Let us dive into different themes we need to be aware of when we want to increase trust in organizations. To be able to talk about what trust is, I want to find a language with some terms for how trust can be approached in my management.
Trust can be categorized horizontally and vertically depending on who the trust is with, what the trust is based on and how many degrees of familiarity we slide through.
Jagd identifies four types of trust:

1. Calculative-based: Can it even pay to trust? “What do you get out of it? Will the process be faster? Will tasks get done better? Calculative trust involves a basic skepticism towards colleagues.” It is weak and typically found at the beginning of a collaboration.
2. Knowledge-based: I gain trust based on the information my colleagues’ work routines, strengths and weaknesses provide, rather than “optimizing control of the colleague”. It is a competence-based trust. Kirkeby calls this type a codified trust.
3. Relationship-based: It is knowledge-based and is reinforced by working with colleagues over time. Kirkeby calls it realistic trust.
4. Identification-based: “Two colleagues can know each other so well that they can represent each other’s interests because they dare to entrust large and important parts of their responsibilities to each other.” Identification-based trust doesn’t just require casual chatter at the coffee machine, but close and regular collaboration where “you recognize each other’s strengths and good intentions”. This is where it turns into blind trust, what Kirkeby calls genuine trust, where a shared ethos has been created.
   Fogh Kirkeby is more positive and starts his trust list with spontaneous trust. You could call it naive, as it is not yet based on any foundation. This is what my empirical data shows in the interviews, where my first months in the organization were primarily met by spontaneously trusting employees who wanted the best for me, even though they could not justify this trust rationally, as Jagd suggests. This is in line with Løgstrup’s universe of naïve, unreserved and unexplainable trust that becomes observational and analytical in a work community. Luhman says “we trust because it’s easiest” in a complicated world where we need to simplify.
   Trust is key for transformation to happen. People develop trust at their own pace, but all are equal and important. Renowned Covey writes in the book “Speed of Trust” about how to increase the pace of trust in your organization. He says trust is “the all-important difference” – an aquifer that “supplies all springs on the surface of the earth”.
   Svendsen describes “The Scandinavian enigma”. We have a secret raw material – a fuel that economists rarely observe, but provides a special buoyancy: Denmark is the world champion in trust between people. Social trust is “an expectation that a given norm will be respected”, where groups have the ability to work together towards a common goal. It’s a kind of collective insurance scheme, with Denmark as No. 1 on the index of least corrupt countries. This corresponds to what I experience on my travels in the African countries that Mission Africa works with. They are characterized by corruption and nepotistic despots who are role models for the population’s values, willingness to work and trust. Here, the leaders of our partners in the African churches stand as beacons of integrity and purpose, and we work to build their capacity and performance according to Covey’s Credibility Cores, even when things have gone wrong.
   To further explore how trust emerges and materializes, I will use Wenneberg’s research-based anthology that explores the social glue in the complex world of modern society.

We need to distinguish between the importance of trust internally – the relationship between managers and employees, and externally – the relationship with the organization’s stakeholders: customers and donors.

Internal
In the workplace, trust runs horizontally and vertically. Trust between colleagues is horizontal, while the vertical covers trust between managers and employees. In addition, there is trust in yourself.
The cornerstone of the Neo-Taylorist management view is that “trust is good, control is better!” A manager plans, delegates, monitors and controls. This hinders the ability to act quickly and efficiently in the midst of change when there is a constant need for oversight. Employees lose accountability and commitment, which was also seen in some of the communist cooperatives. In Africa, we see a lack of job satisfaction because they don’t have ownership, as the authorities put the money in their own pockets anyway.
Pierre Dupont said at the beginning of the 20th century: “We push responsibility as far out into the organization as we can find someone to carry it!” One of my team leaders had major challenges with his team a few years ago and was forced to micromanage his employees. It wasn’t until the manager changed her team that she was able to act responsively and delegate the mandate for the details. Only then could she grow the team’s business and take a helicopter view. My role was to keep the leader focused on the core mission at all times, shielding her from micromanagement and attacks from disgruntled employees.
When I started as General Secretary, one of my middle managers expressed that I had to earn his trust. Being curious about his attitude, I learned that trust was about personal relationships where he felt like he was involved! When I put myself into play by talking about personal feelings and being physically present, I created trust.
Kirkeby describes that the core of true trust lies in friendship, where trust has become a habit – the status quo of mutual security and honesty. True trust “springs from an unconditional honesty towards oneself, and can therefore also be assumed in the other person”. The greatest trust is when you are unconditionally honest with yourself – “resting in yourself”. Then trust is superfluous because we have risen above the “dialectical interplay between position and negation” of the concept of trust. We should not and must not make a decision, but have decided to choose because we cannot help it.
Trust is indispensable in a responsive organization. Only when employees and managers trust me, I can develop and test new initiatives in the organization because they trust my qualifications as a leader. At the same time, my employees have very specific knowledge as their most important asset, which I can only choose to either monitor through control or show trust by giving them continued ownership in the area. So, I have to manage someone with an intangible resource I don’t have, so they can manage themselves using second-order management. Here I provide a framework and a basis for them to make decisions that are aligned with the interests of the rest of the organization.

External
Trust with customers/donors is achieved through positive and credible communication and aesthetic expression and uniform. Who wants to put their life in the hands of a carpenter on the operating table? I would choose someone in a white coat. In other words, we trust institutions and professions. We trust the white coat because we expect the doctor to have knowledge and insight. This is how customers observe the knowledge of the organization. But also its reputation, ethics, social responsibility, values. They connect these experiences with their own expectations for the future. If we appear to meet their needs in the future, they trust us. But it doesn’t take much negative knowledge for trust to disappear. That’s because our emotions are great at remembering. So how do we gain the trust of the surrounding society?
Not even the modern scientist can remain on his pedestal. Because who pays him? Is he independent? Where did he get his degree? Is the diploma real or self-created? Is the experiment properly substantiated? If the scientist fails to communicate his knowledge, the concept of truth is devalued and the negation of trust – distrust – arises. People with little education can go into defense mode if they don’t understand the communication, and trust disappears. Especially if quantification only takes into account numbers and not qualitative aspects.
If there is no communicative transparency, there is no trust. Trust and confidence are the same, but the drastic opposite is distrust/mistrust and control. “The moment there is distrust in a person’s motives, everything he does becomes corrupt” said Mahatma Ghandi. It’s all about being “on the right side of the zeitgeist”.

Fortunately, trust can also be completely stable over time. Even the Danish emigrants to America, for example, took trust with them through generations and have not yet “fallen to the American average level”. In Denmark, we see how religion and Protestant ethics raise trust levels. So it will be interesting to measure how immigration from low-trust areas of the world will affect our social trust in the future.

Passively
Trust is created passively and built proactively. Aadland believes trustworthiness is out of our hands. Only when we “don’t give it a second thought” can we become credible, trustworthy leaders who don’t manipulate and calculate. I use the term “grace” because what we receive is given by grace. It is based on a gift, not an ability or something we pride ourselves on.

Proactively
On the other hand, I have found that I can proactively build trust around me through my leadership style. Covey works with proactivity in all his books, and inspired by Covey, Jakobsen said time and time again in my interviews with him: “If you can do something about it, do it. If you can’t, don’t do it”.
Covey outlines four themes, taken from the legal system, that build and break down your trust account: Your integrity, intent, ability and results. If you’re testifying in court, these four demonstrate your “credibility core”.