How and why you should building trust using the Applied Curiosity Model

What you need to know as a leader

In over three decades of working with leaders across industries, I have consistently noticed that a leader's effectiveness is directly proportional to the trust they've built. Having worked with leaders through multiple economic cycles, I have also noticed that this ability to build and maintain trust becomes even more critical during economic downturns and when a company is operating in an uncertain environment.

While many leadership capabilities matter, trust remains the foundation upon which all other leadership functions depend. Yet surprisingly, trust is often treated as an intangible that either happens organically or doesn't, rather than as a capability that can be systematically developed.

Why Trust Matters: The Leadership Imperative

Before exploring how to build trust, let's clarify why it deserves focused attention:

Why trust becomes even more important during economic uncertainty

In uncertain economic times, creating a high-trust environment becomes not just important but essential for organisational resilience and adaptability. Faster decision-making, as enabled by high-trust environments, becomes critical when markets fluctuate, budgets tighten, and strategic directions need rapid reassessment.  These are not the times to allow the drag that excessive verification and defensive documentation create.  

And once those critical decisions have been made, leaders who have established trust can transparently communicate difficult realities and necessary changes while maintaining team commitment and engagement. This trust allows organisations to implement strategic pivots more quickly as teams focus on solutions rather than questioning motives or protecting individual interests. 

Furthermore, when economic pressures create the need for innovation and efficiency improvements, trusted leaders can harness the collective intelligence of their teams because people feel safe sharing unconventional ideas and admitting challenges without fear of repercussion. 

Organisations with strong trust foundations ultimately weather economic uncertainty more effectively, preserving both operational capability and human capital through turbulent periods.

In their book The Speed of Trust, Stephen Covey and Rebecca Merrill liken trust to a bank account, and our job as leaders is to make sure that account never goes into overdraft.  Our actions can be deposits or withdrawals from the trust account.  When we are leading through uncertainty, there will be factors we can’t control that make withdrawals on that account.  It is our job, therefore, to make as many deliberate deposits as we can.

Using the Applied Curiosity Model to build trust can help us do that and build a healthy balance in the trust account at the individual and organisational levels.  Let’s look at how.

While various trust-building approaches exist, I've found the Applied Curiosity model particularly powerful for leaders. The actions we take when we apply this three-phase virtuous cycle create the conditions for trust to flourish naturally rather than forcing it through technique or manipulation.  

The Applied Curiosity Process is a continuous cycle with three key phases:

1. Research: Gathering and Exploring

In this initial phase, leaders actively gather information, perspectives, and context without judgment or premature conclusions. This involves:

2. Reflect: Creating Meaning from Discovery

The Reflection phase creates space to process what was learned during the Research Phase:

3. React: Translating Insight Into Action

The Reflection phase phase transforms understanding into visible action

This three-phase cycle builds upon itself with each revolution, creating progressively deeper understanding and more effective action.

As a process, it can easily be shared with the team, and they can be encouraged to use it themselves.

Applied Curiosity in Trust-Building: Practical Applications

Now let's explore how leaders can specifically apply this model to build trust:

1. Research Phase: The Foudation of Trust

In my experience, most leaders underestimate how powerful genuine inquiry can be in establishing trust. Perhaps this is understandable given that many are promoted to a position of leadership because of their technical knowledge.  However to develop as an effective curious leader there is a need to let go of the belief that the leader knows everything they need to know.  

Consider implementing these research practices:

Create More "Understanding Before Solution" Conversations

In one-to-one conversations as well as in team meetings, adopt an ‘understanding before solution’ approach.  None of us wants to go to a doctor who provides medicine before diagnosing what is wrong with us, so what would we want to work in a team where this happens?  Until this style of conversation becomes habitual, sharing and working through the Applied Curiosity Model as a way to structure the conversations can help with this.

The key is demonstrating that you're genuinely interested in understanding, not fixing or defending.  Try opening the conversations with questions like ‘What is your perspective on what is happening?’ or ‘What do you think about this situation?’ Make sure you follow this with more enquiring questions that help you understand what the others are thinking.

