The Power of Trust - what PMO's need to know about creating high trust working environments

The Power of Trust

Why PMOs need to develop High Trust Environments to drive Influence and Impact 

Here is what you need to know.

Recently, I have been having more and more conversations about how having the right tools, techniques, and processes is not enough to ensure project success or for the PMO team to have the impact and influence they could be having in the business.

It is down to the people, their skills, knowledge and behaviours.  

And in my experience there is something that goes beyond even this - since I came across Stephen Covey and Rebecca Merrill’s Book The Speed of Trust, and started applying it to my work, I have noticed that the most successful leaders, especially in the world of project and programme management are those who have established a high level of trust across their organisations.

Their ability to build and sustain the trust of the people they work with individually and as teams, regardless of the pressures they are under, determines how successful their departments are in delivering value to the organisation.

So why does trust matter in a project environment?

Trust isn’t just a feel-good factor—it’s a strategic advantage. Research shows that high-trust teams outperform low-trust ones in virtually every key metric, from productivity to innovation, in every environment and not just projects.  When trust is present, employees feel empowered, accountable, and motivated, all of which contribute to smoother project execution and ultimately better business outcomes.

Based on my experience working in the project and PMO space, here are the top 8 business benefits I have seen when leaders, including PMO leaders, create a high-trust environment in and around their projects and programmes.  As they say in all the best awards ceremonies, in no particular order the benefits are:


  • Faster Decision-Making and Problem-Solving - Projects require constant decision-making. In a high-trust environment, team members feel confident expressing their opinions and making informed choices without excessive oversight. This speeds up processes and ensures that problems are addressed proactively and early, rather than escalating into major roadblocks. In contrast, low-trust teams hesitate, second-guess themselves, or wait for unnecessary approvals, leading to costly delays.
  • Enhanced Collaboration and Communication - Great projects don’t happen in silos. When trust is strong, team members share information freely, seek feedback, and engage in open, clear communication. This fosters alignment and reduces misunderstandings. That is not to say there are not disagreements, but these are handled constructively and based on facts rather than entrenched opinions.  People feel ablt to use the techniques of Applied Curiosity.  Conversely, a lack of trust leads to miscommunication, withholding of critical information, and inefficiencies that can derail project timelines.
  • Increased Accountability and Ownership - High-trust teams take responsibility for their work. This means all team members are more likely to meet deadlines, own up to mistakes, and find solutions when they trust their colleagues and leaders to support them. In low-trust environments, finger-pointing and blame culture emerge, stifling accountability and slowing progress..
  • Higher Engagement and Productivity - Engaged team members work harder and care more about outcomes. When trust is present, employees feel valued, motivated, and committed to their roles. They go the extra mile to ensure success. In contrast, low-trust environments lead to disengagement, minimal effort, and declining morale—ultimately affecting project quality and efficiency.
  • More Innovation and Creativity - Innovation thrives in a culture of psychological safety, where team members feel comfortable proposing bold ideas and creative solutions. Since projects are often about delivering an innovative solution and doing things differently, supporting bold thinking and ideas can bring real business benefits.  High-trust teams embrace experimentation and calculated risk-taking, driving innovation. However, in low-trust settings, fear of failure discourages new thinking, resulting in stagnation and repetitive solutions.
  • Stronger Conflict Resolution - Disagreements are inevitable in project work, but how they are handled makes all the difference. In a high-trust environment, conflicts are resolved constructively, with team members applying curiosity and listening to each other and working toward a shared solution. In a low-trust setting, conflicts turn personal, fester unresolved, and disrupt team dynamics.
  • Greater Resilience Under Pressure - Projects are rarely (if ever!) smooth sailing. Unexpected challenges and setbacks are part of the process. High-trust teams remain adaptive and solution-focused, tackling problems together rather than crumbling under stress. Low-trust teams, on the other hand, react with panic, resistance, and disengagement, making it harder to recover from obstacles.
  • Improved Stakeholder and Client Relationships - Trust extends beyond the project team—it influences how you engage with stakeholders, clients, and executives. A high-trust team communicates transparently, building credibility and confidence with stakeholders. In contrast, poor communication in low-trust environments creates uncertainty and dissatisfaction, damaging business relationships.

And these benefits or trust advantages all enable the PMO to increase it's impact and influence.

The Trust Challenge for PMO Leaders

There are some additional trust challenges that PMO leaders face that other organisational leaders don't:

  • The need to be able to influence decision-making and activity without direct authority across diverse stakeholder groups
  • The perceptions about what the PMO is there for and what they contribute.  PMOs are often viewed as "process police" rather than value-adding partners
  • The need to balance competing priorities between executive leadership and project teams
  • The change a PMO introduces and the ways of working they are promoting often  initially increase workload before delivering value, especially at an individual project level
  • A PMO will be making decisions that inevitably disappoint some stakeholders; they can’t keep all of the stakeholders happy all of the time and are often the messengers and enforcers of news that a particular stakeholder may not like.

Without trust, PMOs become bureaucratic obstacles; with trust, they become strategic enablers of organisational success.  This makes Trust Building essential if a PMO wants to become a true strategic partner and wants to have both influence and a positive impact.

How can you tell if your PMO needs a strategy to build trust?

Creating a high level of trust in the PMO and within the projects and programmes that the PMO is supporting has significant benefits, but how can you tell if there are trust issues that it would be valuable for your PMO to address?

