Skip to main content

Deliver small wins to build trust

Talking to stakeholders and building a roadmap won't take all of your time. That leaves you with time to deliver small wins to build trust and confidence.

Here are two tactics that seem to effectively and efficiently build trust:

  1. Immediately starting small (<5 minute) tasks that help stakeholders
  2. Find quick stop-gaps for burning problems

A common example I've seen for #2: rewriting an existing-but-hacky bioinformatics pipeline with a workflow manager.

Sharing how you're spending your time with your hiring manager helps build trust, too. ("I'm spending 60% of my time on immediate needs and 40% of my time on planning".)

Successful team leads do seem to put in more hours to deliver quick wins when they're starting, but sharing this with your manager helps prevent unsustainable expectations. ("I'm putting in an extra ten hours a week to accelerate spinning up the bioinformatics team, but I will likely not be able to continue that pace for more than two months.")