Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / How New Managers Can Build Trust With Their Team Quickly
Transcript
- Lucas: So you've been a manager for maybe two weeks, maybe two months, and you walk into the kitchen and a couple of your team members go quiet mid-conversation. You know they weren't talking about the weather. That's the moment trust starts to feel like this invisible wall. Luna: That is such a specific picture, and I think every new manager I know has felt that at least once. So what do you do when you sense the wall? Lucas: A lot of new managers respond by trying even harder to prove their competence — sending more detailed status reports, making faster decisions, showing up to every meeting early. But that can actually backfire because it signals anxiety, not confidence. Luna: Right, it's like trying to win trust by being the loudest person in the room. But I think a lot of new managers don't have a framework for what trust actually is, they just know something feels off. Lucas: Yeah, and honestly I didn't have one either until a mentor pointed me to Patrick Lencioni's model — he talks about a 'trust battery.' The idea is that every relationship has a trust battery, and it's either charging or draining. You're not starting at full. You're starting somewhere between forty and sixty percent, and every interaction either adds a few points or pulls a few out. Luna: I like that because it removes the mystery. So what are the specific actions that charge the battery? Lucas: Lencioni breaks it into two types. First is competence trust — do you know what you're talking about? Can you do the work, or at least understand the work well enough to make good calls? The second is vulnerability trust — can you admit when you're wrong, ask for help, share something you're struggling with? And the tricky part is that new managers often over-index on one and neglect the other. Luna: And listeners, this show is supported directly by people like you, which is what keeps it completely ad-free. If these episodes have helped you think through a career move or a tricky management situation, a couple of dollars a month genuinely makes a difference — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Alright, Lucas, you were saying about over-indexing? Lucas: Yeah, so I think the most common pattern I've seen — and did myself — is going all-in on competence trust. You learn the team's tools, you read every document, you send polished emails. But you never show a crack. And that can make you seem robotic or unreachable. Luna: So what does the opposite look like? Someone who leads with vulnerability but can't back it up? Lucas: That's the other risk. You get a manager who says 'I'm learning, I'll make mistakes, help me out' — that's great for safety but if you can't also demonstrate that you have a grip on the fundamentals, the team stops trusting your decisions. They'll think you're nice but not effective. Luna: So there's a balance. How do you calibrate it when you're new and you don't even know what you don't know? Lucas: One technique I recommend is what I call 'reliability experiments.' Pick one thing — just one — that you promise to do consistently for two weeks. Could be sending a weekly priorities email every Monday by 9 AM, or holding office hours every Tuesday at 3. Then do it without fail. That small, visible reliability builds competence trust faster than any big speech. Luna: I love that specificity. And what about vulnerability? How do you demonstrate that without oversharing or seeming weak? Lucas: I think the best entry point is saying 'I don't know' in a context where the team already knows the answer is uncertain. Not on something you should know, but on something genuinely ambiguous. Like, 'I don't know how the budget will shake out this quarter, but here's what I'm doing to find out by Friday.' That shows you're honest and you're working the problem. Luna: That's a nice formula: uncertainty plus a plan. Let me push back a little though — doesn't this depend a lot on the team culture? I've worked in places where showing vulnerability was seen as weakness, especially if you're managing former peers who wanted your job. Lucas: Absolutely, and that's the hardest scenario. When you're managing former peers, the trust battery often starts lower, and competence trust becomes even more critical early on. You don't want to lead with vulnerability in that dynamic because they're already watching for signs you're not up to it. Instead, you start with small competence wins — maybe you unblock a decision that was stalled for weeks — and then, only after you've built some balance, you introduce vulnerability around less charged topics. Luna: So sequence matters. First prove you can do the job, then prove you're human. What about a specific example from your own experience? Lucas: When I first became a manager, I had a senior engineer on the team who was skeptical of me — I was younger and less technical. I didn't try to win him over with technical depth I didn't have. Instead, I asked him to help me understand the architecture in our weekly one-on-one. I said, 'I want to learn the system from you because you know it best.' That was vulnerable — admitting I didn't know — but it was also a competence signal because I was showing I knew how to get the right information. Luna: And how did he respond? Lucas: He lit up. He spent thirty minutes drawing diagrams on a whiteboard. After that, he started coming to me with ideas instead of just executing. The trust battery went from maybe thirty percent to sixty in about three weeks. Luna: That's great. So one concrete takeaway: find the person who holds the most informal influence on the team and invest in that relationship first. Not with flattery, but with genuine learning. Lucas: Exactly. And here's something I wish I'd known earlier — trust isn't built in grand gestures. It's built in the small, boring moments. Following up when you said you would. Remembering a detail someone shared last week. Sending a note when someone did good work. Those ten-second actions compound incredibly fast. Luna: I think that's why a lot of new managers miss it — they're looking for the big win, the all-hands speech, the project that saves the quarter. But trust is actually built in the quiet corners. Lucas: Yeah, and there's research backing this. A study from Google's Project Aristotle found that psychological safety — which is essentially the team's collective trust that they can take risks — was the number one predictor of team effectiveness. And it wasn't built by the manager's charisma. It was built by small signals: the manager admitting a mistake, asking for input, following through on a commitment. Luna: So when a listener goes into work tomorrow, what's one thing they should do? Lucas: Pick one commitment you already made that you haven't followed up on — something small, like sending a document or scheduling a meeting. Do it before noon. Then, in your next one-on-one with a direct report, ask one question you genuinely don't know the answer to. Two small actions, one for competence trust, one for vulnerability trust. That's the start. Luna: That's actionable and it doesn't require a week-long training program. And if you want to go deeper, we'll link to Lencioni's book in the show notes. For now, just start charging that battery. Lucas: And remember, the battery is never full forever. It needs regular charging. But the good news is, even a small deposit today pays compound interest tomorrow.