Intro

Trust is earned and not given. You build trust by consistently doing the right things.

And that’s especially important to focus on when you get hired by a new company or you come to a new team. DON’T believe that a title can give you trust by default.

The first thing you need to do is to earn trust from others. And it takes time to do that.

But the funny thing? It takes a long time to build trust and it takes a couple of seconds to lose it. It takes one wrong action and you can lose trust from your team and also your manager.

In today’s article I am sharing my view on how to build trust as a new engineering leader both upwards and downwards.

This is an article for paid subscribers, and here is the full index:

- I've seen many times when a new VP or a CTO comes to the company and completely changes everything
- You just started your role in a new company as an engineering leader
🔒 This is how you should start building trust both upwards and downwards
🔒 Start with understanding the expectations thoroughly
🔒 Move to active listening and noting down all of the findings
🔒 Create a board/diagram/notes of all the findings
🔒 Present your findings and reach a consensus regarding the plan
🔒 Involve the team and start executing the plan
🔒 Last words

Let’s go straight into it.

I've seen many times when a new VP or a CTO comes to the company and completely changes everything

Process, direction, overall vision and everything else. And the outcome of that?

They’ve lost the people's trust because it’s not possible to make the right decisions without thoroughly knowing and understanding the current situation.

As a new manager in the company, you might feel that there are many things you would like to change immediately.

But that can actually make things worse because you don't have the full context of the situation when you come to the company.

Let’s start at the beginning.

You just started your role in a new company as an engineering leader

Let’s imagine that you have just started with a new role and you start managing a new team. You don’t particularly know anyone, you might have some idea who is doing great and who might not.

You are excited about the role and at the same time, you’re worried about how it will go. You are worried about how will your team accept you and what is the current situation inside the team and also across the whole organization.

Building trust is the most important thing you can do when you start.

And that should be both upwards (with your manager, leadership, stakeholders) and downwards (with your team and your peers).

This is how you should start building trust both upwards and downwards...