A consistent outcome from many large employee surveys tells us that business leaders are among the least trusted professions in today’s culture. Overall, trust in leadership is the main employee concern in the workplace.
Gallup’s research further confirms this by showing that leaders who don’t focus on their people have the trust of only 9% of their staff. Leaders who make people their priority foster a 73% trust level from their employees. This is a stunning statistic that exposes a marked difference in leadership mindsets.
Trust has long been considered a powerful trait that enables leaders to succeed. People who trust their leader are willing to follow them. They are more willing to engage their duties, make strong efforts to benefit their organization, prize the quality of their work, and feel like their efforts have value. Conversely, a leader who is not trusted can never overcome large, inevitable pitfalls.
Trust is a decisive difference maker in personal and collective prosperity, so it makes sense for leaders to raise their trust quotient as high as possible. You may ask where you should start. Gallup’s work indicates that the primary leadership mindset needed to establish and build trust is a genuine focus on people. Why don’t more leaders pursue this? They may not grasp its gravity or they may not understand the four basic elements.
In this blog post series we will be looking at various steps leaders can take to increase trust, as well as exploring the importance of appreciation, integrity, and humility. As always I would love to hear from you. I can be reached here or on LinkedIn.
