– How To Lead When Nobody Respects You Yet – Part 2

What No One Tells You — #11 - How To Lead When Nobody Respects You Yet - Part 2 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEUuY3hBjwE —————————————————————————————————————————————————— Welcome back to What No One Tells You, the podcast where we talk about the leadership challenges that nobody prepares you for. My name is Claudia and if you listen to episode 10, you know we talked about earning respect as a new manager when your team sees you as unproven or maybe even unqualified. We covered the foundation, the basics you need to get right. And I know some of you went back to work and started implementing those strategies. But here is what happened next for many of you. And I know this because I've lived it and I've coached leaders through it. You did everything right. You set those boundaries. You showed up consistently. You delivered your promises. And 3 months later, there's still someone on your team who rolls their eyes when you speak in meetings. Or maybe you made one mistake and now you feel like all that progress just evaporated. Or perhaps you're sitting there thinking, "Claudia, I've been doing this for six months and I still don't feel like they truly respect me. So, what am I doing wrong?" That's what we're covering today in part two. Because earning respect isn't a checklist you complete and then you're done. It's a messy process with setbacks and slow progress and moments where you question whether any of this is even working. So, let's talk about what happens when your first attempts don't work the way you hoped. And more importantly, what to do about it. First thing I need you to hear, and I mean really hear this, is that earning respect as a new leader takes 6 to 12 months, not 6 weeks. I know that sounds like forever when you're in month three and someone just questioned your decision in front of the entire team, but this is the reality that nobody tells you when you get promoted. The first month, everyone is polite because you're new and they're figuring you out. The second and third months, you start setting boundaries and making decision. And that's when the real testing begins. But here's what br what is brutal about month 3 through six. Your initial enthusiasm starts to fade. The results you're driving aren't dramatic enough yet for people to notice and you're in this weird misle middle zone where you're not new anymore, but you're also not established. This is the danger zone where most new managers either give up and become pushovers or they overcorrect and become tyrants. And I need you to resist both of these urges because what you're experiencing is completely normal. The question you need to ask yourself isn't is this working, but rather is this getting slowly better, staying the same, or actively getting worse. Because those three scenarios require very different responses. Now, let's talk about the people who still aren't respecting you even after you're done everything from episode 10. In my experience, there are three types, and you need to handle each and one differently. The first type is the hold out. This is someone who usually wanted your job themselves, or they're very close to someone who did, and their resistance to you isn't really about you at all. It's about their own disappointment or loyalty to someone else. You can be the most competent, fair, and effective manager in the world, and this person will still find reasons to undermine you because respecting you feels like betraying their own ambitions or their friend's ambitions. Here's what actually works with the hold out. Time plus consistency. And I know that sounds boring, but it is the truth. What doesn't work is trying to win them over personally, having heart-to-he heart conversations about your relationship, or bending over backwards to prove yourself to them specifically. What you need to do instead is focus on earning their professional respect, not their personal affection. And there's a huge difference between these two things. When the hold out pushes back on your decisions, instead of getting defensive, you can say something like, "I notice you disagree with this approach, so walk me through your thinking." And then you actually listen to their perspective. You make the final call and you move forward. Over time, and we're talking months here, they start to see that you're not threatened by disagreement and you're not trying to be their best friend. You're just trying to do the job well. And that's professional steadiness is what eventually shifts their perspective. The second type is the tester. This is the person who keeps pushing boundaries to see if you'll actually hold the line you drew. And here's what nobody tells you about testers. They are actually a good sign because it means they're taking you seriously enough to test whether you're real or just performing. Think about it. If they truly didn't respect you at all, they wouldn't bother testing you. They just ignore you completely. The tester shows up late to meetings after you said punctuality matters, or they miss a deadline you specifically discussed, or they question your decisions in ways that feel like challenges to your authority. And what they're doing is checking whether you meant what you said or whether you're going to fall under pressure. What works with the tester is calm and immediate boundary reinforcement. And I mean immediate, not 3 days later in a private conversation. Right there in the moment. So when the tester shows up on Tuesday with something you agreed was due Friday, don't let it slide. You can say, "We agreed on Friday deadlines. This is Tuesday. What happened?" And you say it in a neutral tone, without anger, but also without wiggle room. What the tester is learning over time is that you are consistent, you are not reactive, and you don't make empty threats. And once they learn that, they usually become some of your most reliable team members because they know exactly where they stand with you. The third type is the genuine skeptic. This person has been burned by bad managers before, maybe multiple times, and they've learned to protect themselves by not trusting new leaders until those leaders prove themselves over a long period of time. The skeptic isn't trying to undermine you. They're just refusing to believe your promises until they see consistent action. And honestly, I respect this approach because they've been trained by experience to be cautious. What works with