Higher levels of trust needed in economic atmosphere of ‘change and uncertainty’
Professor Veronica Hope-Hailey, dean of the School of Management at the University of Bath, has been thinking a lot about trustworthiness as part of the ‘Cultivating Trustworthy Leaders’ study conducted by the university and the CIPD.
Speaking at the CIPD’s L&D Show 2014 at London Olympia yesterday, she explained that changes in society, particularly in the wake of the financial crisis, have created an atmosphere of change and uncertainty where people demand more trust from their leaders. “Trust fills the void,” she said.
As part of her research, Hope-Hailey has been working with 13 different organisations who, despite having had problems during the recession, have maintained a culture of engagement and trustworthiness. From this research she has identified key ways to build trustworthy leaders:
Use 360 feedback
Hope-Hailey cited a technique used by the BBC called ‘The Well’. In these feedback sessions, senior managers were sat in the centre of a room filled with the people they worked with. Here, they were given face-to-face feedback and asked to respond to the comments. The technique is not for the faint –hearted, she warned, as some members of the senior team left as a result of their session but it did help the media organisation to build more trustworthy leaders.
Admit mistakes
The most trustworthy leaders are “human, real and personable”, she said. They acknowledged and admitted their mistakes, rather than trying to brush them under the carpet. One of the companies studied for the research was Unilever. Their global VP HR marketing, communications, sustainability, water and talent, Geoff McDonald, agreed with Hope-Hailey and said: “People don’t expect perfection but what we expect is honesty.”
Respect legacy
McDonald is particularly passionate about respecting legacy. He speculated that most of today’s big organisations – Unilever included – were probably started by “a group of men and women sitting around a kitchen table, asking: ‘How can we make things better in the world?’” Hope-Hailey cited John Lewis as another big name that has successfully used legacy to build trustworthy leaders.
Listen to gut feeling
One surprising thing the research found was that they weren’t afraid to admit that they occasionally just used their intuition to tell whether a leader could be trusted. Hope-Hailey said that the complex systems and processes that some HR departments use could actually be counterproductive as they can get in the way of natural intuition, which prevents HR professions listening to their inner voice.
Base recruitment on values
Hope-Hailey said that the best organisations did not flinch from measuring leaders against a set of values. In one utilities company she studied, the best person they had for assessing the trustworthiness of their leaders was not anybody in the HR department but the car park attendant. He saw how people behaved when they thought nobody was watching, for example inappropriately parking in a disabled space.
'Cultivating trustworthy leaders’ is the second part of a three-part series from the CIPD and the University of Bath. The first part entitled ‘Where Has All The Trust Gone?’ was published in 2012.