WEDNESDAY - JUNE 3, 2026

HUMPDAY

Your weekly dose of Insight and Inspiration

The Foundation Beneath Everything

On trust, and why it is the most essential leadership asset you have

I spent nearly all of my 20-year bedside nursing career in the Emergency Department. I did a short, 6-month stent in the ICU and quickly learned that I do not want to take care of a patient for longer than four or five hours so I went back to the ED. Needless to say, I did not know much about the operations of an inpatient unit - because I never worked on one. So, imagine my surprise when while I was an ED director, my CEO came to me and asked me to open and lead a new neurosurgical inpatient service line - I thought he was crazy! I didn’t know anything about an inpatient unit much less how to run one. When I questioned him as to if I was the right person for the job, he said three words I will never forget - “Stacie, I trust you”.

"Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships together."

— Stephen R. Covey

Every leadership strategy, initiative and vision rest on a single invisible foundation: trust. Without it, even the most well-resourced teams and organizations move cautiously and defensively and struggle to perform. With it however, teams are nimble and can move fast and take risks that payoff. Teams built on a foundation of trust do their best work together.

Yet trust is rarely taught. It is often assumed, demanded, or - most dangerously - taken for granted. Let’s explore what trust actually means for leaders, how it’s built, and what happens when trust is broken. ____________________

THE CASE FOR TRUST

Why Trust is your Most Valuable Leadership Asset

Research from the Harvard Business Review found that employees at high-trust organizations report 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, and 50% higher productivity than those at low-trust companies. Trust is not a soft value - it is a performance multiplier.

As a leader, the trust your team places in you determines how honestly they communicate with you, how fully they commit to your direction, and how resilient they remain when things get difficult. It is both an outcome and an ongoing practice.

1 - CONSISTENCY

Trust is mostly built in small moments repeated overt time - not always grand gestures. Do what you say, and say what you mean, reliably.

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2 - TRANSPARENCY

People trust leaders who share context, acknowledge uncertainty and resist the urge to project false confidence.

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3 - ACCOUNTABILITY

Nothing erodes trust faster than leaders who hold others to standards they exempt themselves from. Own your mistakes visibly.

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4 - GENUINE CARE

Teams follow leaders who demonstrably invest in their growth and wellbeing - not just in their work output. Be genuinely interested in the people entrusted to you.

WHEN TRUST BREAKS

The Cost of a Fractured Foundation

Trust, once broken, doesn’t just simply reset. It takes considerable effort and time to rebuild. A single moment of dishonesty, blame-dodging or broken commitment can undo months of relationship capital. Leaders typically underestimate this dynamic to their demise.

The signs of low-trust environments are often subtle at first - slightly longer pauses before giving opinions or feedback, a little less candor in meetings, team members reluctant to offer ideas. Gradually, the silence gets louder.

PAUSE FOR REFLECTION

Take a moment this week and ask yourself these three honest questions about the trust dynamic on your team:

• When did I last openly acknowledge a mistake I made without deflection in front of my team?

• Do the people around me feel safe bringing me bad news - or do they manage me carefully?

• Am I consistent in private as I am in public? Does my team see the same “me” in every room?

A PRACTICE TO TRY

The Credibility Audit

Once a quarter, review the commitments you made to your team in the previous 90 days. Which ones did you keep? Which quietly disappeared? Which were delayed without explanation? The gap between your words and your follow-through is where trust leaks and begins to erode.

This isn’t about perfectionism - it’s about noticing a pattern. Leaders who do this honestly tend to make fewer empty commitments and actually keep the ones they do make. That shift alone radically changes the trust level and performance of the people on your team.

Who knew that opening an inpatient neurosurgical service line would be one of the most memorable and rewarding experiences of my leadership career - all because of trust. My CEO trusted me to open a high risk, high profit service line and my team trusted me to ensure they had all the resources and processes they needed to provide excellent care for our community. Little did I know that their trust in me would eventually come full circle - two years after opening the service line I would have to trust that same team with the life of my daughter after emergent brain surgery. Trust - it is indeed an invisible yet powerful foundation that should always be carefully tended and never taken for granted.

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“Leadership is not about being in charge. It’s about taking care of those in your charge - and that care begins and ends with the trust you earn every single day.”

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~ Stacie

The “Humpday” was an e-mail originally created by a great leader and mentor - Marc Strode. He used the Humpday to bring insight and inspiration to his team every week. With his permission and at his request to Keep the Spirit - the Humpday lives on. Thank you Marc for being a leader worth following. Despite your love for camels, you truly are the GOAT!