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Learning Leadership from Dogs Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2025
This topic was slated for an earlier placement in the book, but then while writing the book, I figured that a previous chapter made more sense to be moved up, so it became prudent to move trust down to this chapter instead. Trust is another quality that is integrally tied to effective leadership. The whole point of leadership is to be able to influence followers, and in optimal cases, be able to influence them without coercion. You have to get them to follow you despite any rewards or punishments—the key to doing that is Trust. When followers trust their leaders, they are more willing to stick up for and support their leader's plans and visions. And ditto for leaders—if they trust their followers, they are more likely to listen to their followers and more likely to practice an empowering style of leadership with them as opposed to the dreary and dread-inducing micromanagement style of leading. which needless to say signals a lack of trust on the leader's behalf, and also ensures that the followers never trust their leader either.
In this chapter, I will focus on the concept of trust, and discuss how important and essential it is in establishing effective leadership. Without trust, one may as well take one's ball home and call it a day. Trust is integral in helping people follow and adhere to a vision set by the leader. There is a plethora of ways by which leaders can help their followers trust them, and I will discuss some of those behaviors in this particular chapter. When it comes to followers, it is important for leaders to trust them as well. It is absolutely suboptimal to have situations or conditions where only followers trust their leaders, but the leaders don't reciprocate the trust back.
Dogs are synonymous with trust—after all, the old saying about a person's best friend being his or her dog exists for a reason. Another human being may betray your trust over trivial or nontrivial matters, but a dog will never do that. Humans trust their dogs for a reason, and dogs too trust their humans (although sadly, in some cases, the trust is misplaced, and many of those humans aren't worthy of that level of trust). But if the humans in question are indeed worthy of that loyalty, then it's pure perfection.
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