After 30 years of leading through crises—from 9/11 to COVID-19 to natural disasters—I've learned that the strongest leadership teams are built by modeling the vulnerability you want to see. My top tip? Be human. Too many leaders project confidence when uncertain, never admit mistakes, and make decisions without explanation. But this creates distance, mistrust, and psychological distance between the team and the leader. Members fill in gaps with mistaken assumptions, feel insecure about expectations, and feel like their own doubts or struggles are misplaced. Human beings are wired for reciprocal vulnerability and transparency. Leading this way fosters loyal, high performing teams. This lesson crystallized during early COVID when I was CEO of Wakefield Brunswick. Our healthcare consulting firm faced an impossible choice: watch clients struggle without support, or risk everything to serve them for free while revenue evaporated. When my finance team raised concerns about the risks we took, rather than put on a confident facade, I chose transparency about the risk I was taking and purpose as my compass. "I have lost everything before, so I know I can come back from that," I told them. "I have spent my career preparing hospitals for a pandemic, so even if I lose the company over this, I will be able to look back and believe I did the right thing." That was vulnerable leadership. I had to acknowledge and communicate both my fears and my values. They stood behind the decision even though it was risky, and it shaped our team dynamics in the months and years that followed. When leaders admit they don't have all the answers, it amplifies their humanity. And humans trust other humans far more than they trust invulnerable entities. When I was transparent about our financial risks, my team rallied around our shared purpose with dedication. They knew their work was supporting our healthcare colleagues on the front lines, and they trusted that we were making decisions from our values, not our fears. During our COVID response, despite the company experiencing months of uncompensated work and uncertainty, we didn't lose a single team member. In fact, our reputation in the healthcare community reached new heights, and we attracted talent who wanted to be part of an organization that led with purpose and authenticity. This allowed me to exit as CEO in January 2024, and the company continues to thrive. People don't follow perfect leaders. They follow human ones.
My top tip? Normalize truth-telling at the top. That means creating intentional space where leaders can speak candidly—not just about strategy, but about uncertainty, friction, and blind spots. I often introduce structured "unfiltered conversations" into leadership meetings, where the goal isn't consensus. It's clarity. At one organization, a senior leadership team was stuck in a pattern of performative agreement. Decisions were made, but alignment was shallow—and execution suffered. I facilitated a monthly "Say the Unsaid" session with clear guardrails to ensure psychological safety and respect. Over time, leaders began raising real concerns in the room instead of after the meeting. Debates became richer. Misunderstandings dropped. And because people felt heard, they committed more fully. The result? Faster, more confident decisions. Stronger follow-through. And a leadership team that modeled trust from the top, setting the tone for the entire organization. Trust doesn't just happen. It's built when leaders are invited and expected to bring their whole voice to the table.
Author, The Grit Factor, CEO and founder at The Grit Institute, Veteran
Answered 9 months ago
The willingness of a leader to share his or her own struggles and even failures with the team opens up not only a culture of vulnerability and trust, but also innovation in supporting the understanding that the road to success will necessarily include failures. Critical to this is the perspective that it isn't failure that matters-- it's what you do with it that counts! This was a part of how we did things in military aviation-- but also when I was working at Microsoft. The only way through in rapidly changing and challenging environments is to quickly assess what went right and what went wrong, and be willing and able to continue to move forward not with blame or shame, but a shared sense of learning and developing. This is part of both the learn AND of the launch phases of The Grit Triad, the framework supporting The Grit Factor, and is absolutely necessary for success in today's climate.
