Trust, Psychological Safety, and Values. What is Missing?

Here we are with another blog that considers what we do, and what it takes to work with purpose, lead with impact, and engage with people in a way that really makes a difference.

In our Work Unplugged podcast last week, Amrit explored something that sits quietly underneath the surface of most organisations, something that, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And that is those things that get tolerated, that directly go against what an organisation says it values.

In the podcast Amrit explained the trust equation. Credibility. Reliability. Intimacy. Self-orientation. It's a solid, well-worn framework and it holds up. Add to that a set of clear values with behavioural descriptors of what we truly stand for around here and then layer on top a genuine commitment to psychological safety. Tick, tick, tick. On paper, that looks comprehensive. It looks like culture and a great one at that. And yet, we've watched scandals unfold in organisations that had all of those things. Doctors harassing junior colleagues. Managers in well-known brands abusing their positions. Racial incidents in companies with prominent diversity statements. These aren't organisations that forgot to write a values statement. Many of them had entire frameworks in place. So how does it keep happening?

Amrit's answer is uncomfortable, and deliberately so. Because the thing that's missing isn't something most organisations have a word for. He's calling it, for now, anti-values, not because it's the right term, but because it points at something real that we've been leaving unnamed. Values tell us what we hold most dear. But anti-values, or whatever we eventually call them, define the line we will not cross. They are not the opposite of values. They are the boundaries. The behaviours we will not tolerate. And they are almost never articulated.

I've worked in organisations that had genuinely beautiful values. Treat people like family. Work as one team. Put the customer first. The kind of statements that, when you first read them, make you feel like you've landed somewhere that actually gets it. And then, slowly, reality introduced itself. In one of those organisations, one that spoke loudly about trust, about teamwork, about treating staff and customers like family, the unspoken rule was that nobody really trusted anyone to make a decision. Not employees. Not senior leaders. Everything funnelled upward. Every call, every judgement, every deviation from the script required sign-off from above. The values said family. The culture said: we don't quite believe in you.

That gap, between what an organisation proclaims and how it actually operates, is something I've seen play out more times than I can count. And I've come to believe it's one of the most quietly damaging things in organisational life. Not because people are hypocrites, but because most organisations have simply never done the harder work alongside their values: defining what they will not tolerate. Values statements are, by nature, aspirational. They describe the best version of what an organisation wants to be. And that's not wrong. But aspiration without boundary is incomplete. You can tell people what you love without ever telling them where the line is. And when the line is never drawn, behaviour fills the space.

In the organisation I'm describing, the value of trust was real, in intent, at least. Leaders believed it. They'd have defended it in any conversation. But nobody had ever stopped to ask the harder question: what does a lack of trust actually look like around here, and are we prepared to call it out when we see it? The answer, it turned out, was no. Because the behaviours that eroded trust, the micro-management, the decisions pulled back at the last moment, the senior leader who said "I trust your judgement" and then overrode it, none of those violated the values statement. They weren't blatant enough to name. They existed in the grey space where culture quietly lives and where most organisations never think to look.

This is the gap I think leaders need to sit with more honestly. Not "what do we stand for?", most organisations can answer that, but "what will we not stand for, and do our people actually know?" Because values without enforced boundaries leave room for the very behaviours that contradict them. Teamwork as a value means little if people who hoard information or undermine colleagues face no consequence. Family as a value rings hollow if employees need three layers of approval to act on their own initiative. The value becomes decoration. And people notice. They always notice.

What I've seen change cultures genuinely, not cosmetically, is when leaders get specific and honest about the behaviours they refuse to normalise. Not in a punitive way, but in a clear one. This is what we mean when we say we trust people. And this, the second-guessing, the bottlenecking, the silence when someone should have spoken up, is what trust does not look like around here.

The organisations I've seen do this well don't just have better values. They have better clarity. Their people know not just what is celebrated, but what is quietly, consistently, and collectively not accepted. That clarity doesn't happen through a policy document. It happens through leaders who are willing to name things, including, sometimes, their own behaviour, and hold the line.

Now think about your organisation. Think about the behaviours that go on, week after week, that everyone notices. The game-playing. The politics. The person who takes credit for others' work. The meeting after the meeting. The leader who speaks over people. The comments that are never quite over the line but never quite right either. None of those things are likely to violate your stated values. They're too subtle, too grey, too easy to explain away. And because there's no articulated boundary, no collective statement of this is what we will not tolerate, they just carry on. Unchecked. Quietly corrosive.

This is where psychological safety breaks down. Leaders invest heavily in creating spaces where people feel able to speak up. And yet, people don't speak. They stay quiet. The reason, often, is that they've watched behaviours go unaddressed long enough that they no longer believe speaking up will change anything. What we tolerate defines the boundaries of what feels safe. Full stop. So, if your organisation has values on the wall, the questions worth asking are: what's on the other side of those statements? What are the behaviours that contradict them, and what are you doing about them? What would it look like to name them? To say, clearly and collectively: this is who we are, and this is what we will not stand for?

Values tell people what you love. But until you're equally clear about what you won't accept, the space in between remains available to those who know exactly how to navigate it. It's time to name it. Whatever we call it. Because a culture isn't what you declare. It's what you permit.

If you'd like to listen to the podcast click here!