I was basically thinking of two different examples I've had in my career. In my last position (Ops Manager) there was very little trust within the management team. Even though we tended to communicate pretty openly with each other, the dynamic was still very much about covering our own ass. I think this really negatively impacted us as a team, because we were rarely all on the same page, therefore that trickled down to the employees bellow us and influenced the dynamics between shifts. I think the bad part about all of that was my direct manager almost preferred that way, because he was worried that if we were cohesive then we may turn against him, therefore it turned into a very fractured environment.
The position I held prior, a colleague and I were able to establish a strong trust with each other. This ultimately allowed us to work in cohesion and collaborate with each other openly. I think one contributing factor to us being able to establish this trust is him and I were not in competition with each other for a promotion or anything. This ultimately allowed us to elevate each other in our own roles. I ended up being the top manager at the site and was exposed to many opportunities because of that. I also found that it made the day to day work experience A LOT more positive.
The thing is though when working for different companies, I don't think a lot of people are even interested in establishing trust, especially if they feel they have the upper hand (say if I'm new and they've been there for a few years) and it basically just turns into a doggy dog environment.