Build a Culture of Trust

Team culture isn’t just what you can see in meetings or messages. Use this exercise to surface your team’s values, habits, and unspoken norms so you can strengthen trust, clarity, and alignment.

PREP TIME

30m

Run TIME

90m

Persons

3-10

5-second summary

Reflect on what’s visible and what’s hidden in your team culture.
Use a simple team culture iceberg exercise to surface assumptions, habits, and unspoken norms.
Take concrete steps to strengthen trust and alignment together.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

A physical or digital whiteboard, like a Confluence whiteboard
Sticky notes and markers for in‑person sessions
Shared document, like a Confluence page
Timer (optional)

PLAY resources

Personal User Manual Play

How to build a team culture of trust

Uncover what’s shaping how your team works, and build trust to do your best work together.

What is a team culture of trust?

A culture of trust is a team environment where people assume positive intent, feel safe to speak up and make mistakes, and can depend on each other to follow through. With a culture of trust, everyone can focus their energy on doing great work together.

In practice, when a team has a strong culture of trust:

Team members believe others are acting in good faith, not trying to embarrass, undermine, or catch them doing something wrong.
There’s psychological safety. Teammates can ask questions, admit mistakes, and share concerns without fear of blame or backlash.
There’s mutual reliability. People do what they say they’ll do (or proactively reset expectations), which reinforces confidence over time.
There’s mutual respect and care. Teammates respect each other’s competence and value each other as people, not just as “resources.”
Honest feedback, disagreement, and bad news are welcomed as part of doing good work, not treated as personal attacks.

What does it look like to build a culture of trust?

Building trust starts with assuming positive intent and speaking up when something’s off. Make expectations explicit: who’s deciding, who’s doing what by when, and what “good” looks like. Then, follow through or reset quickly if plans change. In a culture of trust, team members are transparent about how decisions are made, the trade‑offs behind them, and how success will be measured so everyone stays aligned.

Trusting each other doesn’t mean you always agree. In fact, disagreement is welcome. A culture of trust means team members can dissent and feel safe to raise risks or concerns. They respond with curiosity, not blame. When trust wobbles, they repair it fast with a clear apology and next steps.

When should you run this Play?

Use this Play when:

You’re kicking off a new team or project and want to start with clear cultural expectations.
Your team has gone through change, like welcoming new members or a new leader, going through a reorg, or shifting strategy.
You sense friction, confusion, or low trust, but can’t quite pinpoint why.
You’re refreshing your team norms or working agreements and want deeper input.
You’re running a broader effort around employee experience, DEI, or ways of working and need a concrete activity to anchor the discussion.

This Play is especially useful once your team has worked together long enough to have shared experiences to reflect on, but before unhelpful patterns are too entrenched.

5 benefits of building culture of trust

Higher psychological safety: People feel safer speaking up, sharing ideas, and admitting mistakes, which is linked to better learning and performance. (Duhigg, 2016)
Clearer expectations and norms: You reduce guesswork about “how things are done here,” making collaboration smoother across roles, functions, and time zones.
Stronger alignment on values and behaviors: By naming what matters most, you can design rituals, feedback, and recognition that reinforce your desired culture.
Earlier detection of risk and friction: When trust is strong, people raise concerns sooner so you can respond before issues escalate.
More resilient, connected teams: Teams that routinely talk about culture are better able to adapt to change, support one another, and sustain performance over time. (Hartnell et al., 2019; Schein, 1984)

1. Prep the Play

Est. time: 5 MIN

First, let’s get your tools ready and set expectations for how your team will use the time together.

Book 60 minutes on the calendar with your teammates. In the invitation, share the goal of the session (to deepen trust by understanding what’s visible and what’s under the surface in your team culture), along with an agenda so everyone knows what to expect.

Send a message in your team’s group chat recapping the plan, and ask for a volunteer to facilitate. (You can also nominate someone who’s comfortable guiding conversation and keeping time.)

