S1:E20 The Trust Gap New Executives Must Close

Todd Curzon

[warmly] Welcome to the show. Daniel, I want to start with a scene that I think every newly promoted VP or Director recognizes: it’s 8:07 on a Monday, your title changed maybe two weeks ago, your calendar is suddenly full of peers from finance, product, legal, operations -- and everybody already knows your new role before they know whether your judgment is any good. That’s the uncomfortable part. You can be fully competent, genuinely capable, and still not be credible YET.

Daniel Carter

[curious] That phrase -- “credible yet” -- is the whole thing. Because the title upgrade is immediate, but trust is on a delay. And different people are looking for different proof. Your boss is asking, “Can I leave this with you without having to circle back three times?” Your peers are asking, “Are you going to collaborate, or are you going to throw your new title around?” And the cross-functional folks, especially the ones who don’t report to you, are asking, “Will working with you make my life smoother or harder?”

Todd Curzon

Exactly. [pauses] The mistake, I think, is assuming trust is now implied by position. It isn’t. Position gets you access. Trust gets you latitude. And those are very different currencies. I’ve watched newly promoted leaders walk into rooms believing they must demonstrate range -- speak on every topic, opine on every detail, prove they deserved the promotion in real time. But what the room is often measuring is much quieter: Do you understand the actual decision? Can you separate signal from noise? Can you hold tension without becoming theatrical?

Daniel Carter

[responds quickly] And “latitude” is the word I’d underline there. Because when your boss gives you latitude, that means fewer check-ins, less second-guessing, more space. When peers give you latitude, they stop treating every request like it needs a legal review. [chuckles] And when cross-functional partners give you latitude, they’ll bring you half-formed problems earlier, which is huge. That’s one of the best signs you’re becoming trusted -- people let you see the mess before it’s polished.

Todd Curzon

That’s beautifully put. And there’s a subtle asymmetry here. Your boss often grants trust based on judgment and reliability. Peers grant trust based on fairness and consistency. Cross-functional partners grant trust based on usefulness. If you miss that, you can perform well in one direction and still stall in the others. I’ve seen leaders who are adored upward because they send immaculate updates, but sideways they create friction everywhere because nobody can tell what they actually want.

Daniel Carter

[skeptical] Let me push on that a bit. I think some people hear “be useful to cross-functional partners” and translate it into “be agreeable.” Those are not the same. If product wants one thing, finance wants another, and operations wants something else, being trusted does not mean smiling at all three and nodding. Sometimes credibility is saying, “No, we’re not doing all of that in Q2. Here’s the sequencing.”

Todd Curzon

Yes -- not agreeable, but legible. That’s the distinction. People trust what they can read. If your reasoning is coherent, if your trade-offs are visible, if your priorities remain stable under pressure, then even disagreement can deepen trust. But opacity erodes it almost instantly. And newly promoted leaders often don’t see the trust gap because they’re looking inward -- “Am I performing at the level?” -- while everyone around them is looking outward, asking, “What is it like to work with you now?”

Daniel Carter

[reflective] Which is why the first thirty, sixty, ninety days matter so much. People are creating a mental file on you with very little evidence. Not in a malicious way -- just human nature. They’re collecting moments. One meeting where you ramble. One deadline you miss. One issue you clarify fast. One conflict you handle calmly. The file gets built from those specifics, and then the title starts to mean something real.

Daniel Carter

[matter-of-fact] The good news is the fastest credibility signals are rarely glamorous. They’re small. Repeatable. And visible. Clarity, speed, precision. If I send you a note after a meeting that says, “Here are the three decisions, the owner for each, and the Friday deadline,” that does more for trust than a brilliant but wandering fifteen-minute speech in the meeting itself.

Todd Curzon

And that is such a relief, frankly, because it means credibility is not some mysterious charisma product. It is often administrative elegance. [chuckles] I say that with affection. A leader who can turn a murky discussion into, “Here is what we decided, here is what remains open, here is the risk if we wait,” creates immediate calm. The room feels held. That feeling matters.

Daniel Carter

“Administrative elegance” -- I’m stealing that. [laughs] But yes. And speed matters, though I want to be careful with that word. Not frantic speed. Not replying in ninety seconds to prove dedication. I mean decision speed where appropriate, response speed when commitment was made, and follow-up speed while the topic is still alive. Momentum is a credibility signal. If every action item from your team drifts for ten days, people start to assume the work will need chasing.

