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Building Trusting Relationships

Brewster, C. and Railsback, J. (2003). Building trusting relationships for school improvement: Implications for principals and teachers. Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. ERIC document reproduction service, ED 481 987.

Brewster and Railsback (2003) review the issue of trust in professional relationships in educational settings. Trust relationships involve risk, reliability, vulnerability and expectation. The authors draw from extensive work by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy to propose five key components commonly used to measure trustworthiness.

Benevolence: Confidence that another person has your best interests at heart.
Reliability: The extent to which you can depend upon another party to come through for you, to act consistently, and to follow through.
Competence: Belief in another person's ability to perform the tasks of his or her position. For example, if a principal means well but lacks necessary leadership skills, he or she is not likely to be trusted to do the job.
Honesty: Integrity, character and authenticity. The degree to which a person can be counted on to represent situations fairly.
Openness: How freely a person shares information with others.

(Condensed from Brewster, 2003, no. 168, pp. 4-5)

Although trusting relationships between school personnel do not guarantee success, schools without such relationships have almost no chance of improving.

Trust among educators lowers their sense of vulnerability as they engage in the 'new and uncertain tasks associated with reform'.
Trust 'facilitates public problem-solving within an organisation'.
Trust 'undergirds the highly efficient system of social control found in a school-based professional community. Staff members understand their own and others' roles and obligations as part of the school community and need minimal supervision or external pressure in order to carry them out'.
Trust 'sustains an ethical imperative … to advance the best interests of children', and thus 'constitutes a moral resource for school improvement'.

(Bryk and Schneider, 2002, cited in Brewster, 2003, no. 168, p. 7)

Brewster and Railsback collate a number of studies to propose that trust is connected with a greater sense of self-efficacy (the belief that one's actions will be successful) and a stronger degree of collaboration with the principal, colleagues and parents. Trust and collaboration are seen not simply as a matter of cause and effect, but rather as mutually reinforcing.

Obstacles to engendering trust include high turnover, repeated staff cuts, budget shortfalls, unfavourable media coverage and widespread differences of opinion regarding curriculum matters, teaching practices and school policies. The authors list the most common barriers to developing trust as being:

top-down decision-making that is perceived as arbitrary, misinformed, or not in the best interests of the school
ineffective communication
lack of follow-through on, or support for, school improvement efforts
unstable or inadequate funding
failure to remove teachers or principals who are widely viewed to be inneffective
frequent turnover in leadership
high teacher turnover
teacher isolation
past experiences.

(Brewster, 2003, pp. 10-11)

Brewster and Railsback propose steps that principals can take to develop trust in a school community.

Demonstrate personal integrity, honesty, and commitment to follow through.
Show that you care by taking a personal interest in the wellbeing of others.
Be accessible and available, encouraging open communication.
Facilitate and model effective communication, listening to what others have to say.
Involve staff in decision making with authentic participation, providing background information and treating teachers as capable professionals whose insights are valuable.
Celebrate experimentation and support risk, provides room for teachers to try new things and make mistakes, empowering teachers and drawing out their best.
Value dissenting views, make staff feel comfortable expressing dissenting views without fear of reprisal; welcome conflict as a means of producing positive long-term outcomes.
Reduce teachers' sense of vulnerability - value their efforts and intentions.
Provide resources.
Be prepared to replace ineffective teachers.
Engage the full faculty in activities and discussions related to the school's mission, vision and core values.
Make new teachers feel welcome.
Create and support meaningful opportunities for teachers to work collaboratively.
Identify ways to increase and/or improve faculty communication.
Make relationship-building a priority.
Choose a professional development model that promotes relationship-building.

(Condensed from Brewster, 2003, pp. 12-17)

Trust scales (for measuring trust in a school community) are available at:
http://mxtsch.people.wm.edu/researchtools.html