Leadership Academy — Week 1 Study Guide: Management vs. Leadership, and the Trust Equation
A condensed summary of Week 1 for assessment prep — the management/leadership distinction and the Trust Equation, in one page.
Part of the Leadership Academy series — a condensed study guide ahead of the assessment. Full detail lives in Session 1.
The core idea: management and leadership aren’t two job titles, they’re two mindsets the same person moves between. Management = process, a defined outcome, a shorter horizon. Leadership = a longer horizon, willing to lose small battles to win the bigger one, doing the right things rather than just doing things right. Being good at one says nothing about whether you’re good at the other.
The framework — Trust Equation:
Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) ÷ Self-Orientation
- Credibility — “I believe what you say” (competence).
- Reliability — “you do what you say you’ll do” (consistency).
- Intimacy — “I can be honest with you, you’re safe to confide in” (psychological safety in the relationship).
- Self-Orientation — the denominator. Lower is always better. High self-orientation collapses trust even if the other three are excellent — you can be brilliant, dependable, and easy to confide in, and still be untrusted if people sense you’re ultimately optimising for yourself.
Leadership commitment — deciding in advance what you’ll stand for, what you’ll change, and what you’ll protect, before the pressure to compromise arrives.
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