Why Your Team Doesn't Trust You Yet, And How To Earn It

Dear Reader ,

Let's Start With a Hot Take: Respect doesn’t guarantee trust, but when you have trust, respect usually follows.

Ever since you took on that role, you’ve been friendly and you’re working harder than anyone, yet the team has remained guarded.
The conversation changes when you walk in; they switch topics. Nobody’s rude, but nobody’s open either.

That’s often a sign your team doesn’t trust you yet and that’s completely normal in a new leadership relationship.

Something Worth Knowing

Respect for your position can be automatic. Trust in you is not. That part, you earn.

People who take on new roles often get this wrong in one of two ways: they either try hard to be liked, bending rules, avoiding hard calls, or they try to prove authority by being firm and distant. Neither builds trust. Both approaches make people more guarded, not more open, because they don’t feel safe enough to show you what’s really going on.

What Trust is Really Built On

• Competence is your ability to do the job.
• Care is whether people believe you want good outcomes for them.
• Consistency is whether your actions match your words over time.

When those three line up, people stop bracing and start opening up.

So How Do You Actually Earn It?

• Do what you say you'll do. Keep the small promises; the call you said you'd make, the answer you said you'd get. Reliability in small things is what makes people trust you with big things.

• Listen before you act. Take time to understand how the work really runs before you start changing it. People trust a manager who learns their reality before rearranging it.

• Protect them. Take the heat when it comes from above; give them the credit when it goes up. A manager who shields their team earns loyalty money can't buy.

• Be predictable. Your team should know which version of you walks in each morning. Your moods are not their problem to manage. When people don’t have to scan your mood before they speak, they feel safer telling you the truth.

• Admit what you don't know. Pretending erodes trust faster than ignorance ever could. Saying "I don't know yet, let me find out" is a trust deposit, not a weakness.

Here's the good news: trust tells you when it has arrived. One day you'll walk in and the conversation won't stop. Someone will bring you a problem early before it becomes a crisis. Someone will disagree with you in a meeting, openly, without first checking your face. That's the signal that your team that has quietly decided you're safe to follow.

You won’t get there by being liked, and you won’t get there by reminding people who’s in charge. You’ll get there the slow way: small promises kept, credit given, heat absorbed, and being the same steady person walking in every morning.

Many of your people have been led before by the boss who demanded respect and never earned trust, and they're waiting to see if you're the same. The most powerful thing you can do is simply, consistently, be different.

This is exactly what I wrote The First 90 Days Playbook for. It walks you, week by week, through how to build those first relationships; who to invest in, what to say in the awkward early conversations, and what to avoid so you don’t inherit someone else’s broken trust.

If you’re stepping into a new role soon (or already in one), you can get your copy here.

Still learning

Eyitemi

Founder, The Management Lab

Every week, The Management Lab lands in the inboxes of new managers, 0-5 years, across Africa who are figuring out leadership in real time; without a manual, without a mentor, and often without anyone telling them the truth about what the role actually demands.

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