to update their views and are also cool with uncertainty.
The simplest way I can explain this is that without trust, the truth doesn’t get through. And without truth, there is no way to build trust. Great leadership requires both which is why that conscious effort must be put into building trust in order to be able to discuss the truth with the people around you.
