Why Leaders Suck at Teambuilding (and How to Fix It)

Trust is a holy temple. Build one, and teambuilding might actually work. Part 7 of an article series about trust in the workplace, in our personal lives, and in general.

In our journeys through the forests, deserts, and swamps of Leadership Land, we’ve observed leaders partaking in strange religious rituals. One such ritual is to sacrifice a teambuilding activity (e.g. happy hour, Secret Santa) at the Altar of Workplace Productivity, then pray to the Goddess of Trust for a blessing of Team Spirit. The leaders then take off their holy shaman feathers, go back to business as usual, and wonder why employees keep quitting.

This isn’t to say that teambuilding activities are inherently bad. The problem is that the worshippers of the Goddess of Trust have it backward: they’re merely emulating the superficial behaviors of people who already trust one another. It’s like observing that people who fall in love tend to kiss each other, so you conclude that you can get random strangers to fall in love by forcing them to kiss each other.

What awkward teambuilding activities feel like.

Most reasonable people would never consider a soft drink to be a wholesome, nourishing meal on its own. Likewise, it’s not enough to insert potluck tokens into the teambuilding vending machine until a can of carbonated trust falls out. The artificial sweetness of a teambuilding activity might provide a temporary boost to morale, but it won’t promote long-term organizational health. For teambuilding activities to have the desired effect, you must first put in the back-breaking labor of building a Temple of Trust.

Building the Temple of Trust

Many real-world villages and cities are built around places of worship. It’s the same in Leadership Land: thriving organizations are built around a Temple of Trust¹. Let’s first look at the form of the Temple; we’ll get to the function later.

The Bricks of Integrity

At training seminars and other social gatherings, we often ask people “what is integrity?” (Yes, we’re wildly popularly at parties). The answer is usually a facial expression of pained concentration, followed by a synonym for “honesty.”

Our preferred definition:

Integrity is when your actions align with your words.

Consider this thought experiment: does a megalomaniacal mastermind, like Dr. Evil, have integrity?

By our definition, yes. He claims to be evil. He behaves like evil incarnate. He said he’ll lie, cheat, and steal to get his way, and he does! He goes on long villainous monologues to the damsel in distress about his evil plan to build an evil doom laser, hold the planet hostage, and cover the world with liquid malevolence.

Dr. Evil’s henchmen can see that their leader is faithful to the “10 Commandments of Evil-Doing.” His henchmen trust and respect him because they can see his unwavering devotion to wrongdoing². Dr. Evil’s integrity makes them one big happily-nefarious family.

We’re not portraying Dr. Evil as some kind of perverse paragon that anyone should aspire to emulate (please don’t build a doom laser, we hold the patent on it). This thought experiment illustrates that integrity is an amoral concept about setting expectations and remaining true to them. What this means in real life:

• If you say that you value your employees (expectation), you must show it (delivery). Every time you meet the expectation, you add one Brick of Integrity to your Temple of Trust. If you fail to meet the expectation, you’re merely paying lip service.

• If you threaten to mete out punishment, then you must follow through. Every time you discipline in response to a rule infraction, you add another Brick of Integrity to the Temple of Trust.

The Foundation of Credibility

Pause for a second. You might be thinking: wait a minute, how does punishment lead to integrity?

We’re not claiming that indiscriminate punishment leads to integrity; that’s just being a jerk.

Still, there’s a disconnect between “deserved punishment” and the popular definition of “integrity.” You probably associate integrity with honesty, virtue, and other high-minded ideals from the nebulous realm of soft skills. “Integrity” carries a positive connotation, making it incompatible with the pain of punishment.

But take our amoral, neutral definition of integrity (“when your actions align with your words”) and the paradigm will shift. If you laid down rules (expectations), and you don’t follow through on threatened punishment, you’re either:

• All bark, no bite.

• Selectively enforcing rules, which is inherently unfair.

When your actions don’t align with your words, you damage the Foundation of Credibility that underlies your Temple of Trust. If, instead, you follow through with threats and deserved punishments, you are dispensing justice and upholding the rule of law. By practicing what you preach every day, even when it’s painful, you add Bricks of Integrity to your Temple of Trust. Your subordinates and your wayward children will feel bad about receiving punishment…but the discomfort will soon be forgotten, and your Temple of Trust will endure.

We’re cautioning you against falling for the leniency trap because we’re a lot more agreeable in real life than in writing. This makes us vulnerable to sacrificing integrity for conflict avoidance (disguised as leniency), thus sabotaging our Foundation of Credibility. Being nice to people 99% of the time makes it so much harder to put on the “bad guy hat” for the remaining 1%.

We train ourselves to be tough, but fair, with several re-framing exercises:

• It’s okay to feel bad about punishing good people.

