TRUST IS THE foundation of every relationship. Our teammates deserve to know how we will behave not just when things are going well, but, most importantly, when they are not. They need to trust us, and vice versa. If not, our relationship will have a poor foundation. Unfortunately, teammates, and team leaders alike, destroy that trust constantly in ways that can be avoided.

A corporate teammate who produces an excellent product on Monday but then turns in substandard work on Wednesday destroys trust. A business partner or teammate who does their assigned tasks only some of the time destroys trust. A football player who goes hard on first down, but then takes second down off, or a softball player focused during one at-bat, but not the next, destroys trust. Teammates, and team leaders, have no idea who they are going to get, and hence, what they are going to get. Consistent behavior is predictive of consistent performance. Consistency is key.

By the middle of their deployment, Det 1 had experienced much success. They had conducted several successful direct-action raids. They had become very proficient with the method in which they breached and attacked through the crisis site. Prior to deployment, Det 1 had practiced the same mission hundreds of times over thousands of hours of training. Each Marine had a job to do and standards to meet every single time. Throughout their training and during earlier successful operations in Iraq, the breacher had blown the door in and Marines immediately “rode” that chaos and confusion into the crisis site with a violence of action, never allowing any return enemy fire.

Operation Ricochet was very different. Most of Det 1’s assaulting force had been thrown to the ground from the blast. They immediately started receiving intense enemy fire. Teammates had been shot and were bleeding profusely everywhere. The “bad guys” on the other side of the door knew the Marines had landed and were going to be entering the front door. Their fire concentrated on that area. The lead two Marines in the stack stepped into that area and through it, trusting implicitly that their teammates would follow them as they had hundreds of times prior.

Trust allowed them to do so. It allows the Det 1 Marines and us to stay focused on the mission and our competition, rather than worry about our own teammates following us through the door—or not. If a teammate always hands work in on time and without error and has done so throughout our relationship, we trust that that teammate will do so again. We trust that those who have behaved in a “cool, calm, and collected” manner during times of adversity will do so again. If a member of a hockey team’s penalty-killing unit consistently “sells out” and gives up their body to stop a shot, we know that the next time we’re on the ice together, that teammate will do so again. We can all stay focused on accomplishing the mission rather than an inconsistent teammate.

The opposite occurs on bad teams. A shooting guard sometimes works hard on defense and then other times does not. This forces teammates to “cheat over” to help with the guard’s missed assignments on every possession. The defense breaks down and the other team scores easily. Every corporation in America has countless examples of leaders giving more work as well as the “really important” work to a small group of individuals on the team whom they trust implicitly. Those trusted individuals ultimately leave the team because of the unreasonable and unnecessary workload, and the organization suffers.

As discussed, consistency is key, for both the teammates meeting the standard and for those holding them accountable to it. We lose trust if we hold different teammates accountable to different standards or if we enforce standards inconsistently. Sometimes it is tempting to be inconsistent and let our standards slip. It is indeed more challenging to hold the best player on an athletic team, or the best salesperson on a corporate team, accountable. Performance matters, and losing that production even for a short time can cause us to lose games or not make budget.

Admittedly, when The Program works with teams and organizations there are times when our leadership instructors want to let “little things” go. We like the team with whom we are working. They make a mental mistake, they fail to touch the line on a sprint, or use the wrong commands during an exercise. They are working so hard and displaying such a great attitude. Our instructors, like all teammates and team leaders, want to pretend that they didn’t notice the mistake or talk themselves into believing that maybe they didn’t see the mistake occur. However, we know that if we don’t hold the individual and team accountable, even though they may indeed “like” us more in that moment, they will lose trust in us. We remind parents about this constantly. All teammates would do well to remember it as well.

We must have one team and one set of standards, all the time for everyone. This is not to say that consequences are not different for different team members, based on a host of factors, but there is one set of standards for everyone all the time and a consequence for not meeting them. Most importantly, there is not one standard for some and another for others. Holding different teammates to different standards based on an individual’s talent level is the surest way to decrease the team’s performance. Maybe it won’t suffer in the next game or the next month, but eventually it will, typically when the lights are brightest.

Having inconsistent standards, inconsistently meeting them, and inconsistently holding our teammates accountable to them undermines trust in teammates, team leaders, and the organization. It guarantees cracks in its foundation, destroys relationships, and ensures a deterioration in our culture and performance. Thankfully, the opposite is true as well. Having consistent standards, consistently meeting them, consistently holding teammates accountable when they meet them and when they do not, and consistently enforcing a consequence for the latter and a benefit for the former, all assure a strong foundation, deeper relationships, a strengthening of an organization’s culture, and an increase in consistent performance.

Individuals can win games, but great teams compete for championships. Great teams are composed of great teammates and great team leaders. Great teammates meet the standards first. Consistently. Then they hold their teammates accountable to doing the same. Consistently.