Developing Trust on Your Team

A Lack of Trust Can Destroy Your Team

A chalkboard with a light bulb and the word trust written on it

What You Can Do To Develop an Atmosphere of Trust on Your Team

Trust is a central component of all healthy relationships. Teams are no exception. “There’s no team without trust,” said Paul Santagata, Head of Industry for Retail/Tech/Telecom at Google. “In Google’s fast-paced, highly demanding environment, our success hinges on the ability to take risks and be vulnerable in front of peers.” [“High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create it” by Laura Delizonna, Harvard Business Review August 24, 2017]

The leader must facilitate trust and be a model of trust. This means creating a team environment characterized by open, candid relationships and a climate of psychological safety.

“As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t. . . A CEO’s ability to build this trust over time is often the difference between companies that execute well and companies that are chaotic.” – Ben Horowitz (quoted in https://www.zenefits.com/workest/ben-horowitz-culture-leadership-succeeding/)

It is a sad fact of my long experience working with entrepreneurs that many of them do not trust people easily, and this sets the tone for the way they manage their teams and how team members, in turn, manage their teams. When you don’t trust someone, if you feel they lack competence, skill, or experience or you question their good will and good intentions, you are more likely to try to control or micromanage them. This can severely damage a team’s effectiveness.

A lack of trust and a climate of fear on the team is the opposite of psychological safety. It is toxic and can result not merely in an uncomfortable workplace and a lack of openness, but also in finger-pointing and conflicts between team members, politics, false consensus leading to bad decisions, and ultimately in turnover. It will curtail collaboration, weaken problem solving, hamper individual and group performance and diminish results.

The more interdependent the team – the more team members are dependent on each other to get their work done – the more trust matters. This can be particularly relevant for startups where the number of people involved is small and collaboration is especially vital. For example, Engineers can’t build anything unless the Product team defines what customers want, what features they care about, and Product can’t really do that without coordination with the Marketing team. All these relationships rely on trust: that information is being openly shared, that people are telling the truth, giving honest feedback, working through differences and collaborating and working together to meet commitments.

When there is good will and psychological safety on a team, members will be willing to be vulnerable and openly discuss their problems, opinions, and concerns. In addition, trust also increases the commitment and loyalty between team members, which reduces unwanted turnover, and increases a sense of common identity.

How Trust Grows

Trust builds slowly, over time. It is built in very small moments but can be destroyed in an instant. If team members have shared important experiences and been successful working together, or have endured difficult times and made it through to the other side, trust will naturally increase.

Trust grows when there is openness, information sharing, honesty, and the ability to voice differences and work together through conflict. As Google’s Project Aristotle on effective teamwork has found, members must feel free enough to share their opinions without fear of recrimination or attack. As a New York Times article said, “ We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency.”

Growth of trust also requires regular interaction between members, listening and respecting each other’s ideas. This too takes time, and it means that you, as the leader, need to look for opportunities to increase the level of interaction and collaboration between members of the team. If team members operate in silos or have more frequent communication with the leader than with each other, the team will be less effective.

This can be especially challenging with remote team members. Videoconferences between team members in another country or city, or just in another building or domain, have become commonplace and the leader must pay close attention to bringing team members together in person whenever possible. Where that is not an option, the leader needs to be very deliberate about insuring active participation from all team members rather than allowing in-person members to dominate the discussion.

Does Your Team Trust You?

Leaders are often unaware of how much – or how little – team members are on board with the leader’s strategy, goals, and plans. Even worse, they often assume they have the team’s trust, when that is not always the case. Here are some ways to tell if your team trusts you:

Team members sometimes take a different view from yours, and express it freely.
Team members keep you informed of their progress. They are comfortable coming to you for help or suggestions if they get stuck.
Team members appear comfortable admitting mistakes, and are willing to discuss their problems rather than hiding or minimizing them, or concealing them in fancy PowerPoints.
Team members approach you when they have a non-work problem, to request time off or support.
Team members are not obviously defensive or over-critical about statements you make.
Team meetings are relatively open and there is wide participation, with everyone making a contribution.
Team members speak up – often privately – if they have a problem with one of your decisions or your behavior and are prepared to discuss their concerns.
There does not appear to be excessive gossip in the team.

These are all signs that you have done a good job in creating an atmosphere of safety and trust.

What Happens When Trust Is Strong?

