The One Dysfunction That Tears Teams Apart

Teams can overcome all kinds of hurdles. If the budget gets cut and they have to fly coach instead of business class, so be it. Maybe a new hire joins the team who isn’t a great culture fit—they’ll adjust or walk out the door.

But imagine that you’re called into a meeting where your team lead says, “There were budget cuts, but our team won’t need to downsize,” only to turn around and let five of your colleagues go next week. How is the remaining team going to function after that line has been crossed? 

There’s one thing all teams absolutely must have to function and succeed. It isn’t optimism, focus, or drive: it’s trust. 

Mistrust among colleagues is a prevalent problem in the workplace and the most fundamental dysfunction that can tear teams apart. If you’re a leader, here’s why you need to protect and prioritize trust over nearly every other interpersonal concern.

Merriam-Webster defines trust as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone.” It’s what frees people to rely on each other, collaborate, and share resources in the workplace, and as many experts agree, its importance can’t be overstated. 

The lack of trust is the single most fundamental team dysfunction according to management consultant Patrick Lencioni. Without trust, he says, teams simply cannot perform. 

Leadership experts Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drapeau named three types of trust in the workplace.

• Personal trust, named by Galford and Seibold Drapeau, is trust between employee and manager. Personal trust is the belief that a manager will do what she says she will, has her employees’ best interests at heart, and can be relied upon to treat employees ethically and fairly. 
• Organizational trust, the employees’ belief that the organization has systems and processes that treat people appropriately, that communications will be prompt and transparent, and that a team will fulfill the promises it makes. 
• Strategic Trust, the belief that the senior-most leaders in the company have the ability, vision, and resources to fulfill the company’s purpose and drive success.

Without these three types of trust, your team’s productivity will suffer. As the leader, much of the responsibility of building trust falls to you and your authenticity—your willingness and ability to be open, honest, and empathetic with your employees.

Leadership authenticity and the trust it builds between people at work creates psychological safety, a cornerstone for high-performing teams. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmonson has studied psychological safety since the 1990s and defines it as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ 

She elaborates: psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up.’’

Leading authentically means putting your team’s emotional needs before your own. If you are investing time in shame and focusing on the possibility of your own embarrassment or rejection, you cannot lead a team effectively. If you don’t feel comfortable with your personal or professional history up until now, with your failures and missteps, you will not be able to create an environment where your team feels comfortable with theirs. 

Group psychological safety is impossible without authentic leadership. On the other hand, when we feel safe on a team, we don’t invest time or energy in preparing for worst-case scenarios or defending ourselves from our teammates. We can focus on the challenge at hand. We can try improbable solutions and talk about when we are confused or don’t understand something. We trust that the team is bound together by the challenge; we aren’t ever working against each other.

As I mentioned, a team’s sense of trust and safety starts with the leader. You need to set the tone for the relationship and protect the trust your employees have in you and in each other. If someone is being dishonest and breaking trust, do not tolerate the behavior. In return, you must always be honest and fair with your employees or they will lose trust in you.

Consider when you’ve felt entirely safe on a team. Who was it that showed up to work on that team: your hero in victory or your hero in retreat? What did you dare to do on that team that you couldn’t elsewhere?

I’m willing to bet that you’ve performed the best on teams when you felt safe, and it will be the same with your employees now. Consider what’s possible if every person on your team—direct reports, matrixed partners, and peers—feels completely and entirely safe? 

What could your team achieve? 

As a leader, you have the power and responsibility to create that environment, to be an authentic guiding force, and to bring your team together by building personal, organizational, and strategic trust.

For more advice on improving your professional performance, find Naked at Work on Amazon.  More coaching is available at Avenue 8 On-Demand, on the topics of Giving Powerful Feedback,  The Power of Story, Speech Acts:Why Candor Builds Trust, and more.

Danessa Knaupp is an executive coach, CEO, and keynote speaker, shifting the global conversation on leadership. She has coached hundreds of executives across every major industry and has developed a reputation as a candid, compassionate and courageous leadership partner. She is the author of the leadership manual, Naked at Work: A Leader’s Guide to Fearless Authenticity. She regularly addresses C-suite audiences on how to harness the power of real authenticity (not #authenticity) to drive measurable business results. Danessa earned her executive coaching credentials from Georgetown University, is credentialed by the International Coach Federation, and holds a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology from the College of William and Mary. She spent more than 20 years as an entrepreneur and a senior executive, and ultimately, CEO, before founding her coaching practice. Connect with her at danessaknaupp.com.