Building Trust From Day One: How to Lead When No One Knows You Yet
When you're new to an organization, trust is critical to your success.
You've just moved from an organization where people knew you and your were able to get things done based on your reputation. Now, you're somewhere new, people don't know you, and you've yet to build a reputation.
Here are a few ways to build trust in the early days and set your reputation up for success:
Actively manage expectations - Share your understanding of your role and goals and ask others if they see it differently. Have them share their role and goals and explore alignment. This will allow you to start the conversation on expectations and illustrate your thoughtfulness around collaboration - which will build trust.
Hear from many voices - When you first start, you have little data. Conversations with your direct reports, the board, your boss, etc. will provide a helpful picture, but if you are leading many, you'll need a way to capture broad themes on challenges and opportunities. Set up focus groups across levels to capture key themes that you and your team can tackle. Communicate back to the organization what you heard and what you plan to do about it. This will illustrate your interest in employee perspective, will motivate them, and will build trust.
Develop a practice of continuous improvement - What got you here, will not get you there, so you'll need a process and norm for making adjustments as you learn. Start with your team by stating that your ways of working are still in development and actively solicit feedback as work proceeds. Making space for the team to have frank and safe conversations about what's working and what's not will improve team effectiveness and will build trust.
These are just a few ways to help you develop trust in your early days - folks will be wondering about you - the points above give you the chance to put that wondering on the table and use it for improvement and trust building.