We recently fired a toxic Chief Financial Officer who spent months creating backchannels and turning our leadership team against each other. The remaining leaders are now highly guarded and suspicious. How do we rebuild team trust?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Firing a toxic executive is only the first step; the cultural poison they left behind can linger for months if left unaddressed. Your remaining leadership team is likely suffering from a lack of psychological safety, and they have retreated into defensive postures to protect themselves. To rebuild trust, you must first clear the air. Do not pretend everything is fine. In your next Level 10 Meeting™, address the elephant in the room. Acknowledge the damage the previous CFO caused to the team dynamics and state your commitment to restoring a healthy, collaborative environment. Re-anchor the team in your core value of being Open and Honest. To accelerate the healing process, you need to practice vulnerability. Bring the team together for a dedicated session, perhaps at the start of your next quarterly offsite, and focus on building safety. Use a framework like the trust creation process, where you openly discuss what went wrong and how you can prevent backchannel communication in the future. Establish a firm rule: no triangulation. If a leader has an issue with another team member, they must go directly to that person, or bring it to the IDS® portion of the Level 10 Meeting™. Absolutely no side conversations about peer performance are allowed. As your leaders see that they can speak up without being attacked or manipulated, their guard will drop. Rebuilding trust takes time, but by consistently modeling vulnerability and enforcing peer-to-peer accountability, you will restore the solid foundation your team needs to lead effectively.