Early in my career I wanted my team to respect me. It took me years to realize I was aiming at the wrong thing.
Respect is easy to earn. You show up prepared. You know your domain. You make good decisions. People respect competence, and if you are good at your job, respect follows.
Trust is different. Trust is not about whether you are good at your job. It is about whether your people believe you have their back when it counts.
I have watched capable, respected leaders who could not get their teams to follow them into anything hard. The team acknowledged they were smart. They just did not believe that leader would protect them if things went wrong. So when the pressure came, people covered themselves instead of committing to the mission.
Trust is built where nobody is watching
Trust is built in the moments that do not show up on any performance review.
When someone makes a mistake and you handle it privately instead of publicly. When you take the blame for a team failure in front of your boss instead of naming names. When you give someone credit for an idea in a room they were not in.
None of those moments are about competence. All of them are about character.
Respect gets you compliance. Trust gets you commitment.
You earn respect with what you know. You earn trust with how you show up when it is hard.