Expand Your Information Sources

Observe Interaction Patterns

Actions often reveal more than words. Pay attention to:

Document these observations without immediate judgment, creating a richer picture of your team's dynamics.

2. Reflection Phase: Deepening Trust Through Thoughtfulness

Reflection transforms raw data into meaningful insight. These practices specifically build trust:

Create Individual Regular Reflection Rituals

Dedicate specific time to process what you're learning.  This can seem counter intuitive when things are busy and you need to work at pace.  However, giving yourself thinking time usually results in better decisions.  

Some techniques you could employ include

When team members see you taking time to reflect before acting, they trust that your decisions aren't impulsive or uninformed.

Create Team Reflection Opportunities

Create opportunities for your team to reflect together on what is happening and what you are all learning.  These could include

Reflecting as a team shows that each team member is valued and builds trust not just in your leadership but between team members.

The Bigger Picture Reflections

These reflection techniques can be employed as an individual, as a team or both!

Looking at this bigger picture builds trust in the team and the wider organisation as it demonstrates an understanding of context and multiple agendas.  It shows you and the team are looking to understand the root causes rather than just the symptoms, which creates more trust in any proposed solutions.

3. Reaction Phase: Building Trust Through Visible Action

While research and reflection are internal, reaction makes your curiosity visible to others.  Our behaviours, the actions we take, are ultimately what cements trust or erodes it.  So, how can you structure taking action on your insights in ways that build trust?

 Design Trust-Building Experiments

Create small tests that demonstrate your learning and trial your new approach.  Framing these as explicit experiments allows you to demonstrate that you are applying curiosity and that you are open to the solution needing further refinement.  This makes your motives clear and allows the people impacted to maintain their trust in what you are trying to do.  

Create Feedback Loops

This is where you demonstrate your ongoing commitment to applying curiosity and start your research, ready for the next cycle.  Follow up your experiments with specific questions about their impact and effectiveness.  This feedback could be in one-to-one conversations, team meetings or, if needed, in anonymous surveys.  Whatever method of collecting the data you employ, ensure you listen to understand and then, after reflection, share your learnings.

This builds trust as it shows your curiosity and experimentation is not a one-off activity.

Communicate

Building and maintaining trust requires great communication. This means that as you work through the Applied Curiosity Model, it is important that you explicitly connect your actions to what you've learned. When people can see the connection between what they have said, what you have learned and then what actions you have taken, trust grows.

Acknowledging the contribution of others to your thinking and the results that have been achieved also shows that you value the diversity of input that you gained because of them and that you value their contributions.  This, in turn, further builds trust.

The Compound Effect: Building Trust Over Time

With each revolution, team members witness that their input matters, that you're thoughtfully considering perspectives, and that your actions are informed by genuine understanding rather than arbitrary authority.

This consistency further builds trust in who you are as a leader and in how you act.

Measuring the Impact - Trust Indicators 

So, how do you know if your applied curiosity is building trust? Here are some indicators you might notice:

It is also possible to get a more detailed understanding of trust in your team using survey-based tools such as this one, which can be tailored to suit any team’s function or situation.

Conclusion: Curiosity as a Trust Multiplier

The Applied Curiosity Process offers leaders a structured approach to building trust that avoids both the pitfalls of leaving trust to chance and the artificiality of technique-driven approaches. By genuinely seeking to understand through research, creating meaning through reflection, and demonstrating learning through action, you establish trust as an organic outcome of authentic leadership.

The most trustworthy leaders aren't those with perfect track records or flawless expertise (thank goodness!), they're the leaders who demonstrate genuine interest in understanding, learning, and adapting based on what they discover. Applied curiosity isn't just a tool for building trust; it's a foundation for all aspects of effective leadership.

The Next Steps

Your journey toward becoming a more trusted leader begins with a simple shift: approaching your next conversation not with assumptions or answers, but with genuine curiosity about what you might discover.

If you are curious about how applying this approach to leadership and trust building could impact your work and your leadership, let’s chat.