method · all tools
Triggering Team Trust
Depth · what it can open●●●○3 — emotional
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★★★established
Disclosure · what is sharedrequired
A team examines its own trust explicitly: assessing the fundamental elements — per Zenger & Folkman (2019): positive relationships, expertise and good judgment, consistency — against lived experience with each other, discussing where trust is thin and why, and making concrete commitments to strengthen it. The conversation most teams need and never schedule.
Prerequisites
- Jordan rates this ★★★ for good reason: discussing thin trust requires enough trust to survive the discussion — a leader must genuinely want the answers
Hold with care
- Where trust is actively broken, this needs a repair process (restorative dialogue), not an assessment conversation
Practical
- Time
- 180-270 min
- Group
- 3–6 · small-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Trust-elements handout
- Mechanisms
- dialogic-encounter, feedback-mirroring, values-clarification
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Origin & where it lives
Transition Makers Toolbox (IIS UvA); team adaptation by Thomas Jordan — Trust-building practice
Instructions: open online
In this directory via Transition Makers Toolbox · Thomas Jordan's IDG Resource Library
Related: fearless organization scan (pairs-with) · restorative dialogue (pairs-with)
status: checked · added 2026-08-25