Building trust within leadership teams is crucial for organizational success. This article presents expert-backed strategies to foster a culture of openness, accountability, and collaboration among leaders. From modeling vulnerability to implementing consistent feedback loops, these actionable tips will help strengthen bonds and drive innovation within your leadership team.
- Model Vulnerability to Build Strong Teams
- Normalize Truth-Telling in Leadership Meetings
- Share Struggles to Foster Innovation
- Design Team Commitments for Clear Engagement
- Create Securely Attached Leaders for Trust
- Implement Consistent Two-Way Feedback Loops
- Anchor Discussions to Shared Mission
- Lead with Empathy to Strengthen Bonds
- Practice Empathy as a Data-Driven Skill
- Embrace Radical Transparency in Decision-Making
- CEO Models Openness and Radical Candor
- Include All Departments in Strategic Decisions
- Demonstrate Accountability to Encourage Openness
- Own Mistakes and Hold Others Accountable
- Act on Team Input to Encourage Communication
Model Vulnerability to Build Strong Teams
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 based on 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.
Angela Devlen
Speaker | Author | Entrepreneur, AMD Enterprise Management
Normalize Truth-Telling in Leadership Meetings
My top tip is to normalize truth-telling at the top. This 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 decreased. 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.
Etty Burk, Ph.D.
President and Founder, Leading With Difference
Share Struggles to Foster Innovation
The willingness of a leader to share their own struggles and even failures with the team fosters not only a culture of vulnerability and trust but also innovation. This supports the understanding that the road to success will necessarily include failures. Critical to this perspective is the idea that it isn’t failure that matters—it’s what you do with it that counts!
This approach was part of how we operated in military aviation and also when I was working at Microsoft. The only way to navigate rapidly changing and challenging environments is to quickly assess what went right and what went wrong, and be willing and able to continue moving forward—not with blame or shame, but with a shared sense of learning and development.
This concept is part of both the “learn” and “launch” phases of The Grit Triad, the framework supporting The Grit Factor, and is absolutely necessary for success in today’s climate.
Shannon Huffman Polson
Author, the Grit Factor, CEO and Founder, The Grit Institute, Veteran
Design Team Commitments for Clear Engagement
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 those values. For example, companies that value innovation recognize that debate, differing opinions, and creative problem-solving will be 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 they want to engage with each other. Done well, the team agrees on things like how they address conflict, what they will say when they feel their idea or concern was not heard, and how they will address disagreements. Once agreed upon, the team holds each other accountable and shares 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 individuals as they make decisions. Leaders remember that their contributions are part of the pathway to deliver what the organization needs, not simply achieving the goal for their function. For example, a team agreement might be, “We prioritize the delivery of success metrics for project X above individual functional results.” When the team recognizes that someone is wrestling with competing interests, they take the time to work through it.
Open communication requires an interest beyond what matters to you. Team agreements that center on curiosity and introspection can also be helpful. Models like Appreciative Inquiry can support the team in approaching challenges with an openness that breeds trust and deeper connection. The erosion of trust in a team driven by poor communication derails the team and has a 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 cultivating trust and good communication will pay large dividends down the road.
Anika Apple
Founder & CEO, Remarkably Me Enterprises
Create Securely Attached Leaders for Trust
Hands down, 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 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. This 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!
Katarina Polonska
High-Performance Relationship Coach, KP Coaching & Consulting SL
Implement Consistent Two-Way Feedback Loops
My top strategy is implementing consistent feedback loops that go both ways. At Ocean Recovery, I implemented monthly peer-to-peer feedback sessions among leadership, not just manager-to-team. Initially, it felt uncomfortable, but soon we built a culture where feedback was expected, not dreaded. This practice improved team trust and decreased silos, leading to faster coordination on client care. Others can replicate this by creating structured, recurring forums where leaders give and receive input in equal measure. Trust grows when feedback isn’t a surprise but a shared commitment, and the payoff is stronger alignment and quicker execution.
Maddy Nahigyan
Chief Operating Officer, Ocean Recovery
Anchor Discussions to Shared Mission
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.
Ryan Hetrick
CEO & Co-Founder, Epiphany Wellness
Lead with Empathy to Strengthen Bonds
Leading with empathy is my cornerstone. At Brooks Healing Center, I make it a point to check in on leaders as people first, not just as professionals. This simple step, asking about their well-being, has opened conversations that might have otherwise stayed hidden. The result? Stronger personal bonds and a leadership team that supports each other under pressure. Any leader can do this by making time for genuine connection before diving into agendas. When your team knows they matter beyond metrics, trust becomes second nature.
Tyler Bowman
Founder & CEO, Brooks Healing Center
Practice Empathy as a Data-Driven Skill
According to the 2024 Grammarly-Harris State of Business Communication report, we lost $1.2 trillion per year due to poor communication in the US, making this an important issue. My top recommendation 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 believe empathy is solely 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. This leads to a marked difference in innovation, productivity, and profit.
I believe empathy is such a crucial part of fostering communication and trust that I dedicated an entire chapter to it in my recent book.
Dr. Melissa Robinson-Winemiller
CEO, EQ Via Empathy
Embrace Radical Transparency in Decision-Making
Radical transparency transforms management into partnership. Too many teams stagnate because all decisions are shrouded in mystery.
I practice over-sharing every strategic twist, every budget line, and every reason behind them all. I break down the context until people can see their own contributions reflected in the big picture. There are no hidden agendas, no black boxes.
Once teammates understand the reasoning, they stop waiting for marching orders and start making intelligent decisions on their own. I’ve observed task-doers evolve into leaders because they trust the vision and know their voices carry weight. Cohesion strengthens, execution accelerates, and performance improves when everyone is working with the same information.
Quick tip: treat your leadership team like co-founders. Explain the rationale, provide them with abundant context, and you’ll exchange mere compliance for genuine ownership.
Alexander De Ridder
Co-Founder & CTO, SmythOS.com
CEO Models Openness and Radical Candor
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 judgment. The organization fosters a learning culture, where ideas, innovation, and inevitable failures are expected. The C-suite team members are the leaders and consider themselves owners of the company. When they know that their personal success is tied to the organization’s success, they will be willing to cooperate with their peers to ensure the overall success of the organization.
Molly Hetrick
Professional Development Coach, venture you LLC
Include All Departments in Strategic Decisions
My top tip is inclusivity in decision-making. At Able To Change Recovery, we built a practice of involving leadership from every department in major strategic shifts. This doesn’t mean consensus on every detail, but it ensures that everyone has a voice early in the process. This approach has reduced resistance to change and increased buy-in when executing new initiatives. Others can adopt this by moving away from top-down rollouts and instead integrating cross-functional input from the start. When people feel included, trust grows naturally, and so does execution speed.
Saralyn Cohen
CEO & Founder, Able To Change Recovery
Demonstrate Accountability to Encourage Openness
Be the first to admit mistakes, accept feedback, and have difficult conversations. When leaders consistently demonstrate accountability, it creates space for others to do the same.
The impact? It has transformed our team. Now, there is less chaos, faster decision-making, and increased accountability. People are more willing to speak up, solve problems quickly, and genuinely support one another.
Nir Appelton
CEO, The CEO Creative
Own Mistakes and Hold Others Accountable
I try to lead by example here in two key ways:
First, I 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 person, 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 consequences.
Jonathan Palley
CEO, QR Codes Unlimited
Act on Team Input to Encourage Communication
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.
Edward Tian
CEO, GPTZero