Lead with Trust: A Relationship-Based Approach to Building Happier, More Connected Workplaces

What if building trust isn’t a “soft skill,” but the strongest leadership strategy you could develop?

In Lead with Trust, leadership expert and HR executive Bart Spence reveals a simple but powerful truth: the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our leadership and results. Drawing on more than two decades of real-world experience—from boardrooms to ballfields—Spence offers a practical, human approach to leading through trust.

At the heart of this book is The 9 Principles of Trust, an experience-tested framework brought to life through storytelling, humor, and hard-earned lessons. You’ll discover how trust is built in everyday moments—keeping small promises, listening without fixing, leading with vulnerability, and showing up when it matters most. Complementing these principles, Spence introduces the “Trust Metric,” a comprehensive and innovative framework designed to evaluate the trustworthiness of individual leaders, assigning a measurable trust score while also outlining a clear, actionable pathway for strengthening trust across key areas of leadership.

Lead with Trust shows how trust-centered leadership can:

• Boost morale and engagement through psychological safety and honest communication.
• Reduce turnover while strengthening performance.
• Strengthen company-wide relationships at every level between leaders and teams.
• Repair broken trust after missteps without shame or defensiveness.
• Develop confident, authentic leaders grounded in integrity, vulnerability, and consistency.

If you’re looking to develop yourself and your team members into true leaders, it starts with building trust. When trust leads, workplaces become healthier, teams more loyal, and success more sustainable.