A recent meta-analysis of 112 research studies confirmed that trust between team members is highly correlated with the achievement of team goals. When trust is present, problem solving tends to be creative and productive. Discussions are livelier and out-of-the-box solutions get put on the table when fear of self-expression is absent. Members willingly take greater risks and say what is on their minds directly rather than behind others’ backs.

Trust has a similarly powerful impact on decision-making. The best decisions are made when the best thinking and all the facts are put on the table. When team members feel safe and expect that others will behave in a supportive and positive manner, they will be more willing to be vulnerable and open. They will work more collaboratively and stay more focused on team goals.

What Happens When Trust Is Weak?

When trust is not strong, people are unwilling to share their real opinions and concerns. In that case, you are not getting the best thinking out of them. Often this lack of trust is due to the leader, who may have created an intimidating environment or failed to police bad behavior among members, such as personal attacks. In that environment, people are unwilling to share intuitive insights or half-formed ideas.

Problem solving tends to degenerate and become ineffective. Interpersonal relationships among team members interfere with and distort perception of the problem. That’s because, in the absence of trust, people’s energy and creativity are more focused on self-protection than on finding creative solutions. They feel the need to protect themselves from attack, humiliation, or retribution, rather than apply their energy and attention to problem solving and may withhold half-formed ideas that may contain the seed of a solution.

In the absence of trust, team members are more suspicious of others’ motivations, and become defensive. Openness is reduced, and people don’t say what they really think. Team members lose sight of team goals and focus on personal self-interest.

How to Build Team Trust

Be honest with team members. Don’t spin things. If you distort the truth or outright lie, team members won’t trust you. Tell them the truth rather than what you think they want to hear. A leader must establish and maintain high standards of personal integrity.
Show team members that you care about them as people rather than merely as units of production. Organizations and teams are not machines. Results are important but excessive focus on hitting goals and deadlines or improving performance and quality can give the message that you only see team members as means to an end. Create opportunities to socialize with them in informal settings such as team dinners and avoid too much focus on business issues at that time.
Be proactive in building relationships. Listen to individual team members and get to know them and their concerns. Check in with them regularly to find out how things are going in their world and how they are feeling about events, projects, problems etc. It is easy for a busy team leader to become isolated and insulated from the problems and concerns of employees. If you are too distant from team members and don’t invest in getting to know them and what is important to them, they will be less likely to trust you. Leaders who show interest in the needs and challenges of the employees they manage set a positive tone on the team. Employees who feel valued and supported are more likely to be motivated to get results.
Occasionally survey the team to take its temperature, particularly around trust levels and morale. Then discuss any barriers to teamwork that are surfaced by the results.
Don’t withhold information. Leaders often worry that openly sharing sensitive information about financial results, decisions, or developments could cause problems. Whenever possible, eliminate secrets. Provide team members with both information they need, and information they want. Many leaders justify withholding information by saying, “I provide information on a need-to-know basis.” This reflects a lack of trust and need for control. Obviously, not all information can be shared. But ask team members what information they are not getting that they want and need. When possible, let them know about plans, developments, opportunities, challenges, and priorities. Sharing information makes people feel more like partners, and in the absence of information, rumors and speculation about worst-case scenarios proliferate.
Explain the rationale behind your decisions. Give team members the context they need to understand why you made a decision and use it as an opportunity to teach and explain your thought process and the factors that they need to consider in making similar decisions. This is an opportunity to develop new leaders. Don’t be too quick to take responsibility for “important” problems. Let other team members own the analysis, the plan, and as much of the action as possible. Learn to empower team members as they demonstrate competence and good judgment. This demonstrates trust.
Don’t micromanage. It suggests that you don’t believe that people will get things done without close monitoring and control, and that you don’t trust their judgment or capabilities. If you want to develop the trust of others, you must demonstrate trust in them.
Put the good of the team and the organization ahead of your own self-interest. Leaders who are fixated on their reputation, financial rewards, and personal recognition are quickly distrusted by their team.
Keep your commitments to team members and the team as a whole. If you don’t follow through on your promises, they will question if you will really do what you say you will do. If you don’t meet your commitments, you will send a message that others don’t need to meet theirs. Lack of consistency and dependability will destroy trust.
Avoid blaming team members for mistakes, particularly in front of others. Create a norm around learning from mistakes. Effective team leaders take a little more than their share of the blame and go out of their way to give others the credit for achievements.
Be human. Be open about your own mistakes and weaknesses and you will create space for others to be open about their shortcomings and problems. Don’t communicate in a formal, overly business-like manner that hides your humanity and accessibility. Be genuine and real.
Monitor your own behavior and pay attention to the impact of your words and actions. Leaders who fail to treat team members with respect, consideration and sensitivity can destroy trust quickly. Trust takes a long time to develop but can be broken quickly.
Don’t play favorites. When you reward your friends and fail to confront their substandard performance, it undermines trust and increases politics. Treat all team members fairly and consistently.
Walk your talk. Be vigilant that your behavior is consistent with your stated beliefs and values. When the leader doesn’t behave in accord with the organization’s values and the team’s rules of the road, trust and credibility will be destroyed.

