5.4. Building Trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director

Level Up Your Leadership: The Ultimate Trust-Building Framework for Your Journey

and

Apr 02, 2025

What You'll Learn:

💡 What is building trust, why it is important, and how to apply it daily.
💡 Difference between “sympathy,” “empathy,” and “compassion” when leading.
💡 How to build trust as an Individual Contributor, Manager, and Director from Gabriele.

Tasks for the Week:

☑️ Apply one of the tips for your job role/level. Apply another tip next week.
☑️ Practice the self-awareness activity on the bottom of this post with your team.
☑️ Practice one of the productivity tools from the previous post in your job.

Building Trust at the Workplace

Building trust is hard. It includes bringing our emotions and unique experiences through vulnerability to the workplace. But it creates safe environments that allow us and our teams to be our full selves at work. By building trust, we deepen engagement, help our team manage change, and inspire creativity and growth.

We build trust by being curious, empathizing, and consistently seeking and actively supporting the overall well-being and needs of others.

It’s not enough with being nice or connecting with empathy.
You need to lead with compassion which is the active intention to help others.

This 3rd milestone in the Thriving Challenge, we are practicing building trust.
To build trust, practice with the daily sentences that I will share this week in the Chat.
They will help you really connect with your team and thrive in your goals!

Additionally, in this post,

Gabriele Cimato

tells us his tips on building trust.
He is Director of Engineering at MongoDB and author of Lead With Kindness.
He joined the workforce of MongoDB as a versatile Software Engineer, leveraging his curiosity to explore innovative projects before growing into leadership roles.

Gabriele, over to you.

Early in my career, I was eager to find a place to learn and grow with others, feeling comfortable enough to admit my mistakes and weaknesses. Instead, I crowded my mind with a handful of: "I hope they won't find out I don't know how git rebase works.", "Ugh, I don't know half the acronyms everyone uses.", "What was a left join again? I need to look this up quickly!", and so on. I second-guessed every move and was anxious to admit when I didn’t know something. At the time, I didn’t realize I didn’t trust the team enough and would rather keep all these questions for myself. These daily thoughts were not a sustainable way to start a career. They were trapping me in a cycle of self-doubt and isolation, hindering my growth.

Building Trust As an IC

My impostor syndrome held me back, brushing away any chance to be part of a community. I felt the constant struggle of having to do it all by myself. Then, with a glimpse of mental clarity, I drove back down memory lane. I remembered that I had been the one building communities before, but not in a professional setting. It all came back. Building this environment requires deliberate work; it doesn't just "happen" over time.

I went through ups and downs when I worked at startups or smaller companies. Poor leadership often caused a lack of trust between peers. You would try to outshine your teammates and hoard knowledge to sound brighter. Not only did this make me feel lonelier than before, it eventually fostered unhealthy competition.

Collaboration was a second-class citizen. It created uncomfortable dynamics because you wanted to take credit for the work done. It was hard to make good, lasting decisions; everyone wanted to push for their idea even when it was not the best. Only one could win and get the trophy! (Spoiler alert: there was no trophy.) I didn't know how to change this, and I didn't feel empowered to try.

Looking back, I should have taken the initiative and talked to my manager. I was blown away by how people could run a company or manage a team at such a young age. I was sure they had it all figured out. How come they couldn't fix it? There was no way someone like me could help, right? It turns out they were also figuring it out. They didn't intend to create this environment and could have used someone to call it out.

At this point in my career, I thought I could gain trust only by delivering excellent work. I was uncertain about many things but was confident in my creative problem-solving. I doubled down on that and was eventually offered to be a leader at the company. Since I found myself trusting people who were either delivering or were trying hard to do so, I figured that’s how I should behave to gain the team’s trust.

My tips for building trust as an IC:

☑️ Deliver excellent work.
☑️ Go out of your way to help others.
☑️ Communicate openly and frequently with your manager.

