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The short answer: I demanded respect from my title instead of earning it through relationship. I gave direct feedback before building trust. I solved every problem for my team instead of teaching them resourcefulness. It took two years to fix these mistakes.
You are six months into your first corporate sales job. Your manager just got fired. The next day, you are promoted to lead a team of six people who are all older than you, more experienced than you, and have zero reason to follow you.
You feel the weight of that reality every single morning.
So you do what you think leaders are supposed to do. You project confidence. You have answers ready before questions finish. You make it abundantly clear that you are in charge. You describe your leadership style as iron fist, velvet glove, and you genuinely believe you are nailing it.
You are not nailing it.
I know this because I lived it. The correction took two years of stumbling, thousands of hours of self-training, and a fundamental shift in how I understood my role.
Here is what I learned about earning trust instead of demanding it.
Key Takeaways
- New sales leaders often demand respect from their title instead of earning it through relationship
- Trust must be built before direct feedback can land effectively
- Understanding what your team cares about outside of work creates the foundation for high performance
- Leaders who teach resourcefulness avoid burnout while leaders who solve every problem create codependency
- If your team cannot function without you for a week, you have not built the right systems
Who This Is For
This article is for new sales leaders who feel like they are doing everything right but still struggling to build trust with their team. It is for experienced leaders who wonder why their feedback does not stick. It is for anyone who has ever confused being needed with being effective.
What Did I Get Wrong as a New Sales Leader?
I spent my first three months as a sales manager being angry.
I was telling people exactly what they needed to do. I had identified the problems. I had outlined the solutions. And nobody was listening to me.
I could not understand why they would not just do what I was telling them to do simply because I was their manager.
That belief is where I went catastrophically wrong. I was so focused on being seen as credible that I never created space for my team to be heard. I did not ask what they knew. I demanded respect instead of earning it.
My team felt every bit of that difference.
Why Does Demanding Respect Kill Trust?
The authority I was performing so hard to project was being undermined by the very behavior I thought was projecting it.
When you show up to every conversation with answers already prepared, you send a clear message. You are saying that your perspective matters more than theirs.
That message kills trust faster than almost anything else you can do as a leader.
I did not realize how much damage I was causing until I started paying attention to what was not happening. People stopped bringing problems to me early. They stopped sharing ideas that were not fully formed. They stopped asking questions when they did not understand something.
The team was not the problem. I was.
How Do You Build Trust Before Giving Feedback?
It took me about six months to figure out that I had this backward. I needed a bit of humility, a come to Jesus moment with myself.
Just because I hit early sales records, just because I got promoted fast, these people did not care about any of that. They cared about whether I was worth following.
I started watching YouTube videos and taking self-training courses because I did not feel safe asking other people for help. The environment itself lacked psychological safety.
That is where I discovered Kim Scott’s work on Radical Candor. The concept that stuck with me was the pairing of caring deeply with direct communication. I had been trying to skip straight to the direct part without building any foundation of care first.
The sequence matters. Care first, challenge second.
I wrote about how this framework builds psychologically safe sales teams in a previous article. The short version is this: you cannot give effective direct feedback to people who do not yet trust that you care about them. It took me probably two years of getting it wrong before I figured out what caring deeply actually meant in practice
What Does Caring About Your Team Actually Look Like?
Most leaders think caring about their team means asking about their weekend or remembering birthdays.
That is not enough.
The most important work you can do as a leader is show that you care enough to earn the right to ask people to share their dreams with you. And then you care enough to remember them, to come back to them, and to acknowledge that while the paycheck matters, the paycheck is not why people work.
Ninety percent of the time, when I asked what people wanted to do with their earnings, it was not about popping bottles at the club. It was paying off their mom’s mortgage. Eliminating college debt. Buying their kid a car. Going on a family vacation.
The things that made the hard work worth it were focused on the good they were going to put back into their family and their community.
When you understand that about someone, the dynamic changes completely. You remember it and reference it in coaching conversations. They know you see them as a whole person, not just a quota carrier.
