Why you can trust your team with the difficult work sooner than you think

At the heart of leading a team is trust. In particular, the need to put your trust in others to deliver the things that you are accountable for.

And when you are new to leadership or when you're leading a new team, that means trusting people you don't know or people you haven't worked with in the leader-team member relationship for long.

It is therefore easy for leaders in these situations either to not delegate work that they should be delegating, or to micromanage their team members when they do delegate.

And if, in your pre-leadership days, you ever sat on your hands waiting for work to come your way, or were micromanaged when it did, you will know that both situations are incredibly annoying and hugely demotivating.

So, to avoid this happening, you need to learn to build trust quickly. I know that sounds unintuitive, since we are used to building trust over time. But it can be done and in this piece, I am going to show you how.

Researchers use the word trust more narrowly than we do in conversation. Roger Mayer, James Davis and David Schoorman described it as a willingness to make yourself vulnerable to somebody else's actions, which is a fair description of what delegation involves. You hand something over, and now their work is your problem too (and vice versa).

Mayer's research found that this willingness rests on three separate judgements you make about the other person (Mayer, Davis and Schoorman, 1995):

In other words, in the context of delegating work to somebody, what you are essentially asking yourself is: Can they do it? Will they do it? And do they care?

It is useful to think about your delegation decisions in this way because if you have doubts, you can pinpoint what is bothering you and do something about it in advance.

"I don't trust Sam to do this" doesn't really help you because it conflates three potential issues into one: can they, will they, do they care? Research by Jason Colquitt and colleagues confirms that each of the three carries its own weight (Colquitt, Scott and LePine, 2007).

On the other hand, "I am not sure Sam can do this, because I don't think he has ever put a stakeholder map together before" articulates the source of your doubts, and tells you what you need to do to make Sam ready to do it (and thus, from your perspective, trustworthy).

Of course, when you are new to the team, it can be harder to answer these questions, but there is a process you can go through that will help create the conditions to trust somebody with a particular piece of work at that time.

So here are the four steps.

1. Finish this sentence. "The thing I am worried will go wrong is ______." You need to get clear in your own mind about what precisely you are worried about, and it should be specific to this piece of work. If you cannot finish the sentence, then the problem is anxiety rather than judgement. That is useful to know either way.

2. Work out which of the three trustworthiness factors it is. Do they know how to do this bit (ability)? Will they tell you in time if things start to go wrong (integrity)? Will they give it the priority you would give it (benevolence)? It will usually be one of them rather than all three, and will usually be about the work rather than about the person as a whole.

3. Discuss your concerns in advance. Ask about the person's experience in doing the job in question. Talk to them about the importance of the work and the expectations. Specify what they should do if they start to struggle. And, importantly, check their understanding about the key points. You may have a lot of the context in your head. So, make sure you've done enough to convey what isn't necessarily obvious to somebody coming to the task cold.

4. Put in one checkpoint that would catch what you are worried about and tell them why you have asked for it. Something like: "Could I see the outline on Thursday? It is not about you. I know how complex the stakeholder relationships are in this place. So, I think it will help for us to have an early look at it together."

Giving the reason for the checkpoint is important. It could sound like you lack confidence in them, but research tells us that explaining why it is important helps you avoid being seen as a micromanager. When people understand being checked on as something that is meant to help them get better at the work, they judge it as fairer, and it goes with higher job satisfaction and commitment. When they understand it as something to catch them out, they push back and do less of the voluntary, forward-looking work you want from them (Thiel et al., 2023).

It would be easy to read all this as a shortcut to offloading everything without much further thought. But it is not quite that simple.

Michael Baer and colleagues found that being trusted can be a burden in itself, and that people who feel heavily trusted can end up worn down by the weight of it (Baer et al., 2015). What seems to predict whether somebody feels fairly treated is how well the trust they are given matches the amount they wanted.

So, while it is good to stretch people in the name of development, the goal is not to abandon the task to the other person, but to make sure it fits them. This is why the set-up discussion is so important.

Two things are worth watching out for.

The first is that checkpoints multiply. One becomes three, and by the third you will have become annoying and demotivating. If you have real concerns, you need to have a proper conversation, not checking up disguised as more checking in.

The second is that sometimes the answer to "can they do this?" is no. If it is, then by asking yourself that question early, you will save a lot of time and trouble.

Doing this consistently can change what your team can predict about you. They learn that when you ask for something you will say why you have asked, and you will do it supportively and without a whole lot of covert surveillance afterwards.

That is worth a lot, and it is the sort of thing people remember about a manager for a long time.

It also gets you some of your week back, not just through the delegation itself, but by limiting the amount you need to stress about it while the work is being done.

All of my posts for new leaders are here.

The New Leader's Delegation Manual. This short, succinct but 'done for you' manual with complete scripts, checklists and templates will help you break through any barriers you have when it comes to delegation. There is a chapter in the manual on following up without micromanaging, which covers how closely to monitor different kinds of work and when stepping in is the right call. Until tomorrow (Saturday 5 September) it is £19 instead of £29. You can get it here.

Coaching. If there is somebody on your team you cannot quite bring yourself to leave alone, and you are not sure whether that is about them or about you, that is a good thing to work through with somebody. There are more details here.