A patient does not read your CV before deciding whether to take the medication you have prescribed. They read your hands, your eye contact, whether you sat down or stayed standing near the door. By the time you finish explaining a diagnosis, they have already decided how much of it to believe, and that decision was made on perception rather than evidence.
I noticed this properly as a new registrar, several years into practice but new to a ward that had only ever known me as the doctor who looked younger than his patients guessed. The clinical knowledge had not changed. The perception had, and for the first fortnight it cost me. A plan that would have been accepted without question a year earlier, on a different ward, got quietly checked with the consultant instead. Nothing was said. It did not need to be. Perception had already made its ruling before I opened my mouth.
Substance has to be legible before it is useful
Substance only becomes useful to other people once it has been perceived, and perception runs on a narrower set of signals than we would like: consistency, how you handle the moment something goes wrong, whether your account of a situation matches what other people independently saw. Get those signals wrong and a genuinely competent, committed, principled leader will be read as none of those things, and the gap between who you are and how you are read becomes the actual obstacle to leading anyone anywhere.
What trust actually does once it exists
Once trust exists, though, it stops being a passive judgement and starts doing work. A congregation that trusts its leadership will sit through a difficult sermon rather than a comfortable one. A patient who trusts their doctor takes the medication on the days it makes them feel worse before it makes them feel better. A mentee who trusts their mentor will attempt the assignment they do not yet believe they can do.
Being right rarely produces any of that on its own. Trust does, and trust is a separate achievement, built on top of being right.
The uncomfortable implication
Leaders are responsible not only for their competence, commitment and character, but for whether those things are legible to the people who need to rely on them.
Being good and being illegible produces the same practical result as not being good at all. Nobody follows you anywhere.