You ask your team “What do you really think about this?” The responses come back bland and safe: “I think we’re on the right track” and “Looks good to me.” Everyone’s saying the right things, nodding at the right moments.
But you can sense there’s a whole other conversation happening beneath the surface—one with the real concerns, actual doubts, and ideas people are afraid to voice.
This is the professional mask problem—a pattern where people hide their real thoughts behind a polite, ‘safe’ persona to minimize social risk and protect status. Coaching for organizational trust solves it not by hoping trust will magically appear, but by intentionally designing it from the start.
In this article, you’ll learn why most trust-building fails, how to have explicit conversations that create real collaboration, and five specific ways to get people to actually tell you what they think.
Why Trust Requires Intentional Design
Trust isn’t something that just happens when people work together long enough. Research from Harvard Business Review shows that people in high-trust companies report 74% less stress, 50% higher productivity, 76% more engagement, and 40% less burnout.
What does this actually look like?
- People bring up problems in meetings instead of complaining afterward.
- They admit when they don’t know something.
- Mistakes get fixed instead of hidden.
- Ideas flow because people aren’t worried about looking incompetent.
But here’s what most organizations miss: high-trust cultures don’t emerge by accident—they’re designed.
After 30+ years of developing leaders across 150,000+ practitioners in 25+ countries, Co-Active Training Institute has learned that sustainable trust comes from what we call “designed alliances“—explicit agreements about how people will work together, make decisions, handle conflict, and repair trust when it breaks.
The Neuroscience Behind Designed Trust
When people feel safe to speak up (psychological safety), the brain moves out of threat/defense and into explore/learn. Trust cues then trigger oxytocin, which fuels collaboration and creative problem-solving. That climate shows up when teams set explicit, supportive agreements about how they’ll work together.
Without explicit agreements, you tend to see patterns like:
- People speak in careful, diplomatic language during “candid” discussions.
- The hard questions get answered with safe, meaningless responses.
- Teams walk away from meetings with the same underlying tensions, just more politely packaged.
- Innovation gets replaced by “let’s not rock the boat” thinking.
Related reading: How to Build High-Performing Teams Through Coaching
The Designed Alliance Approach to Trust
“Most trust-building approaches fail because they’re based on assumptions, not agreements. A designed alliance is an explicit conversation where you and your team agree upfront on four critical elements (listed below with examples):
How you’ll make decisions together — “On budget decisions over $10K, the team gives input but Sarah makes the final call. When we disagree, we’ll debate it for 15 minutes, then the decision-maker decides and we all commit.”
How you’ll communicate when stakes are high — “When giving difficult feedback, we’ll start with ‘I care about you and the team, so I need to share something tough…’ If someone seems checked out, we’ll ask directly: ‘I’m sensing some hesitation—what’s on your mind?'”
What you’ll do when someone feels unheard or excluded — “If anyone feels shut down or overlooked, they can say ‘I need a reset’ and we’ll pause immediately to address it. No saving it for later, no pretending it didn’t happen.”
How you’ll evolve the agreement as needs change — “Every quarter we’ll spend 10 minutes asking: What’s working in how we work together? What isn’t? What do we need to adjust?” Alliances aren’t set-it-and-forget-it; they grow with your team.
This approach recognizes that every person is naturally creative, resourceful, and whole—capable of co-creating the conditions where they do their best work.
Why Designed Alliances Work
Unlike traditional “team building” that focuses on activities, designed alliances create explicit frameworks for ongoing relationships. When people know exactly how they’ll navigate challenges together, they can take intelligent risks and bring their full selves to work.
“People tend to avoid disagreement like the plague, primarily because they are afraid that disagreement will put the relationship at risk. Over time, those unexplored and unexpressed disagreements fester and become personal. Resentment and toleration thrive, and authenticity and trust go out the window.”