In a recent interview for Authority Magazine, I talked about how listening is not a soft skill but a power skill. Research shows that 96% of professionals consider themselves good listeners while 83% of employees feel they are not heard fairly or equally at work. The leaders who build the highest trust are the ones who show up fully present in every conversation.
You can read the full interview at https://medium.com/authority-magazine/leslie-venetz-of-the-sales-led-gtm-agency-on-the-hidden-superpower-of-every-great-leader-70cacab2c77f.
How Do You Avoid Burnout as a Sales Leader?
Here is the trap I fell into for years, and I still have to actively resist it. I believed that if my team did not need me, I was not a good manager.
That belief drove me to solve every problem for them. If someone came to me with a challenge, I gave them the answer. If they needed an introduction, I made it. I stayed in toxic environments longer than I should have because I told myself I was protecting my team. I worked 80 hour weeks to make sure everything was handled.
I was creating codependency, not capability.
A mentor eventually told me something that shifted my entire approach. You cannot do everything for your team. You have to teach them to think for themselves. Because when you are not there, what happens? Do they sit around waiting for you to come back before they take action?
You want to teach them the principles and the framework, then give them the resourcefulness to act on it right now.
That shift, from providing all the resources to teaching resourcefulness, is what separates sustainable leadership from burnout. According to Gallup (https://www.gallup.com/workplace/), replacing an employee costs between 50% and 200% of their annual salary. Leaders who teach resourcefulness retain their best people instead of cycling through talent every 18 months.
What Does Taking Time Off Reveal About Your Leadership?
I still vividly remember the first time I went on vacation and actually logged off.
I had never done that before. I was terrified of not being needed. I was afraid that if my team operated fine without me for a whole week, it would prove I was not necessary.
It took me six or seven years into my career before I had the mindset shift that enabled me to truly disconnect.
The shift was this. If my team cannot exist without me for a week because I have not set up the systems for them to function independently, then I am not a good manager.
Being needed is not the same as being effective.
Effective leaders build teams that can execute without constant oversight. They develop people who can make good decisions independently. They build systems that function whether the leader is in the room or not.
When I finally took that week off and came back to find that my team had handled everything, it was not a failure. It was proof that I had finally done my job right.
How Do You Hire for Coachability Instead of Experience?
Within my first year as a manager, I either off-boarded or fired most of the team I inherited.
That sounds harsh. But here is what I learned: being in sales for ten years does not mean you are good at sales. Some people with a decade of experience refuse to admit they need help developing new skills.
The people who left were not bad people. Some just did not want to work for me, and that was fine. Some were not capable of being consistent performers because they refused coaching. They felt like they knew what they were doing, and even though it did not get them results, they were confident something would change.
That gave me the opportunity to hire and grow my own team. And I hired for something very specific: the kind of tenacity that allows people to be highly coachable.
A rep with two years of experience who wants to improve will outperform a ten year veteran. Coachability beats experience.
I was also working hard to show my new team that I cared deeply about them as humans and about their goals outside of work. That foundation gave me space to demand that they be coachable.
What Small Behaviors Build Trust Over Time?
The shift from demanding respect to earning trust shows up in small behaviors.
It shows up when someone asks a question and you pause long enough to actually hear the full question. It shows up when you admit you do not know something instead of pretending you have all the answers.
It shows up when someone makes a mistake and your first response is curiosity about what happened rather than judgment.
It shows up when you remember that the person sitting across from you is working to pay off their mom’s mortgage, and you reference that goal when coaching them through a tough quarter.
These behaviors, practiced consistently over time, build the kind of trust that makes everything else easier. According to research from Great Place to Work (https://www.greatplacetowork.com/), high trust organizations generate returns two to three times greater than their peers. That performance gap is about trust, built one conversation at a time.
Why Is Trust the Foundation You Cannot Skip?
Looking back, the iron fist velvet glove approach was not just ineffective. It was actively harmful.
