Does your team trust you?
What your reps aren't telling you can hurt you.
Observation 🧐
Building Trust with Your Team Should Be Your #1 Priority (but why is it so damn hard?)
Trust isn't just a nice-to-have in leadership, but building genuine trust remains one of the most elusive aspects of leadership. Today, let's explore why trust is so critical, why it's so challenging to build, and most importantly, how you can tell if you're succeeding.
The uncomfortable truth about power
Here's what makes trust-building particularly challenging for leaders: the fundamental power imbalance that exists in every manager-direct report relationship. Your decisions have far more impact on your team member's daily experience than their actions have on yours. You influence their projects, their growth opportunities, their schedule flexibility, and ultimately, their career trajectory.
This asymmetry means your direct report has more to lose by sharing what they really want, giving you constructive feedback and ultimately telling you what you don’t want to hear. It's an inherently vulnerable position for them, which makes your role even more crucial.
Why trust matters
Without trust, you're leading blind. Here's the reality: if your direct reports don't feel safe telling you how they're really feeling, you can't help them. This means their dissatisfaction will simmer beneath the surface, growing stronger and more entrenched each day, until one morning you're blindsided by a resignation letter.
The problems you can't see are the ones that will hurt you most.
The team member who's struggling but won't speak up. The process that's frustrating everyone but no one mentions in meetings. The interpersonal conflict that's slowly poisoning team dynamics while you remain oblivious.
When trust exists, these issues surface early when they're still manageable. When it doesn't, they fester until they become crises.
The Trust Test: 3 signs you're getting it right
Here are three concrete indicators you've successfully built trust with your team:
1. Your direct reports bring you their biggest challenges
When someone trusts you, they don't hide their struggles, they bring them to you for help. If your team members regularly approach you with their most difficult problems, it means they believe you'll support them rather than judge them. They see you as an ally in solving problems, not as someone who will penalize them for having problems in the first place.
2. Critical feedback flows both ways
True trust is bidirectional. It means your direct reports feel safe giving you honest feedback about your leadership, your decisions, and your impact on the team. Equally important, when you give them constructive feedback, they receive it as support rather than attack. Neither of you takes feedback personally because you both understand it's about improvement, not judgment.
3. They Would Gladly Work for You Again
This is perhaps the ultimate test. If your team members choose to work for you again in the future (whether that's following you to a new company or requesting to be on your team for the next project) you've built something special. It means they trust not just your competence, but your character.
The Trust-Building Journey Starts Now
Building trust isn't a destination—it's an ongoing practice that requires consistency, vulnerability, and patience. Every interaction is an opportunity to either build or erode trust with your team.
The good news? Once you understand the dynamics at play and commit to the process, trust becomes a renewable resource that makes everything else about leadership easier. Your team becomes more engaged, more innovative, and more resilient because they know they can count on you to have their backs.
Start by examining your own behavior through the lens of these three indicators. Are your team members bringing you their real challenges, or only the sanitized versions they think you want to hear? The answer will tell you everything you need to know about where to focus your efforts next.
Thought Starter 🤔
Love 🥰
My most memorable story of how I knew my team trusted me came when I was an RVP at Salesforce. Check out my story here.