Below, I have compiled my experiences and research. As you read this article you may think that I am knocking on an open door, and, of course, it may be perceived that way, but here you will get a scientific basis on how this relates.
I have tried to focus on trust and its relationship with other variables. However, the fact is that it is not possible to see this variable individually, but rather that it interacts with other variables. I will progressively share my experiences and findings, variable by variable. We are starting with the variable trust. Below I describe the variables that have an extremely high correlation in my material, gathered from the last 22 years.
BACKGROUND
Over the last 22 years I have worked as a consultant and researcher within leadership and organisational development. Over these years I have met with various kinds of businesses, both private companies and public organisations. On many occasions I have had the opportunity to avail myself of our tool QMP. QMP is a tool that analyses leadership and business on a comprehensive level, at departmental level and from an employee perspective. To this we have linked PSS, a tool that measures the psychosocial ‘lost time’; a measure in money and time for issues that are not working optimally, based on soft values.
The foundation of QMP has its origin in the research that Prof. Göran Ekvall and Jouko Arvonen Ph.D. carried out over many years. In Jouko Arvonen’s model (Arvonen, 2002) he described the dimensions ‘relationship, change and structure’. These have been captured, through our research and development, when we began developing QMP 2000. We have used this basis in all our analyses, not only within leadership, but also in our analyses of organisations. The variables are based on seeing organisations from an interdisciplinary perspective, with psychology, sociology, business administration and medicine as a basis.
In total, we study 156 variables in QMP. When we built the system, it was important to create a relevance in the variables found in the tool, i.e. that we measured the right things and that there was an explanation for each variable; how it is correlated with other variables. One of the 156 variables found in our system is trust. Today many managers and employees talk about trust and how important it is that it exists. Trust is used in many contexts, where trust can be described as having confidence in someone. When we looked at leadership from a relationship perspective, as part of my studies as I developed QMP (see below if you want to know more about QMP), it emerged that trust was one of the most important variables to study. Trust, described below, is an important variable and has strong links with other variables within leadership, but also when we study the business overall, the department and from an employee perspective, based on relationship, structure and change. Trust also has a strong connection to PSS, i.e. to human efficiency in the business.
I will progressively release the material from my real-life studies related to QMP. Trust is the first! According to studies by other researchers, transformational leadership creates trust, which in turn has an influencing effect on performance and satisfaction for leadership, employees and the business. Trust can be defined as an intension and willingness in an individual to accept vulnerability/exposure on the basis of positive expectations with regard the intentions and behaviour of another individual (Rousseau, Sitkin, Burt, Camerer, 1998). Trust infers thinking about another person as reliable and trustworthy, that one feels safe and comfortable with the person and that one trusts and opens oneself up to the other person (Gillespie & Mann, 2004). According to Dirks @ Ferrin (2002), there is a strong link between transformational leadership and the level of trust towards a leader, which should support the indirect effect in the form of trust between transformational leadership and various measures of effectiveness. When there are high demands on change and performance, trust is a very important factor.
Trust describes emotional security in relationships (Larson, 2001). When the trust is good people have the courage to come forward with ideas and opinions. One can take the initiative without fear of reprisals, should something go wrong. Communication is open and clear. In those organisations where trust is lacking, management and employees are suspicious of each other and expect to pay dearly for any mistakes. One is also afraid of being exploited and having ones ideas and good suggestions stolen.
To build trust one must really know one another. Trust is not only built on chatting in the break room or in the corridor. One builds trust in the long-term by getting to know one another better and more profoundly, where one knows how and what happens in different situations. One builds up trust gradually, meaning it is therefore something that one earns. A deeper trust in a group can be better built by obtaining professional help from process leaders who, through team development, create trust. My experience is that one quickly achieves the result if one accepts this help.
Seeing trust based on how the real leadership works
In my studies I focus on 31 different variables within what I call the real leadership (how leadership actually works). These are divided into relationship, change and structure. The variables I highlight below have, for example, a strong or very strong correlation with trust.
