--- title: The Three Ingredients for Building Trust description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/the-three-ingredients-for-building-trust/ author: Michelle Peng article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-06-07T10:30:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-06-05T19:44:43.563Z article:section: Charter og:title: The Three Ingredients for Building Trust og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Jun 7, 2026 10:30 AM UTC  Art: Charter  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Jun 7, 2026 10:30 AM UTC _Editor’s note: Last week we published our latest research playbook, “_[_Getting Ahead of the Leadership Gap_](https://www.charterworks.com/download-getting-ahead-of-the-leadership-gap/)_,” which focuses on the gaps in many companies’ leadership development pipelines and how the demands on it are changing in an age of AI. It’s full of research and case studies, and we developed it in partnership with Council Advisors. The interview below is excerpted from the playbook._ The most essential things leaders need to build trust can fit onto a cue card with three simple phrases: “The real me, in it for you, with sound reasoning,” says [Frances Frei](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/profile.aspx?facId=6587), a Harvard Business School professor and former Uber executive whose research and writing focuses on trust and leadership. Each of these phrases refers to one of the three component parts that’s essential to build and maintain trust: authenticity, empathy, and logic. “When you experience those three things simultaneously, it's almost an involuntary reaction to trust me,” explains Frei. To learn more about how emerging leaders can learn and practice the skills that lead to trust, we spoke to Frei and her wife, [Anne Morriss](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-morriss), the founder of a coaching organization and co-author with Frei of three books on leadership. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity: Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). **How does your idea of the ‘trust triangle’ describe how leaders can build trust?** **Frei:** Trust is really a summary statistic of the simultaneity of authenticity, logic, and empathy. It’s three component parts—hence the triangle. There's a myth that trust takes a long time to build, and it does if you don't know how it works. If you know how it works, you can actually build trust very quickly. And I mean measured in minutes, not days, weeks or months. There’s also this myth about trust that once you lose it, you can’t rebuild it. Not true. Indeed, not only can you rebuild it, you can rebuild it even stronger than it was before you lost it. And every single time that trust is broken, we can trace it back to one of these three culprits. **Morriss:** When leaders lose trust, when teams lose trust, when organizations lose trust, it’s not that all three of these pillars collapse at once. It's usually that one of the three tends to get a little wobbly. When we look back at our own experiences of work where we've lost trust, it tends to be the same one that gets a little shaky on us. We call that your wobble. It’s an intentionally playful word because we want it to be approachable. We also each tend to have a superpower—one of the three \[component parts\] is rock solid. We call that your anchor. When we work with people on their trust diagnostic, we'll say, ‘What's your anchor and what's your wobble?’ **Say my wobble is authenticity. What would you recommend to build that capacity?** **Morriss:** When I used to give high-stakes presentations and needed a little authenticity boost, particularly when I was raising money for my company, I would bring my son's little Lego piece with me. I would put it in my pocket. Or I used to sneak pictures of our dog into the \[slide\] deck. It would be a reminder of my dimensionality as a human. I didn’t get up there and play this cartoon version of a startup CEO that I thought the room wanted me to be. The harder stuff is a deeper psychological journey. What is the story I’m telling myself? That I don’t belong here? That I’m not credible? **I'm curious now, Frances, what is your wobble?** **Frei:** Empathy. What's interesting about this is I'm actually a very empathetic person. A wobble doesn't mean \[complete\] absence. It does mean in the moments when I lose trust, it's going to be for reasons of empathy. What I try to do is stack as many days as possible in between those episodes. It's not intentional. It's like collateral damage. We have to put up the reflective mirrors and build that peripheral vision. **How can someone build their peripheral vision?** **Frei:** We coach a lot of leaders in our work and we can get very tactical on empathy. Sometimes I'll say, ‘You cannot \[give your opinion\] until you ask three questions, even if you're the CEO.’ And empathy is fun because you can fake it till you make it. You can ask the question you are not actually that interested in, but by the time the complex human in front of you starts answering and thinking, it becomes fascinating. They become really interesting to you. **What about logic wobblers? What does that look like and how do you build it up?** **Frei:** Logic wobblers come in two forms. The far more common one is where I actually have good logic, but I lose you in my communication. We call that one a style wobble because I only have to change my communication style. \[Leaders like this\] take you on a journey with an increasingly winding road and, as journalists say, you bury the lede. By the time \[leaders get\] to that gorgeous reveal, very few people were left listening. Start with the point, with as much brevity as you can, and then give the supporting evidence. There is another case we call a substance wobble, where you doubt my logic because I don't have very good logic. And that's almost always when we know something well and we speak about it with confidence, but \[then\] we borrow that confidence and apply it even when we don't know things well…Some people were told leaders should project confidence. It's almost as if the small print got cut off: Project confidence if and only if you know it well. **For more from Frei and Morriss on identifying your wobble and anchor, repairing trust, and helping emerging leaders practice building trust at scale, download the full playbook** [**here**](https://www.charterworks.com/download-getting-ahead-of-the-leadership-gap/)**.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: How to Break Through to Detached Team Members](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7000691/how-to-break-through-to-detached-team-members/)  ### How to Break Through to Detached Team Members [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/7000691/how-to-break-through-to-detached-team-members/) [Open article: The Wrong Way to Define Productivity](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6337826/the-wrong-way-to-define-productivity/)  ### The Wrong Way to Define Productivity [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6337826/the-wrong-way-to-define-productivity/) [Open article: How Employee Feedback Leads to Greater Trust in Leaders](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6258249/ddi-stephanie-neal-leadership-trust/)  ### How Employee Feedback Leads to Greater Trust in Leaders [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/6258249/ddi-stephanie-neal-leadership-trust/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/the-three-ingredients-for-building-trust/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/the-three-ingredients-for-building-trust/"},"headline":"The Three Ingredients for Building Trust","datePublished":"2026-06-07T10:30:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-06-05T19:44:43.563Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/the-three-ingredients-for-building-trust/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt150bd8a301e6e951/6a2326f2b956c923fef80e7f/charter-frei-morris.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michelle Peng","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt150bd8a301e6e951/6a2326f2b956c923fef80e7f/charter-frei-morris.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-frei-morris.jpg","caption":"","creditText":"Art: Charter","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/the-three-ingredients-for-building-trust/","name":"The Three Ingredients for Building Trust"}}]}] ```