--- title: "Reina Trust Building News: Dennis and Michelle Reina Built a System to Measure and Rebuild Workplace Trust" date: 2026-06-24T23:16:23Z modified: 2026-06-25T00:58:05Z permalink: "https://spotlightonstartups.com/dennis-and-michelle-reina-built-a-system-to-measure-and-rebuild-workplace-trust/" type: post status: publish excerpt: "" wpid: 7707 categories: - Expert Insights - Featured tags: - Expert Insights - Featured - Employee Engagement - leadership development - Mergers and Acquisitions - Organizational Trust - Trust Building - Trust Rebuilding - Workplace Culture featured_image: "https://spotlightonstartups.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Reina-Trust-Building.jpg" featured_image_alt: Reina Trust Building News author: Gregg Kell timestamp: 2026-06-25T00:58:05Z --- _Prepared by [Gregg Kell](https://www.linkedin.com/in/greggkell/), Editor | https://SpotlightOnStartups.com_ Most consultants who talk about workplace trust treat it as a value statement, something for a poster in the break room. [Dennis Reina, PhD](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisreina/), and Michelle Reina, PhD, cofounders of [Reina Trust Building](https://reinatrustbuilding.com/), treat it as a variable you can measure, track, and repair when it breaks. That distinction, built over more than three decades of research, has turned trust from a soft cultural ideal into what the Reinas call an operating foundation, and it is the reason organizations facing mergers, restructurings, and leadership turnover keep calling them back. > _“When Michelle and I founded the Reina Trust Building Institute in 1991, the prevailing view was that culture followed strategy and structure,” Reina said. “Our research, practice, and experience pointed us in a very different direction. Trust is the foundation upon which strategy, culture, leadership, and performance all depend.”_ That conviction did not arrive as a hunch. It arrived as a pattern. While pursuing doctorates in Human and Organizational Systems in the early 1990s, the Reinas consulted with leaders on quality improvement and organizational effectiveness, and kept running into the same wall. > _“Organizations hired us because teams were underperforming, leaders were struggling to lead effectively, and business results were falling short of expectations,” Reina said. “Regardless of the industry or issue, when we dug into the root causes, we found the same underlying factor: trust, or the absence of it.”_ That observation became a research question, and the research question became a four year study spanning 67 organizations across 19 industries, with interviews from more than 378 leaders. The result was the Reina Trust & Betrayal Model and the couple’s first book, Trust & Betrayal in the Workplace. A few years later, senior leaders at a major company in Orlando handed them the question that would define the next thirty years of their work. “Can you measure trust?” Reina recalled them asking. At the time, there was no reliable way to do so. Six months later, the Reinas had built their first statistically valid and reliable trust assessment. Three decades on, that single instrument has grown into a full suite of assessments measuring trust at the individual, leader, team, organizational, and customer levels, and the couple has authored multiple books, including Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace, a third edition of Trust and Betrayal in the Workplace, and their newest release, The Art of Trust Building. ![](https://spotlightonstartups.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/the-art-of-trust-building-book-cover-amazon-pencraft-recognition.webp "the-art-of-trust-building-book-cover-amazon-pencraft-recognition") ## What a High Trust Workplace Actually Looks Like Ask Reina what trust looks like in practice, and the answer is not philosophical. It is behavioral. The Reina Trust & Betrayal Model breaks trust into three measurable dimensions, Trust of Character, Trust of Communication, and Trust of Capability, each tied to specific, observable actions. > _“It’s surprisingly concrete,” Reina said. “We look at trust across three dimensions, which show up in everyday behaviors such as keeping agreements, telling the truth, sharing information, involving people in decisions, acknowledging mistakes, and following through on commitments.”_ Two behaviors come up constantly in assessments: how people set expectations, and how they handle feedback. “In high trust workplaces, expectations are discussed openly rather than assumed,” Reina said. “People make clear agreements about what they will do, by when, and with what support. When circumstances change, they renegotiate commitments rather than quietly missing them.” Feedback follows the same pattern. “In high trust cultures, feedback is timely, respectful, and focused on learning rather than blame,” he said. “Difficult conversations happen earlier, not after problems have grown.” The cumulative effect, Reina said, is a workplace that simply runs differently day to day. “People share information rather than hoard it. Leaders explain the rationale behind decisions. Team members ask for help without fear of being judged. Energy is spent serving customers, innovating, and solving problems, not protecting turf or second guessing motives.” ## A Process for Rebuilding, Not Just Building Where the Reinas’ work diverges most sharply from generic culture consulting is in what happens