• Laying the Foundation of Credibility and building the Temple of Trust is worthwhile, but not painless.

• Wanton punishment is toxic; disciplinary action is justice.

Here’s our favorite mantra – the reason we see integrity as solid bricks:

Integrity is not a “soft skill.” It’s about being hard on the soft things.

The Mortar of Vulnerability

A stack of bricks is prone to toppling, even when built on a steady foundation. You also need mortar (the gray stuff ↑) to bind the bricks together.

In part 2, we shared the best definition of trust we've found so far, in which vulnerability is a key component:

Trust is the willingness to give someone the power to harm you, and hoping they won’t.

The Mortar of Vulnerability is what cements all the individual Bricks of Integrity in place. It strengthens the Temple of Trust by sealing gaps between the bricks and holding the whole structure together. Why is the mortar composed of vulnerability, you ask? Because trust without vulnerability is nothing more than a set of expectations.

Let’s say you’ve coexisted peacefully with an office acquaintance (Sandra) for several years, but you don’t know her well. You’re civil to one another, so every interaction – small talk, passing each other in the hallway – contributes one Brick of Integrity to your relationship with Sandra. With the passage of time and the “mere exposure effect,” you end up with a jumble of bricks – an expectation that the two of you will continue to coexist peacefully – but you don’t truly trust Sandra. You wouldn’t ask her to babysit your kid, serve as executor of your estate, or storm Dr. Evil’s lair like action movie protagonists; you’re keeping her at arms-length, somewhere in the space between “stranger” and “confidant.”

But one day, you notice that Sandra seems sad. You ask her what’s wrong, and she describes some personal tragedies that are troubling her. She’s grateful that you were the first to show sympathy, and asks that you don’t spread the gossip around the office. The two of you eventually become close friends, all stemming from the first time Sandra gave you the power to harm her, and you didn’t.

By confiding in you, Sandra did two things:

1. She triggered a shift in your mind. She immediately ceased to be a flat, one-dimensional abstraction of a human being; she became an actual person with emotional depth and a life story.

2. She added some Mortar of Vulnerability to the pre-existing Bricks of Integrity, upgrading the structure of your relationship from mere expectations into genuine trust.

Sandra’s decision to expose her vulnerability to you was risky. One common element to all spiritual/religious practice is the concept of faith – belief without evidence. Every time you apply the Mortar of Vulnerability, you’re taking a leap of faith. To build the Temple of Trust, you must give others the ability to harm you, and hope that they choose not to.

How that looks in real life:

• Sharing secrets with a friend, and hoping they don’t divulge it to the world.

• Granting someone access to restricted systems or sensitive information, and hoping they don’t misuse the privilege.

• Delegating tasks for which you are ultimately responsible, and hoping your subordinate doesn’t make you look bad.

• Revealing concerns, fears, and dissent to a superior, and hoping they don’t retaliate.

• Letting someone borrow your car, and hoping they don’t use it as the getaway car for a bank heist.

Every Temple of Trust has an optimal ratio of bricks to mortar. Too little Mortar of Vulnerability results in a weak Temple that’s prone to collapsing into a jumble of expectations. Too much Mortar of Vulnerability results in a flimsy mud hut with some bricks mixed in, making us more likely to become a turkey at someone else’s Thanksgiving dinner. Finding the optimum is more of an art than a science.

Misguided Masonry

The Desert of Good Intentions is littered with many ruined Temples of Trust. Don’t let yours become one of them.

Many of the bosses, managers, and executives throughout Leadership Land make a genuine effort to build trust in their organizations, but not everyone succeeds³. Here are some ways that a well-intentioned leader can botch the construction of a Temple of Trust:

1. Leniency trap: We warned about this earlier, but it bears repeating: sacrificing integrity for conflict avoidance (disguised as leniency) might feel good in the moment, but it sabotages trust-building in the long run.

2. Token attempts at teambuilding: Valentine’s Day can either be a sweet cherry on top of a loving relationship, or an obligatory box-checking exercise in a loveless marriage. A teambuilding activity can either enhance trust that already exists, or backfire by juxtaposing the harmony of the activity against the toxic work environment that resumes after teambuilding is over.

3. Politics without the payoffs: Virtue-signaling without taking decisive action = no Bricks of Integrity. Over-promising and under-delivering = damage to the Foundation of Credibility.

4. Misusing the mushy matter: Too much Mortar of Vulnerability will make a leader appear weak. Using it at the wrong time is just as damaging. When a crisis arrives, and all eyes turn toward the leader with the expectation of decisive action...that's not the ideal time to get all touchy-feely about personal shortcomings. The Mortar of Vulnerability is for building trust, not for inspiring bravery⁴.

