Faithful or Traitor? What The Traitors Reveals About Leadership and Trust

If you have ever watched The Traitors and found yourself questioning who you would trust under pressure, you are already exploring the same tensions leaders face every day.

In this episode of the Leadership and Management Reset podcast, I explore what it really means to be Faithful or a Traitor, and what this reveals about leadership, trust, power and followship.

What you’ll learn in this episode

• How The Traitors offers a powerful metaphor for leadership, trust and decision-making under pressure

• What the roles of Faithful and Traitor reveal about power, secrecy and influence in teams

• How suspicion and fear quickly change team behaviour and erode psychological safety

• Why groupthink forms, and why people often choose belonging over truth

• What the round table and voting scenes teach us about silence, conformity and perceived safety

• How integrity and loyalty show up when values come at a personal cost

• Why trust is built or broken in moments where leaders have easier options available

• What followship really means, and why people choose to follow leaders they respect rather than fear

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Faithful or Traitor? Why This Distinction Matters in Leadership

At its core, The Traitors presents two roles: the Faithful and the Traitors. Instinctively, we want one to represent goodness and the other betrayal. Leadership, however, rarely fits into such neat categories.

Both roles involve influence. Both require judgement under uncertainty. Both test character.

The Faithful believe they are operating in the open. They rely on trust, shared purpose and conversation. They assume that if people talk long enough, the truth will surface. This mirrors how many workplace teams operate, built on goodwill and the belief that honesty will be reciprocated.

The Traitors operate with asymmetric power. They hold information others do not. They decide privately and influence outcomes without explanation. Many leaders unintentionally display Traitor-like behaviours, not through ill intent, but because they feel responsible, constrained by confidentiality, or believe secrecy protects the organisation.

The issue is not secrecy itself. It is how power is held, and how trust is experienced by others.

What The Traitors Shows Us About Suspicion and Team Behaviour

One of the most uncomfortable dynamics in The Traitors is how quickly behaviour changes when suspicion enters the room.

Pauses become suspicious. Silence feels dangerous. Reflection is misinterpreted as guilt. Nuance disappears, replaced by a binary sense of safe or unsafe.

This mirrors what happens in teams when psychological safety drops. Curiosity gives way to self-protection. People stop asking what might be true and start working out where it is safest to stand.

At the round table, names gain momentum not because of evidence, but because standing apart feels risky. This is groupthink in action. Belonging becomes conditional, dissent feels dangerous, and speed replaces reflection.

For leaders, this is a crucial moment. When fear sets the tone, people do not become braver or wiser. They become careful.

The Round Table, Voting and the Illusion of Democracy

On the surface, the voting process in The Traitors looks fair. Everyone has a vote. Everyone writes a name. But psychologically, something else is happening.

People read the room.
They sense which names are gaining traction.
They follow confidence rather than certainty.

This dynamic is familiar in organisations. Meetings where everyone nods, only to disagree later. Decisions that appear unanimous but are quietly unsupported. Silence mistaken for agreement.

Leadership is not about forcing consensus. It is about creating conditions where disagreement is safe, silence is explored, and people can stand apart without fear of consequences.

The moment people choose safety over truth, trust begins to erode.

Loyalty, Integrity and the Cost of Doing the Right Thing

The final moments of the series offered one of the most powerful leadership lessons in the programme.

Steven had absolute power. He could have written Rachel’s name and taken the full prize pot for himself. The system rewarded betrayal. Yet he chose loyalty. He honoured his word, even when it came at a personal cost.

Values only matter when they cost us something.

Steven did not act according to what the system rewarded. He acted according to who he decided to be. What he gained was not money, but respect.

Teams notice this. They know whether promises are conditional. They sense whether loyalty flows one way or both.

A useful leadership question to sit with is this: would your team believe your word when there is an easier option available to you?

Followship, Trust and the Leaders People Choose to Follow

This conversation is not only for leaders. It is also about followship.

Followship is not blind loyalty. It is conscious alignment. We choose to follow leaders whose actions match their words, whose values hold under pressure, and who absorb risk rather than passing it downwards.

When leaders act with integrity, people follow not because of hierarchy, but because respect has been earned. These are the cultures where people speak up, stay engaged, and stand together when things become uncomfortable.

So the real question is not whether you are Faithful or Traitor. It is who you choose to be when power sits in your hands.

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