Signs of Low Team Trust and Resilience

Yesterday I finished a case with one of my clients: I was asked to take a research of the moral climate within the company, the NPS fall down, turn over increased... I had to conduct an investigation through several surveys, F2F talks to employees, etc. to understand the reasons behind. And do you know what was the reason? The answer is: the reluctance of certain managers to trust their highly skilled employees, especially those perceived to be more intelligent than themselves. The investigation was aimed to uncover potential motivations and skills deficits contributing to this behaviour and to explore the consequences of such an approach on team dynamics and overall organisational performance. Why do managers hire people? Because it is impossible to know everything, right? Because they do not have enough time to do all by themselves as well. They are lack of skills, resources and it is normal! Please, managers, accept it! Findings: The investigation revealed that some managers displayed signs of insecurity and fear of inadequacy when faced with employees they considered more intelligent. This fear often stemmed from a desire to maintain control and authority, leading to micromanagement and a reluctance to delegate critical tasks. Moreover, the lack of essential leadership skills, such as emotional intelligence and effective communication, hindered the development of trusting relationships with their teams. Consequences: The consequences of this fear-based management approach were evident in decreased employee morale, reduced engagement, and limited opportunities for innovation. High-performing employees felt demotivated, leading to potential talent attrition. The stifling of diverse perspectives and ideas hampered creativity and impeded the company's ability to adapt to changing market demands. Suggested Actions to the HR and SLT Team: HR team will design leadership development programs focused on enhancing emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and effective communication for managers. A culture of trust and open communication must be fostered through all touch points, where employees will feel themselves empowered to share their ideas without fear of reprisal. Cross-functional projects and knowledge-sharing initiatives will encourage to leverage the intelligence and skills of all team members. Through these steps, the HR team aim to build a more inclusive and supportive work environment that nurtured trust, embraced diversity, and empowered both managers and employees to thrive and contribute to the company's success. #culture #employeeexperience #employeeengagement #nps ----------------- I would love to help you to attract right people and foster people strategy that would suit your specific team. Do not afraid to ask any questions :) -----------------

The most dangerous thing in a meeting isn’t a heated debate—it’s silence with a fake nod. In low trust teams, they don’t speak up in meetings, then vent in private. They smile at the plan, but quietly ignore it. They avoid conflict, and call it being “a team player.” The best teams? They debate. They challenge (the ideas) They raise their hand and say, “I see it differently and here’s why.” Because real alignment only comes after real conflict. If your team never disagrees, they’re not aligned—they’re avoiding. So, what do you do? 1️⃣ In decision-making meetings, try designating someone to challenge the prevailing view—even if they agree with it. It normalizes dissent. It protects the team from groupthink. And it gives quiet voices permission to speak truth without fear. Because when conflict is expected, it becomes productive. 2️⃣ Ask each person privately: “What’s one thing you think but haven’t said out loud in our meetings?” Then just listen. No defending. No fixing. When people feel heard without punishment, trust starts to grow. Invite them to share more of those views in group settings. And when they do, welcome it. Say, “This may feel uncomfortable for some of you, but I want us all to welcome more debates over ideas. It’s not me vs you, but me and you vs the problem.” If they still aren’t voicing dissent in team meetings, it may not be that they don’t care— but because they don’t feel safe. Then try going first and modeling the behavior you want with vulnerability. In your next meeting, say: “Here’s where I might have dropped the ball. What am I not seeing?” Or, “Here’s where I might be wrong. What am I missing?” Vulnerability builds trust. And trust invites truth. And when disagreement is safe, alignment gets real. How do you build a culture of healthy conflict over ideas?

7 years ago, I received the results of an all-employee survey. It stated: 🚨Your business unit lacks trust. 🚨 It was a blow to my ego, but deep down, I knew there was a larger problem to such an overly simplified statement. This set me on a learning journey to understand what destroys trust and what builds trust. I discovered that numerous hierarchy and management practices will destroy trust - quickly. Here are several, often adopted, policies used to “safeguard” the company that quietly and softly, kills trust: 📉 Mandatory time clocks suggest that the company does not trust employees to manage their time responsibly, creating an environment of micromanagement and control. 📉 Internet usage policies that monitor or restrict access to certain websites, assuming employees will misuse their internet privileges. 📉 Email monitoring to check for inappropriate content or non-work-related communication, implying that employees cannot be trusted to use email responsibly. 📉 Micromanagement of breaks by enforcing rigid schedules and limiting the number of breaks, suggesting employees cannot manage their own time effectively. 📉 Attendance tracking for remote work using tools to track login/logout times and activity levels, indicating a lack of trust in employees' ability to work independently. 📉 Pre-approval for expenses requiring detailed approval for even minor expenses, showing that the company does not trust employees to make prudent financial decisions. 📉 No work-from-home flexibility rigidly enforcing office presence despite the feasibility of remote work, suggesting a lack of trust in employees' productivity outside the office environment. 📉 Limited access to resources restricting access to certain tools, information, or company spaces, indicating a belief that employees cannot be trusted with these resources. 📉 Overly detailed reporting requirements requiring exhaustive daily or weekly reports on activities and progress, implying that employees cannot be trusted to manage and report on their work effectively. Practices like these highlight a problem: a lack of trust that cripples the organization, costing your organization untold revenue. This led me to a transformative journey of learning and growth.     ✅ I developed a shared definition of trust within my team by encouraging them to write down and discuss their definitions.     ✅ I fostered open, vulnerable conversations among team members to build understanding and empathy.     ✅ I implemented consistent actions to build and maintain trust through effective communication and setting clear expectations. Trust has become a cornerstone of my leadership. The results I have witness since that fateful day 7 dreadful years ago? 📊 Improved team cohesion, higher employee satisfaction, and significant revenue growth. Trust impacts performance and your P&L statements. Is your team built on a foundation of trust?

