Leadership in arts organisations – the importance of trust

Trust is a fragile thing – hard to create and easy to destroy. Creating high-trust organisations is the challenge faced by all leaders, because trust doesn’t just happen. It requires an inter-related set of policies, such as promoting a culture that values relationships between people, creating opportunities to meet informally, and ensuring that people are able to perform effectively. Conversely, inconsistent messages and standards, misplaced benevolence, and a failure to trust others or face up to tricky issues all serve to reduce trust. To find out more, the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) and Management Today surveyed over 5,000 UK employees and asked them to rate the importance of six dimensions of trust – ability, understanding, fairness, openness, integrity and consistency – and then assess their leaders and managers against these.