Designing team commitments is a game changer. Establishing space for trust and open communication requires clarity for the team members. What are the rules of engagement? When that is not clear, there is always the risk that people hold back their brilliance. In an ideal team environment, values are clear and behaviors support the values. For example, companies who value innovation recognize that debate, differing opinions and creative problem solving will be a part of the way teams engage. You don't innovate by thinking the same thoughts and repeating old processes. Team commitments create a framework for the group to define the ways that they want to engage with each other. Done well, the team agrees on things like how they address conflict, what they will say when the feel that their idea or concern was not heard and agree on how they will address disagreements. Once agreed upon, the team holds each other accountable and share the responsibility for upholding the cultural norms they have created. Competing priorities are an ever present challenge for any leadership team. The overarching goal and values established by the team help to desensitize the individuals as they make decisions. Leaders remember that their contributions are a part of they pathway to deliver what the organization needs, not simply achieving the goal for their function. For example, a team agreement might be, "We center the delivery of the success metrics for project X, above the individual functional results." When the team recognizes that someone is wrestling with the competing interest, they take the time to work through it. Open communication requires an interest beyond what matters to you. Team agreements that center curiosity and introspection can also be helpful. Models like appreciative Inquiry can support the team with approaching challenges with an openness that breeds trust and deeper connection. The erosion of trust trust in a team driven by poor communication derails the team and has measurable business impact. While analytics around team trust may be more difficult to measure outside of engagement surveys, you can be certain that any time spent on cultivating trust and good communication will pay large dividends down the road.
Hands own the most effective thing I've seen in all my years of behavioral science, including being a VP for a global behavioral science consultancy and in coaching over 2,000+ C-Suite executives is this: - Create securely attached leaders. Secure attachment isn't just for romantic relationships nor is it therapy language. It's literally your most important leadership infrastructure. At its core, secure attachment is the ability to remain emotionally grounded, responsive (not reactive), and trustworthy under stress. In human development, it's what allows a child to explore the world confidently, knowing support is available if needed. In leadership, it's what allows teams to take bold, aligned action without spiraling into anxiety, second-guessing, or squirreling away with self-protection. Insecurely attached leaders, even if they're brilliant technically, tend to manage through a lot of emotional dysregulation: they over-control, emotionally withdraw, do power plays, or avoid hard conversations. The result is of course low trust, and a culture where no one feels truly safe being honest - especially at the top. Securely attached leaders do the opposite. They create psychological stability through emotional consistency and mature communication. Their teams know where they stand and hard truths can be spoken without fear of repercussion. Feedback nurtures relationships and trust grows naturally because of all the transparency. In practice, secure leadership looks like: - Transparency without oversharing: Leaders who communicate clearly, even in uncertainty, and never weaponize information to control power dynamics. - Healthy boundaries: They say "no" without tons of emotion and can course-correct without shaming. They lead with kindness and grace. - Responsiveness without reactivity: These leaders stay calm when others spiral. They think clearly, stay cool, and see the wood through the trees because their nervous systems stay regulated. - Consistency under stress: When things get tense, they don't disappear or explode. They become more clear, more direct, more calm. The business impact is palpable: When secure attachment becomes the norm in a leadership team, trust flows. Which means faster execution, lower attrition, and fewer political dramas. Transparency becomes a catalyst for a healthy culture. Secure teams come from secure leaders. We just need to build more of this. Which is precisely what I specialize in! :)
My top tip is clarity of purpose. At Epiphany Wellness, we begin each leadership meeting by revisiting our mission and client outcomes, not financials. This alignment ensures discussions are rooted in why we exist, which reduces turf wars and builds unity. After we adopted this habit, we saw collaboration improve and turnover drop by nearly 15%. Others can apply this by anchoring tough decisions to shared values rather than individual goals. When everyone feels connected to the bigger picture, trust becomes organic and communication flows more freely.
According to the 2024 Grammarly-Harris State of Business Communication report, we lost $1.2 trillion per year to bad communication in the US, so this is an important question. My top tip is to actively implement empathy as a skills-based, data-driven, and outcome-oriented part of employee culture, but not in the way most people think. Most people think empathy is only about feelings, but it's not: it's about connection and understanding. When leadership is committed to understanding their people and connecting, even on a cognitive level, a culture of trust and open communication follows, to the extent that there is a marked difference in innovation, productivity, and profit. I believe empathy is such an important part of fostering communication and trust that I dedicated an entire chapter to it in my recent book.
