Leadership by Trust: The Force of Work Beyond the Pandemic

A high level of trust has been the crucial element of the culture and leadership of companies that better than others have taken their business and workforce through Covid 19 this far. And trust will be a key factor for leaders in companies going further. 

But what is ”trust”, what can it look and sound like? And how does a leader act to get it to grow? In this podcast, General Manager Inna Wahlberg is interviewed for the fascinating story of how Ascender Asian Services, a leader in the field of payroll outsourcing, has pulled through the pandemic so far building on trust and exceptional commitment by the staff. She describes the journey of creating a culture which suits the special nature of the work in the industry and herself as a “curious problem-solver trying to get out of the way of people who know what they are doing”. 

”In my organisation, long before the pandemic, we had worked a lot on creating engagement and shared direction and helping people ”walk a little bit taller” and be a little more proud of what we do. This helped us. People believed in the organisation and the commitment to clients has been spectacular. I think it is really difficult for an organisation if it starts building engagement now, as the pandemic is easing, to suddenly start to say to employees that “we care about you, and you 

Inna Wahlberg is interviewed by Wim Gijselaers, professor of learning and development in Maastricht University, and Bo-Magnus Salenius, leadership coach and founder of TalentMiles.