You Don’t Have to Like Each Other But You Do Have to Respect Each Other

This week I was facilitating a group of CEOs, and a familiar theme surfaced: “Our people don’t trust each other. How do we fix this trust issue?”

It’s an honest concern. And it’s also where many leaders go wrong.

Because here’s the truth: you can’t “fix” the lack of trust.  What you can do is create an environment where trust has a chance to grow.  And that starts with something far more practical and far more achievable than trying to get people to like each other.

Liking Is Optional. Respect Is Not.

High-performing teams are not built on liking each other.  Being friends.  Going out to lunch together.  They’re built on respect.

You don’t have to grab a beer with your teammates. You don’t have to share hobbies, personalities, or political views. But you do have to respect one another’s:

• Intent
• Capability
• Contributions
• Humanity

When respect is present, trust has somewhere to land.

As my colleague David Horsager says, “without trust, you don’t have a high-performing team.” You might have smart individuals. You might have impressive résumés. But you won’t have sustained performance.

Why Leaders Get Stuck on Trust

When leaders say they want to “fix trust,” what they often mean is:

• People are withholding information
• Conflict feels personal instead of productive
• Commitments are shaky
• Feedback is guarded or absent

And that’s just the passive-aggressive side of low trust.  The polite dysfunction that hides in meetings where everyone nods, but nothing really changes.

When a lack of trust is allowed to persist, it doesn’t stay quiet. It escalates. And you start to see much more active and visible symptoms:

• Decisions get second-guessed or ignored
• Silos harden and “us vs. them” thinking takes hold
• Energy is spent protecting turf instead of solving problems
• Mistakes are hidden instead of learned from
• Meetings become performative rather than productive
• Accountability turns into blame or disappears altogether

At this stage, people aren’t just cautious, they are defensive. And defensiveness is the enemy of learning, collaboration, and speed.

What’s most dangerous is that leaders often mistake these behaviors as performance or personality issues. They try to coach individuals, restructure teams, or replace talent without addressing the underlying environment that made trust unsafe in the first place.

Low trust doesn’t mean people don’t care.  It usually means they care too much about self-preservation.  And until the conditions change and until respect is consistently modeled, reinforced, and expected, no amount of “trust talk” will make a difference.

Trust doesn’t break all at once.
It erodes slowly, through what leaders tolerate.

Trust Grows Where Respect Is Practiced

Respect shows up in small, observable behaviors:

• Listening without interrupting
• Giving credit instead of taking it
• Addressing issues directly instead of talking around them
• Disagreeing without diminishing
• Following through on commitments

When those behaviors are present, people begin to think:

“I may not agree with you, but I know you’re not out to get me.”

That’s the soil where trust grows.

You Can’t Demand Trust — But You Can Design for It

Here’s the leadership shift I often challenge CEOs to make:

Stop asking, “How do we get people to trust each other?”  Start asking, “What are we (individually and/or collectively) doing (or tolerating) that makes trust difficult?”

Trust erodes quickly when leaders:

• Allow disrespect to go unaddressed
• Reward results without regard for behavior
• Avoid hard conversations
• Say one thing and do another

On the flip side, trust accelerates when leaders:

• Model respect under pressure
• Hold people accountable for how results are achieved
• Make expectations explicit
• Create space for healthy, productive conflict

Create the Conditions and Then Get Out of the Way

Speaking as a team consultant, trust is not an initiative.  It’s not a workshop.  And it’s definitely not a team-building stunt.

Trust is the byproduct of an environment where:

• Respect is non-negotiable
• Learning is valued over blame
• People feel safe to speak up — and are expected to do so
• Differences are leveraged, not smoothed over

When leaders focus on respectful behavior and clear expectations, people begin to lean in. They test. They take small risks. They learn who they can rely on.  That’s how trust actually forms.

Not because people like each other more, but because they respect each other enough to show up fully.

And that’s what high-performing teams are really made of.

Related Articles:

Stop Choosing. Start Thinking: Escaping the Binary Trap in Team Decisions

Wearing Two Hats: The Executive Balancing Act Between “One Team” and Functional Priorities

Why Your Leadership Team Isn’t Aligned And How to Fix It