Jordan had the better resume and better metrics, too. Two consecutive quarters of exceeding targets, a client save that everyone still talked about, and a certification Sam hadn’t even started. So when the stretch assignment came open, Jordan assumed it was a formality.
You can guess what happened next. (Yes, it went to Sam.)
It isn’t fair, we tell ourselves. And maybe it isn’t. But it also isn’t random. There’s an unseen mechanism at work in almost every one of these decisions, and once you understand it, you stop taking it personally and start doing something about it.
Competence gets you noticed, but trust gets you chosen.
Trust As a Mechanism For Advancement
Opportunity isn’t primarily a reward for past performance. It’s a bet on future performance. And when a manager places a bet, they’re not just consulting a track record but a feeling:
Do I believe this person will represent me well when I’m not in the room? Will they tell me the truth when something goes wrong? Can I hand them ambiguity and trust they’ll fill in the gaps the way I would?
Harvard Business School’s Frances Frei and Anne Morriss have spent years mapping exactly how this feeling forms. They describe three core drivers of trust: authenticity, logic, and empathy. People extend trust when they believe they’re dealing with the real you, when they have confidence in your judgment and competence, and when they sense you actually care about them and their outcomes. When trust breaks down, it almost always traces back to a wobble in one of those three legs.
Competence is in there, folded into logic, but it’s only one-third of the equation. Jordan had logic locked. Sam, evidently, had all three.
The Brain Science Behind “Just a Feeling”
If this sounds a little soft for a performance conversation, consider that it’s measurable at the level of brain chemistry. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak spent over a decade tracking oxytocin levels in the workplace and found that this brain chemical facilitates collaboration and teamwork, and is central to building a happier, more loyal, and more productive workforce.
Zak identified specific behaviors, such as recognizing people’s contributions publicly, giving them real discretion over their work, sharing information generously, and being willing to show vulnerability, which reliably raise oxytocin in the people around you, which in turn raises how much they trust you.
Here’s the useful part, though, those same behaviors work in reverse. You can’t manufacture oxytocin in someone else’s brain by demanding a promotion. But you can behave in ways that make people feel safe extending trust to you.
You don’t have to wait for someone to recognize your potential. Learn how to demonstrate it with the Strategic Advisor Blueprint.
Why “Doing Great Work” Quietly Isn’t a Strategy
This is the part that trips up a lot of talented, heads-down professionals. If you believe good work speaks for itself, you’re not wrong, but it’s just not the whole equation. Good work speaks for itself to the people who are already paying close attention. Trust is what earns you their attention in the first place.
Think about it like a credit score. You don’t build credit by being capable of repaying a loan. You build it by repaying, visibly, over time, in ways a lender can actually verify. Trust capital works the same way. It’s not what you’re capable of; it’s what people have seen you demonstrably do, especially when no one was forcing you to.
The Career Cost of Going It Alone
There’s a related pattern worth naming, because it explains a lot of the “overlooked” feeling: trust doesn’t just shape who gets picked for the next project. It shapes who gets advocated for when you’re not in the room. That’s the function of a sponsor—someone senior enough to open a door, and who trusts you enough to put their own credibility behind you.
The data on this is striking. Economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett studied sponsorship relationships and found that middle managers with a protégé were far more likely to be handed a stretch assignment than those without one. The effect of this compounds over a career.
Sponsorship isn’t handed out for merit alone. It’s handed out to the people a senior leader already trusts enough to stake their own reputation on. If no one is currently doing that for you, that’s a signal about where to focus next.
Three Ways to Start Earning Trust This Week
You can’t shortcut trust, but you can absolutely be intentional about building it. A few places to start:
- Say the hard true thing, early. Flag the risk before it becomes a crisis. Trust is built far more by the bad news you deliver on time than the good news you deliver at all.
- Make your reasoning visible. Don’t just deliver the answer; show your work. When people can see how you think, they can predict how you’ll handle the next ambiguous situation, which is exactly the confidence a manager needs before handing you one.
- Ask for help in public. Counterintuitive, but backed by the research: asking a colleague for input signals security, not weakness, and it invites the kind of collaboration that builds mutual trust fast.
None of these require a title change. All of them are available to you starting in your next meeting.
Final Reflection on Trust at Work
Sam probably didn’t out-work Jordan. He was simply someone people had already learned to trust with ambiguity, with bad news, with the moments that don’t show up on a performance review. That’s not a talent. It’s a practice that you can start today, in the smallest interaction on your calendar.
Trust is the currency that opportunity actually runs on. The good news is, you’re allowed to start earning it right now.
