The gap every new leader feels — and what to do about it

Starting a new leadership role comes with a level of uncertainty that nobody ever prepares you for. You have the title, the responsibilities, and the expectations that go with them. What you do not yet have is a track record in the role, with your team or with your stakeholders.

And this gap, between the authority you have been given and the credibility you have not yet earned, is something new leaders can feel acutely.

The good news is that you don’t have to wait for credibility to accrue. It is something you can build, deliberately and early, through consistent actions. That is what this post is about.

It is worth being clear about the distinction, because confusing the two tends to make things harder.

Positional authority is conferred on you through your appointment, your updated job title, and the announcement to the team. It gives you formal decision-making power and a degree of organisational legitimacy. What it does not give you is credibility in the eyes of the people around you.

Credibility is a social judgement. Your team, your peers, your stakeholders and your manager will all form a view of you based on what they observe you doing, and that process starts from day one. Williams et al. (2023), drawing on a review of 66 studies on leader credibility, identify two foundations on which that judgement rests:

It is also worth being clear about the difference between this and the internal experience of self-doubt. Feeling like a fraud is something many new leaders go through, and the imposter phenomenon is a well-documented response to stepping into a demanding new role. This post addresses something different: the deliberate external steps you can take to influence how others see you, regardless of how you feel on the inside.

Before turning to what helps, it is worth understanding what can undermine credibility early on.

Williams et al. (2023) and Srimulyani and Hermanto (2022) both identify behaviours that build credibility. From this we can discern the opposite - behaviours that new leaders often fall into, particularly under pressure, which erode the trust they are trying to build:

None of this is intended as a checklist of things to feel anxious about. It is simply useful to know what to watch for in yourself, particularly in moments of pressure when instinct takes over.

Of all the things you can do in your first few weeks, this is probably the one that is most underestimated.

Research by Kluger and Itzchakov (2022) on the effects of listening in workplace contexts finds that being genuinely listened to increases people's trust in the listener, reduces their defensiveness, and improves the quality of their own thinking. When team members feel heard, their engagement and willingness to contribute both go up. The reverse is equally evidenced: leaders who fail to listen are among the quickest to lose credibility, regardless of how capable they are in other respects.

Williams et al. (2023) specifically highlight cognitive openness and good listening as character traits that followers consistently associate with credible leaders. It is also worth noting that the same listening behaviours that matter in early relationship-building are the ones that underpin effective coaching conversations later. There is more on that connection here.

Action: In your first two weeks (or now, if you are past that period and you think it would help) schedule short one-to-ones with your key team members, not to set direction or assess performance, but to listen. Ask what is working well, what is causing frustration, and what they would want you to understand about the team. You will learn things you would not discover any other way.

Credibility in the early stages does not require deep expertise or a bold strategic vision. But it can be helped by identifying a real problem and doing something about it.

The quick-wins literature on leadership transitions makes a consistent argument: visible progress on a meaningful issue signals competence more powerfully than credentials or position ever can. The emphasis on visible is important. A problem you quietly resolve in the background does not build credibility in the same way that a problem openly acknowledged, addressed, and publicly resolved does. Your team needs to be able to see the action and connect it to you.

This matters particularly if you are leading people who have more technical knowledge in some areas than you do. That is a challenge many new leaders face, and it is worth addressing directly. You do not need to be more of an expert than your team to be credible. What you need to show is that you can create the conditions for good work to happen. Identifying a genuine obstacle and removing it is often a stronger signal than providing an answer, because it demonstrates that your job is not to know everything but to make things easier for the people who do.

Action: Use your early listening conversations to look for one recurring friction point, something the team finds frustrating and that is within your reach to address. Make that your first visible action. Keep it achievable and follow through completely.

Kouzes and Posner's foundational work on credibility, reviewed by Farquhar (1994), consistently finds that followers rank honesty and consistency as the attributes they most closely associate with leaders they trust. Williams et al. (2023) make the same point from a different angle: credibility is built "daily" through sustained, consistent behaviour, investment in the people around you, and openness to feedback. It is not built through one-off gestures, however well intentioned.

Leaders who behave in ways that are genuinely values-driven and consistent with who they are, create higher levels of trust and better working relationships than those who manage impressions or project confidence they do not have (Srimulyani & Hermanto, 2022). Performance without substance is usually detectable, and it damages trust quickly.

Honesty about the limits of your knowledge is part of this. Saying "I don't know" when you don't know, and meaning it, is one of the more underrated credibility moves available to new leaders. It signals intellectual honesty, and it tends to make people trust what you say when you do claim to know something.

Action: Identify a small number of visible, achievable commitments you can make in your first few weeks. Keep to them, reliably and without drama. This is how a reputation for credibility accumulates.

Most advice about building credibility as a new leader focuses on your relationship with your team. That is important, but it is not the whole picture.

Bond et al. (2003), examining reputational effectiveness in cross-functional working relationships, found that how leaders are perceived depends significantly on their responsiveness to a broad range of stakeholders, not just those who report directly to them. Ospina and Foldy (2010), studying leadership in change contexts, make a similar point: credibility is built partly through the quality of the connections a leader maintains across boundaries, forging new ties and strengthening existing ones in ways that enable collective action.

In practical terms, this means your peers are forming a view of you alongside your team. They are watching whether you are a collaborator or a competitor, whether you share information or protect it, whether you show interest in their work or only your own. Your manager is forming a view of whether you can build the organisational connections that are essential for consistency with organisational strategy .

For leaders who have moved from peer to manager within the same team, this dimension of credibility is particularly complex. The relationships that already exist carry history, and that history needs to be navigated carefully.

Action: Identify two peer or stakeholder relationships worth investing in now. Show genuine interest in their work and their priorities before you need anything from them. Credibility is built through generosity before it is built through achievement.

Credibility builds slowly but it does compound. The actions you take in the first 90 days set the trajectory but ongoing consistency is critical

If you are finding the early stage of leadership harder than you expected, you are not alone in that. The adjustment is tough, and the search for credibility is something almost every new leader navigates. What the research shows is that credibility can be built through listening, through visible action, through consistency, and through paying attention to the relationships on all sides of you.

What is the credibility challenge you are finding hardest right now? Hit reply. I read every response. 

All of my posts for new leaders are here.

My Imposter Phenomenon workbook is available here. This will give you twelve evidence based actions you can take to build your leadership confidence and overcome those nagging imposter doubts.

Coaching - I have a few spots available for 1 to 1 coaching. I can help you with any of the people leadership challenges you might be facing. There are more details here.

Best wishes

Martin Cole

P.S. The imposter phenomenon workbook is available for a limited period initially, so that I can get some feedback. I’ll remove it from sale on Monday 20 April at 8am UK time.