Ask senior executives whether trust is an important part of leadership and you’ll get emphatic agreement that it is. In my interviews with over 70 senior leaders across multiple sectors, every CEO I spoke with affirmed that leadership trust was foundational to positive outcomes such as employee performance, customer loyalty, profitability, and innovation. But when asked how their organizations actually measure leadership trust, most were silent. Some pointed to proxy measures like Net Promoter Score or employee engagement surveys. Others admitted they didn’t think trust could be measured at all, deeming it too “soft,” too subjective. This mismatch is becoming more consequential. As stakeholder expectations grow and organizational life becomes more complex—especially with remote work, social accountability, and generational shifts—leadership trust is under more scrutiny than ever. Yet many organizations still treat trust as a gut feeling rather than a trackable variable, with a recent PwC survey finding that “there is no one in the C-suite that truly owns trust.” Imagine handling financial risk or cybersecurity threats in such a casual and subjective way. When trust erodes, whether through public scandals, internal disengagement, or cultural breakdowns, the impact is often severe and reputationally costly. Leadership trust is a measurable, manageable business asset, and leaders need to start treating it like any other strategic variable: visible, monitored, acted upon, and benchmarked. Through my research at Aston Business School and my work as an executive coach to both CEOs and elite sports leaders, I’ve identified four key steps C-suite leaders and boards need to follow to measure trust effectively. Decide on a Measurement Tool Over the past decade, new frameworks have emerged that make trust visible and tangible. These tools generate reliable trust metrics by surveying the views of internal stakeholders regarding leaders’ specific behaviors. One example is the Leadership Trust Index (LTI), a survey-based diagnostic grounded in my own academic research and implemented across dozens of organizations in the UK. The LTI assesses leadership behaviors linked to trust using a model known as the Nine Habits of Trust, which include traits such as openness, honesty, humility, and the ability to inspire. Another well-known model is Paul Zak’s “Organizational Trust Index,” grounded in neuroscience. This model emphasizes the essential role of trust in cultivating high-performing workplaces. He links specific leadership behaviors to increased engagement, productivity, and overall well-being. Stephen M.R. Covey’s “Speed of Trust” diagnostics provide yet another model for understanding and cultivating trust by positioning it as a measurable asset with significant impact on both organizational efficiency and costs. Despite differing methodologies, these tools share the belief that trust, while complex and nuanced, is not beyond measurement. These tools translate trust into actionable insights, identifying where it’s being built—or lost—through everyday leadership behaviors. Choosing the correct tool for your situation depends on your focus—i.e., leaders, the whole organization, or the culture—along with the kind of language that might land best with your target audience. For example, the commercial language of Covey’s Speed of Trust diagnostic resonates in sales-driven cultures, whereas the more neutral language of the LTI tool appeals to a cross-functional or cross-cultural audience. Without the clear insights these tools provide, a leader’s trustworthiness risks being overlooked or assumed to be strong without evidence. By embracing visible metrics like trust dashboards or surveys, leaders can better understand and prioritize executive trust as an organizational resource. Monitor Boards, investors, and regulators are increasingly looking at non-financial metrics as indicators of long-term value creation, and trust deserves a prominent place in that mix—alongside revenue, employee turnover, and customer satisfaction. It’s no longer enough to assume you’ll know when it’s missing. Trust is dynamic and fluctuates with leadership actions, cultural shifts, and external pressures, so organizations must actively monitor their executives’ trustworthiness to stay on top of any significant fluctuations. Consider how a spike in costs or decline in NPS would trigger board-level concern. Trust monitoring enables leaders to spot internal warning signs early, such as disengagement, cultural toxicity, or reputational risk. For example, despite strong clinical ratings, a large hospital I worked with faced cultural dissatisfaction due to burnout and leadership struggles. An LTI trust measurement I conducted on behalf of the board assessed 27 different leadership behaviors aligned with the Nine Habits of Trust model. The survey revealed issues with senior leaders’ coaching skills and openness, prompting a shift toward listening, admitting mistakes, and fostering authentic communication. Within a year, trust scores improved, along with staff retention and the volume of employee grievances. Imagine a set of board-level performance measures where trust sits alongside revenue, employee turnover, and customer satisfaction. Like financial performance or customer satisfaction, trust must be continuously monitored over time to detect trends so the board always knows whether trust levels are improving, stagnating, or deteriorating. Actively Manage Trust in leadership will never be fully captured in a spreadsheet, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be measured meaningfully. Objective measurement is vital because research reveals a significant bias that needs to be counteracted: CEOs tend to rate themselves as significantly more trustworthy than those who report to them—by as much as 29%. Objective assessments bridge the gap between how leaders perceive their behavior and how it’s experienced by others. For example, I worked with a UK-based professional sports organization that faced a severe trust crisis after a high-profile controversy. Using a trust audit, I helped the board identify key weaknesses in openness, leadership coaching, and courageous decision-making, which fell below industry benchmarks. In response, the board implemented training workshops for the senior leaders and adapted their performance appraisal process to reward specific trust-building behaviors. When the LTI tool was used to re-measure leadership trust levels 12 months later, average scores had improved by over 20%—an outcome neuroscience-based findings suggest leads to higher engagement, lower stress, and improved productivity. Benchmark Once leadership trust has been measured, monitored, and actively managed, an organization should benchmark its leadership trust levels against others in their sector to assess how they’re performing against their peers. For example, the data I’ve collated from using the LTI trust measurement tool with many different organizations over the past seven years uncovered the strongest and weakest leadership trust-building behaviors. The three strongest are delivering work on time and to budget, being honest, and motivating others through an inspiring vision. The three weakest behaviors are showing appropriate levels of vulnerability, confusing being humble with being weak, and defaulting to a top-down leadership style. Organizations that outperform the benchmark over a period of time will be able to use trust as a competitive differentiator and justify claims of being a “best in class” employer using hard data. . . . Once measured, monitored, actively managed, and benchmarked, trust should inform immediate decisions and long-term strategy. Organizations can incorporate trust metrics into leadership development plans, board reviews, recruitment processes, and succession strategies. That might mean linking bonuses to trust-building behaviors, using trust scores to guide promotions, or commissioning targeted coaching when warning signs emerge. Trust measurement only works if leaders have the courage to expose blind spots and the discipline to respond. Like financial audits or compliance reviews, the point isn’t to prove you’re perfect, it’s to demonstrate that you’re managing risk through a rigorous and targeted process. Measuring executive trust requires an intentional approach, but the rewards are undeniable: a workplace culture where employees feel valued, stakeholders feel confident, and leaders are empowered to drive organizational success. When nurtured systematically, trust becomes the foundation not just for operational excellence, but for long-term resilience in an increasingly unpredictable business climate.
