Trusting Teams: Greater than the Sum of their Parts
Coaching the Underdogs
Growing up, my dad coached in our local Minor Hockey league. He took it seriously, going through all the coaching classes and training, eventually being qualified to coach up to semi-pro levels. But he didn't chase those higher status positions. He was a volunteer, after all, and his heart was with kids my age or my brother's—12 and under. A lot of coaches treated coaching us as though “it’s just for kids," so advanced training wasn't always a priority for them – some training may have been required, but certainly not to that level. In my eyes, though, what really set him apart wasn't the certifications. It was how he approached team development.
In our little town, most years, there were enough kids for three or four teams. The coaches ranked the players and built teams from strongest to weakest—the "A" team got the top talent, became the travel team, playing the top competition from other towns. It seemed to me that most years, Dad always took the weakest group, the underdogs. To my recollection, the start of the season was rough! Skills were spotty, team-coordination wasn't there yet. He drilled individual skills hard, no question, but his real focus was team stuff: building leadership within the group, getting kids to work together, to learn to trust each other on the ice. Perfection was never required; showing up was. I don’t think he would have ever called it “building trust”, but he certainly framed it as building familiarity and routines. The outcome was trust, though.
By mid-season, they were holding their own in the league. By the end, they were often top contenders. They weren’t always league champions, but they'd gone from clear underdogs to worthy opponents. The turnaround came from trust and collective effort, not just stacking the best individual players.
Top Players or Top Teams
That memory stuck with me because it flips the usual script. We tend to chase star power— the highest performers, the flashiest skills. But in real life (and in high-stakes worlds), teamwork built on trust beats raw individual talent when it counts. Simon Sinek hits this hard in The Infinite Game, Chapter 7 on trusting teams. He talks about working with Navy SEALs—literally life-or-death operations—and asked how they build their units. They'd take a group of medium performers who trust each other deeply over high performers who can't be trusted. A high-performer with low trust is toxic: they hide mistakes, avoid accountability, create cracks that show up under pressure. The team knows who's reliable and who's the jerk before the leader does. When performance slips, the key question isn't "Are they the best?"—it's "Are they coachable?" Open to growth, willing to own issues.
In our personal circles—family, close friends, even our relationship with ourselves—we're playing the same game. Without trust, even the strongest Just Cause (from last post: directing energy away from meaningless busyness toward real contribution) fizzles. We hide struggles, dodge tough conversations, or push solo, wasting effort on protection instead of progress. Safety changes that. When people feel secure, they own problems instead of becoming the problem. They admit when they're off, ask for help, share concerns. Relationships become the foundation, and trust lets everyone do what they're capable of without second-guessing.
We can all be leaders in different contexts– in our homes, friendships, or even self-leadership. Sinek points out that Leaders aren't responsible for results directly—they're responsible for the people who get results. When we deliberately prioritize trust over metrics, it’s remarkable that higher levels of performance usually follow. Being responsible for the people who get the results, also gives the opportunity to build a bench – building the bench means investing in others so they can step up, lead, and contribute long-term to the Just Cause.
Sinek ends the chapter with a poignant analogy: A tree can grow tall and strong, look impressive right now, but if it doesn't produce seeds, it's irrelevant in the long run. No new growth, no legacy—it dies out alone. It’s the same in our circles, for our Just Cause. If we're always the one who knows and does and can’t make it safe, appealing, or possible for others to develop the skills and become part of a bigger team – we might be able to advance our Just Cause today, but we're not planting anything for tomorrow or for future generations. Trust creates the conditions for fruitful seeds and building a team to carry on a meaningful Just Cause.
Ethical Fading
Placing performance metrics above trust, Sinek provides a meaningful and familiar caution that we see in the media far too often: ethical fading. But let’s not be naive, they occur “at home” , too, but aren’t just as obvious to us – especially if we’re a party to it. These are small, seemingly harmless compromises to start—euphemisms to soften things, disconnecting from consequences, blaming "the system" or rules. It compounds like an infection. It was consequential on a massive scale with Wells Fargo. At Wells Fargo, the aggressive sales quotas prompted employees to fake a few accounts here and there. The pressure didn’t let up, though, and the short-term metrics were prioritized over and what was rewarded was repeated. The finite thinking of short term goals led to millions of fake bank accounts. Executives claimed they were shocked by the bad behavior, but until the guilty were brought to light, no one was brought to justice internally. The emphasis was on short term wins, not the long game – the infinite game. Sinek points out that this happens even in places like the military where honor is core, often when lazy leadership swaps real support and communication for more processes.
Rules can be really useful for maintaining ethical behavior; however, simply following the rules, or following them to the letter, doesn’t ensure ethical behavior. For those playing short-term games, finding loopholes and taking advantage of unexpected situations can easily lead to ethical fading. “I’m not breaking any rules” is the call of the finite game, enabling drift and ethical fading. What are the guardrails? Anchor in your Just Cause with an infinite mindset. Keep the long view front and center. Constant reaching toward the ideal (not arriving) beats short-term temptations that derail everything. It attracts people who share the vision and keeps integrity intact. The spirit, not the letter, of the law becomes the measure of integrity.
Overcoming Fear with Trust
Individuals and teams who are playing an infinite game need trust to go beyond the short-term metrics and focus on the long-term game, the Just Cause is the goal and the metric is but a temporary milestone. This all loops back to why we're doing this: directing energy meaningfully needs trusting support to avoid waste and isolation, to highlight needs for training, improvement, and redirection – all those need and environment of trust and safety to bring to the surface and deal with. In my work, we call those trust-building moments "1:1s" (pronounced, one-on-ones). They’re scheduled check-ins where the agenda is simple: What’s on your mind? What's going well? What's challenging? No fixes forced, just listening and owning our parts. That’s at work. At home or with friends, it can be as basic as an honest conversation in the car between stops. It could be a weekly sit-down at the coffee shop or day at the park: “What’s on your mind? What’s going well? What knocked you sideways this week?" Real listening, no jumping in to solve.
That's the reason for these rituals—they keep ethical fading at bay by making it safe and normal to admit shortcomings, problems, and issues before they compound. When we can say "This is hard for me right now" or "I dropped the ball here," the small drifts get caught early, owned, and corrected instead of hidden and allowed to grow.
None of this demands perfection. We’re playing an Infinite Game. Iterations for improvement are enough. Building trust guards the long game against ethical fading and builds effective and powerful teams. Powerful teams ensure the future looks bright, with Sinek’s single tree becoming a resilient forest…with every tree, Aiming Up!
