Motivation
Albert Einstein’s students objected that he asked the same questions on their exams as the year before. “Yes”, he replied, because the answers had changed. So one might ask: How has leadership changed to meet today’s challenges and maintain trust?
Humans are security junkies. We dream of stability and security, but the world is constantly changing, as the coronavirus pandemic revealed. Therefore, the leader is in constant change management in a responsive organization. When there is constant change, job satisfaction is extremely affected. A good work environment can only be created with trust from employees, the board, the leadership team, and other stakeholders. That’s why I want to research trust as a foundation.
My academic purpose is to investigate trust and agility. I have chosen to use the term “responsive organization” as it clearly shows what the task is for agility: to be able to react quickly. Trust is the foundation of everything in leadership. How do I create a framework that fosters trust and job satisfaction in my leadership of a modern, responsive, and politically driven organization?
Leadership is about context (surroundings – social structure, norms, society and local environment, customers, and values) and morality (what is right and wrong).

Responsive/agile
I don’t distinguish between a responsive and an agile organization. Since I was deeply involved in the YMCA Scouts as a patrol leader and senior leader, I have been inspired by the facilitative leadership paradigm where you are allowed to try, fail, evaluate, innovate, and retest in close interaction with the self-managing teams in the patrol.
In the scout troop, we unknowingly work with the three basic principles of agile: participatory, transparent, and evolutionary.
We ask more and more critical questions to authority figures in the highest offices with great responsibility. From parliamentary politicians to defense chiefs, TV hosts and mayors. No authority can be safe. Only “the trustworthy leader is long-lasting”. It’s about trust in the system, democracy, the separation of powers, the elected leader, and the chosen boss.
A traditional hierarchical view of leadership still hangs over many organizations and companies. This was also true of Mission Africa when I started as Secretary General in September 2018, although it is increasingly useless when we look at the complexity of the modern world and thus our organizations. We have gone from simple transparency, via “complicated” to “complex”. Stacey calls it the “Anarchy” area in his illustration th.
Already as a scout leader, I experienced how complex dynamics emerge in the interactive spaces between people. We each bring our backpack to the table. Leadership must therefore be a dynamic that both uses and exceeds the capacities of individuals to challenge these spaces to develop new “Blue Oceans”.

Trust
Trust is existentially necessary to lead non-hierarchically. The prerequisite for us to work together, respect each other, listen to each other, and dare to show uncertainty/make mistakes is trust. “A crucial ingredient in the recipe for a good workplace is trust, trust, and more trust”. Therefore, as a leader, I should pay special attention to how I build this resource.
All leadership is about creating, maintaining, and expanding trust between individuals in the organization. Therefore, as a leader, I must constantly reflect on my decisions and actions in the consequences of trust. Working with values means setting clear visions and letting them drive the commitment to work towards the goal.
Trust plays a crucial role in modern leadership. Since Bent Jakobsen wrote one of the first value-based management books, “Trust-Building Leadership” in 2003, the trust agenda has moved into the management arena as a counterweight to the Taylorist management hierarchy and New Public Management’s rule and financial management.
This thesis grapples with what happens to management when trust emerges passively and what can we do to create it proactively.

Value-based leadership
Through my leadership, I reveal the sources from which I act – both theoretical and personal experience. Every time I make a decision, I openly reveal the basis, values, outlook on life, and people that motivate my actions and the role I play.
Trust and responsibility are key to value-based leadership. Bent Jakobsen started with the individual manager and employee – leadership begins with the manager – self-management. From there, he moves close to the employee and the team, ending with the organization and the company’s culture and constant change. It takes self-leadership, professionalism, employee-centered values, and a vision to gain trust in both personal leadership and manager-employee relationships. He says trust, openness, and empathy are the fundamental values that demonstrate a leader’s view of humanity and ability to walk the talk. Accountability and values-based leadership respect these values.
But a lot has happened since the book was published in 2003. For example, societal debate shows that some of the newer items on the trust agenda are de-bureaucratization and the streamlining of regulations. Trust makes a difference both on a more general management level and in the specific management challenges. Trust is reflected in relational coordination, social capital, and team structures, and is a counterpoint to power and control, which I will describe below.
We all work in a global workforce and are often unfaithful to the company. If the employee discovers a better place with the competitor, they’re gone. At the same time, companies are looking for the cheapest solution in Poland and Asia, and there is always cheaper than Danish labor! How can I create such trust and thus well-being and job satisfaction so that employees are retained?