Newly promoted managers and leaders find themselves in a position of leadership, yet often face the immense challenge of the more defining aspect of it - having influence, the ability to get people to engage or participate, and have people following and listening to you because they want to, not because they have to.

I believe one of the most important leadership qualities common among great influential leaders is that they communicate trust. You will never be assumed as trustworthy by what you tell people; it is always demonstrated through behaviour.

How Does A Newly Promoted Leader Build Trustworthiness?

One of the vital foundations a newly promoted manager needs to build in order to instill trust with their teams is communicating with a sense of certainty. When a leader communicates with a sense of certainty, people know what to expect from them. They are consistent. They talk a lot about the future, provide a sense of direction and can lead both themselves and others through difficult times. Influential leaders don’t become derailed in turbulent times, letting emotions get the better of them. They don’t put their personal agenda before their team’s needs.

In times of turbulence and hardship, people look to the individual who communicates with the most certainty and calls them leader!

Do people know what to expect from you?

Another vital foundation on how to build leaders is being able to connect on a human level. Too often, a leader’s new job title can blind them to the fact that leadership is a responsibility and not simply a position. Great leaders shorten the gap between business and personal. They are present and regularly seen by their teams and attend to their needs. They are ok to admit their mistakes and don’t feel insecure to elevate the achievements of individuals on their teams.

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. The deeper your relationships, the wider your influence!

Do you value relationships first over results?

Build Authority Through Invitation Not Obligation

When you have trust, you have safety. People will default their focus on the threat or apparent lack of trust they find in their leaders instead of their goals and ideas. I believe one of the biggest mistakes newly promoted managers make is making transactions before deposits. There are only so many withdrawals you can continue making from your team before you lose their support. If you had a chance to read my blog 2 weeks ago, you will remember that the hippocampus is the brain’s memory bank that remembers experiences as either being positive or negative.

Because the hippocampus is a part of the limbic system, our brain’s emotional network, we tend to classify these experiences as a ‘toward’ (positive) or ‘away’ (negative) experience or similarly, a friend (I trust you) or foe (avoid this person). When your team starts to see you as a foe the uphill battle begins and their ‘threat response’ increases. This leads to team disengagement.

When individuals like and trust their leader, incidentally 4 platforms are magnified and form the foundations of high performance. Below is a model I have constructed that demonstrates this idea:

To know more on how to build leaders in your workplace, or solutions on how leaders can communicate to drive productivity and engagement, contact Ben today.