When Trust Fails in Culture Shift Projects

Trust collapsed after one missed deadline They delivered millions in savings together. Then one critical project failed. I watched my client Sarah's (have seeked their permission and changed their name for confidentiality) team transform from celebrating quarterly wins to exchanging terse emails within weeks. During our first coaching session, they sat at opposite ends of the table, avoiding eye contact. "We used to finish each other's sentences," Sarah confided. "Now we can barely finish a meeting without tension." Sound familiar? This frustration isn't about skills—it's about broken trust. In The Thin Book of Trust, Charles Feltman provides the framework that helped us diagnose what was happening. Trust, he explains, isn't mysterious—it breaks down into four measurable elements: ✅ Care – Sarah's team stopped checking in on each other's wellbeing ✅ Sincerity – Their communications became guarded and political ✅ Reliability – Missed deadlines created a cycle of lowered expectations ✅ Competence – They began questioning each other's abilities after setbacks The breakthrough came when I had them map which specific element had broken for each relationship. The pattern was clear: reliability had cracked first, then everything else followed. Three months later, this same team presented their recovery strategy to leadership. Their transformation wasn't magic—it came from deliberately rebuilding trust behaviors, starting with keeping small promises consistently. My video walks you through this exact framework. Because when teams fracture, the question isn't "Why is everyone so difficult?" but rather: "Which trust element needs rebuilding first—and what's my next concrete step?" Which trust element (care, sincerity, reliability, competence) do you find breaks down most often in struggling teams? #humanresources #workplace #team #performance #cassandracoach

Most transformation efforts don’t fail because leaders don’t care. They fail because leaders avoid facing unpleasant truths. Here’s what I see happening regularly inside organisations: 1️⃣ The Beautiful Lie: The bold, inspiring vision rarely leaves the boardroom. Frontline teams don’t see it—or worse, don’t care. 2️⃣ The Fear of Chaos: Empowerment is talked about but not practiced. Micromanagement paralyses middle managers and frontline teams alike. 3️⃣ The Disconnected Reality: Frontline workers know what’s broken, but they’re too scared to speak up. Silence leads to a train wreck. 4️⃣ The Death by Overload: Change initiatives pile up, capacity is ignored, and good people burn out. 5️⃣ The Broken Culture: Strategies don’t fail because they’re bad; they fail because silos, politics, and egos take over. And there’s a very real human cost! 💰Leaders feel like failures after investing millions without results. 💰People and teams disengage because they’ve seen this movie before—afterall, it’s far too common. 💰Trust is broken, and without trust, you big transformation initiative doesn’t stand a chance. Why does this keep happening? Because the hardest part of transformation isn’t strategy—it’s honesty! Here’s the truth: ✅ Truth #1: Culture eats strategy for breakfast. If your culture is broken, your plan is irrelevant. ✅ Truth #2: Real work happens in the trenches. Execution is messy, detailed, and often overlooked. ✅ Truth #3: Motion ≠ Progress. Just because there’s activity doesn’t mean there’s alignment or commitment. So, what needs to change? 1️⃣ Brutal Honesty: Ask yourself: What’s really blocking progress? 2️⃣ Focus, Not Frenzy: Pick fewer priorities and see them through. 3️⃣ Empower Frontlines: Insights come from those closest to the work—listen to them. 4️⃣ Fix the Culture First: Trust, alignment, and engagement are the real KPIs. 5️⃣ Measure What Matters: Ditch vanity metrics and focus on meaningful progress. Transformation isn’t glamorous. It’s about humility, trust, and doing the unsexy work. It’s about leaning into unpleasant truths. Are you ready to face the unpleasant truth in 2025? Sing out.

You can have every tool. Every dashboard. And still fail. Spectacularly. Project success hinges on human connection. I led a failing project team. Red metrics. Missed deadlines. Morale in the gutter. We had Jira, Asana, Slack, the whole stack. Nothing was working. No one tells you this early in your career: - Projects don’t fail because of tooling. - They fail because trust breaks down. So, I made a shift. I stopped micromanaging the metrics. And started leading the humans behind them. Small, intentional actions made the difference: ✅ Personal check-ins at the start of meetings ✅ Remembering who was caring for a newborn or a sick parent ✅ Calling out wins by name in front of execs ✅ Making sure the team felt seen and celebrated ✅ Asking the team how I could lead better ✅ Owning my missteps, out loud ✅ Addressing conflict head-on, not later One day, a teammate pulled me aside and said: “This is the first time in months I’ve actually felt like someone has my back.” That moment said more than any dashboard ever could. And the results? ✅ We saw a 62% jump in output quality and speed based on internal metrics ✅  Feedback turned overwhelmingly positive ✅  My impact was seen. Executives began to see me as a true leader Because tools don’t build trust. People do. Tools track the work. People determine if it’s worth doing. Leaders bridge that gap. Be the bridge. 👉 What’s one thing you do to build trust with your team? ♻️ Repost to help others. Follow me for more of these types of posts. ➡️ Let's connect Elizabeth Dworkin

70% of transformation efforts fail. Not because of a lack of intelligence, ideas, or funding— But because teams don’t trust the leaders driving them. I’ve seen it firsthand. Leaders preach collaboration while protecting turf. They launch flashy change initiatives without fixing the broken culture underneath. They roll out org charts and slide decks—without ever rallying the hearts of the people. Communication is top-down. Alignment is assumed. And “One-Team” is just a slogan—not a lived reality. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: People don’t resist change. They resist being excluded from it. They resist egos, silos, and performative leadership. They resist leaders who don’t walk the talk. But I’ve also seen the opposite: When leaders build trust, model humility, and co-create the path forward— Teams don’t just adapt, they transform. That’s what One-Team Leadership is about. It’s not a tactic. It’s a mindset. A commitment to serve instead of control. To listen instead of command. To win together instead of alone. Transformation doesn’t fail because change is hard. It fails because too few leaders are willing to change first. It’s time we do better—together. #OneTeam #Transformation #Leadership #Culture #ChangeLeadership #FutureOfWork