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Trust is an important part of good leadership and governance.  Can you trust your leaders not to line their own pockets? But to really have the success of the organisation and it’s beneficiaries  such as tenants at the heart of every decision it makes?

The Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) recently did a suvey called ‘The Index of Leadership Trust’ on  how  leadership in organisations is viewed. The study examines the relationship between leadership practices and team members .  It also looks at trust in times of change and concluded that trust in leaders is strongly associated with team effectiveness.

Trust the ILM reports says is:

“An integral part of the organisation’s social capital the set of relationships between individuals and groups that bind people together…. Simply put people work better and feel more positive about their work in environments where levels of trust are high. Trust reduces transactional costs, the costs of doing business. Where trust exists there is less need for excessive controls and regulation.s�

Its research focused on six dimensions of trust in leaders: ability, understanding, fairness, oppeness, integrity and consistency.

An important question to ask stakeholders: Do you have a firm  belief in the reliability, truth or ability of for instance the chief executive, the board, the chair of the board, the tenant organisation  or your line manager? This got me thinking about all the teams I had been in over the years and I am definitley happiest when I have confidence in the leader’s six dimensional abilitities.

Of  these drivers of trust, ability and integrity were formost  and consistency least important .  Trust waned as  the size of organisation increases and is lowest in organisation of over 1000 employees; trust is lowest when a long serving employee is working under a new leader. Age and gender have less affect than expected with women being more trusting and trusted, but lose trust more quickly than men and ultimately fall below men in trust. Employees trust leaders of the same age and gender more.

What are the implications? Does this means that we must work harder to establish  and embed equality and diversity to help overcome the tendency for people to trust people in their own image more? In large organisations better training opportunity helped overcome the fall in trust.

What steps can your board and senior management take to maximise their personal capability and their organisations governance structure to promote high levels of trust?

We at the Board develiopment Agency run an ILM Level 4 Managing Equality and Divsersity Programme, which explores the issue of leadership and trust. We also run board, tenant and support officer leadership and development programmes.  We can develop any leadership programme to meet your organisation’s needs.

For more information go to www.boardagency.org.uk