Leadership: Trust vs. Reliability and Credibility
Trust and Reliability are sometimes conflated. Dictionaries don’t necessarily help. The definition of Reliability in the Oxford Languages dictionary is “the quality of being trustworthy or of performing consistently well.” Yet its definition of trustworthy is “able to be relied on as honest and truthful.” A bit of a circular set of definitions as indicated with the italics I added.
It can be confusing to a leader who wants to improve their leadership skills. In this post I want to discuss both of these terms, as well as Credibility, a related term, to help leaders understand them and their mutual impact.
In the Six Domains of Leadership™ (SDL) model, Relational Leadership is the keystone of the pyramid. It is placed in the middle of the bottom layer of domains (see below). Why? Because all other domains rely on it and its leadership effect, Trust. Without trust a leader will struggle to lead. Team members will not follow them willingly as they wonder what is the hidden agenda. Does this mean they are not reliable? Not necessarily. A leader may be relied to have a hidden agenda yet they may not be trusted because followers worry about their intentions.
The conflation of these two terms, Trust and Reliability, is shown in comments such as “I don’t trust him to get the work done because he’s never on time”. The fact is that because a person is not reliable to get something done, they are not trusted. Why? Let’s dig a bit more. The subdomains of Relational Leadership are Concern and Respect, Fair Treatment, and Understanding. A leader who is not reliable impacts both Concern and Respect (they are ignoring the impact of their unreliability) and Understanding (they either don’t understand or care about the impact of their actions). These also impact their Trust, the leadership effect of Relational Leadership.
Using the SDL model, reliability also impacts Credibility, the leadership effect of Personal Leadership (bottom left of the pyramid). As the model suggests, the domains and their leadership effect influence each other. The subdomains of Personal Leadership are Authenticity, Dedication, and Vision. Lack of reliability is reflected in the Dedication subdomain. The unreliable person may be unreliable because they are not dedicated. This in turn impacts their trustworthiness.
So what’s a leader to do?
What does this mean for a leader? The leader must monitor themselves, their commitments, and the delivery of these commitments. Followers look to the leader to determine if they are reliable. If the leader commits to do something, yet regularly fails to deliver on the commitments, the followers will find the leader unreliable and their trust on the leader will be impacted, and therefore their ability to lead.
Similarly, the leader must monitor their credibility. Are they dedicated and seen as such? Their dedication will help or hinder their credibility regardless of their reliability. While a leader may reliably deliver on their commitments, if they are viewed as not dedicated (or even worse not authentic), their credibility will be impacted negatively and, therefore, the trust followers have on them and their ability to lead.
How can a leader improve in these areas? Developing a Personal Development Plan (PDP) based on the analysis of the Six Domains of Leadership Survey provides such a plan. To identify some ideas that could help one of the tools we have to support the Six Domains of Leadership is the “Leadership Action Deck”. This deck of cards provides suggestions for leaders to improve their subdomain behaviors and hence their leadership effects. They are a starting point for leaders as they develop their (PDP).
How about their followers?
As leaders, one of our priorities is to grow our team members so that they are more effective, efficient, and hopefully future leaders. As leaders then our role includes helping them with their trustworthiness, credibility, and reliability. Take note of when they fall short in one of these areas and coach them to improve just like you would coach yourself.
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Contact me at jose@coachsolera.com to find out how to improve your leadership.
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