A correlation of servant leadership, leader trust, and organizational trust

Purpose Aims to explore the relationship between employee perceptions of servant leadership and leader trust, as well as organizational trust. Design/methodology.approach Uses Laub's Organizational Leadership Assessment along with Nyhan and Marlowe's Organizational Trust Inventory. Findings Perceptions of servant leadership correlated positively with both leader trust and organizational trust. The study also found that organizations perceived as servant‐led exhibited higher levels of both leader trust and organizational trust than organizations perceived as non‐servant‐led. Originality/value The findings lend support to Greenleaf's view that servant leadership is an antecedent of leader and organizational trust, and to aspects of other servant leadership models.