PLEASE, SEE BELOW CLASSMATE WEEKLY DISCUSSION QUESTION ANSWER AND WRITE A response (In replies to peers, provide specific ideas or steps that can be taken to help your peers improve their trust-building skills and explain why the ideas and resources you have shared could be helpful to them. Include relevant links when possible)
Since collaborative leadership entails a move away from an authoritarian style of leadership in order to forge networks and connections across organizations, departments, teams, and individuals, there is a need for leaders to rely on others to perform various tasks and functions. Here, trust plays an important role, where leaders trust their team members and these members in turn trust the leader and each other to carry out their respective functions. According to Ouslis (2019), leaders can build trust by ensuring that decision-making is inclusive, by providing organizational support to staff, by treating people fairly and having fair processes in place. As a collaborative leader, my strengths in building trust does include a very conscious effort to be fair and to include as many people as possible in decisions and strategic planning. I realize that it is not enough to be committed to the idea of fairness without ensuring that organizations are set up for fairness to be realized. I have in the past worked for ‘fair’ leaders who were unaware of the ground reality in the organization and unknowingly and unintentionally failed to build an organization where trust was encouraged. This has led to me to avoid some of these mistakes in my own leadership.
Areas for improvement in building trust include public health work at the community level, where I find it challenging to build a culture of trust towards public health officials among community members. I will have to work on actively communicating with communities and influencers who can help build trust among populations. Another area I need to work on is in promoting accountability among staff and teams. As a collaborative leader, it does sometimes happen that in the process of promoting inclusion and shunning too much oversight, we fail to create systems of accountability between parts. When members fail to deliver, this can lead to a breakdown of trust. Trust is the basis for relationships in the public health system, whether between community members/the public and public health professionals, or the relationships at different levels cutting across government, regulatory bodies, healthcare providers, researchers and other stakeholders. Without two-way trust, it becomes challenging to implement policy and health programs that can ultimately have positive health outcomes for communities. For example, during the pandemic in Wales in the UK, there was a decision as a result of public health policy for supermarkets to keep aside items deemed non-essential which contributed to a feeling of mistrust as people felt they were treated like they couldn’t be trusted to decide what was essential and what wasn’t. (Williams 2020; IFRC & UNICEF 2020; Ward 2017).
References
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) & United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF). (2020). Building trust within and across communities for health emergency preparedness.
Ouslis, N. (2019). Trust in Leadership – One Key Factor During Organizational Change.
Retrieved on June 9, 2021 from https://scienceforwork.com/blog/trust-in-leadership-change/
Ward P. R. (2017). Improving Access to, Use of, and Outcomes from Public Health
Programs: The Importance of Building and Maintaining Trust with Patients/Clients. Frontiers in public health, 5, 22. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2017.00022
Williams, S.N. (2020). Why trust is vital to public health strategy. Retrieved on June 9, 2021
from com/why-trust-is-vital-to-public-health-strategy-149674” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>https://theconversation.com/why-trust-is-vital-to-public-health-strategy-149674
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