If your team feels like a family, it might be time to worry. I’ve worked with enough founders to know this: The moment someone says “We’re like a family here”, it’s often not love, it’s emotional manipulation in disguise. Here are 8 red flags that silently kill trust, performance, and peace: 1. “We’re a Family” Culture → Belonging becomes a trap when it’s used to guilt teams into overworking. 2. Micromanagement → When control replaces trust, creativity dies. Fast. 3. Too Many Talkers, Too Few Doers → Ever sat through a 90-min meeting that could’ve been 3 action points? 4. Ignoring Feedback → A team that isn’t heard becomes a team that stops speaking. 5. Secret Decisions → Nothing kills psychological safety faster. 6. Overloading Your Best People → Your A-players won’t burn out. They’ll walk. 7. No Respect for Boundaries → “We work hard” becomes an excuse to invade personal lives. 8. Dominated Meetings → When only the loudest get airtime, brilliance gets buried. If even one of these sounds familiar, you’ve got work to do. Not on your team. On your culture. DM me the word “leader” and let's discuss how we can fix these issues.

Team psychological safety doesn't disappear in a dramatic moment. It disappears one tolerated behavior at a time. Every time I start working with a team to build psychological safety, we uncover the same invisible pattern. 📍 It’s not the loud failures that ruin trust. It’s the slow erosion caused by habits that were normalized, ignored, or even rewarded over time. At the beginning of the process, we always go back and explore what shaped the team's environment. And almost every time, we find one or several quiet practices that left deep scars. In one organization, the leadership team asked me to help them rebuild psychological safety after noticing a worrying trend: low engagement and increasing turnover. When we started the diagnostic process, it became clear that a few "star performers" had been tolerated in their behavior because their results looked good on paper. Their behavior wasn’t directly endorsed, but it was tolerated. And that is just one example. In other teams I see deeper patterns: 🚩 Team managers expected conformity and treated silence as a sign of alignment. 🚩 New hires are rushed into delivery without understanding how the team truly operated, leaving them isolated and hesitant. 🚩 After a major restructuring, leadership never formally resets expectations, creating an unspoken divide between the "old guard" and the "newcomers." 🚩 Heroic solo efforts are celebrated publicly, while steady, collaborative work went unnoticed and undervalued. These small practices, seemingly harmless on their own, quietly rewired the team’s culture away from trust, inclusion and shared ownership. P.S. What habits might still be costing us more than we realize? ---------------------------------- 📕 Hi, I’m Susanna and I’m currently writing my first book on coherent leadership - the kind that bridges high performance with psychological safety. If this resonates with you, I’d love to share my journey. Join me via the link in the comments. 👇

In leadership and love, the biggest warning sign isn’t yelling. It’s silence. If your team isn’t coming to you with problems... That’s not a sign of trust. It’s a signal that trust is already gone. This is one of the most misunderstood truths in leadership and relationships. Silence doesn’t mean success. It often means self-protection. 📉 At work, it shows up as disengaged teams, quiet meetings, and surface-level check-ins. 💔 At home, it shows up as one-word answers, emotional distance, or "everything’s fine" when it’s not. General Colin Powell said it best: “The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” That doesn’t just apply to soldiers. It applies to business, partners, friends, and kids, too. Because whether you're leading a team or loving someone.... If they don’t feel safe, they’ll stop bringing you the truth. And here’s what the research says: 🧠 Gallup: Only 3 in 10 employees strongly agree their opinions count at work. That jumps to 6 in 10 when leaders build psychological safety. The result? Higher performance, retention, and engagement. 🧠McKinsey (2023): Leaders seen as supportive are 3.4x more likely to build high-performing teams. 🧠 The Gottman Institute: In relationships, the strongest predictor of disconnection is stonewalling; when people shut down instead of opening up. In both spaces, the message is the same: When people stop bringing you problems, they’ve already started building walls. Want to measure your impact? Don’t count the compliments. Count the real conversations. Ask yourself: ✅ When’s the last time someone brought me the hard stuff? ✅ Do people feel lighter after talking to me or more guarded? ✅ Do they believe I’ll respond with care or react with judgment? If they’re no longer talking to you, that’s your next problem to solve. Because great leadership, and great love, isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about being someone they trust enough to bring anything to. Comment Below: In leadership or love how do you create a space where people feel safe to speak up? ♻ Repost if this made you rethink what silence really means. I’m Dan 👊 Follow me for daily posts. I talk about confidence, professional growth and personal growth. ➕ Daniel McNamee

