Deploying trust: to dare intimacy and embrace discomfort

to follow her. According to her own account, trust and self-trust are what provide her with agency in her leadership in order to get her employees to follow her.

Tiril’s understanding of trust and self-trust in her leadership identity as a leader who dares the uncomfortable is supported by another leader’s voice, that of Peter.

Peter has something interesting to say about his belief in the value of tolerating discomfort in the role as a leader. He discusses what he sees as a foundation for trust and intimacy in his role as a leader. When Peter speaks of sorting matters out with love and clarity, I read his testimony as a parallel to Louise, Kari and Tiril’s notions of the role of trust and self-trust in their identities as leaders:

This about saying things with love and at the same time be clear and speak it out loud...(..) I am not afraid of conflicts and those things that in a way.. It is not always that I have the answer but I like to… or I don’t necessarily like it.. but I like to sort things out, I don’t like things to be left to smoulder.

I recognise this as a depiction of the same type of intimacy as a leadership asset that Louise, Kari and Tiril also talk about; trust and self-trust in their leadership manifest through the desire to seek honesty and frank speech in confident relationships with their employees. Peter’s statement and what he with his words identifies as ‘saying things with love’ in my understanding closely correspond to how trust and self-trust are present in the stories of Louise, Kari and Tiril.

Tiril expresses the same vision about her leadership, where she is a leader who recognises her individual employees—her ‘grass root’:

(..) I stand with my values (..) and one of them is to have a good feeling with the grass root (..) I believe that I a manage to see people where they are (..) A good leader is a leader who sees her employees and who takes the time to talk to both those on the level directly below, who are often middle managers or department managers, but who is also able to be there for those further down or further out in the system (..).

In depicting what she sees as the characteristics of a good leader, Tiril simultaneously presents herself as a leader who complies with those characteristics. Again, the identity aspect in her narrative is apparent when she highlights her notion about the relational intimacy with ‘the grass root’, clearly indicating a notion of hierarchy through which she manoeuvres as a leader. She clearly sees herself as a leader capable of working through closeness and intimacy to close the formal gap, reaching out across formal boundaries to be there for ‘those further down or further

out in the system’. Thus, the aspect of self-trust in the construction of her leadership identity is vibrant in this passage, as is her notion of hierarchical layers, her own position in that structure, and how she sees trust and self-trust as related to that hierarchy and role.

In the various accounts of leadership that I have presented thus far, I find a distinct notion about trust related to relational intimacy with the individual employee. Furthermore, there exists an underlying notion of a greater organisational intimacy, enabled by the trust-driven leadership and rooted in the bilateral bonds between the leader and the employee. To build trust with the organisation as a whole, individual intimacy is portrayed as crucial. The act of daring relational nearness with the individual is depicted as something that builds trust also at an organisational level, where self-trust unfolds as an enabler for the deployment and realisation of that trust.

Thus far, all of the leaders I have introduced apply various terms to describe the same phenomenon concerning trust and self-trust as constituents of the capacity to dare the uncomfortable. To build trust in the role as a leader and thus gain legitimacy for their leadership, they depict themselves as showing off a distinct type of self-trust, confronting distress if they must to maintain trust. This elucidates another notion concerning trust and self-trust in the construction of leadership identities: to be bold in the relational intimacy is conveyed as an important asset for the leader to build trust. In this context, I understand the leaders’ self-trust as the main tool that enables the daring force in pursuing relational intimacy. The legitimacy that the leaders claim in confronting this type of discomfort that is both trust-driven and trust-based, along with the capability to encompass the potential distress this generates, can be understood as founded in a particularly strong belief in self-trust. In other words, because they are leaders who believe in themselves, they can be bold, daring and courageous, and capable of undertaking the demanding tasks of emotion work and relational anguish. This aspect is present in all the stories told in this project.

Hanne, a magazine editor, depicts the asset of being courageous as a key ingredient in how she deploys trust in her organisation. She portrays her determination to challenge discontent and conflict as an act of cleaning the cupboard:

(..) Generally I go to people to talk to them (..) “Guys, is there any discontent here?“.

I invite for a conversation about it (..) When (..) I have seen that something is cooking, that something is developing into a conflict, I am like that, that I have an incredible need for the cards to be put on the table, I clean the cupboard, and we have a dialogue.

Again, the image portrayed is of a bold leader with self-trust to confront the uncomfortable as central in how she presents herself; she portrays herself as a leader who pushes for relational intimacy and deploys trust to foster more trust through what is described as honesty, openness and frankness. This depiction of the courageous leader seems to be a parallel in the tales presented up to this point. Moreover, in this paragraph , the identity aspect is overt; with ‘I am like that’, Hanne sets forth a very distinct identity reference concerning her leadership identity.

A recognition of how the leader should foster trust by daring intimacy in direct feedback is also put forth by Nico, the CEO for a national NGO association:

Actually, I would say that that this about creating such a mutual relationship of trust is pretty high up on the list, yes. That people dare to tell if there is something…that one avoids these.. that it goes a long time without people daring to give feedback and that is… that goes both ways…whether it is positive or negative..(..).

The importance of being a bold leader is accentuated in all these accounts. Building trust is described as an effort that takes boldness concerning how the leader navigates relationally.

Boldness is thus a display of self-trust. Louise, Kari, Peter, Tiril, Hanne and Nico all express how they recognise the ability to foster employee intimacy as a pillar in their identity as leaders. In this dynamic, where they portray themselves as bold leaders daring the relational intimacy, trust can grow. The boldness can be seen as stemming from a strong notion about how crucial trust is in the construction of their leadership identities, as well as how they draw on a rich perception of self-trust to comply with the demanding greenhousing of trust.