Trust, team performance and termination

"Chelsea torn to shreds"

There are varying opinions on the issue of the breakdown in trust between former friends John Terry and Wayne Bridge. At last weekend's Chelsea v Manchester City game, Bridge came, shook the hand of every Chelsea player but refused the hand of his one-time best friend Terry. That was one show of defiance, the next was for City to achieve an unexpected victory with Chelsea reduced to nine men and Terry in a futile dispute with the referee. As one commentator put it "Chelsea torn to shreds at home"

Team leadership

While the closest most of us will get to the lifestyle of today's multi-millionaire footballers is reading the sports pages, there is a core lesson here for everyone who leads a team; whether in sports, business, or any organisational context that requires groups of talented inter-dependent people to deliver results.

Leadership and trust

The lesson is that, as an effective leader, while managing the inevitable regular conflicts that emerge in the running of any ambitious enterprise, it is one of your key responsibilities to constantly look out for any signs of erosion of trust between members of your top team.

Leadership action

When you see the signs, it is your job to intervene - even if the threat to trust is due to factors external to the business - and confront the parties. Help them to look for resolution. If none is forthcoming then you have to make a hard choice and one or both of them has to go. Too often in organisations, far too often, erosion of trust between senior executives is ignored and neglected by weak leadership.

John Terry lost the captaincy of England; Wayne Bridge lost the opportunity to participate in the World Cup; but the deep tragedy is that both of them lost a "best friendship" when trust was gone. Time to move on.

Your job

Everybody on your team will not be best friends but for the organisation to perform and compete effectively a high level of trust between all parties is vital. It is your job as leader to ensure that such trust is present; there is no doubt that true friendship can be its underpinning.

WB Yeats

"When friends plan and do together, their minds become as one mind and the last secret disappears"

Your core aim as leader is that "their minds become as one mind".