Building Trust As a Manager or Senior IC

As I advanced to managerial and director roles, I've been committed to creating a safe space. If I didn't feel empowered to lead those changes before, others likely felt the same. I knew it was a leadership problem then, so I wanted to be part of the solution this time. It all began with establishing a simple yet effective group chat for the team to focus on collaboration. It allows for exchanging ideas, asking for help, calculated risk-taking, and cultivating good rapport and trust.

I led the effort by showing my weaknesses and knowledge gaps. Doing so gave the team a clear signal: not everyone needs to know everything. I promoted the idea that, as a team, we need to support each other in overcoming our individual limitations. This approach helped foster conversations as equals where every member not only shared their ideas freely but also discovered how to serve the team more effectively, thereby building lasting trust.

At this stage in your career, you have the power to make a difference. Don’t hesitate to try different approaches. Observe how your team handles each change and adapt accordingly. Most importantly, collect feedback!

My tips for building trust as a Manager and also beneficial for Senior ICs:

☑️ Show up when your team needs it.
☑️ Listen openly and act quickly to resolve issues and blockers.
☑️ Ask for feedback frequently.
☑️ Create a safe space for the team.

“A Safe Space” means any place where:
🌟Anyone can openly challenge ideas without fearing repercussions.
🌟They feel comfortable disagreeing with one another.
🌟Anyone can admit when they make a mistake and know the team will be there to help.

Bring trust to your team today, by sharing this post with them!

Building Trust As a Director or Staff IC

As a director, the challenge of building trust extends beyond your teams. It goes across the entire engineering organization, which inevitably carries a different weight. In a way, this feels less natural. You must actively keep the trust level high, or project collaborations will fall apart quickly. You might lack day-to-day interactions, so you must plan how trust can be managed consistently.

Not too long ago, we needed to collaborate with a team in a different time zone. We both intended to make the relationship work, but we had to overcome the difficulties of having only a few overlapping working hours. There was a lot of transparency in surfacing concerns and challenges each team faced, which made the conversation simpler and more focused. I was eager to learn from them what an ideal collaboration looked like. This helped build trust and align us on goals. We eventually documented our strategy, which served as a reference for the future. We also settled for recurring check-ins, which helped maintain trust.

My top tips and habits for Directors and Staff ICs that I served my teams well:

☑️ Ask for feedback, listen openly, act on it, and follow up. Communication channels should be open, especially for skip-level 1:1s.
☑️ Encourage cross-team collaborations. This can take the form of a roundtable, a happy hour, or anything that helps avoid silos.
☑️ Help and support your managers so they can iterate on trust-building within their teams.
☑️ Be transparent by letting the team understand how decisions are made, the priorities, and what obstacles stand in the way of success.

Conclusion

Key strategies for building trust and collaboration include creating a safe space for team growth, clarifying alignment and challenges, and promoting open and transparent communication. As one's role grows within an organization, the scale of trust-building changes, significantly impacting the business and team's success. I hope it’s clear that you can make a change for the better, no matter where you are in your career.

A team with individuals who trust each other will outperform a team that doesn’t.

Special thanks to

Gabriele Cimato

for sharing his leadership insights. Follow his journey on LinkedIn and also on

Lead With Kindness

Self Awareness Side Thriving🌟Challenge Practice

Ask for Feedback

We have blind spots; the people who we think we are might not be the people others see. What you say or you ask others might not be aligned with your actions. We need feedback to uncover what we don't see and increase our self-awareness and growth.

Take the Insight Quiz to identify how self-aware you really are. It includes an assessment from someone who knows you well. — Dr. Tasha Eurich.
Ask for feedback from a peer, direct report, and supervisor. Use it for continuously improving performance and detecting blind spots. Getting feedback is a gift.
Enumerate 5 things you are grateful for and keep taking notes of how you feel.
Watch The Power of Self-Awareness illustrates the transformative potential of giving and receiving feedback. — William L. Sparks