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Summary
Building trust at scale requires more than sharing personal opinions or projecting authority; it depends on transparency, shared experiences, and community involvement. The concept “why-opinions-don-t-build-trust-at-scale” explains that individual viewpoints alone don’t create collective confidence or alignment in large groups, especially when honesty and collaboration are missing.
Prioritize transparency: Share both successes and challenges openly to encourage honesty and help people feel informed and included.
Reward collaboration: Shift recognition from individual achievements to group accomplishments to motivate teamwork and mutual support.
Curate community input: Include feedback and insights from a broad audience rather than relying solely on personal expertise, so everyone feels their voice matters.
I bought an expensive product recently that had a pretty glaring issue.
Curious if others were seeing the same thing.
So I posted a question in the company’s Facebook group.
But my post never showed up.
Turns out, the admins, who work for the company, screen every post.
Only the “everything’s amazing!” ones make it through.
No criticism.
No bugs.
Just a highlight reel.
Here’s the thing: censoring feedback doesn’t build trust.
It erodes it.
If the only thing people see is how perfect everything is, they start wondering what’s being hidden.
Real trust comes from transparency.
From saying, “Yeah, that’s a known issue, we’re working on it.”
From letting your customers talk to each other even when what they’re saying isn’t glowing.
You can either control the narrative or build a reputation for honesty.
But trying to do both?
People notice.
'My executives are all A-players. They just don't trust each other.'
That's what a $60M CEO told me over coffee this morning. His revenue was up 40%, but his leadership team was falling apart.
Sound familiar?
Here's the counterintuitive truth I've learned after working with dozens of scaling companies:
High performers often create low trust. Not because they're untrustworthy, but because they're too capable.
Think about it.
When you stack your leadership team with ambitious, competent executives, each one is used to being 'the person with the answers.' They've built careers on being right.
But scaling a business isn't about being right. It's about being aligned.
Last month, I watched a Chief Revenue Officer and COO nearly sink a $100M deal. Not because either was wrong - both had valid concerns. But their inability to trust each other's judgment created decision paralysis.
The real cost of low trust:
- 3x longer decision cycles
- Duplicated efforts across departments
- Missed market opportunities
- Rising stress, falling margins
Your smartest executives are often your biggest trust barriers because:
- They have the strongest opinions
- They're used to being proven right
- They've succeeded through individual excellence
- They struggle with shared vulnerability
Want to build trust between high performers? Start here:
✅ Create shared defeats, not just shared victories. Nothing builds trust like failing together and recovering stronger.
✅ Stop celebrating individual heroes. Start rewarding collaborative wins.
✅ Make decisions visible. Trust grows in transparency and dies in darkness.
✅ Build accountability around team outcomes, not departmental metrics.
Remember: You don't have a trust problem. You have an alignment challenge.
Your executives don't need trust falls. They need a compelling reason to depend on each other.
Curious: Have you ever had a high-performing team that struggled with trust? What turned it around?
hashtag#Leadership hashtag#OrganizationalDevelopment hashtag#ExecutiveTeam
No shortage of opinions or people thinking they’re the experts these days.
I’m reminded every day that I’m not one. It’s humbling and freeing.
It’s also why I could not love the story of ByteSize, Experts Exchange's newsletter, and the lesson behind it more.
Their first attempt at a newsletter was a train wreck.
A community of 6M+ IT pros fact-checked their newsletter into the ground. Every inaccuracy got called out. The marketers behind it didn’t stand a chance against readers who literally get paid to spot errors.
That’s a rough morning stand-up.
BUT it pushed a necessary strategic shift. They stopped trying to out-expert the experts, and positioned themselves as curators.
The move accomplished three things senior marketers should pay attention to:
• 𝗖𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝘁: Admitting “we’re not the experts” will build trust after a credibility gap.
• 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Content shifted from broadcasting opinions to surfacing what the community itself was finding, discussing, and caring about.
• 𝗦𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆: Curating allowed them to publish consistently without burning out trying to “sound smart.”
It led to a 47% open-rate newsletter that today, generates meaningful revenue and acts as a standalone product.
Authority doesn’t come from trying to know more than your audience. It does, however, grow when your audience understands that you deeply care and understand them.
Sometimes the smartest move is admitting you’re not the smartest person in the room. The full playbook from the ‘arb is available now.