What to do when you don't trust your peers

A lot of leadership friction starts with an assumption we rarely examine: that the people sitting beside us are operating in good faith.

But what happens when the challenge isn’t managing your team or navigating up, but trying to deliver results while quietly questioning the motives, follow-through, or integrity of the people around you?

When others control inputs you depend on, and incentives don’t line up.
When conversations get “reinterpreted” later, and you start double-checking yourself because you’re not sure who’s safe.

Of course, all the while, the expectations don’t change. You still have to deliver.

I see this dynamic constantly in my coaching work. Different titles, different industries. Same underlying question: How do you lead effectively when collaboration is required — but you don't trust who you're collaborating with?

When you can’t trust the people beside you

Jake leads a team that depends heavily on inputs from a counterpart organization. Over the past year, he tried everything he was “supposed” to try: relationship-building, alignment meetings, informal influence with his peer's direct reports.

Nothing changed.

What finally shifted things wasn’t another conversation — it was a structural move.

Jake instituted weekly meetings with both teams, their shared boss, and a neutral project manager who documented commitments made… and missed.

It wasn’t intended to be punitive, but clarifying.

What Jake had to confront was uncomfortable: staying silent felt collegial and expected, but it was quietly costing him — and the organization. And absorbing that cost alone wasn’t leadership; it was avoidance.

Emma, on the other hand, wasn’t struggling with neglect. She’s a leader I work with who was under constant scrutiny.

She’s younger than her C-suite peers, widely seen as the CEO’s heir apparent, and consistently high-performing.

That combination made her a target.

Other senior leaders watched closely for mistakes they can use against her, to bring to the CEO to diminish her standing — and for months, she tried to adjust accordingly.

She played nice.
Filtered herself more than the others did.
Assumed her margin for error was thinner.

It wasn’t about competence or intent. It was a peer group uneasy about their own standing — and responding by scrutinizing hers.

Then there’s Sarah, an SVP I coach who works alongside a fellow executive who repeatedly misrepresents conversations to benefit himself. She’s checked her experience with others; it’s not isolated, it’s a pattern.

Leadership knows. And they’ve chosen not to intervene — because he’s been there a long time, and rocking the boat feels risky.

So the behavior persists.

This isn’t a misunderstanding. It’s an organization prioritizing stability over repair, and a boss trying to avoid involvement — so they can avoid the fallout. Their silence ensures leaders like Sarah carry the personal cost.

So what do you actually do?

The instinct is often to ask, “How do I fix the relationship?”​
But that’s not always a helpful starting point.

In my work, I usually begin with different questions:

Start with incentives, not personalities.

In Jake’s case, the issue wasn’t that his counterpart was difficult — it was that the role wasn’t accountable for outcomes that his team depended on. Once incentives and visibility changed, behavior followed.

Name when the system — not the person — is the constraint.

Several of these situations persist because escalation is discouraged, ambiguity benefits someone, or the boss prefers you to “handle it yourself.” That choice has real organizational costs — even if they’re rarely tallied.

Distinguish moral discomfort from operational trust.

Not every breakdown is about capacity or alignment. Some are about integrity — an issue we’ll explore more in a later newsletter. And issues like those require clearer boundaries, not more empathy.

Accept when trust may never be mutual — and plan accordingly.

For leaders like Emma, the goal may not be winning everyone over. It may be building trust selectively, protecting their own judgment, and recognizing that time and leadership transitions — not more effort — are the real variables.

​Trust is powerful.
But clarity is non-negotiable.

And when peer trust is missing, leaders don’t need to become colder or more political. They need to become more intentional — about structures, incentives, boundaries, and where they spend relational energy.

If you’re navigating one of these dynamics right now, you’re not alone — and you’re not failing.

This is some of the hardest terrain there is.