Sep 29, 2026 · 15 min · 8 segments
In this episode of Leadership Launchpad, listeners are introduced to key concepts from the book Minimum Viable Manager. The episode focuses on the importance of building trust within technical teams…
Matt GjertsenHost
So why is trust important? I think especially for technical people, trust other soft fuzzy stuff.
We like to sweep it under the rug, but endless research and practical examples show just how important trust is.
The first example that I always like to bring up is something called Project Aristotle, right? Google did a massive research project for over two years where they examined hundreds of teams within Google and ranked them all by high performers, low performers, and did a bunch of studies to determine what are the things that make a high performing team.
They came up with several things, but the clear research that stands out says the number one most important thing for a high performance team is having psychological safety.
But psychological safety means am I willing to call people out? Am I willing to speak my mind? Am I willing to handle disagreements directly with another person? Am I willing to put in that little extra effort because I know my team will have my back? This is all the research around Amy Edmondson, Harvard researcher who looked into this same phenomenon.
I use the term trust because I think trust is what's necessary to create a psychologically safe environment.
Patrick Lencioni, the author of the book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, also defines trust as the foundational layer that is required if you want to have a high performing team.
If you're not willing to have that productive conflict, then no one can identify what's really important, what the real blockers are to the team.
So if you want to have a high performing team, it starts with trust and psychological safety.
The clearest example of that, which I talk about in the book, which I absolutely love, is from Ford in 2006 when Alan Mulally became Ford's CEO.
So when he came in, The Ford executive teams had a way that they would brief all of their projects where they would use a traffic light brief where they would go through and each executive would say all their initiatives and then whether or not their initiatives were green, they were on track, they were on plan, they were yellow, they were at risk, or green.
And he turns to him and he says, gentlemen, thank you for all of this information.
If all of our initiatives, all of our projects at this company are green, why is the company about to lose $17 billion, right? The company had created a culture where even at the highest level, the executives didn't They didn't have trust that they could bring up things that were going wrong because they knew it would be held against them.
So why is trust important? I think especially for technical people, trust other soft fuzzy stuff.
We like to sweep it under the rug, but endless research and practical examples show just how important trust is.
The first example that I always like to bring up is something called Project Aristotle, right? Google did a massive research project for over two years where they examined hundreds of teams within Google and ranked them all by high performers, low performers, and did a bunch of studies to determine what are the things that make a high performing team.
They came up with several things, but the clear research that stands out says the number one most important thing for a high performance team is having psychological safety.
But psychological safety means am I willing to call people out? Am I willing to speak my mind? Am I willing to handle disagreements directly with another person? Am I willing to put in that little extra effort because I know my team will have my back? This is all the research around Amy Edmondson, Harvard researcher who looked into this same phenomenon.
I use the term trust because I think trust is what's necessary to create a psychologically safe environment.
Patrick Lencioni, the author of the book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, also defines trust as the foundational layer that is required if you want to have a high performing team.
If you're not willing to have that productive conflict, then no one can identify what's really important, what the real blockers are to the team.
So if you want to have a high performing team, it starts with trust and psychological safety.
The clearest example of that, which I talk about in the book, which I absolutely love, is from Ford in 2006 when Alan Mulally became Ford's CEO.
So when he came in, The Ford executive teams had a way that they would brief all of their projects where they would use a traffic light brief where they would go through and each executive would say all their initiatives and then whether or not their initiatives were green, they were on track, they were on plan, they were yellow, they were at risk, or green.
And he turns to him and he says, gentlemen, thank you for all of this information.
If all of our initiatives, all of our projects at this company are green, why is the company about to lose $17 billion, right? The company had created a culture where even at the highest level, the executives didn't They didn't have trust that they could bring up things that were going wrong because they knew it would be held against them.
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