Operating the Temple of Trust

Bricks and mortar atop a foundation: that’s the form of the Temple of Trust. What about its function?

To answer that, we need to deduce the function of real-life places of worship. Why do people have churches? Synagogues? Mosques? Shrines? There are innumerable individual reasons, but we’re more interested in the universal reasons that apply to both religions and Leadership Land.

When you strip away the dogmas, scriptures, and rituals from religions and spiritual practices, you’ll find key commonalities:

People congregate in places of worship to connect with others, seek guidance, and re-discover a sense of serenity before returning to business as usual.

When you strip away all the standard operating procedures, Harvard Business Review guides, and teambuilding exercises from secular organizations, and you’ll find the same set of reasons for visiting the Temple of Trust: encouraging employees to forge emotional bonds, to seek guidance without fear of reprisal, and to re-discover a sense of serenity that can be brought back to their workstations.

The Altar of Psychological Safety

Imagine that you visit a place of worship to:

1. Make an offering, and the priest mocks you for the inadequacy of your sacrifice

2. Confess your sins, and the priest slaps you across the face before lecturing you about your transgressions

3. Pray to a deity for answers, and the deity belittles you before smiting you with a thunderbolt

Now imagine you’re in the workplace and you:

1. Offer an idea for improvement, and your boss mocks you for some inadequacy in your idea

2. Admit to a mistake or bring bad news, and your boss retaliates against you

3. Ask for guidance, and your boss responds by belittling you and putting negative comments in your performance review

Would you willingly continue to visit these unholy dungeons of fear, humiliation, and shame?

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Now consider the opposite: what if visitors to your Temple of Trust can come up to the altar and offer ideas, admit mistakes, express dissent, or ask questions without fear of humiliation or (undeserved) punishment? When a sense of psychological safety permeates your Temple, the altar emits a golden aura of comfort, cognitive ease, and camaraderie - the 3 Cs. After writing about the 3 Cs for five articles, we’ve finally reached the source!

You’ve built a grand Temple of Trust, and your Altar of Psychological Safety is gushing forth the 3 Cs like golden feel-good juice. Time to kick up your feet and admire your handiwork, right?

Wrong.

The Sacrilege of Mistrust

Not only are you the stonemason of the Temple of Trust, you’re also the clergy. You are the shaman of credibility. The Dalai Lama of trust. You are Pope Integritus the Just, ordained to protect the Temple of Trust’s purity. That means resisting the encroachment of mistrust.

Step 1. Build a sacred Temple of Trust. Step 2. Maintain a lifelong vigil to protect the Temple from the blasphemous, the unholy, and the profane.

Mistrust is a shadowy demon. It radiates a corrosive aura that damages the bricks, mortar, and foundation of the Temple; it shrouds the Altar of Psychological Safety in darkness; it strangles the flow of the 3 Cs. This is because mistrust is a presence of discomforting feelings, while trust is an absence; mistrust extinguishes trust merely by existing.

Different flavors of mistrust will sometimes infiltrate the Temple and taint the Altar of Psychological Safety. Some examples:

• Shame: Mistrust arising from shame is a sour presence that curdles the 3 Cs and darkens the Altar.

  • An employee commits an embarrassing and public blunder, and others question his judgment.

  • A schoolyard bully humiliates your child, who carries the shame home.

  • You berate a subordinate for asking a question they could’ve Googled instead.

• Hostility: Internal strife generates mistrust from within, changing the altar’s golden light to a sinister shade of blood-red.

  • Family or team members fight over toys or project assignments.

  • Factions form among the fiefdoms in the Middle Management Foothills.

  • A debate about whether toilet paper should be oriented over the roll or under the roll devolves into bitter barbs and a fistfight.

• Fear: Mistrust born out of fear, uncertainty, and doubt will cause the altar to emit a ghastly chill.

  • An economic recession puts job insecurity on everyone’s minds.

  • Someone perched atop Executive Mountain sends down an employee-unfriendly decree.

  • You lose your temper and yell at your child or subordinate because they installed the toilet paper in the wrong orientation.

Purging the Demons of Mistrust

Your damage control ritual will depend on the origin of mistrust: are the demons infiltrating from outside the organization/family? Is someone bringing mistrust into the Temple? Are you sowing mistrust and strangling the 3 Cs you worked so hard to generate?

If you are source, then you can cleanse the Altar of Psychological Safety by changing your own behavior to avoid antagonizing your family or team members (i.e. not being a jerk). You can also influence others to be nicer to each other. Rarely, you’ll have to resort to brute-force exorcism: restoring peace by separating people who can’t get along, or firing someone to remove their unholy presence from your Temple of Trust.

