Essences of Leadership Trust: Constraints and Opportunities for Regional Cooperation

The trustworthiness of a leader has a significant influence on an organization’s reputation, followers, suppliers, and stakeholders, though it is still under investigation in terms of its effect on building regional cooperation. This study aims to explore the criteria to confer a leader’s trust, the antecedents of leaders’ trust, the core perceived attributes to gain a leader’s trust among regional peer leaders, and the perceived determinants to establish or uplift trustworthiness. To address the study’s purposes, it adopted an exploratory qualitative study using focus group discussion and key informants’ interviews from the perspectives of youth leaders. Theme based content analysis using inductive approach was carried out to categorize similar or different conceptions that further discussions made to align with the literature. The findings indicate that core criteria to confer a leader’s trust include leadership competence, relationship building, and leadership environment (context). Leadership values, functions, and roles are key antecedents of leaders’ trust. Essential attributes to gain a leader’s trust among peers embrace of a philosophical attribute, leadership qualities, values, and attributes of benefits, and collaboration. Furthermore, in establishing or uplifting a leader’s trust solely depends on a leader’s behavior and functions. The results of the essences of leadership trust, which focus on constraints and opportunities for regional cooperation, are insightful for academicians and practitioners, as well as paving the way for future qualitative and quantitative research in the leadership science.

  Keywords: Leadership, Confer a leader trust, Antecedents of leadership trust, Essential attributes of gaining trust, Key determinants to establish or uplift leader’s trust.