Trust, Leadership and Desicion Making

Trust between leaders and followers represent one of the most relevant influences to predict success or failure. It sets the base for collaboration which in term brings organisational effectiveness, improves people’s motivation, co-operation, performance and positive behaviour. 

As a way of exploring this topic, a formal definition or trust is presented together with the analysis of how trust between leaders and followers influences the decision making and behaviours both for leaders and followers.

TRUST DEFINITION

Trust is an attitude people have towards other people in the hope that the other person will be trustworthy. Trust has several important characteristics, firstly, it requires being vulnerable to other people's decisions. 
Secondly, one of the parts rely on the other one to be competent to do what they have been trusted to do, and lastly, to rely on them to be willing to do it (McLeod 2021).

TRUST AND LEADERSHIP IN DECISION MAKING

Trust between leaders and followers is known to be one of the main indicators of success in organisations. Moreover, it is well documented that encouraging a trusting culture causes a positive impact in the long term outcomes for a company. 

One explanation for this is that part of a leader's job is to find and solve problems within the organisation before they produce a damaging effect. 

However, only employees tend to know the full extend of the information of operations and whether they feel enough trust to share that information with the leaders or not, makes a relevant difference which becomes noticeable during the outcomes (Fragouli 2019).

Some of the reasons why trust between followers and leaders influences the leader’s decision making is because when leaders are trusted by their employees, there is a high expectation they will be competent for the task in an ethical manner so they try their best to meet those expectations. 

Also, when employees are trusted by their leaders, they are provided with a deep sense of responsibility and goodness towards their leaders which influences ethical decision making (Fragouli 2019). 

Therefore, a relationship of trust between followers and leaders highly influences ethical decision making for both parties. Leaders need to prove they are competent and worthy of that trust to lead, while followers gain a deeper feeling of responsibility and care for their task at hand.

Similarly, in the negative sense, it can be said that poor level of trust between followers and leaders weakens the relationship, causing suspicion, deception and overall, a negative impact on the leader’s confidence for decision making (Fragouli 2019).

Conclusion

The workplace relationship between leaders and followers is influenced by the sense of trust, responsibility and acknowledgment. 

Functional leadership in organisations is an example of the benefits from increasing the employee’s empowerment, productivity and autonomy. 

While the pygmalion effect and equity theory indicate the importance of expectations and fair perception of inputs and outputs in the workplace as a way of increasing the likelihood for employees to succeed at their tasks and maintain a positive motivation.

Leaders have an important role in shaping the organisational culture which according to Schein’s model is determined by basic assumptions that influence the internal values, behaviours and practices. 

There are several types of organisational cultures which make them more or less likely for a leader to behave in certain ways, the Google study presented supports the importance of leaders in keeping or changing a company’s culture.

Lastly, when leaders are trusted by their followers, leaders are seen as competent and willing to lead. Also, indicating that when employees are trusted by their leaders, they are provided with a deep sense of responsibility and goodness towards their leaders which influences ethical decision making. 

Therefore, it can be concluded there are clear benefits from having a healthy and trusting relationship between leaders and followers such as improving employee’s motivation, co-operation, performance, responsibility and positive behaviour.

Written by Sergio Quintero, 2023, student of Master of Business Administration, 

Kaplan Business School, Melbourne, Australia.

References

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Lumen 2022, Equity theory, Lumen, Module 10: Motivating employees, retrieved 07 October 2022, <https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-introductiontobusiness/chapter/equity-theory/>

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