Todd Curzon

And fewer promises, too. This is one I feel strongly about. Newly promoted leaders often overcommit because they wish to appear helpful, available, expansive. But a narrower set of commitments, met with consistency, is much more powerful. Better to say, “I can get you a recommendation by Thursday at 3,” and deliver at 2:15, than to say, “I’ll look at several options this week,” and vanish into ambiguity.

Daniel Carter

Let me make that concrete. I coached a leader -- won’t name the company, but fast-growth, lots of moving parts -- who had a very simple habit after ambiguous meetings. Within twenty minutes, she’d send a five-bullet note. Bullet one: decision. Bullet two: trade-off. Bullet three: who was doing what. Bullet four: what she needed from others. Bullet five: date of next checkpoint. That five-bullet format became her signature. People started saying, “If she’s on it, we’ll know what’s happening.”

Todd Curzon

[curious] The “trade-off” bullet is especially elegant. Because it tells people she is not merely reporting activity; she is interpreting consequence.

Daniel Carter

Exactly. And the reason it worked wasn’t style. It was cognitive relief. She turned ambiguity into confidence by making decisions easier. Instead of asking a boss, “What do you want to do?” she’d say, “Option A preserves timeline but adds cost. Option B protects margin but slips launch by two weeks. I recommend A because the revenue window matters more.” That’s an easy meeting. That’s an easy leader to trust.

Todd Curzon

[reflective] There’s a phrase I use with clients: reduce the burden of interpretation. If every update requires your boss or peer to decode what is important, what changed, and what you’re actually asking for, then you are exporting work upward and sideways. But if you can say, plainly, “This is the issue. This is what it means. This is my recommendation,” you are not merely communicating -- you are creating momentum.

Daniel Carter

And visible completion matters. Not private diligence -- visible completion. When something closes, close the loop. “Done.” “Sent.” “Approved.” “Resolved.” It sounds almost too basic, but people remember who leaves threads hanging. Trust grows when others stop wondering whether you dropped the ball.

Todd Curzon

[calm] Executive presence is one of those phrases that has been dressed up until it nearly means nothing. People imagine wardrobe, vocal timbre, immaculate composure -- and yes, presentation has its place -- but in practice, presence is far more behavioral than aesthetic. It is the signal you send under pressure. Are you calm? Are you concise? Are you oriented toward outcomes rather than performance?

Daniel Carter

[questioning tone] So if someone says, “I need more executive presence,” your translation is not “speak deeper and buy better jackets.” It’s more like, “When the room gets tense, can you help people think?”

Todd Curzon

Precisely. And one of the clearest markers is whether you lead with the answer or with the backstory. Many smart leaders over-explain because they wish to demonstrate rigor. I understand the instinct. I had to unlearn it myself. But senior audiences usually need three things first: the answer, the trade-off, and the recommendation. Then, if useful, the supporting detail. Framing before exposition.

Daniel Carter

[grins in voice] You’re being very diplomatic. I’ll be slightly less diplomatic: if someone asks you for a recommendation and you take six minutes to narrate your thought process before telling them what you think, the room starts doing emotional paperwork. They’re wondering, “Is there a point coming? Is there a decision here?” Presence drops FAST when people have to wait too long for the shape of the answer.

Todd Curzon

[laughs softly] “Emotional paperwork” is painfully accurate. And to be fair, the intent behind over-explaining is often honorable. People want to be thorough. They want to avoid being seen as simplistic. Yet the effect is that others leave the conversation less certain, not more. Executive presence, in that sense, is not what you felt while speaking; it is what others felt after listening.

Daniel Carter

That right there -- “what others felt after listening” -- I’m never gonna forget that phrasing. Because I had a moment years ago, probably twelve, maybe thirteen years ago, coaching a newly promoted VP in a tech organization. Smart guy, really sharp. After every executive meeting, he’d come out feeling proud because he’d covered everything. But his CFO finally told him, almost word for word, “When you finish, I still don’t know what you want me to decide.” That was brutal... and incredibly useful.

Todd Curzon

[softly] Brutal, yes. But clarifying.

Daniel Carter

Very. He changed one habit. He started opening with, “Here’s the decision I need, here are the two trade-offs, and here’s my recommendation.” Same intelligence. Same data. Different signal. And what changed wasn’t just perception. People started relaxing around him. They trusted that a meeting with him would end in clarity, not exhaustion.

