If Trust Is So Important, Why Aren’t We Measuring It?

Ask senior managers if trust is an important element of leadership and you will get emphatic agreement on this point. In my interviews with more than 70 senior leaders across multiple industries, every CEO I spoke with affirmed that trust in leadership is essential to positive outcomes such as employee performance, customer loyalty, profitability and innovation. But when asked how their organizations actually measured trust in their leaders, most remained silent. Some talked about indirect metrics like Net Promoter Score or employee engagement surveys. Others admitted that they didn’t think trust could be measured at all, considering it too “soft”, too subjective.