Do your employees trust your Leaders?

Recent research from marketing company Maritz Research paints a poor picture of employee’s attitudes towards their work, organisation and Leaders.  Some of the key findings include:

i. Only eleven percent of employees strongly agree that their managers show consistency between their words and actions,

ii. Worst still, only seven percent of employees strongly agree they trust senior leaders to look out for their best interest,

iii. Surprisingly, the same percentage (seven) strongly agree they trust their co-workers to do so,

iv. Twenty percent of those surveyed disagree that their company’s leader is completely honest and ethical,

v. Finally, one-quarter of respondents disagree that they trust management to make the right decisions in times of uncertainty.

While the results are based on a poll of American workplaces, these findings should resonate in every organisation.  In times of significant change and uncertainty, it is not surprising that trust is low.  The question that is applicable for most Leaders is what to do with these results? I have blogged previously about Leadership in a time of crisis based on a McKinsey survey. The top two organisational qualities needed during a crisis were Leadership and Direction.  Too often, organisations spend their time, effort and resources looking externally in a crisis forgetting the importance of spending the same time effort and resources internally engaging with the workforce.

The survey results are the outcome of the failure to look internally.  What are you going to do ensure that these are not replicated in your organisation?

It is not enough to Manage by Wandering About

Management by Walking About (MBWA) is a management practice first proposed by Peters and Waterman in their seminal book In Search of Excellence. As  a technique, it aims to allow management to bypass the bureaucracy of the organisation and stay in contact with those that do the actual work.  It is communication at its best.

The Harvard Business School Working Knowledge discusses some research that shows that management visibility on its own is no guarantee of success.  Unless managers understand that MBWA is more than just walking about, they can cause more harm than good.  The research looked at a number of hospitals that engaged with front line workers on process improvements.  The result showed that improvements were achieved in most instances, leading to not just improvements in processes but in the overall organisation climate.

However, it is also possible to damage that climate.  The researchers found that it is not just important to engage with front line staff.  It is how you engage that will make the difference.  It is too easy for MBWA to be viewed as an audit that is trying to find errors or an attempt to catch employees making mistakes. If this is the perception of MBWA, trust will be quickly eroded, increasing hostility and suspicion – the exact opposite of what MBWA is attempting to achieve.

Some simple steps that managers can follow to ensure that MBWA is effective include:

o Do it solo – senior managers should MBWA alone and not hunt in packs

o Ask questions

o If you give a commitment to act on something, follow up

o Don’t undermine your supervisors – this is not an opportunity to whinge

o Do it often – it is not a fad and repetition will make it seem the norm