We've Been Teaching Leadership Backwards

For decades, leadership development has largely focused on teaching leaders how to build trust to build connection and get engagement. It has become the gold standard. We hire for it. Measure it. Train for it.

And while trust absolutely matters, my doctoral research suggests we may have overlooked something even more fundamental.

What if trust isn't the beginning?

What if trust is the outcome?

Over the past several years, I studied the phenomenon of chemistry within executive coaching relationships. Like many people, I was familiar with chemistry in sports teams, romantic relationships, and friendships. We intuitively understand when chemistry exists. We can feel it.

Yet in leadership and organizational life, chemistry has been dismissed.

So I decided to study it. What emerged was surprising.

Chemistry was not random.

It was not luck.

And it was not simply personality compatibility.

Instead, chemistry appeared as a relational phenomenon that emerged under specific conditions and produced measurable benefits for both individuals and groups.

More importantly, chemistry consistently appeared before many of the outcomes we traditionally seek:

• Before trust.
• Before engagement.
• Before alignment.
• Before commitment.
• Before buy-in.

In many cases, chemistry seemed to accelerate the development of all of them.

Think about the highest-performing team you've ever been part of. People often describe those experiences by saying: "We just clicked." or "We were in sync."

They describe an energetic and relational quality that existed before they could fully explain it. That quality is chemistry.

One of the most important findings from my research was that chemistry is almost always present as a possibility. It’s just sitting in the space between people, waiting to be ignited and utilized.

It is less like something we create and more like something we uncover. It’s waiting for the right conditions to emerge.

When those conditions exist, people orient toward one another differently:

• They become more curious.
• More engaged.
• More willing to explore difficult ideas.
• More willing to challenge assumptions.
• More willing to move together.

You don’t need more effort or buy-in…

You need more chemistry.

Because chemistry gives us many of the things we have been trying to manufacture through effort alone.

When chemistry is present:

• Trust develops faster.
• Communication improves.
• Teams coordinate more naturally.
• People become willing to take risks together.
• Meaning-making accelerates.
• Leadership becomes less about control and more about emergence.

Perhaps the greatest implication is this: Many leaders have spent years trying harder. Learning more. Implementing more processes. Adding more initiatives.

When what may be missing is not another leadership technique. It may be the relational conditions that allow chemistry to emerge.

Maybe the future of leadership isn't found in teaching people to work harder at connection. Maybe it's found in understanding the chemistry that already exists between us.

What would change if we started there?

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you ever experienced a team, leader, coach, or organization where the chemistry was undeniable? What happened as a result?