The team that changed everything I thought I knew about trust at work

I inherited this team under the worst possible circumstances. My predecessor had been fired. The person who hired me left before I even started. And the team itself had spent the past year absorbing blame for mistakes that were made well above their pay grade.

By the time I arrived, they had stopped believing anything they did was right. Other stakeholders had already written them off. And the team had quietly written themselves off too. There is a name for this. Learned helplessness. It shows up when people stop trying because trying has never been enough to change how they are seen.

The distrust ran in both directions. Leadership did not trust the team. The team did not trust leadership, and honestly, they were not sure they trusted me either. Why would they. I was one more person walking in after everything had already gone wrong.

My first instinct was to put controls in place, and I did. I needed visibility into the work, and I needed to know what was actually happening day to day. But controls alone do not rebuild a team. If I had stopped there, I would have confirmed the exact story they already believed about themselves, that they could not be trusted to do their jobs.

So I made a decision early on. I was going to treat them like the seasoned professionals they were, not like a problem to be managed. That meant catching myself every time I wanted to assume something had been done wrong. It meant asking questions instead of jumping to conclusions. It meant teaching where it was needed, without turning every conversation into a correction.

The manager on that team needed something different from me. He needed to feel trusted and empowered again, not micromanaged by someone new. So I gave him real ownership. I backed his decisions in front of others. I let him lead, and I made sure people outside the team saw him leading.

None of this happened quickly. For months it was slow, unglamorous work. Showing up consistently. Following through on what I said I would do. Giving credit publicly and having hard conversations privately. Advocating for this team with stakeholders who had already decided who they were.

About six months in, something had shifted. The team was performing better. They trusted each other again. They trusted me. We had become a genuinely stronger team, not because of one big moment, but because of a hundred small ones that added up.

That is the part people miss about team trust. It is not built in an offsite or a team-building exercise. It is built when a leader earns it through consistent, courageous, compassionate behavior over time.

Building team trust is one of the final, and most powerful, outcomes of the IGNITE journey. If your team is struggling with trust, I would love to connect.

Fernanda Brasileiro

People Development Consultant & Strategist

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