Building trust: turning small moments into lasting connections
Sarah König | September 2025
Read more from the Reflections on Relational Practice blog series:
- 'Hard to reach' families or difficult to access services?
- What is relational practice and why is it important?
- Listening to speak or listening to understand?
- Understanding the broader context of individual families
- How our interpretation of experiences might get in the way of helping families
- Building and sustaining effective relationships: why first meetings matter
- Listening beyond words: what children's behaviour is trying to tell us
- Difficult conversations: when care meets courage
- Summarising: creating connection and empowering speakers
- Why partnerships with families and children matter more than ever
- Humility in professional practice
- Building trust: turning small moments into lasting connections
‘Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.’
- Seth Godin
It was 10 minutes into the session, and one thing was clear. This mum wasn’t hearing a word I was saying and appeared to wish she were anywhere else.
Her eyes kept darting to her son, who was lying on the floor and clutching an Octonauts figurine like it was a lifeline. I had a beautifully prepared plan for this meeting, but the plan didn’t matter. What mattered was showing Mum that I could read the room, shift gears and work with what was in front of us. I knew I had my work cut out for me to build her trust.
In moments like this, it’s tempting to default to professional autopilot:
- ploughing into personal (possibly intrusive) questions to satisfy the ‘Family History’ section of the initial report, or
- showcasing expertise by dropping terminology nobody asked for (neurodevelopmental substrates of socio-cognitive discourse processing, anyone?).
I know the urge well; imposter syndrome plus people-pleasing is a heady cocktail! But research, and the reluctant voice of experience, would say that neither approach helps in building trust.
Micro-moments
Brené Brown explains that trust is built in micro-moments and eroded just as easily through ‘micro-betrayals.’ It can come down to the smallest choices, like walking past a colleague who looks upset because you are ‘too busy’ to check in, pausing to help someone settle in at the start of an initial consultation, or brushing past a comment when a patient might have been tentatively starting to open up. This is particularly crucial when working with populations who have experienced trauma or have a historical mistrust of services, where trust can be especially fragile.
‘Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust’. But how?
The ABCD model
Developed by Ken Blanchard, Cynthia Olmstead and Martha Lawrence, the ABCD model of trust offers a clear framework for understanding those choices. I recently came across it and appreciate how it closely aligns with our work on Relational Practice, in the context of supporting families.
A - Able
As Sucher and Gupta note in The Power of Trust, one of the first things people look for, when deciding whether to trust you, is competence. This tells us that being ‘Able’ is about demonstrating competence as much as part of our skills. Families and colleagues don’t need you to know everything but they do need to feel that you’re switched on and know your stuff. And crucially, our relational skills must be front and centre. The Family Partnership Model highlights the importance of ‘helper skills’ like active listening, emotional attunement, and collaborative goal-setting.
What it might look like in practice:
- Demonstrating strategies or concepts clearly so others feel confident to use them on their own.
- Having a few backup plans ready, so if your first two (or ten) ideas flop, you're ready to pivot.
- Pairing less experienced staff with mentors so families see skill and confidence in action.
- Checking in to make sure everyone’s on the same page, and repeating back key points.
- For leaders: setting a clear vision and creating safe structures for feedback so staff feel heard and supported.
B - Believable
‘Believable’ means acting in a way that communicates integrity and accountability. Choose courage over comfort, practice your values, own mistakes, and make amends when things go wrong. For me, this often begins by seeming less polished and by demonstrating small admissions of humanity. Early in our careers, we fear this may undermine how 'Able' we seem, but often the opposite is true.
Believability grows when professionals don’t overclaim, overpromise, or pretend to have all the answers. Stephen M. R. Covey in Trust & Inspire also emphasises that credibility comes from extending trust to others.
What it might look like in practice:
- Saying, ‘I don’t know the answer, but I’ll find out.’
- Being transparent about what’s in your role and what isn’t.
