Not Every Important Relationship Is Built on Trust

Leaders are often encouraged to build strong relationships across the organization, usually with an implicit definition: trust, openness, mutual support, and genuine personal connection. Those relationships matter enormously. They are also only one kind leaders need.

Some relationships create value because they are functional. Others matter because they are necessary. Still others become workable only when the boundaries are clearly defined. Leaders who recognize only trusting and friendly relationships can leave themselves without the access, information, influence, or cooperation required to get consequential work done.

I saw how narrow that definition had become during a recent leadership session. I shared a story from early in my career about a senior colleague who publicly singled me out for a deadline our team had collectively mishandled. I confronted him privately and made clear that I understood what he had done and would not accept it. The next morning, he corrected the record with everyone who had heard the accusation.

We did not become friends, and I did not trust him, but we had a relationship after that moment. The terms were clear, his behavior changed, and he never treated me that way again. What surprised me was how many leaders in the room later cited that story as one of their most important learnings of the day. The idea that a consequential relationship did not have to be trusting, warm, or even particularly positive felt novel to them—and that should concern us.

The goal is not to make every important relationship trusting or close. It is to build the relationship the work requires.

The Relationships the Work Requires

The strongest leaders operate across a wider spectrum of relationships.

Trusting and true relationships carry candor, loyalty, and mutual support. These are the people with whom leaders can test their thinking, admit uncertainty, and rely on genuine personal regard. They may or may not socialize outside work, but they know one another beyond the immediate task and trust each other to show up.

Functional relationships carry the work. The people involved understand what each does well, when to call, and what kind of insight the other will bring. The relationship may remain formal and contained, with dialogue centered largely on the work, while still being exactly as strong as it needs to be.

Necessary relationships carry access, influence, information, resources, or risk. The relationship exists because the other person can enable, block, reveal, or shape something that matters. Trust and affinity may be limited, and the relationship may require more diplomacy than either person naturally feels. A leader may keep someone close because of trust—or because trust is absent.

Defined relationships carry clear terms and boundaries where goodwill is limited. These relationships often become workable only after a conflict or direct conversation establishes what is acceptable and what is not. Trust creates confidence. Definition creates predictability. Leaders frequently need one when the other is unavailable.

These are not stages on a ladder. A functional relationship is not a failed friendship, and a necessary relationship is not inherently manipulative. Relationships may evolve from one form into another, but they do not have to. What matters is clarity about the relationship that exists, what the work requires, and whether the relationship is strong enough to carry it.

The goal is not to make every important relationship trusting or close. It is to build the relationship the work requires.

Relationship Range Is an Execution Advantage

The leaders who consistently make things happen are rarely those with only the warmest relationships. They are the ones with enough range to draw on the right kind of relationship for the moment. They know who to call before an issue becomes formal, gain cooperation without relying solely on authority, and borrow access, credibility, and influence when their own is insufficient. They hear resistance before it hardens, resolve conflict without immediately escalating it, and work productively with people they would never choose as friends.

A missing relationship can become a hard limit on what a leader can accomplish. During a corporate acquisition, I was fully prepared for the analytical due diligence, but the integration work depended almost entirely on relationships. A senior sales executive resented my involvement and questioned my motives, but I needed his insight and he needed my influence over the integration. We made the relationship work because the outcome required it.

Earlier in my career, I learned that getting to know the people closest to the work dramatically expanded what I could accomplish. I received laboratory results faster because I knew the lab team, respected their contribution, and treated them as partners rather than a service function. At a manufacturing facility, relationships with the operators and the people around them gave me access to practical insight that many engineers missed. In both cases, those relationships increased the speed, quality, and impact of the work.

Relationships do more than create goodwill or broaden perspective. They make work move by speeding decisions, improving access to expertise, surfacing risk earlier, enabling cooperation across boundaries, and helping organizations resolve conflict at the level where it occurs. Without them, problems escalate, resistance appears late, and critical stakeholders remain unengaged.

The people with the greatest ability to mobilize an organization are not necessarily those with the most relationships. They are those who understand which relationships matter, what each one needs to carry, and how to draw on the full spectrum when the work demands it.

Relationships No Longer Build Themselves

The conditions that once helped relationships form and sustain themselves have weakened. Cross-organizational relationships were disrupted during the pandemic and, in many organizations, have not recovered. Remote and hybrid work reduced physical proximity. Virtual meetings became more agenda-driven, while the informal moments before and after them largely disappeared.

The loss is not simply social. Leaders have had fewer opportunities to practice the behaviors through which relationships begin: breaking the ice, asking open-ended questions, following an interesting line of conversation, sharing enough to invite reciprocity, and finding common ground. Small talk is often dismissed as inconsequential, but it is frequently the route to useful knowledge and connection. A comment about the commute, a shared event, or something happening around the meeting can open a line of conversation that reveals experiences, interests, or connections neither person knew they shared. Open-ended questions surface meaningful information and stimulate conversation that yes-or-no responses cannot sustain.

This is not happenstance. It is capability. Leaders also need a clear picture of the relationship landscape around their work. Who is present and who is missing? Who supports or opposes the agenda? Where does power sit, and who influences it? Which relationships can carry disagreement, and which are overvalued simply because they feel warm? Awareness is the first building block because leaders cannot strengthen a network they do not understand.

The people with the greatest ability to mobilize an organization are not necessarily those with the most relationships. They are those who understand which relationships matter, what each one needs to carry, and how to draw on the full spectrum when the work demands it.

What Executives Can Do Now

Organizations cannot continue treating relationship strength as personality, chemistry, or something leaders will naturally acquire with tenure. Executives can make relationship range a visible leadership priority by:

• Broadening the definition. Make clear that valuable relationships are not always trusting, close, or friendly. Leaders need permission and language to build functional, necessary, and clearly defined relationships too.
• Helping leaders see the landscape. Expect them to understand who matters to the work, where power and influence sit, who supports or opposes the agenda, and which relationships are missing or weaker than they appear.
• Developing the capability. Build your leaders’ skill in finding common ground, asking thoughtful questions, maintaining the network, working through limited trust, and setting boundaries when a relationship needs clearer terms.
• Modeling the behavior. Show that strong leadership means seeking insight across levels and functions, investing beyond a trusted inner circle, and treating people closest to the work as consequential.
• Making relationships part of execution. Ask who must be engaged, whose influence will matter, where resistance may form, and whether a missing or weak relationship could slow the work.

At Pathbuilders, we believe great leaders have networks that are strong, deep, and broad. Leaders who can see the full landscape, build the relationships their priorities require, and draw on them at the right moment are better able to move ideas, resolve conflict, and make things happen across the organization.

Building that capacity matters to the entire organization, and senior executives have a role to play. Organizations must proactively develop leaders to build relationships with greater intention, visibly model that behavior at the top, and consistently reinforce it as a tenet of how work gets done.

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