How to maintain trust with your team during a period of uncertainty and change

Expert Opinion from Rich Watts published July 10, 2026

Of all the things that change puts under pressure in an organisation, trust is the one that suffers most quickly and recovers most slowly. A team that trusts its leadership will tolerate a surprising amount of uncertainty, difficulty and disruption. A team that has lost that trust will struggle to engage with even a straightforward change because every message, every decision and every communication will be filtered through a lens of scepticism.

Trust is not as mysterious or magical as it may sound. It is made-up of specific things, it breaks for specific reasons and it is rebuilt through specific behaviours.

Understanding these things is one of the most useful steps that any leader navigating a period of change can take.

This article will help you to understand, and act, to build and maintain trust with your team.

A QUICK EXPLANATION

What trust is actually made of

David Maister's Trust Equation offers one of the clearest and most practically useful frameworks for thinking about this. It defines trust as three things added together and then divided by a fourth.

The three things that build trust are credibility (do people believe you know what you are doing?), reliability (do you do what you say you will do?) and connection (do people feel heard and genuinely safe to speak honestly?). The fourth thing, the one that divides all the others, is self-orientation. Self-orientation is the degree to which you are managing the situation for your own comfort rather than for the people around you.

The reason self-orientation sits in the denominator is significant. A leader can be credible, reliable and well-connected, and still lose trust rapidly if people sense that their decisions are being driven by self-protection rather than genuine concern for the team. People are remarkably good at detecting this, even when they cannot articulate exactly what they are sensing.

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WATCH OUT FOR...

The warning signs that trust is starting to erode

These patterns tend to emerge when leaders are not communicating well during uncertainty. If any of them feel familiar, they are worth taking seriously sooner rather than later.

People are filling the gaps with their own stories. When communication is absent or vague, people do not sit in neutral. They create their own explanations for what is happening, and those explanations are almost never more optimistic than the reality.
Questions are getting harder to answer honestly. When a manager finds themselves giving the same non-committal answer to the same question repeatedly, or avoiding certain conversations altogether, that is a signal that the communication approach needs to change rather than the questions needing to stop.
There is a visible gap between what is said and what people believe. Reassurances that are met with polite nods and private eye-rolls. Commitments that people do not quite believe will be kept.
People are going through the motions. Engagement without genuine investment and compliance without commitment. People will disengage quietly first and that disengagement then shows up in the quality and energy of their work long before it shows up in a resignation letter.

THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR

Where leaders most commonly lose trust during change

Most trust breakdowns during change are not caused by dishonesty. They are caused by well-intentioned choices that have the opposite effect to the one intended.

Holding information back until there is a full picture feels responsible. In practice, the absence of communication generates far more anxiety than partial information does. People would rather know that you do not know yet than be left wondering why nobody is saying anything.

Offering reassurance before it is warranted feels kind. But premature reassurance is a credibility withdrawal that comes due the moment reality diverges from what was promised. "Everything will be fine" said too early costs far more trust than it saves. False promises are also one of the most common reasons that change in a business, once announced, fails to be genuinely accepted.

Moving to solutions before people feel heard feels efficient. When someone raises a concern during a period of change, the instinct is often to address it immediately by explaining or fixing it. What people almost always need first is to feel that their concern has been genuinely understood. Acknowledgement before explanation is effective leadership.

MAKING A CHANGE

The leadership actions that build and protect trust during uncertainty

These are the behaviours that make the most consistent difference to trust during periods of organisational change.

Say what you know and say what you do not know. The distinction between the two builds more trust than false certainty ever will. Being specific about what has been decided, what is still being worked through and when people can expect more information gives people something real to hold on to rather than something vague to be anxious about.
Do what you say you will do, every time. Reliability is the most straightforward element of trust and the most consistently underestimated. If you commit to communicating something by Friday, then communicate it by Friday, even if the only thing you have to say is that the position has not yet changed. Small commitments kept consistently are worth more to trust than large promises delivered inconsistently.
Listen before you explain. Before moving to solutions or rationale, acknowledge what the person in front of you is feeling. A simple "I understand why this feels uncertain" said and meant will do more for trust in that moment than a detailed explanation of the strategic context.
Check your own self-orientation. Before any significant communication during a period of change, it is worth asking honestly: whose discomfort am I primarily trying to manage here? If the answer is your own, that is worth examining. Transparency, even when it is uncomfortable, signals that you are genuinely in this with your team.
Align the leadership team before communicating outwards. Inconsistent messages from different leaders erode trust faster than almost anything else. The team needs to hear the same things from the same sources. Getting alignment in the room before anything goes out is not a luxury during change. It is a requirement.

THE NEXT STEP

Develop your skills with Further

Further Communications delivers fully tailored in-house training for managers and leadership teams across the UK, helping them communicate through change with clarity, honesty and genuine connection to their teams.

Find out more about our in-house leading through change training.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about difficult conversations training from Further.

1Can trust be rebuilt once it has been damaged during a change process?

Yes, though it takes longer to rebuild than it does to lose, and it requires consistent behaviour over time rather than a single gesture. The most effective approach is to acknowledge specifically where trust has been damaged, be clear about what will change and then deliver on that consistently. Reliability, in particular, is one of the most visible routes back to trust because it is observable and measurable by everyone.

2How should a manager communicate when they genuinely do not know what is going to happen?

Honestly and specifically. There is an important distinction between 'I do not know' said as a conversation-ender and 'I do not yet have the answer to that specific question, and here is when I expect to have more information' said as a commitment. The second maintains reliability even in the absence of certainty. Communicating the process of finding out is nearly as valuable as communicating the answer itself.

3What is the single most important trust-building behaviour during a period of change?

Reliability. Of all the elements in Maister's Trust Equation, reliability is the most straightforward and the most consistently underestimated. Every small commitment kept on time, every update delivered when promised, every follow-up that actually happens all accumulates into a track record that holds trust in place when everything else feels uncertain.

4How do you handle it when the honest answer is bad news?

Directly and with care. People can handle bad news far better than most leaders assume, particularly when it is delivered honestly and with genuine acknowledgement of what it means for them. What people find much harder to handle is discovering later that the news was known and withheld, or that the reassurances they were given turned out to be unfounded. The short-term discomfort of honesty is almost always less damaging than the long-term cost of eroded trust.