A 4/3/12 Forbes article by Charles Green, Why Trust is the New Core of Leadership, talks about the growing importance of trust in business.

Charles Green compares the old and new worlds of leadership and business:

Old Leadership: Old Business

• The essence of business was competition.
• Shareholder value was the main goal, as well as the main measure.
• Scale economies dictated being number one or two in your markets.
• Leaders were scarce and special; followers were many and common.
• Leadership was a vertical function, related to power.
• Horizontal relationships related to markets and contracts, and were the purview of strategy, not leadership.

New Business: New Leadership

Leaders can no longer trust in power; instead, they rely on the power of trust.

New Leaders:

• Skilled at trusting, because trusting and trustworthiness enhance each other.
• Good at collaboration and the tools of influence.
• Operate from a clear set of values and principles, because opportunistic or selfish motives are clearly seen and rejected.
• More intrinsically than extrinsically motivated, and more likely to use intrinsic motivations with others.
• Not dependent on direct authority or political power.

Green states that the teaching of trust needs to be defined and talks about three points in particular:

• Trusting and Trustworthiness
• Virtues and Values
• Risk