Trust is not one thing

The team where trust surveys looked fine

The pulse surveys said safety was present. Leaders had run the workshops. Working agreements covered honesty. And yet the early signals still weren't being raised — not in standups, not in retrospectives, not in one-to-ones. Problems arrived fully formed, long past the point where they were cheap to address.

The coach had been working on safety as if it were a single variable. It is not. Johnson's two-axis trust model makes the distinction precise: trusting and trustworthy are orthogonal behaviours, not opposite ends of one spectrum. Either can fail independently. Coaching the wrong axis makes things worse.

The two axes

Trusting behaviour is openness: the willingness to self-disclose, share incomplete thinking, admit uncertainty, and place yourself at risk of being known. A member who raises early signals, asks for help before they need to, or says "I don't know yet" is exhibiting trusting behaviour.

Trustworthy behaviour is acceptance: responding to others' openness with support, curiosity, and non-exploitation. A member who receives a concern without weaponising it, who asks a genuine question before offering an opinion, who protects a speaker's exposure — that is trustworthy behaviour.

Both are required for trust to function. You can be willing to share (trusting) and receive no acceptance (low trustworthy). You can be accepting (trustworthy) and work with members who won't disclose (low trusting). The psychological safety literature tends to treat these as one variable. The two-axis model separates them — which is what makes it diagnostic.

Four trust profiles

What breaks on each axis

The trusting axis breaks under: a history of openness being punished — past experience in this or a previous team where disclosure was exploited; performance goal orientation that makes vulnerability a liability; unclear norms about what level of self-disclosure is acceptable here. The member is willing to share in principle but has learned that sharing is costly.

The trustworthy axis breaks under: competitive team structure where others' problems become opportunities; leader behaviour that processes shared information in ways that disadvantage the sharer; norms that reward critique and certainty over curiosity and support. The environment punishes openness after the fact, which closes the trusting axis of every member who witnesses it.

Different interventions for each axis

When the trusting axis is broken — when members won't disclose even though the environment is accepting:

When the trustworthy axis is broken — when the environment doesn't protect or accept openness:

The coach's own profile

Coaches who are highly trustworthy but not trusting model acceptance without reciprocal vulnerability. The team learns that it is safe to share with the coach but sees no evidence that sharing costs the coach anything. This can produce a dependency where the coach carries disclosures that never return to the team.

Coaches who are trusting but working in low-trustworthy teams become the carrier of things the team cannot yet hold. Their openness goes unmatched and eventually costs them credibility. Neither profile is sustainable. The two-axis model applies to the coach as much as to the team.