Radical transparency turns management into partnership. Too many teams stall because all decisions are wrapped in mystery. So I over-share every strategic twist, every budget line, every why and all. I break down the context until people can see their fingerprints on the big picture. No hidden agendas, no black boxes. Once teammates grasp the reasoning, they stop waiting for marching orders and start making smart calls on their own. I've watched task-doers morph into leaders because they trust the vision and know their voices carry weight. Cohesion tightens, execution speeds up, and performance climbs when everyone's rowing with the same map in hand. Quick tip: treat your leadership crew like co-founders. Explain the why, flood them with context, and you'll trade compliance for ownership.
It starts at the very top. The CEO models openness, transparency and "radical candor." The CEO creates a culture where questions and concerns can be raised without judgement. The organization fosters a learning culture, where ideas and innovation, and inevitably failures, are expected. The c-suite team are the leaders, and consider themselves owners, of the company. When they know that their personal success is tied with the organization's success, they will be willing to cooperate with their peers to ensure the overall success of the organization.
Be the first to admit mistakes, accept the feedback, and have the hard conversations. When leaders show consistency and some sort of accountability, it creates space for others as well to do the same. The impact? It has transformed our team. Now, there is less chaos, faster decisions, and more accountability. People come forward to speak, solve problems quickly, and genuinely have others' backs.
I try to lead by example here in two key ways: First, I'll always own up to my mistakes and give credit where it's due. I do as much as I can to show that I'm just another guy, and just because I have three letters in my title doesn't mean I have all the answers. The flip side of this is that I hold others to the same standard. If they make a mistake, I call them out for it, while also making it clear that all they need to do is learn from it and deal with the fallout.
My top tip would be to demonstrate to your team that they are heard. If somebody on your team expresses a problem they are encountering, try to personally help them. If they have an idea for something, try to implement it. People aren't going to communicate openly and with a feeling of trust if they don't think the things they have to say will actually be taken seriously by anyone else.
If I had to give just one tip, it would be this: Make vulnerability a leadership habit, not a performance. Too often, trust is treated like a checkbox. It doesn't magically show up after a team offsite or a one-time icebreaker. It's built or broken in the micro-moments. When someone says, "I messed up," and the room leans in, not out. When a leader admits, "I don't know," and nobody flinches. That's the soil trust grows in: honesty, consistency, and humility. The moment we stop performing like we have it all figured out, we give others permission to do the same. That's when the real conversations start. Not the filtered updates. But the honest: "I'm overwhelmed." or "I need help." I've worked with enough leadership teams to know the difference between a team and a group of individuals managing optics. One team I coached at one of our sessions, a leader admitted something that shifted the room: "It's tough to trust. I want to, but deep down, I still hold back because of past letdowns." That crack of honesty opened a conversation we needed to have. Not about tools or strategy, but about intent. About how mistrust doesn't usually come from one dramatic moment, it builds up over time. A misread email. A passive-aggressive comment. A teammate who once blamed you unfairly. So what do we do? We retreat. We protect ourselves. That's when I introduced the idea of practice vs. game time. In sports, athletes spend far more time practicing than playing. But in business, we do the opposite; most teams are in "game time" 90% of the time. We expect flawless execution, even though we rarely carve out space to train the skills that matter most, like emotional safety, communication, and trust. So in that session, we paused the game. We asked leaders to reflect: Where have I been holding back trust? Where have I assumed negative intent? Postures softened. Conversations deepened. And for the first time, we saw less defensiveness and more ownership. Here's what this looks like in practice: - Start leadership meetings with a real check-in: "How are you actually doing?" - Normalize leaders going first when it comes to feedback, uncertainty, or personal challenges. - Create intentional space for practice, where the stakes are lower and trust can be built, not just tested. If you want a high-performing team, start by being the kind of leader others feel safe being honest around. Because trust doesn't scale through systems, it scales through behaviours.
