Taking on a role as a new manager is an exciting step. It brings new challenges that allow you to stretch and grow. As a manager, you have the opportunity to offer structure and guidance and to set the tone for your team as a leader. You are responsible for optimistically offering trust to your team members as you actively listen to their concerns, assign them shifts, training and duties, encourage their personal and professional growth, and step back, allowing them to lead. But how to strike this balance? Many new managers struggle, pushing too hard in one area while pulling back too far in another. Here, we explore seven common missteps new managers make that destroy their team’s trust.
Your team members can’t flourish without direction. They need to know what to do and how to do it better. Without feedback letting them know where to improve and how, your team members will be left confused. They need to be challenged in order to rise to the challenge. It’s important to schedule regular one-on-one check-ins to ask them how they feel they are doing, what you can do to support them, and to offer them pointers on areas to improve as well as praise for their successes. This will keep their morale high and allow them to continue their professional growth. It will also foster trust between you; your team members will see that you recognize and value their contributions and want them to do well.
Let me repeat: be sure to witness, recognize and praise your team members when they succeed. If you only point out opportunities to improve, your team member will feel targeted. You will deplete their morale. Their motivation will falter, because what’s the point of doing their best if it’s never good enough?
Distress is catching. If a team member is truly consistently underperforming, they should be formally warned, put on probation and dismissed. If this isn’t warranted and the team member starts to show wear and tear from your frequent downplay of their contributions, their peers are going to notice. Making every problem about your team or a single team member (instead of double-checking systems or investigating to see if other team members are experiencing similar issues) is a great way to call your leadership into doubt. Your team will either wonder about your motives for retaining this employee or consider you untrustworthy. You might see overall morale and motivation drop with team members taking more sick days, a dip in productivity and lowered creativity and initiative.
Cheering your team on is great, but when things are going wrong on the floor, you need to step in. This means you need to offer both positive and negative feedback as soon as possible in order to constructively support your team members. It is your job to notice and correct the causes that lead to problems. Your feedback serves to both prevent and course correct. Just as constant negative feedback will lower morale, constant positive feedback will lower trust in your ability to lead effectively.
That same is true here. Instead of training and trusting your team members, by micromanaging you create an anxious environment for them by keeping constant watch over their every move. Any time your anticipate a mistake (whether they make it or not), you step in and correct or direct them. At best, this is infantilizing. You demonstrate that you don’t trust them, aren’t willing to, and destroy their sense of agency. At worst, you will lose this team member and potentially others who witness your inability to cede control and allow for team action rather than just your action. No one trusts a micromanager because a micromanager trusts no one.
Having favorites is fine as long as it doesn’t show, especially in the workplace. Showing favoritism is incredibly unprofessional. It stacks the deck, and the way this usually plays out is one person gets all the benefits, and one person gets all the criticism. Why? When you don’t keep your favoritism in check, you also tip your hand about who is your least favorite.
Take a moment to consider your top performer. Now take a moment to assess the team member you feel is the most “at risk.” Is it because they don’t perform their job well? Is it because they aren’t a “good fit” in your culture? If it’s the former, why are they still on your team? If it’s the latter and they otherwise consistently perform well, have you talked to them about their fit? How did they respond? Do you feel they want to be welcomed in your company culture? Is it possible there are misunderstandings that result from your personal bias?
Going further, is there anything your top performer is allowed to get away with that your at risk performer would be criticized for? It’s common to overlook in top performers what would be considered “misbehaviors” in anyone else, so be honest. Are you truly holding everyone to the same standards? If not, this should be rectified immediately. It is 100% guaranteed that your team has noticed the disparity and has feelings about it.
This is a hard ask from yourself as a manager, but if someone keeps showing up and working hard and trying, sometimes it’s worth it to make sure the problem is them and not internal to you before you take next steps. And the reason is the same as above—if it’s about favoritism and you don’t like this team member, chances are they know and the rest of the team knows it. The rest of the team also knows this person does their job well. So dismissing them is going to have a lasting impact on your business, and not the one you might be expecting.
Think about it. These actions contribute to a loss of trust in you as a leader. Your team members will start to wonder if they’re next. If one wrong step will put them in your bad graces and you’ll begin to assume the worst of them as well. If you uncover a personal bias, that’s an opportunity for growth. Show your team you are willing to put in the same work you expect from them. Model the behavior you want from them. Lead through demonstration.
And don’t assume you’re perfect. None of us is infallible. We are going to err. As a manager, your errors have rippling impact, often in the form of documentation for your team. For example, if you discover you made an incorrect assessment about a team member that resulted in disciplinary action, correct it. Don’t let it go. Don’t leave your mistake as a red flag in your team member’s file and let it potentially contribute to their dismissal. Consider how you would feel if the roles were reversed? Further, consider what type of leader you want to be. Is it an honest and caring one that can be trusted? Your team members hope so.
Finally, consider what type of culture your company is trying to build. Is it one that values honesty and integrity? Your choices have the power to build or destroy your company culture from the inside—no one will believe your business has a positive work culture if it only applies to a select few.
Of course, this is only one example of a mistake a manager might make, but it has profound effect on the full team because team members talk to one another. It’s unlikely an omission of this type will go unnoticed. Stand up for your team members when necessary, and they will stand up for you.
As a new manager, you have a new job to do. You are not simply working an individual contributor position; you have a team to conduct. Many new-in-position managers make the mistake of not managing the shift at all (watching but not doing, or worse, being on the office or on a computer when the shift is at its peak!). You need to be a “working manager,” meaning you need to be find a balance between that individual contributor position and your behind-the-scenes role. This means being active on the floor to interact and oversee, catching errors and wins and correcting or celebrating them as they happen. Your team needs to know you’re there for them, and the best way to show them you are is to be accessible.
In order to build and maintain trust with your team in your new position as manager, you need to be intentional and positive in your leadership role. Most of the above has to do with offering clear communication to your team in order to foster a two-way relationship that allows for them to believe you want them to succeed. This requires you to pay attention, listen actively, and correct for the mistakes you make as you learn your new role. You set the tone, each day, each week, each quarter. Treat your team in a manner that aligns with integrity and respect to get the same in return.
This most often happens when you go from buddy to boss. If you’ve recently been promoted in-house, there’s a good chance you first bonded with the team members you were promoted over. Maybe you brought in or were brought in by one of those team members. Now, in a leadership position over them, you have to maintain the status quo. To learn more about making that shift, read our post: “How to Go From Friend to Boss.”
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