Ask senior executives whether trust is an important part of leadership and you’ll get emphatic agreement that it is. In my interviews with over 70 senior leaders across multiple sectors, every CEO I spoke with affirmed that leadership trust was foundational to positive outcomes such as employee performance, customer loyalty, profitability, and innovation. But when asked how their organizations actually measure leadership trust, most were silent. Some pointed to proxy measures like Net Promoter Score or employee engagement surveys. Others admitted they didn’t think trust could be measured at all, deeming it too “soft,” too subjective.