Often, however, the source of mistrust is outside of your control. The only thing that you can do is to deliver the bad news, give your teammates/family space to confess their negativity, then address the emotional debris as best you can. You won’t be able to keep the Altar of Psychological Safety 100% pure, but you can still reduce the extent of contamination.

Beware of Toxic Positivity

Fortunately, mistrust demons have a limited lifespan because people naturally adapt to negative changes. Once enough time passes for an unfavorable change to become the “new normal,” the Altar of Psychological Safety will shine once more. Your job is to usher your congregation along until the “new normal” sets in, which could take weeks or months.

Unfortunately, the transition period is painful, and weathering it is simple but not easy. It’s tempting to flex your leadership muscles by dismissing mistrust, as if it’s unworthy of your attention. You must demonstrate personal strength, right? It’s also tempting to fabricate a cheery atmosphere, hoping to distract everyone from the shadowy little devils gnawing at their ankles. Aren’t we supposed to stop people from dwelling on negative feelings?

To an extent, yes. But if you try too hard to minimize mistrust and overshoot your goal, you’ll land in the Desert of Good Intentions. If your people feel compelled to suffer silently, or to put on a happy mask despite the turmoil within, you’ve created an atmosphere of toxic positivity. Everyone feels the discomfort of mistrust, so pretending like it doesn’t exist won’t actually make things better – it just makes everyone emotionally constipated.

When balancing the need to get things done vs. allowing others to express their discomfort, we use the old saying:

If you’re going through hell, don’t stop.

Are You a Priest or a Saint?

Let’s say you successfully extract a mistrust demon from the Altar. What should you do with it?

Here are two ways to protect the Temple of Trust:

1. The priestly way is to drop-kick the squirming little devil off the nearest highway overpass into oncoming traffic.

2. The saintly way is to absorb that mistrust demon into yourself and wrestle with it internally for the rest of your life.

By taking mistrust into yourself, you remove pollution from the Temple of Trust at the expense of your own psychological safety. Becoming the vessel of mistrust requires self-sacrifice, hence the comparison to saints. To Temple visitors, you appear as a pillar of calm who is immune to indecision and fear. But behind the mask of tranquility is a howling tempest of negative emotions. That raises the question: why would anyone willingly eclipse their inner world in the shadow of mistrust?

Because it’s useful.

In part 4 and part 5, we covered how the dark whispers of mistrust can help us foresee and prevent problems. Perpetual discomfort is a powerful defense against complacency, and low-grade anxiety provides an intrinsic motivator for self-improvement. Unquestioning trust lulls us into a false sense of security, making us reactive to calamities. Mistrust motivates us to be proactive about mitigating or avoiding crises before they happen.

Despite the benefits of being a sponge for mistrust, lifelong suffering is not for everyone. There’s no shame in choosing the priestly route; it simplifies your life by removing ambiguities, and allows you to happily spend your days evicting mistrust from your Temple. If you don’t mistrust your family or coworkers, you can’t damage your relationship with them by accidentally unleashing a hurtful comment during a moment of weakness. You can always outsource the saintly burdens to other people who are willing to tolerate chronic pain.

You know, masochists. Like us.

Teambuilding in the Temple

Do you wish for higher loyalty, lower turnover, and better work from your employees? Do you wish your family were more cohesive? Then build a Temple of Trust and start your own cult!

Once you build a Temple of Trust and your Altar of Psychological Safety radiates the 3 Cs, you can finally have teambuilding activities that don’t feel disingenuous. Team spirit, inside jokes, and loyalty will sprout naturally by the golden warmth of the 3 Cs.

We wish you success in building a grand Temple of Trust, like Notre Dame or Ankor Wat – something that attracts people from around the world. Whether you choose to banish mistrust or struggle with it internally, you have our support.

Amen.

1. We use “temple” to refer generically to a place of worship. You can imagine a church, mosque, cathedral, synagogue, gurudwara, shrine – whatever religious structure you’re most familiar with.

2. For convenience, we’re going to gloss over the apparent contradiction created by the liar’s paradox. Trusting someone untrustworthy doesn’t make sense…but the standard bad-guy henchman isn’t the brightest knife in the crayon drawer.

3. For this essay, we’re not going to cover the many failures that originate in the Straits of Conflicting Interests. We’ll assume that you, the reader, are trying to build trust in good faith ಠ_ಠ

4. An exceptionally strong leader can still rally the troops by acknowledging fear, uncertainty, and doubt (in an unwavering voice), then overcoming the vulnerabilities in a grand display of personal strength by taking bold, decisive action (like charging the enemy lines armed with a ballpoint pen and a loincloth). This is much, much easier said than done.