Trust and Building Teams

How to build a culture of trust that enables accountability, ownership, and strong performance. A culture of trust is built through relationships where people trust you to consistently treat them with respect, fairness, and gratitude for the talents and ideas they bring to their work. When trust becomes a team norm, friction decreases, accountability increases, and teams perform without constant oversight.

Confident leader in naval uniform standing at attention, embodying calm, steady leadership presence.

How Leadership Presence Brings Your Values to Life — Especially on the Hard Days

Leadership presence is tested when pressure rises, emotions run high, and people look to you for steadiness. Key Takeaways When things are calm, leadership presence is easy. Most leaders show up as their best selves. Values feel clear. Decisions feel rational. Teams feel steady. But leadership isn’t measured by the easy days. Who you are as a leader—and how others see you and respond—is defined by how you handle the hard stuff. Leadership presence is what allows you to live…

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Person journaling beside a winter window, reflecting on personal leadership values.

A Simple Exercise to Define Your Signature Leadership Values

Leaders make their biggest leaps when they plan who they want to be when things get hard — and dedicate themselves to those values. Key Takeaways Why defining leadership values matters: Leadership presence isn’t charisma, confidence, or polish. It’s the steadiness that comes from knowing what you stand for and being able to return to those values in the moments that matter most. Your values shape the culture your team experiences every day — how people communicate, raise concerns, solve…

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Bright north star shining in a clear night sky, symbolizing clarity and direction in leadership.

Why Every Leader Needs a Signature Leadership Style (and Why Values Are Your North Star)

When things get tough, great leaders lead from values and get results. Skills like managing deadlines, resolving conflict, running meetings, and inspiring teams all matter. But the leaders people remember — the ones who build trust, inspire commitment, and deliver results — anchor those skills in something deeper. They lead with a signature leadership style, shaped by a small set of values that guide their hardest decisions. In unpredictable times, values become a north star. They steady you, strengthen your…

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baseball player about to make a catch and take ownership of it

Why the Best Teams Take Ownership — and How to Build Your Team Ownership

Why do professional athletes so often take ownership for errors and misses, while in offices around the world, mistakes and mishaps devolve into blaming, bickering, and finger-pointing? The difference beween teams that take ownership and those that don’t lies in structure. Key Takeaways — Building Team Ownership Building Team Ownership is a Strategy Nearly every leader I work with wants their team to take ownership of their work—and nearly all of them admit how difficult it is to make that…

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Leadership resources hub with practical tips for trust, confidence, empathy, team alignment, and decision making

Start Here for Leadership Resources: Practical Tips and Solutions to Use Now

Welcome! My blog offers for practical leadership resources to help you build stronger, more productive, and more resilient teams. Leadership is not innate. It’s a set of skills that, practiced daily, promote cooperative, steady focus on what matters most. Anyone can learn these skills with dedication and practice, even if you don’t hire a coach. These skills help good leaders diagnose and tamp down distractions. Using tactics that support these skills, they build a positive team culture where everyone feels…

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taking steps to build trust at work

How to Build Trust at Work: Five Everyday Actions

Trust or mistrust is a choice that every leader has to make: build trust at work to unlock performance or sow distrust and shut it down. Key Takeaways Most organizations fall in the middle between high trust and low trust cultures. In these organizations, managers can vary widely in how much they trust others. Employees are sensitive to even the smallest hints of mistrust. To build trust at work, trust must be a consistent and fundamental part of your leadership…

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Lisa D. Foster, Ph.D. ACC  is an independent coach. As an Associate Certified Coach by the International Coaching Federation, Lisa honors and abides by the ICF Code of Ethics.  All coaching sessions and consultations are confidential.

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