At Edstellar, my top tip for fostering a culture of trust and open communication within a leadership team is to consistently lead by example through radical transparency and active listening. It's not enough to simply state that we value open dialogue; leaders must embody it daily. This means openly sharing information - both the successes and the challenges - and providing the "why" behind decisions. Just as importantly, it involves truly listening to diverse perspectives, even when they challenge existing ideas, and creating psychologically safe spaces where every voice feels valued and heard without fear of judgment or retribution. This approach has dramatically improved our team dynamics and performance. When leaders are transparent, it builds a profound sense of psychological safety, allowing team members to be vulnerable, share innovative ideas, and even admit mistakes, knowing it will be met with constructive support rather than blame. This fosters a collaborative environment where cross-functional teams work seamlessly together, leveraging individual strengths and accelerating problem-solving. We've seen a direct correlation between this culture of trust and increased engagement, higher productivity, and a tangible boost in innovation, as individuals are empowered to take calculated risks and contribute their best work. Ultimately, it allows us to adapt more quickly to market changes and deliver high-impact training solutions for our enterprise partners, solidifying Edstellar's position as a leader in corporate training.
In short, trade ego for curiosity. The fastest way to kill trust on a leadership team is to assume you're the smartest person in the room. The fastest way to build it? Lead with curiosity—especially when you disagree. Most of the time, you're not arguing against each other, you're just approaching the same destination from different directions. Recognizing that shared intent is what opens the door to deeper understanding and better decisions. One of the most overlooked causes of team dysfunction isn't poor communication. It's self-protection. When leaders come to the table already defending a position, performing for the room, or bracing for battle, trust erodes quickly, and collaboration becomes performative. We started shifting this dynamic by introducing one simple but powerful norm: assume noble intent. Not to sugarcoat or avoid tension, but to enter conversations without judgment. That one mindset change made it easier to listen instead of react, and to ask questions instead of build cases. We built in some tactical behaviors too. When a conversation got tense, someone would pause and ask, "What might I be missing?" or "What does success look like from your seat?" It helped us move from posturing to problem-solving. It also reminded us we were on the same team, just seeing the same mountain from different angles. Was it easy? No. Curiosity is a muscle. It takes practice to stay open when you feel challenged or misunderstood. But over time, it changed our team's culture at the core. The impact of these changes was impressive. Conflict stopped feeling personal. Leaders gave each other more grace. We stopped wasting energy defending turf and started focusing on outcomes. We also made better (and faster) decisions because we were pulling in more context, not less. The dynamic shifted from "I need to be right" to "We need to get this right." That's a massive difference. And here's the bigger insight: curiosity doesn't just improve communication - it unlocks innovation. When people feel safe to disagree, share unfinished ideas, or raise red flags without fear, the team becomes more adaptive, more resilient, and more creative. If you're serious about building a culture of trust on your leadership team, start by making curiosity the default, especially in disagreement. It's not weakness. It's a strategic advantage.
At Invensis Learning, cultivating a culture of trust and open communication within our leadership team is paramount. My top tip truly revolves around leading by example, consistently demonstrating transparency and vulnerability. It's about creating an environment where every leader feels safe to share insights, challenges, and even mistakes without fear of judgment. This means actively listening, truly hearing concerns and ideas, and then visibly acting on feedback whenever possible, or clearly explaining why a different path is taken. We regularly engage in structured and informal dialogues, ensuring diverse perspectives are heard before crucial decisions are made. This approach has profoundly impacted our team dynamics, fostering a collective sense of ownership and accountability. When leaders trust each other, information flows more freely, problem-solving becomes collaborative, and we're able to adapt to market changes with remarkable agility, ultimately enhancing our performance and driving innovation across all our global training initiatives.
My top tip involves leaders demonstrating vulnerability by openly discussing their own mistakes, knowledge gaps, and areas for improvement during team meetings. This approach creates psychological safety where team members feel comfortable sharing concerns, admitting uncertainties, and proposing unconventional solutions without fear of professional consequences. I implemented this by starting leadership meetings with honest updates about challenges I was facing, decisions I wasn't confident about, and areas where I needed team input. When I openly admitted struggling with a client relationship issue, it encouraged other leaders to share similar challenges they'd been handling alone. This vulnerability modeling transformed our team dynamic from competitive posturing to collaborative problem-solving, where everyone felt safe asking for help and offering support. The performance impact has been remarkable - our leadership team now addresses problems much faster because people surface issues early instead of trying to solve everything independently. Decision-making improved significantly because team members contribute diverse perspectives rather than simply agreeing with whoever seems most confident. This approach has also reduced leadership burnout because the mental load of complex challenges gets distributed across the team rather than falling on individual leaders who feel pressured to appear infallible..
