PurposeAims to explore the relationship between employee perceptions of servant leadership and leader trust, as well as organizational trust.Design/methodology.approachUses Laub's Organizational Leadership Assessment along with Nyhan and Marlowe's Organizational Trust Inventory.FindingsPerceptions 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/valueThe 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.