Rebuilding Leadership Team Trust: A 40% Increase in Engagement
LEADERSHIP COACHING · SENIOR DIRECTORA Senior Director was concerned about her future after trust had broken down with her leadership team. She came to coaching wanting to rebuild those relationships and improve how the team worked together. The work began by looking at what needed to happen before the team could move forward.
The work you ask of your team starts with you.
There were two difficult personnel issues that had gone unaddressed.
Before asking the leadership team to work differently together, we focused on those decisions first.
Through one-on-one coaching, we worked through the issues she had been avoiding and what it would take to address them directly.
It was an important part of the work because rebuilding trust wasn't only about changing the dynamics within the team. It also required her to look honestly at what she could do differently as their leader.
Individual Growth. Collective Change.
Once those issues had been addressed, I facilitated a two-day Five Behaviors offsite with the leadership team.
Together, we looked at the patterns that were getting in the way of how they worked together and created space for greater accountability within the team.
The combination mattered: individual coaching gave her space to work on her own leadership, while the team work gave everyone an opportunity to change how they worked together.
What Transformed
Engagement scores increased by 40%.
The team went on to tackle increasingly complex work with stronger coordination, and she was later promoted from Senior Director to Vice President.
The Larger Lesson
“Trust grows when leaders are willing to have the conversations that matter.”
For me, this story is a reminder that team dynamics don't exist separately from leadership.
Sometimes helping a team move forward means starting with the conversations a leader would rather avoid, addressing what needs attention, and then creating the conditions for people to work together differently.
