Trusting a team requires more than believing in its abilities. It means sharing enough context, clarity, and authority for people to exercise judgment and carry the work forward in their own way.

Leaders may carry a clear sense of the strategy, the pressures surrounding it, and where the organization needs to go. But clarity held by one person is not yet shared direction. As a vision moves through an organization, different groups encounter it from different positions. Strategy sees the intended outcome. Technology sees dependencies. Operations sees practical constraints. People closest to the work see conditions that may not be visible from the top. When these perspe