Every team faces challenges, but some challenges cut deeper than missed deadlines or tough feedback. When trust in a team is broken, especially if the fault lies with a leader, the damage can be profound, wide-reaching and often personal. This is the story of a team that endured a period of anxious uncertainty, led by someone whose leadership eroded the psychological safety and cohesion that once defined the team’s culture. However, this is also a story of resilience, of reconnecting after the fracture, and of how the team began to rebuild not just their workflows, but their trust in one another.
Fractured Trust and Psychological Bruising
My journey with the team began when the leader had exited, and the team was fractured, with obvious signs that something big had happened. Team members, who were once collaborative and open, had become guarded, sceptical, and wary of each other’s intentions without fully understanding why they were feeling this way. Some felt emotionally bruised, others simply felt unsafe, each one internalising their individual experience and the associated feelings. Mistrust had set in like a slow-spreading virus; not just toward leadership, but among peers who had all coped differently under pressure. As one team member shared, ‘We weren’t just rebuilding a team, we were relearning how to believe in each other.’
Choosing to Build a Trust Bridge
As difficult as things appeared, I encouraged the team not to ignore the pain or sweep their past experiences under the carpet. Instead, they committed to building what they called a ‘trust bridge.’ This decision wasn’t about rushing to move on; it was about creating a pathway back to the psychologically safe relationships they had once enjoyed. The bridge metaphor became their guiding image, the opportunity to reconnect with their foundations and build something new and great. Their ‘Bridge’ was built intentionally, step by step, and with a clear purpose focused on honesty and connection; that eventually became the team’s mantra.
How We Used Frances Frei’s Trust Triangle as a Framework for Healing
To understand how trust works and how to rebuild it, I encouraged the team to examine Frances Frei’s Trust Triangle. Frei, a Harvard Business School professor, breaks trust down into three core components:
- Authenticity – are you showing up as your true self?
- Logic – can people trust your judgment and competence?
- Empathy – do others believe you care about them?
We all have the potential to ‘wobble’ as Frei points out, where one of the three trust dimensions might not be our strongest asset; that’s normal. Under the previous leader, authenticity was punished, logic was overshadowed by manipulation, and empathy was absent. Rebuilding meant restoring all three dimensions of trust individually and collectively.
1. Reclaiming Authenticity
Team members began sharing personal reflections on what they had experienced and how it affected them. These weren’t mandatory sharings, but they were expressed in voluntary, safe spaces where people could be real and be heard without judgment.
2. Rebuilding Logic
Decision-making processes became more transparent, roles were clarified, and expertise was appreciated. Instead of second-guessing motives, team members were encouraged to explain not just what they were doing, but WHY, bringing logic back into their conversations.
3. Restoring Empathy
As was to be expected, healing the emotional fractures was the hardest task. The team began using ‘empathy check-ins’ where conversations started with how people were feeling, not just what they were working on. Based on the notion of strategic care, it sent clear signals that everyone in the team mattered based on more than their output.
Re-establishing Psychological Safety – The Soil for Trust to Grow
Rebuilding trust is impossible without psychological safety, which, according to Professor Amy Edmondson, means that team members can take risks, voice concerns, and show vulnerability without fear of punishment. I encouraged the team to invest in practices that fostered Psychological Safety:
- Actively encourage questions and dissent by inviting and welcoming questions, alternative opinions, and challenges to ideas without penalty.
- Celebrate mistakes as learning opportunities, aim to normalise failure as a part of growth by reviewing what was learned, not just what went wrong.
- Debrief regularly as a team, after projects or meetings, discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how the team can improve, without allocating blame.
- Check in on emotions and well-being, for example, start meetings with quick check-ins like ‘What’s one word to describe how you’re feeling today?’
- Avoid blame language by remaining curious; ‘what might have led to this?’ instead of ‘Who caused this?’.
- Create shared ownership of outcomes to emphasise team over individual performance, and frame challenges as collective goals.
As safety grew, so did the team’s confidence both in themselves and in each other.
Where Are They Now?
Today, the team isn’t perfect, and they will be the first to admit that they have had to work very hard to reposition themselves. The trust bridge they built is sturdy and continues to get stronger. They have learned that trust isn’t a switch that you flip on or off; it is a structure that you build, that structure stands on authenticity, logic, and empathy, with psychological safety as its foundation. One team member shared with me, ‘We’re no longer walking on eggshells. We’re invested in this team and we are walking with each other every day with every gesture, no matter how small.’
Final Thoughts
If your team is emerging from a difficult season, it is important to know that recovery is possible. Trust can be rebuilt. Start with small intentional steps and remember that it is healthy to name what happened, not to dwell on it, but to validate people’s feelings around it. Healing can only begin when people feel seen and heard. Trust is not a given; it is difficult to reclaim when lost or taken away, but it can be built again through openness, transparent communication, validation and collaboration.
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