One of the first mistakes new leaders can make is assuming that appointment creates trust. You are given the role, introduced to the team, invited to meetings you did not previously attend and granted authority to make decisions that affect other people. The organisation chart changes, your email signature changes and, almost overnight, people are expected to listen when you speak. None of that means they trust you.
A position gives you authority and may give you compliance. People will attend meetings because you have asked them to, complete tasks because you are entitled to allocate them and follow decisions because your role gives you the authority to make them. Trust is different. It develops through hundreds of experiences that gradually answer questions people may never ask aloud. What happens if I disagree? Will you do what you said you would do? Will you support me when supporting me is inconvenient? Can I admit that I made a mistake? Will you listen before reaching a conclusion? Are you the same person when something goes wrong as you are when everything is going well?
I learned some of my most important lessons about trust during my first international posting. I worked for a leader who gave people opportunities to prove themselves. If you made a mistake, you learned from it and tried to do better. If something went seriously wrong, you talked about it, accepted responsibility and worked out how to improve. Accountability existed, but so did the belief that people should be given the opportunity to grow beyond their mistakes. He also wrote handwritten notes whenever somebody had contributed to something significant, supported an event or done something worthy of recognition. It was a small gesture, but small gestures repeated consistently rarely remain small. They tell people that their work has been noticed, that their contribution mattered and that somebody took enough time to acknowledge it personally.
I admired him enormously and, for a time, probably wanted to copy him. With experience, I realised that copying another leader rarely works because leadership has to be authentic to the person practising it. What I could take from him were the principles underneath his behaviour: courtesy, consistency, accountability, belief in people and a willingness to give them genuine opportunities to develop. Those principles have remained with me.
Trust Is Not a Benefit of Position
John C. Maxwell describes Position as the first of his five levels of leadership. It is the starting point, not the destination. People follow because they have to, and one of the dangers for new leaders is mistaking that compliance for something more meaningful. Trust cannot be written into a job description. It has to be experienced.
People learn whether they can trust leaders by watching what happens in ordinary situations. A promise is made and they notice whether it is kept. Somebody raises a concern and watches whether it is taken seriously. A mistake creates additional work and people notice whether the leader responds with curiosity or blame. Someone disagrees with a decision and waits to see whether the relationship changes afterwards. An inconvenience disrupts the day and people discover whether the leader remains respectful or whether frustration reveals something different.
None of these moments is likely to appear in a strategic plan, and most will never be discussed at a leadership meeting. Yet together they shape how people experience the person leading them. This is why trust is built long before it is needed. By the time a leader faces a significant challenge, asks people to support an unpopular decision or needs a team to continue moving through uncertainty, the foundations of trust have usually already been established. Leaders cannot suddenly demand trust because circumstances have become difficult. People will draw upon everything they have experienced before that moment.
People Need to Know What Happens When They Disagree
Psychological safety is sometimes discussed as though it can be created through statements, policies or leaders repeatedly telling people that their door is always open. Those things may help, but people rarely decide that an environment is safe because somebody told them it was. They decide by watching what happens when somebody actually takes the leader at their word.
In one leadership role, I made a decision that a member of staff believed was wrong. She challenged it and eventually took the matter to HR and my own line manager. The decision was overturned. Later, she came to see me to apologise. She was relatively young, still new to the organisation and uncertain about how I would react. It would have been easy for the situation to become uncomfortable. My decision had been challenged, she had gone above me and other people had concluded that I was wrong.
However, I had told staff from the beginning that I did not want people who simply nodded and agreed with everything I said. If they genuinely believed something was wrong, I expected them to challenge it appropriately and use the structures available to them. That was exactly what she had done, so there was nothing to apologise for.
My response in that moment mattered more than the original message I had given staff. It is easy for leaders to say they welcome challenge when nobody is challenging them, and it is easy to claim that people can disagree when every important decision remains intact. The credibility of those statements is tested when someone actually does it. Psychological safety becomes real when disagreement has consequences for the decision but not for the relationship.