the skeptic is acknowledging their skepticism directly instead of pretending it's not there. You can say something like, "I know you've probably heard promises like this from the other managers before, and I cannot prove anything to you with words, so I'm just going to ask you to watch what I do over the next few months." And then you follow through on every single thing you commit to. The skeptic doesn't need you to be perfect. They need you to be honest and consistent. And when you mess up, which you will, you acknowledge it certainly and then you show them the correction in your very next action. And speaking of messing up, let's talk about the thing that every new manager experiences, but nobody admits out loud. You are going to sabotage your own progress at some point. You're going to lose your temper in a meeting with when someone pushes your buttons. You're going to make a decision you have to walk back the next day. You're going to accidentally show favoritism to someone you click with personally. Or you're going to be inconsistent with your boundaries because you're tired or overwhelmed. This is not a question of it, it's a question of when. And then managers who earn respect aren't the ones who never m make mistakes. They're the ones who recover from mistakes without falling apart. So, when you lose your temper in a Tuesday meeting because someone challenged you in front of everyone, here's what to do. You acknowledge it quickly and specifically, and you can say, "I lost my temper yesterday when your colleague pushed back on the timeline that wasn't professional, and I'm going to handle these agreements better going forward." Notice I said acknowledge it, not apologize endlessly because there's a huge difference. Over apologizing kills your authority because it makes people uncomfortable and it pushes them in a position of having to reassure you which is backwards. What you're doing is naming what happened, taking responsibility for it, and showing them the correction immediately in your next action and then you move on. Here is what I need you to understand. One mistake does not erase three months of consistency. Your team isn't keeping a scorecard where one bad moment cancels out everything you've built. They're watching the overall pattern. And if you the pattern is generally consistent with occasional human mistakes, that actually builds respect because it shows you're real and you're accountable. Now, here's where it gets tricky and it's something uh that we call the patience paradox. On one hand, you need patience to earn respect because this process takes time and you cannot rush it. On the other hand, you cannot wait forever for toxic behavior to improve because at some point patience becomes becomes enabling and it's not good leadership. So, how do you know the difference between this person needs more time to come around and this person is actively harmful and I need to escalate this? Here's what I look for. Is their behavior getting worse or is it staying the same or is it slowly improving? If someone was questioning your decisions in meetings 3 months ago and they're still questioning your decision in the exact same way today with absolutely no shift at all, that is stagnation and you need to have a direct conversation about it. But if someone was openly hostile 6 months ago and now they're just quietly skeptical, that's progress. even though it doesn't feel like victory and that person probably needs more time. On the other hand, if someone is actively undermining you with the team, spreading negativity about your leadership, or creating division after you've been consistent for 6 months or more, that's not someone who needs more time. That's someone who has chosen not to respect your leadership. And you need to escalate this that situation to your own manager or to HR. The line between patience and enabling is this. Are you giving someone time to adjust and grow? Or are you allowing someone to damage your credibility and your team's culture? Those require completely different responses. And part of earning respect is knowing when to hold space for people's process and when to draw a hard line. Let me tell you something that can actually speed up this whole process of earning respect. And it's something you have less control over, but it's worth being aware of. What accelerates respect more than almost anything else is being visibly respected by someone your team already respects. Because human beings are social creatures and we take cues from the people around us about who deserves our trust. So if your boss shows visible support for you in meetings, if they reference your decisions positively, if they treat you as a credible leader in front of your team, that matters enormously. If peer managers at your level treat you as an equal, include you in important conversations and defer to your expertise in your area, your team notices that. And if one senior leader that your team admires says, "Listen to Claudia on this in a meeting." That can shift the entire dynamic overnight. Now, you cannot force any of this to happen, but you can be strategic about building relationships with people your team respects. You can ask your boss for visible support when you need it. You can position yourself as someone who other leaders take seriously. This isn't about politics or playing games. It's about understanding that your team is watching how other people treat you and they are using that information to calibrate their own response to your leadership. So, here is what I want you to take away from this episode. Earning respect when you're a new leader isn't a 30-day plan with a clear finish line. It's showing up consistently for six months while one person still rolls their eyes at you and choosing not to let that derail you. It's recovering from your own mistakes without spiring into self-doubt or defensiveness. It's about boring and reliable and steady until boring and reliable becomes I trust them. They have proven it. And if you're in month four right now, feeling like this isn't working fast enough, I want you to ask yourself, is it getting slowly better? Because slowly better is actually winning, even when it doesn't feel like it. Give yourself time. Give your team time. Hold your boundaries, own your mistakes, and keep showing up as the leader you're becoming, not the perfect leader you wish you already were. This is episode 11 of What No One Tells You. And now you know because I told you. See you next time.