Brain Fertilizer

This is also an ignored precept of management.

Trust is something that is propagated.
You have to trust your employees, even if they are untrustworthy, because two things happen:
1) If you do not trust your employee, they behave in an untrustworthy manner.
2) If you do trust your untrustworthy employee, they behave in a trustworthy manner.

It seems counter-intuative. But the more you put your trust in someone, the more trustworthy they become. They reflect what you feel about them.

Some of the biggest growth, I've seen, in my co-workers is when someone trusted them with a task; and took the risk of giving someone who didn't appear to be capable of completing it. The worker always seems to meet the challange, and ends up a better employee for it.

All it took was a manager/project leader who changed how they felt personaly about them.

Actually, there's an additional dichotomy. You start out with two kinds of employees: the kind who respond to being trusted, and the kind who don't.

If you trust your employees, those who respond will become more trustworthy; those who don't will remain untrustworthy.

If you don't trust your employees, those who respond to being trusted will instead respond to not being trusted. Those who don't respond to being trusted will remain untrustworthy.

Trusting your employees will separate the good ones from the not-so-good ones, and you can weed out the ones who are untrustworthy regardless of what you do. It's not a certainty of success, but it leaves you -- and them -- with an opportunity to succeed neither of you will have if you withhold your trust.

Absolutely!

And if I may put in a plug for my own blog (and if I can't do it on my own blog, what good is it to have one, I ask you?), this ties right back into Setting your people up for success. If you trust a seemingly untrustworthy subordinate with a task, but give them the tools for success, they will be that much easier to set up for success the next time, because they've had a taste for it.
You probably need a back-up plan for the more vital tasks (although you should keep it to yourself, or you are demonstrating a lack of trust), but few people can naturally succeed at a difficult, advanced task without training.

That's a good part of leadership: training your subordinates to replace or even obviate you.

Mind you, all this is more easy in the abstract than in the practice, but I get chances to practice in being a parent. Seriously. I may have to write a story about someone who turns out to be a great leader when no one expects it solely due to their experience as a parent...