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Why smart leaders are the hardest to to work for.

Why Smart Leaders Struggle with People

By Rich Hagberg • March 30, 2026

Some of the smartest leaders you will ever meet are also some of the hardest people to work with. They are fast, perceptive, and unusually strong at solving hard problems. They see patterns others miss. They cut through ambiguity. They grasp systems, strategy, and complexity at a very high level. In many cases, those gifts are exactly why they became founders, technical leaders, or senior executives. And yet many of these same people leave a trail of strained relationships behind them. Their direct reports feel unseen or intimidated. Peers experience them as dismissive, impatient, or controlling. Their bosses admire their intellect but hesitate to trust them with broader leadership responsibility. At home, partners often feel emotionally alone. Over time, the leader becomes puzzled. They know they are smart, committed, and often right. So why do people keep pulling away, withholding the truth, or failing to fully follow them? The answer is that many high IQ leaders are working from an incomplete model of effectiveness. They assume that if they think clearly, argue logically, work hard, and produce results, the rest should take care of itself. That model can work for a long time in school, in technical roles, and in the early stages of a company. But eventually leadership becomes less about the quality of your own mind and more about your ability to work through the minds, emotions, motivations, and limitations of other people. That is where many smart leaders start to fail. The Core Problem Intelligence is not the problem. It is an asset. The problem is that intelligence often creates distortions. It can make a leader overestimate the power of logic, underestimate the importance of emotion, and develop habits that quietly damage trust. It can also create a subtle arrogance. Not always the loud kind, but the quieter assumption that if other people are slower, less rigorous, or more emotional, they must be the problem. Once a leader starts living inside that assumption, interpersonal trouble becomes almost inevitable. Five Common Patterns 1. Overreliance on reason Many bright leaders treat relationships as if they are mainly cognitive systems. If there is disagreement, they explain more. If someone is upset, they analyze the issue. If morale is low, they offer strategy. If a direct report feels discouraged, they give solutions. In their minds they are being helpful and efficient. But the other person often feels bypassed. Their emotional reality is treated as noise rather than information. Their need to be heard is mistaken for a need to be corrected. This is a major blind spot in analytical leaders. They often do not realize that understanding is not the same as persuasion, and problem solving is not the same as relationship building. A person can agree with your logic and still not trust you. They can accept your decision and still lose commitment because the relational cost was too high. 2. Impatience High horsepower people often process faster than the people around them. They see the answer early. They get bored by slower thinking, frustrated by repetition, and irritated when others need more context than they do. This can make them decisive and productive. It can also make them hard to work with. They interrupt. They jump ahead. They finish other people’s sentences. They push past concerns before others feel understood. They make those around them feel slow, clumsy, or not worth listening to. This teaches the organization something dangerous. It teaches people that the leader’s mind is the only one that really counts. The safest strategy becomes speaking briefly, deferring quickly, or waiting until the leader has already decided. Then the leader complains that the team is passive or not taking ownership. What they often do not see is that the culture has adapted to them. 3. Emotional underdevelopment hidden by cognitive strength Very bright people can use intellect as a defense against emotional discomfort. They can analyze instead of feel. They can explain instead of reflect. They can argue instead of absorb. They can move to abstraction when the deeper issue is shame, fear, insecurity, hurt, or loneliness. They are often unaware this is happening. They do not experience themselves as defended. They experience themselves as rational. But leadership requires emotional range. Not sentimentality. Not therapeutic language. Real range. The ability to notice your own reactions before they control your behavior. The ability to tolerate feeling wrong, uncertain, criticized, or less competent than you want to appear. The ability to stay present when another person is disappointed, anxious, or angry without immediately shutting it down, fixing it, or counterattacking. Leaders who cannot do this often become brittle. They look composed until challenged in just the wrong way. Then out comes defensiveness, coldness, contempt, withdrawal, or overcontrol. 