Todd Curzon

There is a generosity in concision. That may sound odd, but I believe it. To be concise is to respect other people’s attention. To frame a decision cleanly is to make collaboration more humane. Presence, at its best, is not dominance. It is steadiness plus discernment. It tells the room, “You need not be anxious; we can think clearly from here.”

Daniel Carter

And under pressure, the giveaway is pace. Not speaking slowly for effect -- that can become theater too -- but not speeding up when challenged. If a board member, or a CEO, or an irritated peer pushes back and your answer gets twice as long and twice as fast, people feel the wobble. Calm brevity is a signal. It says, “I’m still with the problem.”

Daniel Carter

[curious] Once you move into bigger roles, a lot of your success comes from people who do not report to you. So influence without authority becomes less of a slogan and more of a daily operating requirement. And the leaders who do this well are usually reducing three things for others: risk, workload, and uncertainty. If partnering with you lowers those three, your influence goes up.

Todd Curzon

That triad -- risk, workload, uncertainty -- is wonderfully crisp. And it reminds us that influence is not persuasion alone. It is design. You are designing a path that others can say yes to with less friction. This is why stakeholder mapping matters. Before you push an initiative forward, ask: who can approve it, who can block it, who will be affected by it, and who must help implement it? Those are not the same people.

Daniel Carter

Right, and pre-wiring is where a lot of newer executives hesitate. They think, “Shouldn’t I bring this to the meeting and let the group discuss it live?” Sometimes, sure. But for anything important, the real work often happens before the meeting. Ten-minute conversations. Pressure-testing objections. Finding out what legal is nervous about, what finance needs to see, what operations can actually support. Then the big meeting becomes confirmation, not discovery.

Todd Curzon

[reflective] The phrase I often use is: never surprise a stakeholder with a decision that depends on them. Surprises create defensiveness. Pre-wiring creates participation. And if you can anchor the conversation in shared goals -- revenue timing, customer experience, risk reduction, team capacity -- you shift the dynamic from “my function versus yours” to “how shall we achieve the thing we both say matters?”

Daniel Carter

[skeptical] I agree with that, but I’m gonna push on one piece. I hear a lot of leaders say, “Just be helpful.” I don’t think helpful is enough. Helpful can become reactive. Helpful can turn into being everyone’s favorite utility player and nobody’s strategic peer.

Todd Curzon

That is fair. Though I would defend helpfulness if we define it correctly. Not servility, not endless accommodation -- but practical usefulness in service of a shared outcome.

Daniel Carter

Maybe. But I’ve seen too many newly promoted leaders become endlessly available and call it influence. They’ll sit in every working session, answer every question, jump on every Slack thread. Meanwhile, nobody knows what they stand for. Strategic clarity matters more than generic helpfulness.

Todd Curzon

[pauses] Yes, I think that’s the sharper framing. Helpfulness is insufficient unless it is attached to a clear point of view. Influence requires that others know how you think. If I reduce your uncertainty but never reveal my recommendation, I am facilitating, not leading. Useful, perhaps, but incomplete.

Daniel Carter

Exactly. So the practical version is: make it easier, but don’t make it vaguer. Say, “Here’s the shared goal, here’s what I know you care about, here’s the risk I’ve tried to remove, and here’s the path I think we should take.” That’s influence. It respects their world without surrendering your own judgment.

Todd Curzon

And this is where cross-functional trust deepens. When people feel that you have genuinely accounted for their constraints -- budget, timing, compliance, bandwidth -- they become far more open to your proposal. Not because you outranked them, but because you did the intellectual courtesy of meeting reality before making a request.

Todd Curzon

[matter-of-fact] Trust rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, it leaks. Quietly. Through habits that seem minor in isolation: too much talking, inconsistent priorities, slow decisions, silent assumptions. Each one sends a signal, and together they form a pattern people remember.

Daniel Carter

[responds quickly] “Leaks” is exactly right because most leaders don’t notice it while it’s happening. Take too much talking. The issue isn’t simply airtime. It’s that excessive explanation blurs priorities. If everything gets equal verbal weight, nobody can tell what actually matters. And then people start leaving your meetings with different interpretations, which means you’ve created work instead of direction.

Todd Curzon

Or inconsistent priorities -- which can be especially damaging. On Monday, speed is everything. On Wednesday, quality is paramount. On Friday, the new message is stakeholder alignment. Now, to be fair, real conditions do change. But if leaders do not explain why a priority changed, others experience it as caprice. The team becomes hesitant because they no longer know which standard will be applied.