According to the results, I have concluded that it is important for a manager to build trust in their organisation, in the form of an established security, in relation to the employees, being in place. If this does not exist it can create anxiety among employees, resulting in not feeling motivated or not performing to ones’ best. The focus is quite simply wrong; instead of output, thoughts about the situation in relation to the business are created. Without trust, security may be difficult to create and vice versa.
Security is based on the existence of confidence and trust in each other. Managers who fail in this find it much more difficult to enforce change processes in a good way within their businesses. For managers who have built up a trust, it is easier to get employees on board in order for the change process to be undertaken together. They believe in the leader, which creates an easier process. Through my studies, I have also concluded that leaders who have greater trust are more accommodating and show more consideration to employees’ needs and circumstances. For the leader to succeed in creating trust, showing consideration and showing in a clear way that one cares about ones employees is also required. The leader must also behave in a fair, reliable way in order to create trust among their employees.
Based on my section on the changing leadership, it is important for leaders to be courageous decision makers. By leaders daring to be courageous, they show that they dare to drive things which may be challenging. This behaviour creates trust. Conversely, should leaders not be courageous, then trust is adversely affected, through leaders being cowards and not standing up for the business or employees.
When the need for change exists in an organisation, it is important that a fundamental trust in the leader exists. If this is lacking, employees’ motivation to participate in the change process is affected. In my meetings with organisations, I sometimes see a non-trusting environment where managers and the management team do not understand why employees don’t feel motivated when changes are to be implemented. During my analyses it has clearly emerged that, among other things, trust and confidence in managers and the management team from employees or junior management have been at a low level. Focusing efforts on strengthening the trust will also increase the motivation to want to participate more actively in the change process.
Through the leader creating trust, he/she dares, together with their employees, to try new ways to solve problems. The trust gives the courage to look for new ways and not just state that it is something that’s been done before, but instead daring together to see the problem/opportunity from new perspectives.
By increasing trust, the leader has an open door, and employees have the courage to present new ideas. This increases the possibility for change and involvement in the change process, which leads to increased commitment and motivation.
Through trust, the leader encourages employee creativity and innovation. To meet the new changes that businesses are facing, it is important that trust exists, and that one relies on the ability of employees to be able to think creatively. In order to succeed in creating development, it is important to ‘turn stones’ together, and it doesn’t need to be the leader who is unilaterally accountable for this.
The manager seeïng the employees’ individual needs for development and changecreates trust, which results in the leader seeing each employee and supporting them in their own development. This is important for overall success. A unison between the organisation’s development (as a whole) and the individual employee’s development must exists in order to create good results humanely and economically.
Trust in connection to the structural leadership perspective
Through trust in the leadership, it is easier to get employees to accept the set objectivesand the path there. At the same time, it is important that established objectives exist. If not, trust and the other variables in the relationship aspect will gradually decline. If goals are not set, there is a risk that the organisation wavers and becomes unclear to managers and employees. They even need to be communicated down to the individual employees. If one does not succeed in this, it is my experience that the relationship aspect is adversely affected. One options for managers is to “sub-optimise” their own businesses in order to curb this trend.
From a structural leadership perspective, it is important that there is order and clarity and that responsibilities and roles are clearly communicated to employees. This is strongly linked to trust. In my analyses I have found that the structure of leadership is extremely important in order to maintain a good relationship with employees, where trust is an important variable. If the leader fails to create this structure with order and clarity, it creates an environment where the business can be perceived as messy and chaotic, without a clear direction, which leads to the variables within the relationship and the trust declining.
If the leader does not give clear and specific directives, which are clearly explained to employees, the trust in the relationship with employees will be adversely affected. Even if the leader has initially built up a trust, this will decline when employees want clear directives on what shall be done and how it shall be performed.
If the work is not planned precisely, the employees will be adversely affected, so that they feel they do not understand the framework and how the work shall be performed. Employees must understand the plan. If the leader does not succeed in communicating this, trust will gradually decline.
