Week 46 Day 2: The Six Trust Audit Questions

The six questions: (1) Do you feel safe bringing me bad news? (2) Do you understand why your work matters? (3) Do you feel like I have your back? (4) Do you know what 'done' looks like for your current work? (5) Do you feel comfortable pushing back on my decisions? (6) Do you believe I will follow through on my commitments? Each question is a window into a different aspect of how you lead.

Here is what each question measures and why it matters. Question 1 -- 'Do you feel safe bringing me bad news?' measures psychological safety for error reporting. This is the foundation question. If the team does not feel safe surfacing problems, every other aspect of trust is compromised because you are leading with incomplete information. A 'no' on this question means your team is managing your emotions instead of managing the work. Question 2 -- 'Do you understand why your work matters?' measures meaning and context. This connects to Commander's Intent (Week 18) and the Value Pyramid (Weeks 11-14). A 'no' means the team is executing tasks without understanding their purpose, which produces compliance without engagement and makes it impossible for the team to make good decisions when you are not in the room. Question 3 -- 'Do you feel like I have your back?' measures benevolence and protection. This question asks whether the team trusts that you will defend them to stakeholders, absorb political pressure, and advocate for their needs. A 'no' means the team feels exposed -- that they bear the consequences of failure but do not receive protection from organizational pressure. Question 4 -- 'Do you know what done looks like for your current work?' measures clarity and alignment. This connects directly to Definition of Done (Week 28). A 'no' means the team is guessing about your expectations, which produces either over-engineering (trying to cover every possible expectation) or under-delivery (guessing wrong about what matters). Question 5 -- 'Do you feel comfortable pushing back on my decisions?' measures voice and agency. This connects to this week's predecessor (Week 45) on pushback protocols. A 'no' means you are getting compliance instead of contribution -- the team follows your direction but does not improve it, which means every decision carries only your perspective and your blind spots. Question 6 -- 'Do you believe I will follow through on my commitments?' measures reliability and integrity. This is the trust question with the longest time horizon -- it measures not just how you behaved today but how consistently you have behaved over months or years. A 'no' means the team has learned that your commitments are aspirational, not actual, which erodes the credibility of every future commitment you make. Scoring: use a 1-5 scale for each question (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Any question with an average below 3.5 is a priority repair area. Any question with an average below 2.5 is a crisis that requires immediate, visible action.

The six questions map to the established trust dimensions in organizational research. Questions 1 and 5 measure psychological safety (Edmondson, 1999) -- the belief that the team environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Questions 2 and 4 measure what Ryan and Deci (2000) call 'autonomy support' in self-determination theory -- the provision of context and clarity that enables autonomous action. Question 3 measures what Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) call 'benevolence' -- the perception that the trustee genuinely cares about the trustor's welfare. Question 6 measures what they call 'integrity' -- the perception that the trustee adheres to principles of consistency and follow-through. The 1-5 Likert scale with the 3.5 threshold implements what social science researchers call the 'above-midpoint interpretation' -- the principle that in organizational surveys, midpoint responses (3 on a 5-point scale) typically indicate dissatisfaction rather than neutrality, because social desirability bias inflates scores upward by 0.5-1.0 points (Edwards, 1957). Therefore, a score of 3.5 (which appears above midpoint) may represent actual neutrality or mild concern, making it an appropriate intervention threshold. Research by Burke, Sims, Lazzara, and Salas (2007) in their meta-analysis of trust in teams found that behavioral trust measures (questions about specific observable behaviors, like 'do you feel safe bringing bad news') predicted team performance more accurately than attitudinal trust measures (questions about general trust feelings, like 'do you trust your leader'), validating the behavioral specificity of the Trust Audit questions.