Daniel Carter

And slow decisions... that’s a big one. There’s a myth that thoughtful leaders always take longer. Not true. Thoughtful leaders know what requires depth and what requires closure. If every medium-stakes decision sits open because you want one more slide, one more input, one more scenario, people stop trusting your ability to call the ball. They work around you.

Todd Curzon

[softly] “They work around you” is devastatingly accurate. Another leak is changing tone by audience. Confident with direct reports, deferential with peers, polished with the boss, vague with partners. We all modulate language a little -- that is natural -- but when the underlying message changes to suit the room, people sense it. Consistency of reasoning is a profound trust marker.

Daniel Carter

And the disappearing act after the meeting -- that one is so common. Somebody drives a big discussion, sounds terrific, gets everybody aligned, and then... silence. No summary, no owner list, no next step, no follow-up on the blocker they promised to resolve. The meeting felt good, but the trust score actually went down because the energy didn’t convert into execution.

Todd Curzon

This is where diagnosis matters. Because most leaders can feel that something is off -- credibility is uneven, influence is patchy, presence is inconsistent -- but they cannot easily name the pattern. And if you cannot name it, you cannot improve it with precision.

Daniel Carter

That’s why tools can help, if they’re used well. One I like in this context is the LEAP assessment because it helps surface where the gap actually is. Is it credibility? Is it executive presence? Is it influence across stakeholders? Is it follow-through? Instead of a leader vaguely saying, “I need to be stronger,” you can get more specific: “No, your issue is that peers trust your intent but not your decisiveness,” or, “Your boss trusts your output but not your framing.” That specificity is gold.

Todd Curzon

[warmly] And it prevents the usual overcorrection. Without a clear read, people tend to fix the wrong thing. They become more forceful when the problem was clarity. Or more visible when the problem was inconsistency. A good assessment can save months of misdirected effort.

Daniel Carter

[calm] If you’re in the first ninety days of a bigger role, the value of something like LEAP is not that it hands you a flattering report. It’s that it shows you the blind spots EARLY, while your reputation is still forming. That’s the moment when a focused adjustment has the highest return. You don’t need a giant personality overhaul. Usually you need two or three very disciplined changes.

Todd Curzon

And that focus is so important. Because early in a role, the temptation is to improve everything at once. Speak better, delegate better, build cross-functional trust, refine your updates, sharpen strategy, be more present, be more decisive. It becomes an impossible self-management project. A structured assessment narrows the aperture. It says, in effect, “Here is the leverage point.”

Daniel Carter

Let’s make that concrete. Suppose LEAP shows that your credibility is high with your team but low with peers. That suggests a very different development plan than if your boss sees you as smart but too detailed. In the first case, maybe you work on stakeholder mapping, pre-wiring, and cleaner trade-off conversations. In the second, maybe you train yourself to lead with recommendation, then evidence. Same title. Totally different plan.

Todd Curzon

[curious] And for listeners who want to see it, the link is https://assuredleadership.com/services/assessments-tools. I’ll say that once more naturally because I know some people are walking the dog or driving -- assuredleadership.com/services/assessments-tools. It is worth reviewing not as a label-maker, but as a development aid.

Daniel Carter

Yes, and not in a salesy way -- just practically -- it can help you get out of the fog. The first ninety days generate a lot of feedback, but most of it is fragmented. One person says be bolder. Another says slow down. Another says get more strategic. Another says communicate more. LEAP can help organize that noise into a pattern you can actually work with.

Todd Curzon

[reflective] What I appreciate most is that it returns us to behavior. Not image. Not status performance. Behavior. What do you do in meetings? How do you frame decisions? How do others experience your follow-through? Can people predict your judgment? Those are all improvable, which is encouraging.

Daniel Carter

And if you’re leading someone newly promoted, it gives you a better coaching conversation. Instead of saying, “You need more executive presence,” which is fuzzy to the point of useless, you can say, “In the last three staff meetings, you answered with context before recommendation, and the group lost the thread. Let’s fix that.” That’s coachable. That changes outcomes.

Todd Curzon

[softly] Perhaps that is the real invitation for anyone stepping into a larger role. Not, “How do I appear more senior?” But something more demanding, and I think more humane: when people leave a conversation with me, do they feel clearer, steadier, and more able to act?

Daniel Carter

[questioning tone] And maybe that’s the question to sit with after this one: are you spending your energy trying to LOOK senior... or are you becoming the kind of leader who is simply easier to trust?