Where did all the trust go?

Our levels of trust have had quite a test over the last fifteen months – our trust in government, organisations, leaders and even each other.

We surveyed over 170 individuals – the majority working within higher education – and found some interesting responses. Participants were asked how much more or less they trust their manager, their colleagues and their organisation.

The vast majority of responses were neutral though fewer were neutral about trust in their organisations. This is intriguing  though unfortunately we didn’t have a baseline against which to measure the levels of trust so this finding gives limited insight.

The associated comments were somewhat telling…

Given the importance of trust as a base for ongoing flexibility, agility and goodwill in our organisations, we find this slippage thought-provoking.

The questions we are now asking ourselves include:

• What did we do/not do that has eroded trust?
• What do we need to do differently to raise the trust quotient (TQ) in our organisations?

If you have any thoughts on the above, we would love to hear from you.