253. Trust Must Be Exercised

At The Table with Patrick Lencioni

Patrick Lencioni

Pat, Business, Success, Work, Entrepreneurship, Companyculture, Patricklencioni, Teamwork, Leadership, Organizationalhealth, Culture, Management

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 October 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Are you unintentionally eroding trust by avoiding hard conversations? Also, what happens to your team when trust goes unexercised?

In episode 253 of At The Table, Patrick Lencioni and Cody Thompson unpack why trust isn’t something to simply build and preserve—it must be used, stretched, and tested to grow stronger. They explore how leaders unintentionally erode trust by avoiding honest curiosity, mistaking it for suspicion.

Topics explored in this episode:

(00:00) Curiosity vs. Suspicion

* How simple questions like “What are you working on?” can build or break trust.

* Why avoiding questions to “protect” trust actually weakens it over time.

(04:59) Trust Isn’t a Museum Piece

* Unused trust is like a car that’s never driven—beautiful but purposeless.

(09:56) Healthy Relationships Aren’t Fragile

* How conflict and tension signal healthy trust, not dysfunction.

* The importance of exercising trust through candid conversations.

(13:28) Trust and Remote Leadership

* How distance and fear of misinterpretation can make trust decay faster.

(17:16) Leaders Must Take the First Risk

* Pat challenges leaders to stop being afraid of awkwardness and exercise trust first.

This episode of At The Table with Patrick Lencioni is brought to you by The Table Group: https://www.tablegroup.com. We teach leaders how to make work more effective and less dysfunctional. We also help their employees be more fulfilled and less miserable.

At The Table is a podcast that lives at the connection between work life, leadership, organizational health, and culture. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4hJKKSL), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6NWAZzkzl4ljxX7S2xkHvu), and YouTube (https://bit.ly/At-The-Table-YouTube).

Follow Pat Lencioni on https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-lencioni-orghealth, http://www.youtube.com/@PatrickLencioniOfficial, and https://x.com/patricklencioni.

Be sure to check out our other podcast, The Working Genius Podcast with Patrick Lencioni, on Apple Podcasts (https://apple.co/4iNz6Yn), Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/3raC053GF5mtkq6Y1klpRU), and YouTube (https://bit.ly/Working-Genius-YouTube).

Let us know your feedback via [email protected].

This episode was produced by Story On Media: https://www.storyon.co.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So with the best of intentions, we can actually decay our own trust because we didn't take the risk of putting it out there.
0:09.5	I mean, and we're people that do podcasts about this and talk about that. I've written books about that.
0:13.7	And even we got lured into, well, I'm just not going to ask because I'm afraid he might think the wrong thing.
0:24.2	Welcome to At the Table, the podcast that lives at the intersection between leadership, teamwork, organizational health, and culture.
0:31.3	I'm your host, Pat Linchony.
0:33.1	Join by Cody Thompson, my regular co-host.
0:36.7	How are we today, Cody? I am doing great, Pat.
0:40.5	Very good. Where it's hot. It's hot in Tennessee. It's hot in Utah. And this podcast is hot.
0:47.9	Hot off the press. Hot off the press. It's trust must be exercised. That's right. We've recently come to understand that even
0:58.6	really well-intentioned people who value trust, sometimes misunderstand it or try to protect it,
1:05.7	which only leads to atrophy, decay, and the loss of trust. And I think this is really important.
1:12.4	This is going to be a real philosophical and theoretical one that has real practical implications.
1:18.8	Where should we start, Cody? Well, I like when you do this, Pat. This is kind of how I think the
1:24.0	listener sometimes has a fun time kind of hearing how these things come about
1:28.6	because we don't just sit in a room and always think about like, oh, what's an interesting
1:33.8	thing?
1:34.4	But more often than not, it comes out of an executive retreat that we were at or a conversation
1:39.4	we had or something we observed a leader do.
1:43.1	And in some ways, this came out of a little bit of you
1:47.2	like asking me and some of the other executive team members like, tell me what you're working on.
1:53.1	And that little phrase, it kind of encapsulates some of the conversation we want to have because
1:59.6	the implications of that phrase
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Patrick Lencioni, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Patrick Lencioni and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.