weLEAD Online Magazine
leadingtoday.org
Copyright 2003 ã
weLEAD, Inc.
A Book Review Article
Leadership and the Culture of Trust
Praeger
Publishers– 1994 (256 pages in hardback)
Author Gilbert W. Fairholm
ISBN 0-688-08508-3
This book is about
the leadership of trust. It describes
cultural leadership that produces a homogenous organization where work can be
done collectively. Seeing leadership in
these terms is different from past models.
It has been an American tendency to see leadership in terms of the
personality and capacity of individual leaders.
Leadership is the task of culture
creation—of creating a culture of shared values, vision and trust where people
know what to expect and participate in because it is what they want to do. Leadership cannot take place in a culture
where people distrust each other, doubt other’s motives, and pursue independent
action agendas. Fairholm
defines the leader’s role in cultural creation, change, and maintenance as
primarily a values creation activity.
Leaders use values to define meaning for the group. He elaborates on team relationships and a
cultural environment conducive to developing and using trust.
Three ideas form
the basis of this book: (1) culture creation, (2) trust relationships, and (3)
leadership. Shaping a culture in which
group members can trust each other enough to work together is the first
leadership task. Of all the new and
pressing problems the chief officers in our large-scale organizations face
day-to-day, one stands out. It is the
challenge of creating and maintaining an organizational culture that fits the
nature of the work done and the character and capacities of its growingly
diverse work force.
When it is said
that leadership is not so much a function of the individual leader as it is a
condition of the culture, the author is suggesting that leaders actually create
a culture within an organization that is conducive to leading and
following. You cannot lead unless people
are willing to follow. To follow, people
must believe in the same core and organizational values. It is a leader’s function to create this
culture of values and live and work by them.
Fairholm affirms that
cultures exist in every organization—even in groups that last for only a
modestly short time. The benefit of
these cultures is that they provide methods of understanding events, symbols
and messages. The author takes the state
of our societal culture and shows how this affects cultures within
organizations.
Fairholm also deals with
details of leader actions and requirements in shaping culture. He defines cultural leadership as a function
of values, plus strategic, communications, and office politics systems present
in any organization. He ties cultural
leadership to the effectiveness of the action used, the attitudes engendered in
members by cultural artifacts, the service goals established, how leaders
manage change, and how one exercises leadership. He focuses on how and by what means leaders
create meaning within the organization.
Trust is central
to leadership in organizations because followers are people who choose to
follow leaders. The trust of followers
allows leaders to lead. Culture affects
willingness to trust, and willingness to trust helps define culture. Trust is the glue holding the organization
and its programs and people together.
Leaders build trust or tear it down by the cumulative actions they take
and the words they speak—by the culture they create for themselves and their
organization’s members. Fairholm defines trust as reliance on the integrity, or
authenticity, of other people.
Our lives are
based on trust relationships. We trust
people to obey traffic rules and we trust stores to honor our credit
cards. Sadly, the books
suggests that people in general appear to have lost confidence (trust)
in their leaders and in the programs they lead.
We see this in business, government, education, and even in our
churches. We have lost the sense of
community that former trust cultures provided.
The thrust of
leadership today is toward seeing the leader as a developer, not a controller,
of followers. Developing a trust culture
is critical to the success of a leader.
Feelings of trust are developed by the way people interact. Cultural values also influence the
development of feelings of trust.
From an
organizational cultural perspective, to trust our leaders
means we expect them to assume a stewardship relationship toward those who
follow them. The foundation of trust is
truth. A culture that includes a trust
atmosphere allows the leader to empower followers by building mutually
compatible relationships rather than coercive ones. Trust is key to the
task of creating a corporate culture built on the values of respect and candor
and is critical in values leadership.
The process of
developing trust is not a simple or quick process. Trust is something that is earned over time,
not demanded. Several factors are key to developing trust, nurturing it and expanding it. Among them are integrity, patience, altruism,
vulnerability, action, friendship, character, competence and judgment. A leader has a prime responsibility to create
a culture in which trust and trustworthiness are integral parts of the definition
of the culture. Four ways to develop
trust are participation, helping, listening and leadership. Trust is encouraged and fostered by shared
experiences. Followers can do a number
of things to encourage a trust relationship such as being proactive in moving
work forward as a demonstration of follower trust in the leader.
Faiholm also introduces
some elements constraining a fully trusting culture, including the quality of
communication, the way a company assigns authority, and general feelings of
apathy and alienation. Development of a
trust culture may also be hampered by a lack of effective accountability
mechanisms and time constraints.
Trust is key to an effective organization. Leaders within the organization are
responsible for achieving a level of trust within the organization that is
beneficial to all stakeholders. In
developing a trust culture, leaders make the work easier for everyone within
the organization.
weLEAD rating - recommended
Coy
Reese, an undergraduate Finance major at the
Buy
This Book at a Discounted Price Here!
BACK TO
weLEAD HOME PAGE