I've spent years studying what builds and breaks trust in teams, and one thing is clear: the small, everyday behaviors matter more than grand gestures. Quick check: Which of these trust-eroding behaviors have you observed in your team? ✓ Saying they'll do something but not following through ✓ Arriving late to meetings (or leaving early) without acknowledgment ✓ Interrupting or dismissing others' ideas ✓ Avoiding difficult conversations ✓ Making decisions without appropriate consultation ✓ Speaking about colleagues behind their backs ✓ Responding defensively to feedback In my work with teams across sectors, I've found these "micro-betrayals" gradually erode psychological safety and team cohesion. They're often unintentional, which makes them harder to address—the person breaking trust may not even realize they're doing it. What fascinates me is how differently team members interpret these behaviors. What feels like a minor oversight to one person ("I forgot to send that document") can feel like a significant breach to another ("They didn't value my need for preparation"). Trust isn't just about warm feelings—it's the foundation that makes everything else possible. Research shows that high-trust teams: • Make decisions faster • Implement with greater commitment • Communicate more efficiently • Experience higher engagement • Retain members longer Even more revealing, when one of these trust-eroding behaviors becomes a pattern, team performance can measurably decline within weeks, not months. The good news? Trust can be rebuilt through intentional practices and consistent behavior. I've seen teams transform their culture by focusing on specific trust-building habits and creating accountability structures that support them. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate trust in your current team? What's one thing that could improve that score? If you comment, I'll give you an idea! P.S. If you’re a leader, I recommend checking out my free challenge: The Resilient Leader: 28 Days to Thrive in Uncertainty  https://lnkd.in/gxBnKQ8n

As a leader, developing team resilience has become a critical component to success in today's world. Stress, overwhelm, and anxiety are like the unseen anchors dragging a team's performance down. These factors don't just impact individuals; they ripple through the entire team dynamic, creating a downward cycle that's hard to break without deliberate intervention. Having developed high performing teams over the past 31 years, here are the six symptons I've found in teams that are struggling to perform and lacking resilience: 1. Cognitive Overload: When team members are stressed or overwhelmed, their cognitive functions are impaired. Decision-making slows, creativity takes a hit, and problem-solving becomes less effective. 2. Communication Breakdowns: Anxiety can lead to miscommunication. People might become less clear or concise in their interactions, misunderstandings can proliferate, and the flow of information gets choppy. This creates a breeding ground for mistakes and frustration. 3. Reduced Collaboration: When individuals are overwhelmed, they might retreat into their own tasks to cope, reducing collaboration. The team spirit weakens, and the collective intelligence that comes from diverse viewpoints is lost. It’s like having a rowing team where everyone is paddling at their own pace and direction. 4. Lower Morale: Persistent stress and anxiety drain energy and enthusiasm. Team members may become disengaged, lose their sense of purpose, and start dreading work. This isn't just about feeling low; it directly impacts productivity and the quality of work. 5. Health Issues: Chronic stress can lead to serious health problems, from burnout to physical illnesses. When team members are frequently sick or feeling unwell, absenteeism rises, and even when present, their effectiveness is compromised. 6. Impaired Innovation: Stress narrows focus to immediate survival, hindering the ability to think long-term or outside the box. Teams under pressure tend to stick to the known and safe, rather than exploring new ideas or strategies. Innovation stalls when fear of failure outweighs the excitement of possibility. As leaders we need to recognise these factors and take action. Better still we need to develop Team Resilience so we never get these symptoms! To achieve this it requires a deliberate intervention by you to provide the required resilience framework, to develop resilience skills, to provide a range of simple to use tools, and to develop the right mindsets for today's world. Thankfully we have developed a tried, tested, and proven approach to develop Team Resilience. It's a focussed 90 day virtual, or face to face if preferred, team journey which helps build the team too! I've attached the outline of our approach and if you like what you see, message me and we can explore more.