― Karen Kimsey-House, Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead
Related reading: Best Practices for Change Management
Five Ways to Lead: Your Trust-Building Model
Co-Active’s Five Dimensions of Leadership model gives you specific ways to build trust through designed alliances. Each dimension offers practical tools you can use immediately:
Co-Active’s Five Dimensions of Leadership model doesn’t hand you a checklist of steps. Instead, it offers five distinct ways of being that shape how we lead. Each dimension brings its own quality—how we listen, notice, and speak—and when we design our alliances from this place, the model becomes a powerful, creative framework for trust and collaboration.
To see how it works in practice, let’s look at each of the five dimensions and how you can bring them into real moments of leadership:
1. Leader Within: Start with Self-Awareness
Before your next difficult conversation, ask yourself: “What am I afraid will happen if I’m completely honest about this?”
This internal work determines whether you’ll show up authentically or hide behind your professional mask.
Try tomorrow: Take 60 seconds before a challenging meeting to identify what you’re really feeling. Name it to yourself first—then decide how much to share with others.
2. Leader In Front: Create Clear Direction
Instead of asking “Any questions?” try “What’s one concern about this direction that you haven’t voiced yet?”
This invites people to surface real thoughts rather than polite compliance.
Try tomorrow: In your next team meeting, share one thing you’re uncertain about regarding a decision you’re making. Model the vulnerability you want to see.
3. Leader Beside: Build Collaborative Partnership
Design alliances that make partnership explicit. Ask your team: “How do we want to handle it when we disagree? What should I do if I notice someone seems checked out?”
Try tomorrow: With one team member, have a 10-minute conversation about how you both want to give and receive feedback. Make it specific and actionable.
4. Leader Behind: Develop Others Through Support
Focus on growing people’s capacity rather than just getting tasks done. Ask “What would help you take ownership of this?” instead of “Here’s exactly how to do it.”
Try tomorrow: When someone brings you a problem, resist solving it immediately. Ask three questions first: “What’s your take on this? What have you already tried? What do you think might work?”
5. Leader in the Field: Read the Larger System
Pay attention to what’s happening energetically in your team. Notice who speaks, who doesn’t, what topics create tension, and where the real energy lies.
Try tomorrow: In your next team interaction, spend two minutes reading the room. Who seems engaged? Withdrawn? What’s the unspoken dynamic you’re sensing?
Making the Five Dimensions Practical
These aren’t abstract concepts—they’re specific ways of being that create psychological safety through intentional design.
When you operate from all five dimensions, you become what Co-Active calls a naturally resourceful leader—someone who can create trust in any situation.
Dig deeper: Understanding the Co-Active Leadership Model
From Professional Masks to Authentic Collaboration
When trust becomes intentionally designed rather than accidentally hoped for, teams move from polite agreement to genuine co-creation. People stop managing their image and start managing the work. The energy that was going into “reading the room” and “playing it safe” gets redirected into innovation and problem-solving.
Explore: Workplace Coaching Benefits
Beyond Survey Scores: Real Trust Indicators
Designed alliances create trust you can see and feel:
- Repair happens in real time — When someone feels unheard, there’s an explicit process for addressing it immediately.
- Difficult conversations become normal — Conflict becomes problem-solving rather than relationship-threatening.
- Innovation emerges organically — When people feel safe, they naturally bring forward their best thinking.
Ready to Design Trust? Start with Foundations
Trust isn’t built by accident—it’s designed through intentional practice. Co-Active Foundations is a 8-hour experience where you’ll practice designing alliances, explore the Co-Active Model, and leave with specific tools you can implement immediately.
Co-led by two master faculty members with decades of combined experience, you’ll work with real leadership challenges alongside other growth-oriented leaders. This isn’t theoretical learning—it’s experiential practice based on 30+ years of proven methodology used by our global community of 150,000+ practitioners.
You’ll leave with a complete understanding of how to create psychological safety through designed relationships, plus a personal action plan for implementing these approaches in your specific context.
Claim your spot → Co-Active Foundations
External references
- Paul J. Zak, The Neuroscience of Trust, Harvard Business Review. (Harvard Business Review)
- Center for Creative Leadership, How Leaders Can Build Psychological Safety at Work. (CCL)