Building Bulletproof Trust

Cultivating unbreakable trust from the battlefield to the boardroom.

As an Army officer with 20 years of service and combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ve thought a lot about trust throughout my career.

A commander’s ability to cultivate trust within their unit is not only critical to accomplishing the mission, but it can often be the difference between life and death.

That requires a lot of trust.

How does the U.S. military create that trust? How can we build trust as leaders in our organizations?

Trust is the grease that allows the gears of teams and organizations to run effectively in a VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world. Trust is one of those unique aspects in life that is often earned over thousands of acts, big and small, yet easily lost in a single instance.

I believe there are five essential components leaders can use to build trust in any organization. The more a leader masters each component, the deeper the level of trust will be on that team. 
The first two components — character and competence — are non-negotiables. Leaders either have them, or they don’t.

These two components are the minimum criteria for a leader’s ability to build trust with their team. Without both, nobody will follow you.

Character

Character, like love, is tough to define, but we know it when you we see it. As a leader, do you do what you say you’re going to do? Do you do things when you say you’re going to do them? Are you honest? Humble? Reliable? Decent?

Nobody will trust a leader who doesn’t possess and demonstrate these traits. Nobody wants to be on a team with a hypocritical leader. Nothing evaporates trust on a team more than a leader’s toxic behavior and lapses in character such as cheating, lying, bullying and stealing.

Competence

But being a decent human being is not enough to build trust. You could be the best human being in your organization, but if you’re not competent at your job, people will always question your aptitude and decision making.

To build trust within their teams, leaders must exhibit a baseline level of competence at their jobs. Leaders who can effectively demonstrate the “blocking and tackling” of their job will be able to create trust faster than those who are seen as incompetent.

No, this does not mean that leaders must be the best in the industry to create trust on the team (although it helps!). But there is a bar that followers will expect leaders to meet, and hopefully surpass, when it comes to competence in the job.

If you are a leader who is entering a new field or getting promoted to a job where you feel out of your depth, do what it takes to get up to speed as quickly as possible. The faster you do, the more trust your teammates will have in your ability to lead them.

(Effective) Communication

If we consider a leader to be a 10 out of 10 when it comes to being competent at their job, and that same leader is considered only a three out of 10 when it comes to communication, then that leader will be ultimately seen as a three out of 10 leader overall.

It may not be fair, but it is a reality.

This doesn’t mean that if you’re not Winston Churchill on the microphone or Adam Grant on social media that you can’t be an effective leader.

What it does mean, however, is that leadership ultimately is about transforming a vision into reality. How that vision is articulated matters, and it matters a lot. That responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the leader.

A leader who can clearly articulate what, when, where, how and why something needs to get done will create more trust within a team than a leader who cannot or does it poorly.

Organizations exhibiting high trust are more likely to be led by leaders who are transparent, humble and vulnerable.

These leaders understand their strengths and their vulnerabilities when it comes to the modalities of communication. Great writers should exploit their strength and write. Great orators should find every opportunity to speak in front of their team. Leaders who are poor at one modality should hire someone who can complement their communication shortcomings.

Accountability

Just like character and competence are a combo platter, so are communication and accountability.

To illustrate this point, consider the conditioning drill commonly referred to by coaches and players as “suicide sprints” or “line drills.”

The instructions to players in these conditioning exercises are crystal clear. In basketball, a coach might tell her team to start on the endline, run to the foul line, and sprint back.

In the next iteration, players repeat that first step and then run to the 3-point line and back. The next iteration is to the halfcourt line, then the opponent’s 3-point line, and so on.

Yet in every gym across the country, I guarantee there are players on a lot of teams who fail to touch every line.

If the coaching staff isn’t on top of this when it occurs, the darkest angels of our human behavior inevitably take over.

If a player does an iteration without going all the way and touching the line, and no coaches or teammates say anything, chances are she’s going to take other shortcuts.

And whether it’s due to competitiveness or laziness, other players inevitably follow suit. After a while, most or all of the team is now cheating on a drill meant to improve their conditioning.

In the above scenario, was communication to blame?

No. Of course not. Every player knows exactly what the expectation is in this drill.

The problem was accountability, or to be more specific, a lack of it.

Trust cannot exist on teams where there’s poor accountability. High performers will vote with their feet or they will resent the leader and the leadership team for allowing others to skate by without any consequences.

Just like we saw with incompetence, hypocrisy accelerates distrust on a team, and fast.

Leaders must clearly articulate their goals, expectations and the standards by which they will be met.

But that’s not enough. They must also then “inspect what they expect” and hold teammates accountable for their actions.

We often see accountability problems in organizations that publicly talk about their family culture. I know, because I was once one of these leaders who proudly referred to my team as a family.

Heck, I even changed the names of our regular weekly synchronization meetings to “family meetings.”

Reed Hastings, the former CEO of Netflix, made me see the error in my ways.

His articulation of the differences between a high-performing team and a family strikes at the heart of how important accountability is to trust.

In a family, we are likely to overlook and sometimes excuse low performers, even members who are toxic and bringing shame to the family name. We do this in the name of loyalty to our bloodline. We cannot ostracize them, we tell ourselves, “because they’re family.”

The better analogy to replace the family concept, Hastings argues, is a high-performing team. For example, if a teammate is unable to meet the standards of a particular sports team, that individual is likely to get cut. High performers push other high performers, and the standard of excellence raises. Morale is high because everyone wants to play on a great team.

One of my favorite thought experiments Hastings suggests is to evaluate teammates using this question: “If this individual came to you and said they were leaving the company, would you fight to stop them?”

Accountability is one of the biggest challenges in business today. Without a culture of accountability, it’s extremely hard to build trust on your team.

For those leaders who know accountability is a problematic area for them, consider these two tactics I give the executive leaders I’m coaching.

First, leaders can benefit from looking at this accountability problem from the team’s perspective, not from their personal perspective. In other words, leaders should ask, what is in the best interests of the team? The answer will usually drive leaders to the correct course of action.

Second, remember this mantra. Leaders who hold their teammates accountable and who are willing to have the tough conversations care more about that individual’s future potential than they do about their current feelings.

Emotional Intelligence

If a leader is able to demonstrate character and competence, they will enjoy a baseline level of trust on their team. Trust will increase if they can effectively communicate goals and expectations, and it increases even more if they can establish a culture of accountability on their team.

I think that those who have the first four components of trust building down pat can be effective managers.

But to be a transformational leader, in my opinion, and to achieve the highest level of trust on any given team, leaders must possess and demonstrate emotional intelligence.

Managers manage things — budgets, programs, processes. Leaders, however, lead people. And people are messy. Complicated. Complex.

Put another way, managing is about doing things right, and leadership is about doing the right thing.

The latter is always subjective, but doing the right thing requires leaders to accurately read the room and understand when a situation calls for an iron fist or a velvet glove.

This may not always result in teammates being treated equally, but it always involves teammates being treated fairly.

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In the Lead magazine is a collaboration between the Buccino Leadership Institute and the Stillman School of Business’s Department of Management. This edition reaffirms Seton Hall’s commitment to fostering innovative, ethical and impactful leadership. Stay ahead of the curve — explore the Fall 2025 issue of In the Lead.

Categories: Business