.
Building Trust
and Credibility
One of your fi rst tasks as a manager and leader is to gain the trust of your
team. But your employees won’t grant that trust automatically. As a man-
ager, you have a profound effect on how they do their work and live their
professional lives. As you take charge, they will have questions such as:
Will you be able to represent their work well to people outside the unit? Is
it safe to speak up when they disagree with you? How will you react when
they tell you they’ve made a mistake? What values will you act on when
faced with a diffi cult decision? Will you be an ally and an advocate?
Gaining trust can be a particularly delicate task when you have been
promoted to manage your former peers. You need to establish authority
and credibility without alienating those who used to have the same title as
you—or who may even have been vying for the same job—and whose alle-
giance you now need. See the box “Tips: How to manage your former peers.”
Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill and executive coach Kent
Lineback defi ne trust as a combination of two components: character and
competence. Character is about how your intentions align with your actions,
24Develop a Leader Mindset
TIPS
How to manage your former peers
If you’ve been promoted over your former coworkers, you have a fi ne line
to walk. Here’s how to get off on the right foot.
•
Make people aware of the transition. Ideally the team will learn
about your promotion from someone else—the outgoing boss or
another supervisor. Make sure there’s a plan in place for getting
the word out, and if you end up making the announcement your-
self, be modest with the wording.
• Don’t introduce any major changes right away. No matter how
good your plan is, hold off for a bit. Aggressive change will look like
a rejection of your predecessor, and you don’t know how their sup-
porters will feel about that. Don’t damage these relationships right
off the bat.
• Meet with your team members one-on-one. Don’t let people
form assumptions about what your new relationship with them
will be like; show them. Spend time with each person, individually
and in small groups, sharing your vision and asking for feedback.
“What can I do to support your success?” is a great lead-in.
• Distance yourself. If you continue to socialize with people the
way you used to, you’ll blur the lines that defi ne your new role and
open yourself to the accusation that you’re playing favorites.
•
Make peace with your rivals. If you competed for this job with
peers, acknowledge to yourself that they’ve suff ered a loss. Don’t go
overboard—it will look like you’re gloating—but pull them aside to
say that you value their contributions. If you can, take a specifi c ac-
tion to back up your words, like assigning them an important task.
Source: Amy Gallo, “How to Manage Your Former Peers,” HBR.org, December 2012.
Building Trust and Credibility25
while competence refers to the technical, operational, and political knowl-
edge you bring to the job. Your employees quickly form opinions of your
character and competence based on both what you say and what you do,
and they’ll continue to refi ne these opinions as they get to know you better.
Establishing your character
Your character is about your values: Are you out only for your own gain, or
the company’s profi t? Do you also genuinely care about the group? If you
don’t, Hill and Lineback warn, your people will not trust your character, no
matter how able and productive you are. Demonstrate your interest in the
group and its work in the following ways:
Strive for consistency.
Being consistent means that your actions align with the values you pro-
fess. For example, if you emphasize rigor and accuracy to your team, you
also vet your own information carefully and invite them to question your
conclusions. Keep your promises and model ethical behavior from day one,
even if it means making an unpopular decision, like reassigning a well-
liked employee who has a confl ict of interest. By behaving consistently, you
teach people that they can interpret your actions in a straightforward way,
without worrying about your intentions.
Regulate your emotions.
Your employees don’t need to you to be a beam of sunshine in the offi ce,
but they do need to know that you won’t have a meltdown or lash out when
you’re under a lot of stress. Avoid extreme emotional displays like giddiness
and despair, and show compassion for others when you’re in a tough situ-
ation. For more about how to cultivate this quality, see “Emotional steadi-
ness and self control” in chapter 3, “Emotional Intelligence.”
Mind your manners.
Show respect for people as individuals. Be respectful by about answering
emails promptly and beginning and ending meetings on time. Say hello
26Develop a Leader Mindset
to people in the hallways, hold the elevator door, make eye contact when
you’re listening, and don’t multitask during meetings. Pay attention to the
message you’re sending with more subtle body language, too. Research by
Northeastern University professor David DeSteno shows that people are
likely to perceive you as untrustworthy when you clasp your hands, touch
your face, cross your arms, or lean away from a conversation.
Ask questions.
You can get a lot of mileage out of a question. It solicits information, but it
also communicates information—about who you are, what you care about,
and how you regard the person you’re talking to. Good questions demon-
strate your own knowledge and values, and by listening attentively, you
show people that you’re interested in who they are and what they can do.
This tactic is especially useful when you’re new to a team and you don’t
want to come off as arrogant or close-minded.
Invite feedback.
Show that you care about your impact on others by asking people for feed-
back and then doing something with it. The point here isn’t just to become
a better manager, but to demonstrate self-awareness. Everyone has blind
spots, so show that you’re willing to take responsibility for yours.
Give others a chance to shine.
Prove to your employees that you genuinely welcome their input by actu-
ally using their knowledge in early decision making and problem solving.
Recognize individual contributions, not just within your offi ce but to the
rest of the company, too. Show that you want their efforts to benefi t them
directly, and that they can trust you to steward their good work without
trying to take advantage of it. By soliciting—and crediting—help from your
team, you send the message that you don’t just see them as drones or in-
struments to your own triumph.
Note that these strategies don’t have anything to do with being likable.
If your sense of humor doesn’t connect with that of one of your employ-
Building Trust and Credibility27
ees, that’s OK. What matters is their perception of your integrity, that you
mean well by them and by the company, and that you can deliver on your
promises.
Demonstrating your competence
As your employees evaluate your character, they’re also taking stock of
your competence. On their minds are questions such as:
• Do you understand the work your unit performs? Do you know
how this work gets done in your organization?
• Do you know how to get the resources and visibility your team
members need to be successful?
• Are you an effective coach and developer of talent in the
organization?
Your employees will fi nd the answers to these questions in your ev-
eryday behavior as well. Here’s how you can cultivate their faith in your
competence:
Plan quick wins when you start a new role.
Ultimately, people are going to judge you by your results. So produce some
good ones—fast. In his classic work on the “fi rst ninety days” of any new
management role, leadership transitions expert Michael Watkins recom-
mends picking three or four simple, well-defi ned problems that matter to
your team or your boss and solving them in a way that’s consistent with
company culture. Don’t overreach: failing at fi ve tasks looks worse than
succeeding at four.
Confront tough issues and knock down roadblocks.
Your employees want to know whether you have the operational and politi-
cal know-how to create favorable conditions for their work in the organi-
zation at large. Identify a few of the obstacles that are holding your team
back: Can you get a famously diffi cult executive to sign off on a resource
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