Our leadership team gets highly defensive during weekly Level 10 Meetings whenever metrics or Rocks are missed, turning what should be healthy IDS sessions into a blame game. How do we build vulnerability-based trust so team members feel safe admitting they need help?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Defensiveness is a symptom of low trust and high status management. When leaders feel they will be punished or lose status for a red metric, they hide issues, make excuses, or point fingers. To break this cycle, you must actively build psychological safety and share vulnerability, which are the core foundations of strong group culture.

Start by shifting the leadership team's mindset from defending themselves to solving the problem. Use the Trust Creation Process from the Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: engage, listen, frame, envision, and commit. When a metric is missed, the team must not attack the owner. Instead, frame the issue as a systemic challenge the team owns together.

As the owner or leader, you must go first in showing vulnerability. At your next quarterly meeting or weekly Level 10 Meeting, openly share a major mistake you made, or admit a personal capacity limit. When the boss shows vulnerability without dying, it sends a powerful signal to the rest of the team that it is safe to do the same.

Establish a team Charter that defines how you handle issues. Agree to three basic principles:
- Trust: we communicate openly and solve issues completely.
- Same Page: we have one vision and hold each other with respect.
- Yes to Strategy: we support the plan once decided.

When a metric goes red, the leader's job is to say they need help, and the team's job is to rally around them to IDS the issue, not to judge them. This shifts the dynamic from blame to collaborative problem-solving.