4. Low interpersonal curiosity Smart leaders are often highly curious about ideas, products, markets, and strategy, but not necessarily about people. They know how to interrogate problems, but not always how to explore another person’s inner world. They ask what happened, but not what it felt like. They want the conclusion, not the hesitation. They want the output, not the psychology. People do not trust leaders simply because they are competent. They trust leaders who show that they are trying to understand them. Interpersonal curiosity communicates respect. A leader does not have to agree with someone to make that person feel seen. But when the leader skips that step, people feel reduced to functions rather than treated as human beings. 5. Weak awareness of impact Many smart leaders are genuinely surprised by how strongly people react to them. They tell themselves, “I was just being direct,” or “I was only asking a question.” In their own minds, intent carries most of the moral weight. If they did not mean harm, then the reaction seems excessive. But leadership does not work that way. Impact matters because power magnifies everything. A passing comment from a founder can ruin a weekend. A skeptical look from a senior executive can silence a room. A blunt critique can stick in someone’s head for months. High IQ leaders often underestimate this because they evaluate themselves from the inside while everyone else experiences them from the outside. That gap sits at the center of many 360 feedback problems. The Identity Trap There is another layer here. Some smart leaders have been rewarded for being exceptional for so long that they quietly build their identity around being the smartest person in the room. They may not say it out loud. They may even dislike arrogance in others. But inside, being quick, insightful, and right has become central to their sense of worth. Once that happens, other people’s competence can feel threatening. Feedback becomes harder to absorb. Collaboration becomes more performative than real. The leader listens selectively, especially when they believe the other person is less capable. They become invested in remaining the mental center of gravity. That is a dangerous place to lead from. It turns intelligence into status defense. It makes humility feel like loss. It makes genuine curiosity harder. And it makes the leader lonelier than they realize, because very few people feel close to someone who always has to occupy the top intellectual position. The Shift That Matters The good news is that these problems are workable. In fact, smart leaders often improve quickly once they see the pattern clearly. Their intelligence then becomes an ally rather than a shield. But improvement requires a shift in model. Leadership is not just about being right. It is about creating enough trust, clarity, and psychological safety that the best thinking of the group can emerge. Your job is not merely to contribute your intelligence. It is to increase the total intelligence of the system. That means treating emotions as information rather than interference. It means becoming curious about your own interpersonal signature. What happens to people in your presence when you are under pressure. Do they get more open or more cautious. More honest or more political. More energized or more tense. Those are not soft questions. They are the real scorecard of leadership impact. It also means slowing down your certainty just enough to make room for other minds. Ask one more question before concluding. Stay with the other person’s frame a little longer. Notice when you are moving to solution because you are uncomfortable with uncertainty or emotion. Let people finish. Reflect before rebutting. And it means understanding that warmth and strength are not opposites. Many analytical leaders fear that becoming more emotionally intelligent will make them softer or less respected. The opposite is usually true. Leaders become more effective when people experience them as both rigorous and fair, both clear and human, both demanding and safe enough to tell the truth to. Practical Experiments A few simple practices can help. In your next one on one, spend more time understanding than advising. In your next disagreement, summarize the other person’s view in a way they agree is accurate before stating your own. In your next leadership meeting, track how often you interrupt, redirect, or signal impatience. After a difficult conversation, ask yourself not only whether your point was valid, but what emotional residue you likely left behind. Ask two trusted people what it feels like to disagree with you, and listen without defending. Final Thought Human beings are not engineering problems. They are not solved by superior reasoning alone. They need respect, steadiness, dignity, trust, and emotional attunement. That is why so many smart leaders struggle. Not because they are too intelligent, but because they have leaned on the wrong part of themselves for too long. At a certain point in leadership, your mind stops being the main differentiator. Plenty of people are smart. What becomes rarer is the ability to combine intelligence with self awareness, candor with sensitivity, high standards with trust, and authority with emotional maturity. That is when a smart leader becomes someone people actually want to follow.