Have We Been Training Leaders for the Wrong Moments?
The Trust Staircase — Part 1 of 3
By Katja Schleicher | Communication Expert & Keynote Speaker | Working Style
Quick Answer: Most leadership development focuses on high-stakes, high-visibility moments — keynotes, board presentations, town halls. But trust is not built on a stage. It is built in the twenty ordinary conversations a leader has before lunch. The leaders people trust most are not the most polished performers. They are the most consistently present ones.
I spend a lot of my time preparing executives for high-stakes moments. Keynotes. Town halls. Panels. Interviews. The moments everyone sees.
Which is slightly ironic. Because I don't think that's where leadership happens.
Yes, I'm aware I just argued against my own business model. Stay with me. It gets worse before it gets useful.
Where Does Leadership Actually Happen?
Leadership usually happens on a random Tuesday at 10:17. Someone sticks their head around your office door. "Have you got a minute?"
Of course you haven't. But this is the moment where you should take it: for the colleague challenging your idea. An information that quickly needs to be exchanged and weighed. Those are the moments that quietly decide whether people trust you. Because they're ordinary.
Let's do a quick calculation: How many conversations will you have today? The stand-up. The project update. The one-to-one. The quick call. The chat over coffee. The conversation after the meeting. The meeting that could have been an email. The meeting explaining the email.
Twenty? Yep. Exactly.
And if you just thought, "Mine? All memorable" — lovely. Ask your team on Friday. I'll wait.
Why Do Leaders Over-Prepare for the Wrong Conversations?
We've become remarkably good at preparing leaders for the moments that happen once a quarter. And remarkably casual about the twenty conversations they'll have before lunch.
Somewhere, right now, another PowerPoint is proudly announcing a bold transformation journey. I genuinely wish it well. (It's the journey's third relaunch. The destination remains a mystery.)
Meanwhile, a manager turns to a colleague and asks, "What do you think?"
If I had to bet on which moment builds more leadership... I'd put my money on the question.
Isn't it fascinating that after a keynote, people hardly ever say: "Slide 14 was brilliant." Nobody has ever said that since Microsoft invented PowerPoint. Instead the audience says "cool intro", "I liked how she handled that difficult question", "She remembered something I'd told her months ago."
We applaud presentations. We remember conversations.
What Is the Real Communication Problem for Most Leaders?
I don't think most managers have a communication problem. I think they have a forgettable conversation problem. Not bad conversations. Just... interchangeable ones.
One meeting sounds much like the last. One update blends into the next. One "Any questions?" arrives while the laptop is already closing and the minds are already in the next call or meeting. Nothing terrible happens. And nothing memorable happens either.
And leadership has a memory problem. People don't remember everything you said. They remember how consistently you showed up.
We're constantly told to think bigger. Create more impact. Build your brand. Increase your visibility. Fine. But trust has never been particularly impressed by volume. Announcements are cheap. That's why there are so many of them.
How Do Leaders Build Trust Through Everyday Conversations?
Trust watches for consistency. Are you curious before you're convincing? Do your actions catch up with your words? Does today's conversation sound like yesterday's?
People may admire your vision. They trust your patterns.
That's why I love questions. Questions are surprisingly expensive. They cost certainty. They cost ego. They ask for courage. Sometimes they cost the answer you were hoping for. Announcements don't ask much of us. Curiosity does. Maybe that's why questions build trust so much faster than declarations.
Judith Glaser, whose work on Conversational Intelligence® has shaped my thinking for years, argued that conversations either open people up or shut them down. There isn't really a neutral conversation. Think about that.
Those twenty conversations in your diary today? They're not administrative. They're not the filler between the "real work." They are the work. Each one leaves something behind: a little more openness. Or a little more distance.
Why High-Stakes Presentations Reveal Trust — They Don't Create It
This is why I think we've been training leaders for the wrong moments. Of course the keynote matters. Yes, the interview and the board presentation as well. But those moments don't create trust. They reveal it.
By the time someone steps onto the stage, people already have a story about them. That story has been written in the dozens of conversations nobody applauded.
The hallway. The lift. The five minutes before the meeting. The call that began with, "Have you got a minute?"
Leadership isn't built on a stage. It's built in the spaces between the stages.
The One-Conversation Experiment
Tomorrow, don't try to become a better communicator. That's too big. (See what I did there?)
Choose one conversation. Walk into it with one question: "How can I help this person think?" Don't try to sound impressive. Try to leave the conversation better than you found it.
Because trust isn't built one keynote at a time. It's built one conversation at a time.
Next in the series: What If Small Talk Is the Most Underrated Leadership Skill?
Katja Schleicher is a trilingual communication expert and keynote speaker working in English, German, and Dutch. She helps organisations and leaders turn everyday dialogue into a strategic advantage — from the conference stage to the boardroom. Find out more about how Katja works.