One of the most effective ways I've found to build a culture of trust and open communication within a leadership team is this: **model vulnerability before expecting it from others.** At Nerdigital, I made a conscious decision early on to ditch the performative leadership mask. That meant being transparent not just about wins, but also about uncertainty, mistakes, and the occasional moments of doubt. When your team sees that you're human first and CEO second, it gives them permission to do the same. And that's when real communication starts—not the filtered version people think you want to hear, but the kind that actually drives progress. One specific practice we implemented is something we call "No-Spin Fridays." It's a standing check-in where each team lead shares one thing they're proud of, one thing that's not working, and one thing they're stuck on—without trying to sugarcoat or over-explain. The point isn't to report up—it's to level with each other. And I always go first. What this has created is a space where people are quicker to ask for help, surface challenges before they become problems, and offer solutions across departments without being prompted. It's also led to more creative problem-solving, because when people aren't wasting energy trying to protect their image, they can focus on the actual work. The result? Better decisions, faster pivots, and a leadership team that genuinely trusts one another—not just professionally, but personally. We've seen that trickle down into the rest of the company culture too. Teams communicate more proactively, conflicts are addressed directly and respectfully, and collaboration feels natural instead of forced. Trust isn't built through a single retreat or values statement—it's earned through consistency and honesty, especially from the top. If you want open communication, you have to be willing to go first. That's the core of how we've built alignment and resilience at Nerdigital.
Hi, My top tip is radical transparency especially when it comes to financials, failures, and decision-making logic. Within our leadership team, I share both the wins and the uncomfortable data: campaign losses, cost overruns, or missed KPIs. This sets the tone that no one needs to posture or hide. When leaders see that honesty isn't punished but encouraged, they follow suit. That honesty trickles down through departments and creates a culture where problems surface early, not after damage is done. The result? Faster execution and stronger collaboration. Our leadership meetings shifted from passive reporting to active problem-solving. Team leads began surfacing risks earlier, owning mistakes faster, and aligning better around shared objectives. It didn't just improve morale it improved speed and strategy. Trust isn't built through team-building exercises; it's built by letting people see the real engine, even when it's not running perfectly.
My top tip for fostering a culture of trust and open communication within a leadership team is straightforward, if not always easy: radical transparency, even when it's uncomfortable. What does this mean in practice? It means sharing information—good, bad, or uncertain—as early and completely as possible. No hidden agendas, no sugar-coating challenges, and definitely no office politics. We discuss tough decisions openly, acknowledging different viewpoints without judgment, focusing on solutions rather than blame. For instance, when we faced a dip in new client acquisition last quarter, I didn't just present the numbers and demand a fix. I shared the raw data, including our missteps, and admitted where my initial projections were off. We then collectively dissected the issues, and this allowed for honest, unfiltered feedback from the team. It wasn't about finding fault; it was about understanding the root causes and collaboratively charting a new course. How has this improved team dynamics and performance? The impact has been significant. First, it eliminates the rumor mill. When leaders are upfront, speculation decreases, and people focus on their work, not on what's being whispered behind closed doors. This creates psychological safety, where team members feel secure enough to voice concerns or propose unconventional ideas without fear of reprisal. Second, it leads to better decision-making. When everyone has access to the full picture, and feels safe to challenge assumptions, we gain diverse perspectives and identify potential pitfalls we might otherwise miss. The solutions we arrive at are more robust because they're built on collective intelligence, not just my singular view. Third, accountability becomes a shared responsibility. When we're all equally informed and involved in challenges, there's a stronger sense of ownership. If someone commits to a task or a target, it's not just an order from above; it's a part of a collective understanding of what needs to be done. This shared accountability, born from transparency, drives performance far more effectively than top-down mandates ever could. Ultimately, radical transparency isn't about being naive; it's about recognizing that a well-informed, trusting team is far more resilient and innovative than one operating in the dark. It builds a foundation where tough conversations are productive, not destructive, and where every leader feels empowered to contribute their best.