Leadership Quote by Patricia Hewitt

Trust, in Patricia Hewitt's framing, is not a feeling you negotiate back into existence; it's a performance you have to repeat until it becomes believable again. The line is pointedly anti-therapeutic: no “sitting down,” no carefully worded pledges, no symbolic reset. It rejects the modern reflex to treat reputational collapse as a communications problem. Hewitt is arguing that the only currency that matters after betrayal is behavior over time, the slow accumulation of proof.

As a politician, she’s also describing a reality her profession frequently tries to dodge. “Talking about trust” reads like an indictment of inquiry rooms, apology tours, and scripted contrition - the ritual language of scandals and broken mandates. Promises are cheap because they’re infinitely reproducible; actions are expensive because they can be measured, repeated, and used against you. The subtext is accountability without the soothing rhetoric: if you want trust, you submit to scrutiny and you change what you do when nobody’s clapping.

The sentence is built to sound practical, almost managerial, which is part of its power. “Living it” is moral language disguised as operational advice. It signals seriousness without melodrama and shifts the debate from intentions to outcomes. In the likely context of public confidence - whether in a party, a leader, or government itself - Hewitt’s intent is to move the audience from cynicism about spin to a testable standard: watch us, don’t listen to us. That’s both a promise and a dare.