You Don’t Have to Be Friends to Build Trust

A colleague once told me I was living in a fairy tale if I expected to trust every person on the leadership team. I see it differently. The fairy tale is not believing trust can exist across a team. The fairy tale is believing everyone must be friends for the team to work well.

Trusting someone is not the same as being friends with them. On a leadership team, trust is built on competence, reliability, and integrity: the confidence that people can do the work, will follow through on commitments, and are committed to doing the right thing for the agreed-upon outcome, even when it is hard.

The real work of leadership is not creating the fairy tale of friendship, but instead, building enough trust that everyone can tell the truth, challenge ideas, keep commitments, and stay focused on the outcomes that truly matter to the enterprise. Friendship may make the work sweeter. Trust makes the work possible.