If leaders become colder, less trusting or less supportive towards people who challenge them, everyone notices. They may not discuss it openly, but they learn the lesson, and the next time somebody disagrees, they may decide to remain silent. People test safety before they trust it, and the leader’s reaction provides the answer.
Trust Is Also Damaged by What We Fail to Do
There is another leadership moment I remember for very different reasons. A member of staff told me that a parent had been verbally abusive towards her. I knew the parent, I was aware of what had happened, and I did nothing.
Even now, I cannot give a satisfactory explanation for why I failed to act. I should have supported the member of staff, addressed the behaviour and made it clear that being part of a service organisation does not mean accepting unacceptable treatment. I did not, and I regret it because it contradicted one of the principles I have tried to follow throughout my leadership: staff should feel safe, and they should know that when they are treated unacceptably, their leader will support them.
Trust is often discussed in terms of promises that are broken, inconsistent decisions or things leaders actively do wrong, but trust can also be weakened by absence. The conversation we avoid, the behaviour we tolerate and the moment when somebody reasonably expects us to act and we remain silent can stay with people for far longer than leaders realise.
One failure to act does not necessarily destroy years of trust, but it can create a crack that remains long after the leader has moved on. This is one of the uncomfortable realities of leadership. Our intentions do not determine how people experience us. People judge whether they can trust us through what we repeatedly do and, occasionally, through what we fail to do when it matters most.
“They Already Know”
One of the most dangerous assumptions leaders make is that communication has happened simply because information has been sent. I have made this mistake repeatedly.
Leadership involves dozens of conversations. You speak to individuals, teams, senior colleagues and stakeholders. You attend meetings, send messages, answer questions and make decisions. After a while, it becomes surprisingly difficult to remember exactly who knows what, and somewhere along the way leaders begin saying, “They already know.”
A message may have been sent but not read. A meeting may have taken place but not everyone attended. An explanation may have seemed clear to the person giving it while being interpreted very differently by the people receiving it. Leaders can become so familiar with a subject that they forget other people have not been involved in the same conversations or spent the same amount of time thinking about it. Communication is not measured by what was said. It is measured by what was understood.
The difficulty is that the solution cannot simply be more meetings. I have never believed in meetings for the sake of meetings, and with teams I have led, I have actively tried to move straightforward administrative information into written communication. If something can be explained clearly in a short email, there is little justification for taking thirty minutes of several people’s time to say the same thing aloud.
The problem is that communication is rarely quite that simple. Some information contains nuance. People may need to ask questions, challenge assumptions or understand the reasoning behind a decision. A written message has to be detailed enough to provide clarity, but the longer it becomes, the less likely people are to read it carefully. Leaders then become frustrated that people have not read their emails and begin wondering whether another meeting is needed after all.
There is no perfect answer. The leadership judgement lies in choosing the method that matches what people need to do with the information. Straightforward administration can usually be written, while complex decisions, significant change and issues likely to generate uncertainty often benefit from conversation. Even then, a face-to-face meeting only creates clarity if people feel safe enough to admit that they do not understand, ask the question they think everyone else already knows the answer to or say that they disagree. Communication and trust are not separate leadership issues. Each depends upon the other.
Successful Change Starts With Trust
Earlier in my career, I sometimes believed that a good idea should be enough to create change. Explain the problem, present the solution, announce what happens next and begin implementation. When resistance appeared, it was tempting to see the resistance as the problem.
Experience has made me considerably more cautious about that conclusion. People may resist change because they do not understand it, lack the skills or resources required to implement it, or have experienced previous initiatives that disappeared after six months and see little reason to invest emotionally in another one. They may understand the organisational argument but remain uncertain about what the change means for them personally. Sometimes what leaders call resistance is simply insufficient preparation.
