Leadership - What Really Matters: A Handbook on Systemic Leadership (Management for Professionals)

2.3.3.9 Unlimited Trust?

The trust between managers and employees, between colleagues or between the
company and the customer is a form of trust extended in advance, for a limited time,
to one or more specific individuals and in relation to a particular task or action but
not for life and not for all areas of life. Trust in Sprenger’s sense is neither unlimited
nor blind. “Trust is always better when it is limited” (Sprenger 2002b, p. 67).
Just as there is no freedom without boundaries, trust is also subject to conditions.
These conditions are not automatically an expression of distrust, for Sprenger sees
no contradiction between trust and distrust; it is more a continuum of more and less
trust. Also trust and supervision are not opposites. Trust is not conceivable without
supervision, which is essential to ensure that trust works. The greater the trust, the
more supervision has an informative and supporting character, he says.
The emphasis on trust must not go so far that all barriers disappear and all control
mechanisms, inquiries, and checks become taboo. It must not come to managers
blindly handing over their decision-making power and losing their sense of respon-
sibility – trusting blindly that everything is going well and the others know what
they are doing.
Nor should it allow defensive leaders to rest on their trust or hide behind it in
order to neither have to supervise nor act. Trust does not mean passivity and retreat.

situation

insecurity risk

decisions

acumen feeling

corporate culture

confidence in trust

organization

provider of confidence

self-confidence

having a good eye

expectation

preparedness ability

action

vulnerability

relinquishing control

Fig. 2.8 How trust is created (Source: Sprenger 2002b)

2.3 The Relationship Between Leader and Led 99