If you’re meeting in person, prep the room:

Draw a large iceberg on a whiteboard or flip chart.
Label three layers of the iceberg: visible culture, unseen culture, and deep culture.
Set out sticky notes and markers so everyone can write their own ideas.

If you’re meeting virtually:

Create a digital whiteboard, like a Confluence whiteboard, and draw the same iceberg with three layers described above.
Make sure all attendees have edit access and know where to add their thoughts.

Iceberg illustration with visible culture above the water, unseen culture below, and deep culture far underneath

Team culture iceberg

Tip: Don’t record or transcribe

If you’re facilitating this session remotely, don’t record the meeting or use an AI notetaker. This can help create a more psychologically safe environment.

2. Set the stage

Est. time: 10 MIN

The facilitator will open the meeting by explaining that this session is about building a stronger culture of trust by getting curious together about how your team works, communicates, and makes decisions. Emphasize that the goal is learning and improvement, not blame.

Then, walk through the three layers of the iceberg, and add a few examples out loud:

Visible culture is what you can easily see: meetings and rituals, collaboration patterns, how feedback is shared, channels you use, and how decisions are announced
Unseen culture is what you can sense: attitudes about risk and failure, how safe people feel speaking up, how conflict is handled, and who feels included or left out
Deep culture is what’s driving everything else: core beliefs and values about what “good” looks like,”what gets rewarded, what’s considered urgent or important, and how you define success

Invite the team to get into a curious and generous mindset. During this session, we’ll assume positive intent, listen to understand, and focus on “how we work” rather than individual personalities.

Iceberg diagram with definitions of visible, unseen and deep culture

The three layers of the team culture iceberg

3. Map your team culture iceberg

Est. time: 25 min

Next, set a timer for 10 minutes, and ask everyone to think about their real experiences on this team over the past few months. Have them individually capture examples for each layer:

Things they’ve seen (visible culture)
Things they’ve sensed or inferred (unseen culture)
Beliefs or values they think sit underneath (deep culture)

People can write one idea per sticky note and place the notes on the whiteboard in the appropriate iceberg layer. Encourage everyone to be candid and specific. “Our standups always run over because we problem-solve in the moment” is more useful than “Meetings are messy.”

When everyone is done with their individual brainstorming, read the notes out loud and cluster them into groups by theme.

Example

Iceberg diagram with post-it ideas for visible, unseen and deep culture

Adding ideas to the iceberg

tip: Partner with AI for grouping and naming

AI can help with grouping similar items and refining the names of each cluster (e.g., “decision-making,” “feedback,” “belonging,” etc.).

4. Discuss what builds – and breaks – trust

Est. time: 15 min

Looking at the full iceberg, ask the team questions like:

“What themes do you see across the layers?”
“Is there anything on the iceberg that surprises you or needs clarification?”
“What parts of our culture build trust?”
“Where might our current habits unintentionally erode trust?”

Write down key reflections near the part of the iceberg you’re discussing.

Next, talk about what to keep, change, and try:

Keep: “Which existing norms or rituals clearly support a culture of trust?”
Change: “What behaviors or habits do we want to shift?”
Try: “What new behaviors, experiments, or rituals should we test?”

Aim to narrow down a small set of specific, observable changes (e.g., “Invite dissent before making big decisions” or “End retros with one explicit trust-building action to try next sprint”).

5. Commit to next steps

Est. time: 10 min

Last but not least, choose a few concrete actions to take, and decide how you’ll hold each other accountable.

Create a shared document, like a Confluence page, and capture:

3-5 trust‑building practices you want to reinforce
2-3 changes you’ll experiment with over the next 4–6 weeks
Any signals you’ll look for to know whether trust is improving (e.g., more people speaking up in meetings, faster surfacing of risks, more direct feedback)

For each action, agree on:

A clear owner (even if the work will be shared)
A target date or check‑in window
Where progress will be tracked (like a Jira or Trello board)

Follow-up

Don’t put this on ice

Treat this less like a one‑time workshop and more like the start of an ongoing team culture conversation. Schedule a follow‑up session to revisit the iceberg and your agreements as a group.