I was so concerned with being respected that I made it impossible for anyone to trust me. I was so focused on having the right answers that I never learned what questions my team needed me to ask.
The correction required intellectual humility. I had to admit the behaviors I thought made me strong actually made me a liability. I had to learn to care deeply about my team before I earned the right to challenge them directly.
That foundation, that trust built through genuine care and presence, is not optional. You cannot skip it and go straight to high performance. You cannot demand it from your title. You have to earn it through consistent behavior over time.
Trust is not the soft part of leadership. It is the load-bearing structure that makes everything else possible.
Thank you to this week’s newsletter sponsor Attention!
We just dropped a prompt guide to help you host discovery meetings that shorten sales cycles. It’s based on my GO GO Needs Analysis Framework. You can grab it here: https://www.attention.com/resources/the-go-go-question-prompt-guide
FAQs
How long does it take to build trust with a new team after you have already damaged it?
Rebuilding trust takes longer than building it from scratch, but it is absolutely possible. You need to own what happened without making excuses. Tell your team directly that you realize you have been giving orders without creating space for their input, and you want to change that. Then you have to actually change your behavior and maintain that new behavior consistently over time. Expect three to six months of consistent effort before you start seeing real shifts in how your team engages with you.
What if I inherited a team that does not want to be coached?
Experience does not equal coachability. Some people with ten years in sales refuse to admit they need help developing new skills. If someone on your team refuses coaching, is not hitting targets, and shows no willingness to try a different approach, you have a performance issue that coaching cannot fix. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for your team and your business is help people find roles that are a better fit.
How do I show I care without crossing professional boundaries?
Caring deeply is not about being friends with your team. It is about understanding what matters to them professionally and personally, and demonstrating through your actions that you remember and value those things. Ask what they want to achieve in their career and in their life. Remember their answers. Reference those goals when you are coaching them through challenges. The boundary is clear: you are invested in helping them achieve what matters to them, not managing their personal life.
What if my company culture does not support this kind of leadership?
You might not be able to change the entire company culture, but you can absolutely create a different environment within your team. Be explicit about the culture you want to build. Model the behaviors you want to see. Protect your team from toxic elements above you when possible. Your team will notice the difference between how you lead and how others operate. If the environment is truly toxic and you cannot create any psychological safety, remember that you have options to find a healthier organization.
How do I balance caring about my team with holding them accountable?
Caring deeply and challenging directly are not opposites. They work together. The care you show creates the foundation that makes direct feedback land without destroying the relationship. When someone knows you are genuinely invested in their success, they can hear hard truths about their performance because they trust your intent. The key is building that care foundation first before you start delivering the challenging feedback.
What if I am already burned out from trying to support my team?
Burnout often comes from doing too much for your team instead of teaching them to do for themselves. If you are working 80 hour weeks to shield your team from organizational dysfunction or solving every problem that comes up, you are creating dependence rather than capability. The solution is to shift from providing all the resources to teaching resourcefulness. Stop giving answers and start teaching people how to think through problems themselves. Build systems that function without your constant oversight.
Can you recommend books that will help me learn more?
Yes. Read Profit Generating Pipeline: A Proven Formula to Earn Trust and Drive Revenue by Leslie Venetz, available at www.salesledgtm.com/book. The book outlines a 9 step formula for prospecting and revenue generation adapted to the modern buyer.
Where can I learn more about listening as a leadership power skill?
I was recently interviewed by Authority Magazine about why listening is the hidden superpower of every great leader. The piece covers the four behaviors that separate good listeners from exceptional ones and explains why most leaders dramatically overestimate how present they actually are in conversations. You can read the full interview at https://medium.com/authority-magazine/leslie-venetz-of-the-sales-led-gtm-agency-on-the-hidden-superpower-of-every-great-leader-70cacab2c77f.
How can I learn more about hiring Leslie as a speaker or working with her team?
Visit www.salesledgtm.com to learn more about services and schedule time to connect.