Protests from various public sector professions in Sweden against demands for increased documentation are becoming increasingly frequent.
The main criticism is that core activities suffer when working time must be spent registering, reporting and evaluating work.
Read this article in Swedish on Arbeidsliv i Norden
Such demands demonstrate distrust rather than trust in employees, the argument goes.
Now, some employers have chosen to go in the opposite direction.
Trust in practice
“If I don’t lead with trust, then how do I lead?”
Mio Saba Sjösten poses this rhetorical question during an interview with the Nordic Labour Journal. She has been the municipal executive in Mölndal near Gothenburg since 2020.
“I have been leading with trust since I did casework in social services. This involved children and young people and sometimes taking them into care with or without the consent of their guardians.
“Then, as now, my starting point is that people mean well. They want to manage their parenting, and it doesn’t work if social services come in as experts on their lives.
“Instead, they should listen in order to understand what the parents need and strengthen their abilities to do it.”
Mio Saba Sjösten applies the same principle in her current role. The premise is that the political chain of command is clear and formal, as are the budget instructions. This creates conditions where politicians can put their trust in civil servants, she explains.
“If I am given a clear task, I deliver accordingly. We humans do want to make a difference and both bosses and employees should know the answer to why we go to work and who we are there for,” she says.
Every November, Mölndal municipality gathers all leaders – 300 in total – for the big leader day. Municipal politicians also sometimes share the stage.
In an election year, the governing political majority explains their policies, what they want to implement in the municipality and why.
“This way of doing it has emerged over time, and we continue in this fashion because it creates understanding throughout the entire organisation,” says Mio Saba Sjösten, who sometimes sees that the concept of trust is being misunderstood.
“The trust principles only work if we also do a lot of work with governance and management and provide frameworks for the company and employees. This is my responsibility. I also do a lot of follow-up. We want more oversight than control.”
Mölndal’s municipal executive underlines that trust-based leadership is an ongoing process. It is not something you can become complacent about, but at the same time, there is no need to change things that work well.
“We work with improving things, and we do that continuously as a natural part of leadership so that we don’t have to make major changes.
“We also ask ourselves what is being required from today’s leadership and what is expected from our managers and leaders. This is what we’re looking into now, so that we can roll it out during the November event,” says Mio Saba Sjösten.
For ten years, the municipality has also worked on its own brand. This is about how municipal employees help create the best possible Mölndal every day.
To become the best possible manager or employee, it is important to make use of past experience, Sjösten believes.
“We have to be able to ask for help and be honest about our own mistakes, and ask what we could have done differently,” she says.
One forum where experiences are discussed is the meetings of 20-grupperna – the 20 Groups – a management network within the city.
All of the city’s managers meet in cross-functional groups of 20 people and are provided with points for debate to help them explore how to handle various situations.
“The meetings are chaired by a chief executive, departmental director or head of staff. We work across organisational boundaries on issues that are relevant to everyone.
“We do this to create something that is valuable to both new hires and those who have worked in the organisation for 30 years,” says Mio Saba Sjösten.
Support from research and the state
The Swedish government has also expressed interest in what trust-based leadership might entail.
Louise Bringselius was head of research for the Swedish government’s Trust Delegation (Tillitsdelegationen).
She was in charge of 12 pilot projects and for developing a framework of guiding principles. This is included in the anthology ”Styra och leda med tillit” (Governing and Leading with Trust), published by the inquiry.
As an associate professor of organisation and management and a researcher at the Stockholm School of Economics, Louise Bringselius has continued to explore how trust can create scope for action for managers and employees.
“Before I entered academia, I worked in the private sector where I felt many worked in a slightly old-fashioned way.
“I began researching employee participation and organisational culture and discovered there was also some interesting research on trust. The problem was that this had not got much traction,” she tells the Nordic Labour Journal.
This is something Louise Bringselius has taken to heart, writing several books on how trust-based leadership can be put into practice. She also delivers lectures on the subject.
In one of her books, Tillitsprincipen – 12 vägval för kreativa och modiga organisationer (The Trust Principles – 12 strategic choices for creative and brave organisations) – the author describes how trust can be more than a feeling, applied as a basic principle for governance, organisation and action within organisations.
The book is based on research and practical examples. It seeks to clarify that trust principles are about both culture and structure and are grounded in legitimacy rather than formal authority.
As the book puts it, “as a manager to listen to your employees and create a relationship of mutual understanding and respect”.
Louise Bringselius also presents a conceptual model of the two dimensions that characterise the trust principles:
- The horizontal – on collaboration and coordination between individuals, departments and organisations.
- The vertical – focusing on the professions, where she includes teachers, doctors and police, and their scope for action.
Threat to trust
Louise Bringselius is also critical of the increasing demands for documentation.
“There is an over-reliance on governance, measurement and planning. It’s as if we’ve become marionettes in the system we created. It seems more important to follow the system than doing what is right,” says Louise Bringselius.
The author shows how this over-reliance can manifest itself and what its trust-threatening consequences may be, based on the following points:
- Silo-based models with a lack of holistic thinking
- Poor quality and reduced learning
- Increasing fear, which in turn leads to passivity
- A deteriorating working environment
- Inefficiency
She also notes that several municipal executives are willing to reduce bureaucracy.
“If so, we need to complement this with a form of leadership that includes trust and learning.
“We might have reached a peak, because I see that discussions these days are increasingly about values linked to trust, such as reputation, kindness, collaboration, simplifications and relationships.
“So I do believe we will see more trust-based leadership and governance going forward,” says Louise Bringselius.
