The Trust Equation for New Leaders
by Paige Costello • Product Lead, Core Product at Asana
Paige Costello is a Product Lead at Asana, overseeing the core product experience including desktop, web, and mobile apps. Previously, she served as Director of Product at Intercom and spent over five years as a Group Product Manager at Intuit.
🎙️ Episode Context
Paige Costello shares her strategies for building trust as a young leader, coaching product managers through example, and evolving product processes at scale. She discusses Asana's unique planning cycles, their implementation of the Double Diamond framework, and how to deliver effective feedback using the SBI model.
Problem It Solves
How young or new PMs can garner trust and win over skeptics, especially those with more tenure or experience.
Framework Overview
Trust is calculated as the sum of Credibility, Reliability, and Authenticity, divided by the Perception of Self-Interest. To maximize trust, PMs must increase the numerator (especially Credibility through deep insight) and decrease the denominator (showing you are not acting for personal gain).
🧠 Framework Structure
Credibility: Bring unique insights. K...
Reliability: Maintain a high say-do r...
Authenticity: Be vulnerable and genui...
Low Self-Interest: Demonstrate that y...
When to Use
When joining a new team, taking on a new scope, or leading stakeholders who are significantly more senior than you.
Common Mistakes
Trying to fake experience you don't have instead of leaning into the 'insight' you can generate through hard work.
Real World Example
Paige advises that even if you don't have 10 years of engineering experience, you can be the person in the room who has watched the most customer sessions and knows exactly why a competitor's feature is better, thus earning respect.
The thing I would say is bring the insight. Know thy customer. Know thy market. Know thy competitors. Know thy numbers. Know thy product.
— Paige Costello