Revolutionizing Leadership and Building Trust - An Interview with Ty Jernstedt, Founder of With Trust
- 28 minutes ago
- 6 min read
With over 30 years of experience leading transformational change for iconic global brands, Ty Jernstedt is an executive coach, culture strategist, and the founder of WithTrust and Remix Coaching. Based in Amsterdam, Ty’s mission is to "remix" the employee experience by building organizational cultures rooted in trust, empathy, and inclusion.
Ty Jernstedt, Owner
Who is Ty Jernstedt? Introduce yourself – your hobbies, your favorites, you at home and in business. Tell us something interesting about yourself.
I am a Chicago native who now calls Amsterdam home. Since graduating from Duke University, my career has spanned 30+ years across four continents. My first decade was spent in marketing and communications for iconic brands like Mizuno, Nike, Coca-Cola, Disney, and McDonald’s. These years taught me how powerful a story can be, but my later work in leadership development, inclusion, and employee experience taught me what actually makes those stories sustainable: the people behind them.
Before founding With Trust, I held senior leadership roles at Nike and Zalando. In 2018, I founded Remix Coaching, which is focused on developing leaders, aligning teams, and evolving cultures for clients such as Converse, ASICS, ING, and Tommy Hilfiger.
At home, I am a husband, a dedicated Duke Blue Devils fan, and a servant to two Shih-Tzus. My passion for global connection was ignited early on during a year with Up With People, performing in seven countries alongside artists like Lenny Kravitz and Take That. That experience – navigating 24 different nationalities – was my first true masterclass in building bridges across cultures.
What inspired you to start With Trust? Founder Ty Jernstedt’s story and work and focus your career on trust, leadership, and culture?
The transition from a marketing executive to a coach was driven by a desire to have a deeper impact on people. During my tenure as the Global D&I Director at Nike, and in subsequent roles, "trust" was a recurring theme. It was the invisible barrier that prevented people from feeling they belonged, sharing their ideas, and collaborating effectively with others.
I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. I have worked in low-trust environments where silos were fortified, and the blame game was the default setting. Conversely, I have operated in high-trust cultures where innovation felt effortless because we were supported rather than policed. The difference wasn't just in the results; it was in the energy we brought to achieving our goals.
I started With Trust to move organizations from "command and control" to "connect and collaborate." My inspiration is that lightbulb moment when a leader realizes their greatest leverage isn't authority, but it’s the trust they cultivate to drive belonging and innovation.
How do you define “trust” in the context of leadership and high-performing teams?
For a leader to be effective and a team to be truly high-performing, these four trust elements are essential:
Credibility: developing and leveraging their expertise
Consistency: being reliable to deliver as promised and behaving consistently to honor their values as well as the organizational values
Connection: building an understanding and authentic partnership with others
Care: showing they care more about the collective well-being and success over their own
What are the biggest challenges leaders face today when building trust across teams?
The primary hurdle is the speed of business, coupled with hybrid work. Remote environments have stripped away organic rapport-building, leaving communication vulnerable to misinterpretation. Many leaders feel they don't have the time to build trust, so they prioritize transactional tasks. By diminishing connection and care for their people, they are guaranteeing a breakdown in performance.
How does With Trust’s approach help leaders during major transitions or new roles?
Transitions are high-stakes because leaders start with an empty trust bucket. New leaders are closely watched. Every interaction is scrutinized for signals of friend or foe. I coach leaders before they start their new role to develop a game plan for building trust through how they communicate, build connections with their new team, and demonstrate empathy and care for their team’s success.
During the partnership, leaders can assess their emotional or conversational intelligence to identify how they can develop in these areas and build stronger trust from the start. Ongoing coaching after they have started helps them continue to assess and improve their impact in building deeper trust with their people.
To create greater alignment with their team, we facilitate a New Leader Alignment session after a month of the new leader starting. The aim of this session is to help the leader and team understand each other better and align on expectations. By getting on the same page and clarifying how they want to work together, they are setting themselves up for more success.