This is where trust becomes critical. Leaders who have listened consistently, communicated clearly and demonstrated that disagreement is safe are in a much stronger position when change becomes necessary. People may still disagree with the decision and remain worried about the consequences. Trust does not guarantee enthusiasm or remove legitimate concerns, but it changes the starting point.
If people believe the leader will listen, explain the reasoning, acknowledge difficulties and respond honestly when something goes wrong, uncertainty is easier to manage. The work of building that trust cannot begin on the morning the change is announced. By then, leaders are drawing upon the relationships they have already created.
Leaders Should Speak Later More Often
Earlier in my career, I was more likely to believe that leadership meant having answers. A problem would be raised and I would offer a solution. A question would be asked and I would respond. A discussion would begin and I would share my view. It felt useful and decisive, but what I understood less clearly was what happened to the conversation after I spoke.
Once the leader gives an opinion, the room changes. Some people become less willing to offer an alternative, others adjust their contribution towards what they believe the leader wants to hear, and people who are less confident may decide there is little point speaking because the direction of travel appears to have been established.
Over time, coaching has become central to how I think about leadership. I once came across a phrase that captured the aspiration particularly well: I want to be the architect of my own irrelevance, empowering others to the extent that I am no longer needed. The point is not that leadership becomes unnecessary. It is that leaders should resist creating organisations in which every decision, answer and solution depends upon them.
That means speaking later sometimes, asking questions, allowing silence and giving people time to think aloud without immediately correcting, advising or directing them. It also means recognising the difference between coaching and mentoring. Advice can be valuable when someone genuinely lacks experience or knowledge, and there are moments when people need to hear what we know. However, advice given too quickly can take ownership away from the person we are trying to help.
Some People Need Belief More Than Advice
Shortly before I left my most recent leadership position, a colleague came to see me on my final day. We had worked together for some time, and I had watched her develop as a leader. There were tears on both sides. We hugged, and I quietly told her that she needed to believe in herself, that she was going to become a very good leader and that she needed to trust her judgement because her instincts had repeatedly been right.
She did not need advice, another leadership model, a list of strategies or someone explaining what she should do next. She already had the competence. What she needed was greater confidence in the competence she already possessed.
Knowing the difference matters because people at different stages of development need different things from leaders. Someone who lacks knowledge may need instruction. Someone developing a new skill may need guidance, feedback and opportunities to practise. Someone who has become capable but remains uncertain may need encouragement and reassurance. Someone who is already highly competent may simply need space, trust and the knowledge that support is available if required.
Leaders who give everyone advice eventually create people who keep returning for answers. Leaders who know their people can respond to what each person actually needs. Sometimes the most valuable thing a leader can say is not, “Here is what I think you should do.” It is, “I think you are ready.”
Trust Is Built in the Ordinary Moments
Leadership positions matter. Authority matters. Organisations need people who are willing to make decisions, accept responsibility and provide direction. But position does not create trust.
Trust grows through repeated experiences of consistency. It develops when leaders listen before speaking, communicate until people understand rather than simply until information has been sent, respond constructively when challenged and remain respectful when circumstances become inconvenient. It grows when people discover that admitting a mistake does not permanently define them, that disagreement does not damage the relationship and that their leader will support them when support is genuinely needed.
Trust also weakens in the same way. A promise is forgotten, a concern is ignored, a difficult conversation is avoided, standards change depending on the person involved, a leader reacts badly when something goes wrong or a member of staff expects support and discovers that nobody is coming. Rarely does one of these moments define an entire relationship, but together they create a pattern.
That is why trust is built long before it is needed. When uncertainty arrives, when difficult change becomes necessary, when leaders make mistakes, when organisations experience pressure and when people are asked to follow without knowing exactly where the journey will end, leaders discover how much trust they have accumulated. They cannot create it overnight, demand it because of the position they hold or borrow it from the person who held the role before them.
A position may require people to follow you, but only your behaviour can give them reasons to trust you.
If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.