after trust breaks, which both founders treat as inevitable rather than exceptional. Every engagement starts the same way. > _“We start with assessments because trust is too important to leave to assumptions,” Reina said._ Using the Reina Trust Scales, the team measures trust at the individual, leader, team, and organizational level, producing a data picture of where trust is strong, where it has been damaged, and which specific behaviors are driving both. From there, the work turns practical. Leaders and teams learn the specific behaviors tied to each trust dimension and practice them directly in their day to day work. And when trust has already been broken, which Reina says it almost always has at some level, the firm runs clients through a structured methodology built for repair rather than a fresh start. > _“We guide people through our seven step Trust Rebuilding Process, helping them move from blame and frustration toward accountability, learning, and renewed commitment,” Reina said._ No two engagements look the same, he added. A healthcare system facing burnout and workforce shortages needs a different approach than a manufacturing company navigating a merger or a technology firm scaling quickly. > “We tailor our work based on the organization’s strategy, culture, leadership challenges, and trust assessment results,” Reina said. “Sometimes the focus is on senior leadership alignment. Sometimes it is strengthening trust between managers and employees. Other times it involves rebuilding trust after a restructuring, acquisition, leadership transition, or broken promise.” ## Proof in Mergers and Burned Out Teams The Reinas point to specific transformations as evidence the work holds up under real organizational pressure. After one major merger, a client organization was fracturing along old company lines, with silos, mistrust, and competing loyalties between legacy groups. > _“Through our trust assessments, leadership alignment, and trust building practices, employees began sharing information more freely, engaging in candid conversations, and making decisions based on enterprise wide priorities rather than departmental interests,” Reina said. “Within a year, leaders reported stronger collaboration across divisions, improved employee engagement, and a significant increase in their ability to execute strategic initiatives.”_ A second case involved a healthcare organization wrestling with burnout and turnover. The Reinas’ assessments revealed that employees felt excluded from decisions affecting their own work. “As leaders adopted more transparent communication practices and actively involved staff in problem solving, trust scores improved, employee retention stabilized, and teams became more resilient during periods of significant change,” Reina said. He measures success less by survey scores than by what shows up in daily behavior. “People speak up earlier when problems arise. Feedback becomes more candid and constructive. Teams recover more quickly from setbacks. Leaders spend less time resolving interpersonal conflict and more time focusing on strategy and growth.” ## The Next Thirty Five Years For an institute approaching its fourth decade, the Reinas describe their ambitions in terms larger than client engagements. “Our vision has always been larger than helping organizations improve performance,” Reina said. “Trust is one of the most important human capacities, one that influences the quality of our leadership, our workplaces, our families, our communities, and ultimately our lives.” The next phase of the work, he said, is about reach. Through trust assessments, leadership development programs, a coach and consultant certification program, digital learning experiences, speaking engagements, and **The Art of Trust Building**, the Reinas are pushing the discipline past the executive suite. > “Our goal is to put trust building into the hands of people at every level, not just executives and managers, so anyone can create, sustain, extend, and, when necessary, rebuild trust,” Reina said. “We want trust building to become a practical life skill that people can learn, practice, and apply every day.” That mission is also shaped by what Reina sees coming for the modern workplace: rapid change, uncertainty, polarization, burnout, hybrid work, and a growing need for human connection in an increasingly technology driven world. His focus going forward is less on first time trust building and more on the harder skill underneath it. > “Every individual, team, and organization will experience disappointment, mistakes, conflict, and betrayal,” he said. “The organizations that thrive are not those that avoid these experiences. They are the ones that know how to recover from them and emerge stronger.” Asked what he hopes the legacy of the work will be, Reina kept the answer simple. > _“If, long after our work together ends, leaders and employees are more able to trust themselves, trust one another, have difficult conversations, navigate change, and rebuild relationships after setbacks, then we will have accomplished what we set out to do more than thirty five years ago.”_ ![Reinas Portrait](https://spotlightonstartups.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Reinas-Portrait.webp "Reinas-Portrait") Dennis & Michelle Reina_Learn more about Reina Trust Building’s assessments, consulting solutions, programs, and certification offerings at [reinatrustbuilding.com](https://reinatrustbuilding.com/)._