The fastest way to poison trust is to build a myth that only works when you’re winning.
A lot of teams do this without realizing it. They install some version of “we’re the best,” “we always find a way,” or “we don’t miss.” It feels stabilizing. It is not. It trains people to hide normal failure until the gap between the story and lived reality gets too wide to carry.
Then the myth doesn’t update. It walks.
The meetings still happen. The language stays on the walls. But private disbelief starts accumulating, because everyone can feel the story no longer holds what they are actually living through. That is the trust cost: people stop bringing truth into the room before anyone admits the myth is broken.
A usable myth has to survive a bad quarter, a failed launch, a public mistake. If it cannot absorb failure as well as success, it does not belong in the foundation.
The hard test is whether your story still tells people how to stand when the numbers go red.