Trust isn't a gift you give on day one
I've had managers tell me "I trust you completely" in our first one-on-one. Before they'd seen my work. Before they'd watched me handle a hard situation. Before they knew anything about me except what was on my resume.
It always felt hollow. And I've been thinking about why.
What they're actually offering
When someone declares trust upfront, what are they actually saying? They haven't seen you make a decision under pressure. They don't know how you handle conflict. They have no idea if you'll tell them bad news or hide it until it's too late.
They can't trust you. They don't have enough information.
What they're offering is something else: the benefit of the doubt. An open door. The chance to prove yourself without having to fight for it first. That's valuable. But it's not trust.
Real trust is specific. I trust you to hit deadlines because I've seen you hit deadlines. I trust you to push back when you disagree because I've watched you do it. I trust you to own your mistakes because you've owned them before, in front of me, when it was uncomfortable.
Declared trust is generic. A posture someone adopts. It sounds good in a first meeting but doesn't actually mean anything yet.
The performance of being "a trusting person"
Some people make a point of announcing how trusting they are. "I give everyone 100% trust until they break it." It sounds generous. Open-minded. Enlightened, even.
But think about what that actually means. You're claiming to fully trust someone you just met? Someone whose judgment you've never tested? Someone who hasn't demonstrated anything to you yet?
Either you're lying, or your definition of trust is so shallow it doesn't mean much.
I worked with a director who said this constantly. "I trust my team completely." But when decisions needed to be made, he was in every meeting. When something went wrong, his first question was always about who was responsible. His "complete trust" evaporated the moment it was tested.
He wasn't a bad person. He genuinely believed he was trusting. But there's a gap between the story we tell about ourselves and how we actually behave when things get hard.
The difference between opportunity and trust
What good leaders actually give new people is opportunity. Room to operate. The assumption that you're competent until proven otherwise. A willingness to let you try things without micromanaging every step.
That's real and valuable. It's just not trust.
Trust comes later. It builds through moments. You make a call that could go wrong, and it goes right. You disagree with your manager in a meeting, and the sky doesn't fall. You miss something, admit it early, and the response is help rather than blame.
Each of those moments adds a little weight to the relationship. Over time, the accumulated weight becomes trust. Real trust. The kind that survives pressure.
Calling the initial opportunity "trust" cheapens the real thing. If trust is something you can declare on day one, what do you call the deeper thing that develops over years of working together?
The confusion this creates
When leaders conflate opportunity with trust, things get messy.
New hires hear "I trust you completely" and think they have more latitude than they actually do. Then they make a decision independently and get questioned on it. Or they push back on something and feel the temperature drop. The declared trust didn't match the actual trust. I've been on both sides of this confusion, and it's disorienting every time.
It also lets leaders off the hook for building real trust. If you've already announced that you trust everyone, you don't have to do the work of demonstrating it through your actions. The declaration substitutes for the relationship.
And when things go wrong, declared trust becomes a weapon. "I trusted you and you let me down." As if the trust was a gift you gave, rather than something that was never really there.
What I try to say instead
I've stopped telling people I trust them before I actually do. It felt dishonest once I thought about it.
Instead I try to be specific about what I'm offering. "I want to give you room to make decisions. I'll back you up if things go sideways. Let's build from there."
That's not as warm and fuzzy as "I trust you completely." But it's true. And it leaves room for real trust to develop, rather than pretending it already exists.
The opportunity to earn trust is valuable. It's worth acknowledging. But calling it trust before it's been tested just sets everyone up for confusion later.
Have you worked with people who declared trust upfront? How did it play out when that trust was tested?