HR can help by recruiting people who will transcend ‘uniform of leadership’
Leaders need to drop their ‘uniform of leadership’ and occasionally reveal their personal side to be seen as more trustworthy, research by the CIPD and the University of Bath has found.
The research revealed that leaders should be encouraged to share their personal stories and take an interest in the personal experiences of their employees if they wanted to build a ‘trusting long lasting relationship’.
The report, ‘Cultivating trustworthy leaders’, found that people still had high levels of uncertainty about their future and, as a result, now need ‘a greater and more overt demonstration of trustworthiness from their leaders’. This was reflected in the December 2013 CIPD Megatrends survey, which found that just 37 per cent of employees trusted their senior managers.
Additionally, the research suggested that HR could help to recruit and develop trustworthy leaders using a number of methods, such as conducting values based interviews, providing information on self-awareness, assessing staff using 360 degree feedback, creating environments where staff could have open conversations about trust and visibly rewarding trustworthy behaviours. However, the study also found that HR departments that had too many rules and policies could be perceived as not having confidence in their employee and were creating environments where individuals had little opportunity to earn trust by showing that they could be reliable.
Claire McCartney, research adviser at the CIPD, said: “It’s proven that organisations with high levels of trust perform better in terms of innovation, problem solving, engagement and knowledge sharing. Given the recent crises in trust in the banking and health care sectors in particular, it’s more important than ever that HR steps up to provide the appropriate platforms for trustworthy leaders to develop. But it’s also important that organisations allow their leaders to flourish without getting too bogged down by process and technology.”
Professor Veronica Hope-Hailey, dean of the School of Management at the University of Bath, said: “Sometimes we let HR processes and systems get in the way of trusting our own judgements of a leader’s worth as a trustworthy person. What came through from the research was that when considering the four drivers of trustworthiness, HR selection processes were good at measuring ability and predictability. However, the softer elements of trustworthiness, benevolence and integrity, were much more dependent upon assessing an individual as a whole person.”
The research built on a previous report called ‘Where has all the trust gone?’ and examined 13 different organisations that had experience of retaining and developing trustworthy leaders. Professor Hope-Hailey will be discussing the findings in more detail at the CIPD’s annual Learning and Development Conference on 30 April.