“Leaders are responsible for expanding the Circle of Safety — the space where people feel secure, supported, and able to do their best work.”
That line from Leaders Eat Last sits at the heart of this week’s Insight, because a Circle of Safety cannot exist without trust in leadership structure. When leaders operate from separate understandings of how the business functions, the safety disappears long before any conflict becomes visible.
Continuing the scenario from the last time, with two capable leaders, both dedicated, both performing well, but separated by an unseen barrier. Each was focused on strengthening the business through their own methods, yet neither had sight of how the other was working.
The issue is the lack of a shared leadership system. A blind spot that prevented the ecosystem from functioning as one.
When people work hard but not together, trust has no consistent place to take root. Momentum continues but the flow becomes disrupted and organisational predictability disappears.
Without predictability, oxytocin, the trust chemical, has no foundation.
What was happening beneath the surface
Each leader had established routines, expectations and timeframes shaped by experience. All reasonable. All with the intention to support the wider team. However, without exchanging reasoning or understanding the pressures each manager was navigating, a disconnect formed between the two approaches.
The result could only be uncertainty. Team members adjusted to whichever method felt most familiar or least risky, out of practicality. In most organisations, individuals will often opt to conserve energy where the system asks them to stretch unnecessarily.
This quiet divergence influences building trust in teams:
- decisions moved through the business at a slower pace,
- questions are raised in pockets rather than collectively,
- remarks about differences in approach circulate in the rumour mill
- individuals hesitated to seek clarity for fear of undermining someone’s judgment
All the while, the founder, relieved that progress hadn’t stalled, has limited visibility of the misalignment forming because it’s all subtly understandable while being very avoidable in creating a shared system.
Trust hasn't broken. Trust simply has nowhere to establish roots.
Where HUM Restores Visibility
HUM enters at the point when the organisation recognises that this is a clarity concern rather than a need for correction. It’s the point where visibility becomes essential for trust in leadership structure.
Humanise
Recognise that both leaders acted with intent to support the business, each shaped by legitimate pressures and real constraints.
Understand
Tracing how work travelled from instruction to completion. Identifying where assumptions create friction and viewing the ecosystem as a whole, not as individual workflows.
Manage
Establishing a shared foundation through:
- agreed non-negotiable processes
- defined expectations, and
- clarity on what supports the ecosystem and what stresses it
This brings the two approaches into visibility so each leader can begin to understand the other’s logic. A baseline system emerges that can be applied, adapted and depended on.
This alignment is not about choosing one method or replacing another.
It’s about the core of leadership alignment in SMEs, ensuring both leaders grow from the same root system so the leadership canopy stops pulling in opposite directions.
The 3E Filter: Where Alignment Becomes Dependable
The Filter moves the conversation away from personality and preference.
Every proposed practice is evaluated through:
Effective
Does it serve the business reliably?
Does it streamline effort?
Enforceable
Can it be applied consistently across the leadership team?
Does it remove ambiguity from the ecosystem?
Ethical
Does it protect the team from uncertainty?
Does it reinforce fairness and clarity?
Once both leaders evaluated their approaches through the 3Es, a shared system materialised, strengthened by the best of both methods, grounded in clear expectations. A system resilient enough to guide the entire business.
A Pause Worth Taking
For those interested in the deeper what lies beneath the ecosystem alignment and the HUM framework, the private mailing list offers extended breakdowns and case studies.
It’s the parts founders need, so they connect the rhythm but rarely get to probe beneath the surface because it doesn’t sit so pretty.
What Stability Looks Like Once the Roots Align
With a shared system in place:
- the team cease to navigate two separate approaches
- updates follow in a consistent rhythm
- decisions aligned with organisational needs, not individual habits
- remarks about differences diminished naturally
- the leadership canopy provided clarity, and
- movement begins in one direction
Culture strengthens in the space between the roots and canopy because the environment becomes predictable. It’s the full HUM rhythm in practice. The trust in leadership structure is rebuilt through visibility and consistency.
A Moment of Clarity
Trust in leadership structure is built when everyone knows the ground they’re standing on won’t shift beneath them. When the structure is clear, the business hums.
When you’re ready to get started with some guidance, a Hover examines the ecosystem, identifies the blind spots so it’s possible to establish the shared structure a business needs to rebuild predictability.
Until the structure is in place, there will be a delay in forming the foundation of genuine trust.