- Backing up recommended approaches with well-researched, accessible information.
- Repairing issues early so small breaches don’t snowball into ruptures.
- For leaders: being upfront about organisational challenges, sharing decision-making where possible, and admitting when we have made mistakes.
C - Connected
Being ‘Connected’ is vital: it’s what makes families and practitioners feel safe enough to engage, and what helps professionals find sustainability in their work. Showing up as our authentic selves can feel in direct conflict with older conventional wisdom, which suggested keeping our home and work persona separate.
We can build/break trust in the ways we convey information, both in conversation and in writing. Klieve & Stark found that partnerships strengthen when we provide accessible reports instead of jargon-heavy documents that exclude the very people they’re meant to support. Inaccessible language can send a message saying ‘you don’t belong in this conversation.’
Trust through connection also rests on non-judgement and generosity: creating spaces where people can ask for help without fear, and assuming the best intentions when interpreting others’ words and actions.
What connection might look like in practice:
- Reading the room before asking somebody about their mental health.
- Remembering personal details and weaving them into interactions.
- Using shared humour.
- Creating opportunities for families and colleagues to feel heard and valued.
- Demonstrating genuine curiosity.
- Validating an emotional response in the room rather than rushing past it.
D - Dependable
Emailing session notes in a timely fashion used to feel like an extra admin burden, until I saw how much families and other professionals valued it as a sign they could rely on me.
Doing what you said you’ll do, demonstrating confidentiality, and holding kind boundaries are all important behaviours to demonstrate early. Nowadays, I even appreciate the moments when a parent or child ‘tests’ me by checking if I remembered to bring the activity I’d promised. It’s a chance to show I can be trusted.
What dependability can look like in practice:
- Keeping to agreed times, whether for meetings, workshops or resource delivery.
- Communicating promptly when plans change.
- Maintaining continuity, especially during handovers or referrals.
- Following through on promises to share notes or slides with participants.
Final thoughts
I appreciate how the ABCD model is a reminder that trust is co-created; each side takes small risks, and the other responds. It is only in this way where a solid relationship can be built. It’s not always easy – sometimes we miss the moment, or get it wrong. But the work is in returning, noticing, and trying again.
Where have you seen trust built (or lost) in the small, ordinary choices of everyday practice?
Upcoming workshop
Engaging Families: Building and sustaining helpful relationships
Strong relationships with families help to promote positive parent-child relationships and early learning environments and experiences for children. This two-part workshop is designed to equip professionals with the confidence and tools necessary engage with parents who may have find services difficult to access.
Dates: 6 and 13 November
Time: 4:00pm-5:30pm AEST
Location: Online
References:
Blanchard, K., Olmstead, C., & Lawrence, M. (2013). Trust Works!: Four Keys to Building Lasting Relationships. HarperCollins.
Brown, B. (2021). BRAVING: The Anatomy of Trust. Unlocking Us Podcast.
Covey, S. M. R. (2022). Trust & Inspire. Simon & Schuster.
Sucher, S. J., & Gupta, S. (2021). The Power of Trust. PublicAffairs.
Davis, H., Day, C., & Bidmead, C. (2002). The Family Partnership Model: A Practical Guide to Working with Parents. London: Pearson.
Klieve, H., & Stark, H. (2025). Teachers’ perspectives on the accessibility and usefulness of speech pathology reports. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22000259.2025.2474989
Curious about future workshops or want to bring one to your team? For further information, head to ccch.org.au/learn
To enquire about tailoring a workshop to meet the needs of your organisation, please email us at [email protected]
About the author
Sarah König is a speech pathologist, facilitator and clinical educator with experience across diverse health, education and community settings. She works alongside children, families and professionals, with a strong focus on connection and psychological safety. Sarah is passionate about strengths-based, neurodiversity-affirming approaches, and is especially interested in how learning can be designed at both individual and systems levels to feel practical, engaging and human.