I spent eighteen years in the Prison Service. A prison is regulated, ruled and short on assumed trust. My uniform came with authority. It did not make anyone confident in me.
People had my behaviour to judge: whether I was straight with them when the answer was no, whether the same standards applied each time, whether I did what I said, and whether I gave early warning when I could not.
The letter
In March 2007, a letter arrived from the governor marked personal. I still have it.
“I write to commend you for your fair and honest treatment of prisoners. Following my discussions with prisoners on D wing this week, they relayed to me that you are a decent member of staff who treats prisoners with respect.”
I was not in those conversations, and the people speaking had nothing to gain from the description. Fair. Honest. Decent. If I could have chosen three words, I would have chosen those.
From authority to behaviour
One lesson stayed with me. Authority can produce compliance. Confidence comes from the way someone repeatedly experiences you.
For my last four years in the Service I was part of the national training team, with one of the largest training portfolios in the Service. I trained hostage negotiators, and taught crisis management for incident commanders and communication for control room staff. In those settings, trust decides whether the words work. That training still shapes how I listen for it: in the language people use, not only in what they say they feel.
Three sides of the same problem
I have seen leadership development from three sides: as the manager who had to release people, as the in-house trainer asking for them, and as the external provider brought in to run the programme. Each side wanted people to develop. Each side ran into the same gap.
The operational manager
As an operational manager, I wanted my staff to grow, and I still needed the work covered. Every course left a gap on the rota. Development happened somewhere else, and it kept losing to the work.
What it built into the Hub: the practice happens inside the work, in the conversations and decisions leaders are already having.
The in-house trainer
On the national training team, and earlier as a part-time trainer, I was the one asking managers to release people. Then I was asked what had changed. Attendance was easy to count. What someone was doing differently two months later was not.
What it built into the Hub: a dated record of what each leader practised and reported, and reports you can take to a sponsor.
The external provider
For around fifteen years since, I have worked in training, coaching and consultancy, often as a freelancer, delivering professional qualifications and supporting leadership programmes across the UK, Europe and the Middle East, including coaching the leaders on them. Clients commission a few days, then expect change once you have gone. Conversations with other providers and with L&D teams tell the same story: programmes often start from a general topic rather than what each leader needs to practise, and the follow-up has little real to work with.
What it built into the Hub: each leader knows what to practise and has the right things to practise, and the practice carries on after the programme team has gone.
I often say in training rooms that the organisation hasn't paid for the training. It has paid for the impact.
Why Trust Leader exists
Trust Leader brings those three sides together. Trust is someone’s confidence in you with something they care about. It is their decision, shaped by how they experience your behaviour, so it is something a leader can work on.
The Trust Leader Hub helps each leader know what to practise, get the right things to practise, get the chance to practise in real work, and see what changed. It supports the judgement of the L&D team, learning provider or coach behind them. It doesn't replace it.
Outside the work
I am happiest outdoors, on my bike less often than I would like, or somewhere new. New places and different ways of working have kept the same question alive: what makes one person willing to rely on another?