Morning friend ☕

Hope you had a great weekend!

Today we’re diving deeper into the most fundamental dysfunction in a team: Trust.

Even the Avengers didn’t start as a team.
They started as a handful of brilliant individuals.
Each guarding secrets, egos, and agendas.

Nick Fury thought leadership meant control.
He hid the truth about the Tesseract, the weapons, even his motives.
The result? Suspicion instead of unity.
The team spent more time questioning each other than fighting Loki.

Sound familiar?

I previously wrote about what to do if your Your Team Doesn't Trust You.
But what if they don’t trust each other?
How do you, as the manager, fix this?

Grab your coffee ☕

Let’s chat!

Patrick Lencioni calls this the base of the pyramid: Absence of Trust.
Without it, every other dysfunction stacks on top like shaky scaffolding:

No trust → no real conflict → no commitment → no accountability → no results.

When the leader guards information, the team guards themselves. And trust quietly dies.

You can feel it before you see it:
The polite smiles. The careful updates.
Everyone’s professional. But no one’s real.

You can fix process. You can fix tools.
But when trust breaks, there’s no easy fix.
People protect themselves instead of the mission.

Harvard’s Amy Edmondson calls this psychological safety: The belief that it’s safe to speak up, take risks, and be human without fear of judgment.

When safety disappears, the brain flips from collaboration to self-preservation.
It’s biology, not attitude.
Under social threat, the amygdala hijacks reason. People stop listening and start defending.

That’s why trust isn’t soft. It’s structural: with trust, people can challenge without fear of triggering a threat response (conflict).

This decides whether your team’s energy goes into solving problems.
Or surviving each other…

So, how do you rebuild trust once it’s cracked?

Lencioni’s fix is more than team lunches or offsites.
It’s what he calls vulnerability-based trust. Knowing your teammates’ intentions are good, and feeling safe to admit weakness, ask for help, or say, “I was wrong.”

He contrasts it with predictive trust.
The “I know you’ll deliver” kind.
That’s reliability.
But reliability alone builds silos, not teams.

Vulnerability-based trust sounds more like this:

“I messed that up.”
“I need help.”
“You’re better at this than I am.”

It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also the glue that holds strong teams together, and the foundation for high performance.

So, how to build it?

Trust isn’t built in games. It’s built in behavior.

Lencioni offers five moves that create vulnerability-based trust:

These habits sound simple, but they rewire the team dynamic.
When honesty becomes normal, trust follows naturally.

Nick Fury thought keeping secrets made him strong.
It didn’t just make him distant. It made them distant.

When leaders withhold, teammates start guarding too.
And a guarded team can’t trust each other.

When Fury finally shared the truth, the team stopped guarding themselves and started guarding the mission.

Lesson: Trust spreads through honesty, not control.
Open up, and watch the team open up with you.

If your team doesn’t trust each other, you can’t order them to.

But, every team mirrors its leader.

If you lead with control, you’ll get compliance.
If you lead with honesty, you’ll get trust.
The fix doesn’t start with the team.
It starts with you.

Model and build vulnerability-based trust in addition to predictive (reliability) trust.

Where’s your team’s trust showing cracks?

Till next Monday, friend! ☕
Vaugan

White to play and force mate in 2 moves.

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We are now well into the Broken Team series.

But, we still need to rap up the First 100 Days Series.

Tune in next week for the final episode: Adaptation with Murdock. It touches on how to wrap this critical initial period at a new job.

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Disclaimer:
This post contains parody and satirical references to well-known characters, shows, and cultural icons. It is created for educational and humorous commentary on management and leadership. ScaryManagement is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any television networks, film studios, comic publishers, production companies, or performers referenced. All trademarks and copyrights remain the property of their respective owners. No infringement is intended. This use is intended as parody and commentary under fair use and related protections in the US, UK, EU, and South African law.