Earlier this year, I wrote how creating a genuine feedback culture was a priority for PeopleUnboxed in 2025. 

We’ve been working hard to foster this – freely giving and receiving feedback in an authentic way, to help people feel supported to grow. To create this culture, we knew the foundation had to be psychological safety; making sure the team felt safe to speak up, share ideas and admit mistakes, something we had been consciously focussing on for years.

As a team, we know first-hand that creating a genuine feedback culture isn’t easy! Regardless, we are all committed to making it happen. Here’s where we are on our journey.

Our feedback culture mission.

Having spent a lot of time building a strong foundation of psychological safety, we were ready to take our feedback culture to the next level, and we had a 7-point plan to make that happen (refer to the original blog for these). 

I’m proud to say we have come a long way, and a lot of those 7-points are starting to become engrained in how we genuinely work. But as with any good plan, there’s always changes along the way, and the key to success is learning from what challenges us. For us, we went through a large change internally – our team expanded, which led to a restructure of departments and line managers. As we onboarded the new starters and guided the whole team through the growth, we continued to bring our feedback culture to life.

One of the key learnings from this journey was Trust.

Why trust is the foundation.

Trust is critical to a successful relationship. To be willing to receive and listen to feedback, you need to feel the person giving it is trustworthy.

We use the word “trust” to:

• Make sense of what people are saying
• Interpret behaviours and intentions
• Decide if it’s safe to open up and share information
• Judge if someone genuinely has our best interests at heart
• Feel safe enough to be vulnerable or admit mistakes
• Gauge the reliability of someone

But how do we measure trustworthiness? At PeopleUnboxed, we are big believers of the Trust Equation from David H. Meister.

Understanding trustworthiness. 

This framework helps us evaluate if someone is trustworthy and explains why we trust some people more than others. Within it are four variables: Credibility, Reliability, Intimacy and Self-Orientation.

These are combined into the following equation to give someone a ‘trustworthiness score’:

Credibility has to do with the words we speak.

Can you see or feel the capability and level of expertise from the person? Is there evidence that they know their stuff or have some relevant credentials? Do they give you confidence?

Reliability has to do with actions.

Do people do what they say they are going to? Do they keep to their promises? Do they have a consistent track record of delivering?

Intimacy refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. 

How open are they with you? Are they authentic? Do they show vulnerability and empathy? Do they share information with you, and handle it responsibly?

All these 3 things are positive and therefore they increase the value of trust,

so that’s why they’re on the top part of the equation.

However, on the bottom, there is…

Self-Orientation refers to the person’s focus.

How much are they focused on themselves and their own needs? Are they selfish?

If someone is too focused on themselves, it decreases the value of trust.

Arguably, it is the most important variable in the Trust Equation,

as it has the largest impact on the overall ‘score’.

[Here’s a handy video that breaks down the trustworthiness equation too].

Living the four trust values. 

The Trust Equation covers the most common meanings of trust that you encounter in everyday interactions. Whilst you can use the Trust Equation to determine why you might trust one person more than others, it becomes incredibly helpful when used to examine how much people trust you.

A self-reflection activity to bring this to life would be to pick three relationships you have and estimate how they might score you for each of these factors.

Or if you’re feeling really brave, you can even ask them and get an actual score, but even if you’re just self-assessing, really think about where your opportunities lie to increase their trust in you. Think of one thing you could do to increase trust in that relationship this week, and have a go at improving your relationship.

“Trust is built in small moments, not grand gestures.”

– Brené Brown

Trust, feedback and support.

Keeping the Trust Equation front of mind and developing relationships built on mutual trust and perceived trustworthiness, helps us give and receive feedback more openly. This is the next step in our journey to creating a true feedback culture here at PeopleUnboxed.

This includes reflecting on how trustworthy we are as individuals (not just how much we trust others) as well as purposefully asking for feedback around the trust equation elements…and it has been a game-changer. Many of the team are already putting this into action, with some peer feedback that gave interesting and different perspectives to what they were perhaps expecting. It’s helping us show up better for each other.

Plus, it is much easier to hear constructive and developmental feedback from someone who:

• is a credible expert in the field
• reliably delivers best practice for us
• is empathetic when providing the feedback
• you believe genuinely has your best interests at heart.

When there’s trust in feedback it begins to feel like the support it is intended to be, rather than criticism.

I’d love to know… how do you build trust in your team? What’s worked well for you when giving or receiving feedback? Please get in touch, contact me on LinkedIn or via email.