Typically, if your PMO is in a low-trust environment, you will notice one or more of the following 

  • Project approvals require multiple review cycles and extensive documentation.  Governance employs universal stage-gates with extensive documentation requirements regardless of project risk or team experience.
  • Methodology compliance is enforced through rigid checkpoints
  • Status reporting is viewed skeptically by executives.  There are multiple reports, many of which are redundant and require manual data entry.  Reports focus primarily on compliance metrics.
  • Resource allocation decisions are frequently challenged, the resource allocation process is often not clear, and decisions are made in isolation and behind closed doors
  • Change initiatives face significant resistance
  • A lot of time is spent reworking information and trying to get stakeholder buy-in, and many conversations feel confrontational
  • Even when Stakeholders appear to agree, they often don’t follow through with actions
Where you are seeing these kinds of behaviours and characteristics, you are effectively paying what Covey and Murrell call a trust tax on everything that you do.  


And by contrast, where your PMO is operating with a high level of trust, you will be reducing your trust tax bill and you will be able to observe the following:

  • Streamlined governance appropriate to project risk.  There is Risk-based governance with streamlined processes for proven teams and lower-risk initiatives
  • Methodology adoption through perceived value rather than enforcement
  • Status reporting that enables decisions rather than just monitors.  There is integrated reporting that minimises manual effort and balances compliance with sights that actually help projects succeed
  • Resource decisions are accepted as fair and aligned with strategy as they are made with stakeholder input and criteria that everyone understands
  • Change initiatives embraced as organisational improvements
  • Stakeholder conversations are productive and based on respect

Ways of Evaluating Trust in your PMO

Your observations and possibly noticing some of the symptoms of either a high of low trust environment is one way of evaluating if there is an opportunity to benefit from building trust in your projects and PMO.


Comparing your observations with the typical characteristics above may have assured you that you are already operating with a high level of trust in yourself and your PMO - and if it has, that is great.  I would encourage you to look at what you and your organisation are doing to create this, and ensure that the lessons are learned and continued into future work.

However, you may also have concluded that you need more information.  Given that trust is two-way and operates on a number of levels, this will often be the case for the curious PMO leader who is always seeking improvements.

Since trust in relationships and departments operates in both directions, understanding other people’s perceptions of how trusted and trustworthy you and your PMO are will be important in understanding how you can develop deeper levels of trust and gain greater benefits as a result.  Getting feedback and talking to the people you work with about the levels of trust that operate will be one way to collect this valuable perspective.

However, if you are operating in a low-trust environment, the information that is shared in these conversations will be limited and guarded.  We don’t share as much information as freely with people we don’t know we can trust.  So the effectiveness of this method of exploring the level of trust in your PMO is limited in its effectiveness.

Employing survey techniques can unlock this, especially when the survey is managed by a third party and the motives for undertaking the survey are discussed and clearly communicated in advance.

Useful Models for Understanding the Elements That Help Build Trust

Since trust in relationships and departments operates in both directions, understanding other people’s perceptions of how trusted and trustworthy you and your PMO are will be important in understanding how you can develop deeper levels of trust and gain greater benefits as a result. We need to get a more detailed breakdown than just a trusted or not.The research gives us several models for understanding how we build trust.  Trust operates at different levels, and in my experience, different models are helpful for giving us a platform to understand where our opportunities to improve trust are.

The foundation for trust is how trustworthy we are as individuals and in our relationships, our personal credibility and congruence, and our consistency with others. Covey and Murell talk about Four Cores of Credibility for us to think about and evaluate ourselves against, especially when we are looking at our personal trustworthiness.

  • Integrity - congruence between your values and behavior
  • Intent - your genuine motives and agenda
  • Capabilities - your skills, talents, knowledge, and style
  • Results - your track record and performance

Additionally, Brene Brown’s Braving Framework can be very helpful, especially when we are looking at how trustworthy we are in our relationships and interactions with others

In this framework, Braving stands for 
  • Boundaries - Clearly defining what is acceptable in a relationship
  • Reliability - doing what you say you will do when you say you will do it - Can I depend on you
  • Accountability - Owning your work and your mistakes, apologising and making amends
  • Vault - Keeping confidential information confidential and respecting privacy
  • Integrity - Practicing your values.  Choosing courage over comfort, choosing what's right over what's fun, fast, or easy
  • Non-Judgment - Accepting others without making judgments and avoiding making assumptions about people or situations

  • Generosity - Extending the most generous interpretation to the intentions, words, and actions of others

When we look at the functional or departmental level, the trust model I have found to be most helpful is the one described by  David Maister, Charles Green, and Robert Galford in their book, The Trusted Advisor. 

They developed the following trust equation,

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self Orientation

They define each of the criteria as follows
  • Credibility - what we say, and the believability of our expertise
  • Reliability - the extent to which we deliver our actions
  • Intimacy - the strength of our relationships
  • Self Orientation - the balance between acting in the individual's or department's best interest and the best interests of the other person or the overall organisation

These models each give us lenses to look at how we and our teams build trust and when we evaluate ourselves against them can give us valuable insights into where we can make gains in building high trust working environments and benefit from the power of trust.

The Next Steps

Understanding the current levels of trust in your PMO and in the projects, combined with your strengths in the different components that enable trust to grow, will provide the information you need to build a trust-building strategy that will enable your PMO to benefit from all the available advantages of a high trust environment.

If you are looking for a detailed independent analysis of trust in your PMO and in your project teams, click here to find out about the PMO360 or book a call to discuss your situation.

Curious to know more about building trust in your PMO and on your projects? book a conversation with Bekka

Book here