Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
How Trust Fuels Agility
Michael Aucoin, D. Engr., PE, PMP is president of Leading Edge Management, LLC in College Station, Texas and author of Right-Brain Project Management: A Complementary Approach. He can be reached at [email protected].
I had eagerly begun my first job as an engineer in an industry with a company that was well known for its excellent management practices. Three weeks in, I got the first inkling that something was terribly wrong with that picture.
My boss asked for an estimate for the duration of the first phase of a project for which I was responsible, and I replied “six weeks”. He said that he would change that to three weeks because engineers always double their estimates to cover themselves. Although I protested that it was a legitimate duration, he would hear none of it. Without using the word, he had just called me a liar.
I am sorry to say that thereafter I lived up (or should I say down) to his rather low trust of his team. With that conversation--and subsequently several more like it--we engaged in a dysfunctional dance that substantially diminished my motivation for my project work.
When teams lack trust, projects fail or encounter severe trouble. One of the most critical ways to promote success on an agile project is to foster an environment in which team members respect one another and demonstrate trust.
Trust is a type of emotional processing in the right brain that involves moral emotions. While morality can be a sticky subject in many circles, here I speak of morality simply in terms of respect for others …
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