Day 8 · Act II — Lead People
Trust Is the Operating System
Psychological safety · Vulnerability · Reliability
~30 minutes
Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback.
The Core Idea
Everything a team does runs on trust: sharing bad news, admitting errors, challenging the boss. Without it, information is filtered and decisions degrade.
Amy Edmondson's research defines psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Google's Project Aristotle found it the most important factor in team effectiveness among those studied.
The Mental Model
The Trust Equation
Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) ÷ Self-orientation — from Maister, Green and Galford's The Trusted Advisor.
At work: A brilliant leader who constantly redirects credit to himself raises the denominator and erodes trust despite competence.
The Case Study
Google's Project Aristotle
DocumentedGoogle's internal research (published 2015) studied hundreds of teams and identified psychological safety as the leading dynamic of effective teams.
Interpretation: how a team works together matters more than who is on it.
Cinema & Story
Twelve Angry Men (1957)
One person's safe dissent can change a room's conclusion — and a life.
The Reading Room
The Fearless Organization
Amy C. Edmondson
The definitive guide to building psychological safety for learning and innovation.
Further reading: The Speed of Trust — Stephen M. R. Covey
The Journal · Portfolio output: Trust audit
The Field Experiment · within 24 hours
Open your next meeting by naming one thing you got wrong recently and what you learned.
The Evening Review
Make truth safe, and truth will find you.