What does “leading with trust” look like in practical, everyday leadership behavior?
During key moments that matter for employees (1:1s, performance reviews, team meetings, etc.), leaders need to leverage their experience to support their people. They intentionally spend time building a deeper understanding and connection with their people by asking questions and listening authentically.
They aren’t just going through the to-do list during 1:1s; they use that time to support and elevate their team members’ experience. They are consistent in following through on their commitments to their people. They are making decisions that show they care about the success and well-being of their team and acknowledge the great work individuals and the team have done throughout the year.
Why should organizations invest in trust building before focusing on strategy or performance?
Strategy is the structure, but trust is the foundation. If the foundation is cracked, the structure will collapse. When organizations don’t have that foundation, they pay a Trust Tax, which leads to extra meetings, defensive emails, and internal politics that slow everything down. High-trust organizations gain a Trust Dividend, in which communication moves at the speed of thought and innovation flourishes because people feel safe taking risks.
Can you share a powerful example of how building trust transformed a team or business outcome?
I was asked to work with two teams responsible for designing and deploying benefits for a global organization. There was a high level of blame and a long list of escalations that significantly reduced the program rollout's efficiency and effectiveness.
Based on the work we did together, the teams were able to better understand each other’s worlds, identify the specific aspects that led to low trust, and commit to taking action to improve those aspects of their dynamics. They also identified specific aspects of one-team spirit so they could work together to solve any issues that arose. As a result, they were able to evolve and launch new benefits more quickly to better support employees and manage costs more effectively for the business.
What are the top three skills you help leaders develop through your coaching and programs?
Emotional Intelligence (Empathy): Moving beyond surface-level rapport to truly sense the unsaid and address fears before they become fractures.
Conversational Intelligence: Shifting from "Tell-and-Direct" to "Ask-and-Empower" to trigger the brain’s creative and trusting state.
Collaboration (Openness): Developing skills and behaviors to encourage inclusive communication, openness to diverse approaches and ideas, and a focus on collective success as they brainstorm and problem-solve.
How does stronger trust improve collaboration and communication within teams?
When trust is high, communication cascades quickly through the leadership levels and across functions in organizations. You don’t need a 20-slide deck to justify a change, nor do you waste time rewriting emails or "BCC-ing" colleagues to cover your tracks. A five-minute conversation suffices because the intent is already established and trusted.
Collaboration becomes fluid because the ego is removed from the equation. In low-trust cultures, information is hoarded as a source of power. In high-trust environments, information is shared freely as a collective resource. This transparency turns a group of individuals into a cohesive team capable of pivoting in real-time to meet market demands without the lag time of internal politics.
What signs should a leader or organization watch for that indicate a need for trust-centered coaching?
The most glaring sign is the "after-the-meeting” norm, when people are silent in the boardroom but vocal and complaining in private. Other red flags include high potential attrition, innovation stagnation, and excessive bureaucracy, in which simple decisions require numerous layers of approval. In low-trust organizations, the blame game, finger-pointing, and a victim role run rampant, and leaders aren’t stepping up to address these toxic behaviors.
What is the most valuable advice you want potential clients to take away about working with you and With Trust?
Working with me and With Trust isn't about a one-off, feel-good workshop. It’s about being committed to a journey of rewiring the DNA of your leadership and your team's dynamics for systemic change.
Trust is a muscle, not a mood. It requires consistent, intentional training and assessment. My advice is this: Stop waiting for a crisis to address your culture. The right time was yesterday; the next best time is now. It’s not just focusing on what you are doing, but how you are doing it.
When you partner with us, you aren't just improving your bottom line – you’re improving the human experience of work. You are building an environment where people can do their best work, and that is a competitive advantage. To do this effectively, we work with clients at a very practical level, without being bogged down in theory or models. It’s a true partnership to make work work better with trust.
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