The #1 Mistake Leaders Make When Building Teams

By Karl Pister, PCC

When it comes to building teams, leaders usually get the basics right. They hire capable people. They set direction. They clarify roles. All of that matters.

But in three decades of coaching executives, physicians, and senior leaders, I’ve seen one mistake more than any other. And it’s not about hiring the wrong person or failing to define the strategy.

The #1 mistake leaders make when building teams is this: They prioritize skills over trust.

Why Leaders Default to Skills

It’s easy to understand why.

Skills are visible. Résumés, credentials, certifications—they look impressive. Performance metrics are measurable. And when the pressure is high, it feels safe to build your team around technical brilliance.

But here’s the danger: when leaders build on skills alone, they often confuse talent with teamwork.

I’ve coached more than one leader who built a group of highly skilled individuals only to discover that the group didn’t function like a team at all. On paper, they had the horsepower to succeed. In practice, they stalled, fractured, or burned out.

Why? Because they ignored trust.

Why Trust Matters More Than Talent

Skills will get you started. Trust will determine how far you can go.

Without trust:

• People protect themselves instead of sharing openly.

• Conflict turns personal or gets avoided altogether.

• Meetings get longer, but decisions get slower.

• Politics creep in, and collaboration shrinks.

With trust:

• People offer their best ideas, not just the safe ones.

• Conflict sharpens thinking without damaging relationships.

• Decisions come faster because people don’t question motives.

• Teams move with energy, not just obligation.

That’s the difference between a group of individuals and a true team.

Patrick Lencioni put it well in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: “Trust is the foundation.” Without it, nothing else works.

How Leaders Build Trust Into Teams

Trust doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built one decision, one conversation, one consistent action at a time.

Here are a few ways leaders can build it intentionally:

1. Model It First.

All transformation begins with awareness, and trust begins with you. If your team can’t trust you, they won’t trust each other. Every word, every follow-through, every promise kept or broken teaches them whether or not they’re safe.

2. Create Safety for Conflict.

Teams without conflict aren’t healthy—they’re stuck. Trust creates the space where people can disagree without fear of retribution.

3. Clarify the Purpose.

People will tolerate almost anything if they understand the “why.” When your team is clear on purpose, trust grows because motives are transparent.

4. Follow Through.

This one sounds simple, but it’s where many leaders lose credibility. Every time you make a promise and deliver, you build trust. Every time you fail to follow through, you withdraw from the trust account.

5. Invite Feedback.

Ask your team: “What do you need from me to trust me more?” And then—this is the hard part—listen without defending yourself.

A Perfect Example

A great example of this was a leader with whom I worked a few years ago. He was brilliant. A true “get it done” type of person. He was the “go-to” person within the organization. He had built a team around him of similar high achievers. It was amazing to work with them. The problem was that he had ten superstars, but all of them were running within ten different silos, since there wasn’t a strong relationship between them.

He started to meet with each of them every month. He already had that in place, but this time it was different. Instead of a laundry-list agenda, he focused on relationship. He asked about them, their well-being, their goals. Not the business agenda. THEIR agenda. At first, he was met with some suspicion, but after a few months, things started to change. The performance had always been high, but now it was mixed in with trust.

A nice warm-fuzzy story? Not so much. Fast forward about two years. I was still working with this person. He continued to be the high performer, always data driven. As we finished a meeting, he said, and I paraphrase:

“Karl, I thought you might want to know that since I started those personal interviews we spoke of a while back, our efficiencies have increased by at least fifty percent.”

True story.

My Final Thoughts

The #1 mistake leaders make when building teams is focusing on talent at the expense of trust. Skills are important. But trust is what multiplies them.

So here’s the question I leave you with: What’s the level of trust on your team today?

Because you can teach skills. You can train technique. But if you don’t build trust, you don’t really have a team; you just have a group of people working in the same room. And that’s not leadership.

Leadership is building an environment where trust runs so deep that people bring their best, challenge one another, and move forward together. That’s when a team becomes unstoppable.