There's a paradox buried in how most leaders think about trust: they treat it as something you earn over time, through consistent performance. But the Stoic philosopher Epictetus drew a sharper line — between what is 'up to us' (our judgments, intentions, actions) and what is not (outcomes, reputation, how others perceive us). The trap for leaders is spending enormous energy managing the second category while neglecting the first. What Ubuntu philosophy adds to this — the Southern African principle that personhood itself is constituted through relationship, captured in Desmond Tutu's articulation of 'I am because we are' — is that trust isn't a resource you accumulate and then spend. It's the ongoing quality of how you show up in relation to others, moment by moment. The practical shift: stop asking 'do they trust me?' and start asking 'am I being trustworthy right now, in this conversation?' That's the only variable actually in your control, and it's the one most leaders ignore while obsessing over their reputation.

When was the last time you made a decision designed to protect your reputation rather than to actually be the right thing for the people you lead — and did you notice it at the time?

Drawing from Stoicism / Ubuntu Philosophy — Epictetus (Enchiridion, c. 125 CE) and Desmond Tutu (No Future Without Forgiveness, 1999)