June 6, 2026

Read Time - 4 minutes

"Trust is like the air we breathe. When it's present, nobody really notices. But when it's absent, everybody notices."

~ Warren Buffett

Last week I was in a room full of seasoned campus leaders, from very different institutions, and one of them said: "I'm 62. I've spent my career in corporate and in the academy. In all of that time, I've had exactly one boss I felt I could trust. I always knew where I stood with him."

It was said matter-of-fact. Just an honest read of a long career. And more than a few people around the room were nodding along.

My own count is similar. I've learned something from every person I've reported to. Even the difficult ones. Especially those. But the kind of trust where you know, without checking, that someone will back you through thick and thin? That has been rare.

So here's a question worth sitting with this week. What do you do when the person you report to doesn't really listen? When they second-guess your work, or go quiet right when you need cover? Or when you're the one who doesn't fully trust them?

I'll be honest up front. I don't have any sage words that make that person trust you, or make you trust them. But there are ways to lead well anyway. Ways to manage up while being true to yourself, and to keep what's broken above you from leaking onto the people you lead.

The Leadership Takeaway

We talk about a lack of trust like it's the other person's failing. Maybe it is. But if we're not careful, the weight of it lands on us.

When we're not sure our boss will back us, we start running every decision through a second filter. Not "is this the right call?" We usually know that already. It's a different question that usually slows us down: "if this goes sideways, am I standing here alone?"

Multiply that across a department. A college. An institution. We don't get a few cautious people, we get a climate. People protect themselves first and the mission second. Good ideas show up pre-hedged. Hard calls get slow-walked. And taking care of our people only happens once we feel safe enough.

Put anyone where trust runs one way, and self-protection becomes the smart play. On plenty of campuses, it's a survival tactic. In January, I wrote about where all the courage went; this is part of the answer. A climate like that isn't fixed, though. It's built. Which means each of us can build a different one. That work is less about winning the person over and more about a few specific moves. Here's where I'd start.

How to Lead Up Without Losing Yourself

Managing up starts with their vision, not your update.  We like to think a boss holds back support because they're busy, or unsure what we need. Sometimes. But let's not tiptoe around the harder reasons. Sometimes they don't back us because they don't trust us, or they don't agree with us. So before you ask for support, get clear on what your boss is actually trying to build, and make it obvious how your work advances it. That's the core of the HBR piece Managing Your Boss: the relationship runs on mutual dependence, and it starts with understanding their goals and pressures, not apple-polishing. Frame what you need around the outcomes they care about, not just your unit's. Support usually follows the person who's clearly serving the bigger picture. It rarely shows up for the one who looks like a free agent.

When your boss doesn't trust your work yet.  Sometimes you got the title but not the confidence, and every move gets a second look. It can feel insulting. The honest first question is the uncomfortable one: is any of it earned? Maybe something did slip. Maybe they've never actually seen the thing they need to see from you. And even when the distrust isn't fair, our resentment won't change it. But predictability will. Trust gets rebuilt through reliability long before brilliance. Solve for their surprise, not just the quality of your work. No blindsides. Steady follow-through on the few things they actually care about (even if you don't). The boring dependability that lets them exhale when your name is on something. Some weeks it'll feel beneath you. Do it anyway. The path to being trusted with the big things runs through being relentless about the small ones.

When you have to carry a decision you didn't make.  Leadership hands it down, your name lands on the email, and the frustration has nowhere to go but you. Two instincts can show up, and both will cost you. One is to distance yourself: "well, I wouldn't have chosen this." The other is to over-defend it like you made it. Instead, disagree and commit. Push hard in private, where it may still change something, then carry the reasoning in public without throwing the people above you under the bus. You can say you'd have weighed it differently and still stand behind the call the institution made. But know where the line is. Disagree and commit is for decisions you dislike, not for ones that cross your conscience. If you're being asked to do something you believe is genuinely wrong, that isn't a managing-up problem, and "commit" isn't the answer. Most of the time, though, it's simply a hard call you didn't make and now have to carry. Your team isn't asking you to agree with everything. They're asking you to be straight with them, and steady under the weight.

The Bottom Line

Let me be honest before we close… none of these moves guarantees the boss above us will trust us or champion our decisions. Predictability and honesty don't always earn loyalty back. Some bosses won't change, and some rooms won't reward our integrity on the timeline we'd want. I've been on both sides of this. As a direct report who didn't yet understand how to serve a boss's vision, and a boss who couldn't fully trust a report working like a free agent. Trust is hard in both directions, and it's not always in our control. Now, here's what we do control: even if we never get that kind of boss ourselves, we can be that boss for our people. Take the heat in public and give the feedback in private. Tell our people what they can count on from us, so they don't have to guess. Defend their decisions in rooms they'll never sit in. We can own that.

That said, none of this is easy. It takes the security to give trust we might not get back, and the generosity to keep giving it without keeping a tab. No one's going to make us lead like that. We decide to.

Most of us will spend a career hoping for the boss who has our back, and finding that person once, maybe twice. Maybe never. But years from now, someone who worked for us will count the bosses they could truly trust. We get to be one of the few they name.

Try This Before Friday

This week, get specific about one thing your boss is actually trying to build this year. Take one ask you've been sitting on and reframe it around that goal, how it moves their priority, not just yours. See if the answer changes.

The Playbook gets you thinking. Here's what gets you moving:​

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