It is important that the leader explains and justifies his/her decisions in order to create trust among employees. In so doing, the employees feel involved and that they are part of the overall cohesion. Those decisions employees themselves are allowed to determine are an important part of creating a context and a trust. Seeing employees as a resource normally encourages them further so that they feel that they are allowed to take responsibility.
In many organisations you hear talk of a creative atmosphere. In order to bring about this environment, trust between the leader and the employees is an important aspect. It is clearly evident when leaders talk about a creative atmosphere if this is the case or not. How many times have we heard that a creative atmosphere exists only to find that that is not the case? Of course, there are many variables that correlate with a creative atmosphere, such as having an open door policy, creating security, allowing people to make mistakes, etc.
It has been shown that seeing and utilising employees’ skills in a proper manner is important in creating trust. Employees must feel that they are seen in the business and that the leader captures employees’ skills correctly. If this does not happen, there is a risk that employees feel sidelined or unutilised, that their skills have no worth, which results in a decrease in trust for the leader.
If trust exists, it in turn means the psychosocial work climate is influenced in a positive way, leading to the right conditions being established for employees to learn new skills. At the same time, a climate is created in which employees are stimulated to improve performance. On numerous occasions I have worked with organisations that have had problems with employees not taking responsibility or clearly masking and even manipulating the system. The result has been that they have performed less, or much less, than could be expected of them. Trust is therefore an important aspect in this respect: that there is a relationship where one openly can explain and give feedback on each other’s behaviour.
To strengthen the trust, it is an advantage if leaders are good at communicating objectives and strategies and explain how the objectives are to be achieved. If leaders do not succeed in this, trust will decrease dramatically.
In order to create trust among employees, it is important that they are given space for them to express their feelings. If this is suppressed it will constantly ‘be on the agenda’ and may even accelerate. It involves listening to employees, not acting like a psychologist. A solution for the individual as well as the good of the whole is vital.
If trust exists this likely brings with it intensive activity in the business. This results in employees being used in a more positive and developmental way, both on the whole and in part.
It has emerged in my results that if employees do not feel trust it may have repercussions on mental health. If trust is low, this is strongly linked to an increase in mental health issues, and vice versa.
Summary
Bear in mind that your trust in your leadership has a strong connection to:
- The level of security you create
- How accommodating you are
- How accessible you are
- The level of consideration you show to employees’ needs and circumstances
- How you care about employees
- How fair and reliable you are
- The level of thoughtfulness you demonstrate
- How courageous you are as a decision-maker
- How you see opportunities versus problems
- How you conveythe business’ visionsfor the future
- If you are always open to new ideas
- If you encourage employees’ creativity and innovation
- If you see the individual needs for development and change
- How you create order and clarity
- How you communicate duties and accountability for these
- If you explain the objectives in a clear manner
- How you explain and justify your decisions
- How you plan and organise the work
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We have created a database, QMP, which, to a high probability, allows us to describe different courses of events based on a leader’s future leadership, its impact on organisations, and the ability organisations have to function moving forward. In other words, what happens if one, for example, does not change a behaviour, or the impact it has when the behaviour is changed. This enables us to propose operational activities that a leader needs in order to create a better leadership and a better environment, for themselves and their employees. This is possible as we can see the relationships between different variables and see their impact if one focuses on developing one aspect of the leadership.
It has been important to create QMP, on the basis that it is possible, in a simple way, to establish a perception of leadership: how I value my behaviour as a leader, how my colleagues value me as a manager, and how my manager values my leadership. By taking an overview, how the leader values himself and how others value the leader’s behaviour, it can be ascertained at which level the leadership is and how it can be developed. By looking at differences between how the manager values himself/herself versus those around them, one is able to determine if there are discrepancies in the perception of the leader’s behaviour.
In our analyses, we have concluded that it is important that, as a leader, one is capable of mastering the relationship aspect with your employees, to be able to act as a leader during the changes taking place, both within the organisation and outside the organisation, as well as being able to act as a leader where there is structure in the leadership.