Trust and Verify: How We Earn Confidence, One Commitment at a Time
Trust isn’t promised—it’s practiced. This is how we make it visible.
A Question Worth Answering
Between March 2024 and early 2025, I worked at Henry Schein One, using the Shape Up process developed by 37signals. It’s not just another prescriptive variation of Scrum. It’s closer to a product framework—a way to help teams commit to meaningful work using fixed time and variable scope. That blend creates a dynamic rhythm: enough structure to stay focused, enough flexibility to stay sane.
In January 2025, I gave a talk at the London Ruby User Group about how the team was using Shape Up, adapting its principles to a different scale of stakeholders. We covered the basics: shaping, cycles, bets, delivery—and the awkward-but-useful bits we’ve had to tweak for a larger, more distributed team navigating multiple, often conflicting requirements.
After the talk, we opened up for discussion, and that’s when Ed asked something simple—but sticky:
“What needs to be true for leadership to trust a team?”
The Way We Work Shapes the Trust We Get
Trust isn’t granted just because we ask for it—no matter how impressive the CV, or how strong the results we’ve delivered elsewhere. Trust is granted when the way we work makes sense to those putting their confidence in us. And it’s developed over time, as we keep the system moving in the right direction. As Peter Drucker put it, “What creates trust, what enables you to get the task done, is when ‘we’ gets the credit.” That kind of trust isn’t portable. The track record that earns it has to be built inside the company, in context, with the team that’s actually doing the work.
That’s where culture—the way we work—comes in. Culture tells a story, whether we mean it to or not. When we commit to fixed time and variable scope, as Shape Up encourages, we’re making a statement: that we value finishing something meaningful over juggling many things at once. We aim to define constraints we can actually honour, rather than setting deadlines we’ll quietly miss. It shows leadership that we’re not optimising for appearances—we’re building momentum through delivery.
One of the most powerful cultural cues is the habit of fast-forwarding scope conversations—the ones that usually get awkward at the end of the cycle, especially when things haven’t gone to plan. Instead of waiting for pressure to pile up mid-delivery, we bring those hard trade-offs into the shaping process. Can we actually ship something valuable—and validate it—in six weeks? What’s the riskiest part of this idea? What will we drop if things get complicated? These aren’t fun questions, but answering them early signals that we’re being realistic, not naive. It strips away the “hope for the best” or “code and pray” mindset that tends to collapse under deadline pressure.
Another cue is scope discipline—sticking to what we shaped, even when we’re ahead of schedule. It’s easy to drift mid-cycle, to add “just one more thing here and there,” or to let sunk costs justify doubling down on complexity. But as a team, we’ve had to learn to keep our commitments smaller, clearer, and more public to build credibility.
When we say, “This is what we’re aiming to deliver,” and then we actually deliver it, trust compounds. And when we don’t hit the target, being able to show what changed and why matters just as much. It’s not just about hitting goals—it’s about consistency, and clarity on what we’re not doing (at least not yet).
All of these cues—front-loading scope conversations, sticking to shaped work, making clear and visible commitments—do more than help us deliver. They tell a story. A story of realism over optimism, alignment over noise, and clarity over chaos. They reduce the need for control because they reduce the chance of surprise. And that’s really what trust needs: not heroic effort, but steady, transparent progress.
Visible Behaviour Builds Trust — Not Vibes
Trust isn’t a feeling we try to create—it’s a conclusion someone else reaches based on what they can observe, what is visible and clear to them. That’s why visible behaviour matters. It’s not about energy, optimism, or “good intentions”—it’s about what leadership actually sees: how we make decisions, how we handle complexity, how we respond when things go sideways. The work speaks louder only if we help it speak—by presenting it clearly to our team, our stakeholders, and the wider organisation.
One of the clearest signals is how we commit. Not just what we plan to deliver, but how we frame it, how we revisit it, and how we talk about trade-offs. Leadership doesn’t just notice if we finish or not—they notice how we handle being wrong, how we adapt, and whether we stay anchored to the original appetite. When we treat scope, appetite, and deadlines as shared agreements—not personal promises—it becomes easier to adjust without spinning. That kind of calm, structured adaptability is easy to trust.
Another visible behaviour is how we talk about risk and uncertainty. If everything always sounds fine, trust erodes quietly—because people know it rarely is. What builds trust is being able to say: here’s what we don’t know yet, here’s where things might break, here’s the bit we’re still figuring out. The goal isn’t to dramatise—it’s to show we’re thinking ahead, not hiding behind confidence. We need to be careful not to sell guarantees. Pre-mortems are a good tool here—simple, honest, and focused on helping the team think about failure before it becomes real.
These behaviours aren’t fancy. They’re not performative. They’re small, visible signals: how we commit, how we talk about risk, how we shape scope and share progress. They’re what people actually see—and that’s what leadership responds to. No amount of energy, team spirit, or well-crafted dashboards will compensate for an absence of clear, grounded behaviours. If we want to be trusted, we have to work in ways that make trust visible.
What Happens in High-Trust / High-Commit Environments
High-trust, high-commit environments feel different. There’s more energy—but less noise. There’s space to speak up, and also space to focus. It starts with psychological safety: the ability to speak honestly, raise concerns, and admit uncertainty without fear of punishment. In these environments, people don’t hide mistakes or opinions—they surface them, because they know the team can handle discomfort without breaking. That safety becomes the base layer for everything else.
Next comes clarity of direction and responsibility. Teams aren’t just asked to execute—they’re trusted to choose, to shape, and to take responsibility for the outcome. That only works when the “why” behind the work is clear. When objectives are meaningful and priorities don’t shift randomly, autonomy becomes productive—not chaotic. Trust and commitment feed each other.
Then comes momentum. When people feel trusted, they move faster—because they’re not waiting for permission or second-guessing every step. Progress is steady because the process is stable. The focus isn’t just on getting more done, but on doing the right things well and finishing what was started. Delivery becomes less about velocity and more about flow.
Finally, there’s space for emotion—celebration and mourning. Celebrating delivery, even in small ways, reinforces shared progress. Mourning failed bets or missed goals—without shame—helps teams process and reset. That emotional honesty is part of the deal. In high-trust teams, outcomes matter, but people matter too.
In Trust, Leadership Has to Go First: A Team Doesn’t Earn What It’s Never Given
It’s almost impossible to earn trust in an environment where none is offered. Teams can do everything “right”—shape well, commit carefully, communicate clearly—but if leadership never takes the first step, the system stalls. Trust isn’t a transaction, it’s a gesture. Someone has to go first. That someone, more often than not, has to be leadership.
You can feel when you’re being given a real shot. Not blind faith, not abandonment—but space. Space to try, to reason through trade-offs, to deliver something meaningful without being constantly second-guessed. When a team receives trust, their first instinct is often to be cautious: are we really allowed to do this? Will it come back to bite us? That hesitation is natural. The answer comes not in words, but in the follow-through. A bet placed. A cycle left alone. A hard problem left in our hands.
The phrase we’ve used internally is: we give you a try. It’s small, but powerful. It says, “We see you. We know this might not go perfectly. But we believe it’s better to let you run than to keep you boxed in.” Of course, this doesn’t mean blind delegation. It means informed trust—a trust that comes with support, context, and the willingness to listen if things wobble. Without that, we’re just pretending.
Trying to deliver without any backup—without access, feedback, leadership clarity—is a futile effort. It drains momentum and erodes morale. Teams end up delivering to stay safe, not to create impact. That’s why leadership trust isn’t a reward for perfect execution—it’s the starting condition that makes good execution possible in the first place.