Why Trust In Leadership Leads To Better Employee Performance

Tweet This

Trust is one of those softer management qualities that people usually believe are good but whose value they have a hard time quantifying.

Which is why I was pleased to see a new study from the Ken Blanchard Companies examining the connection between trustworthy leadership behavior and productive employees.

According to the study, the research showed a "large degree of correlation" between trust and numerous positive employee behaviors and attributes. These included:

• Discretionary effort

• Performance

• Willingness to endorse the organization

• Willingness to stay with the organization

• Desire to be a "good organizational citizen"

Watch on Forbes:

In short, all of these are highly functional employee behaviors firmly aligned with any reasonable management agenda. What manager doesn't want loyal employees who are willing to give extra effort and stay with a company?

So how surprised was I by these findings? About as surprised as if you told me the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Well, sure it does. But that doesn't mean this still isn't useful, valuable information. Because how often do we see leadership teams, and managers in general, who aren't well trusted? How often do we see companies wrestling with epidemics of disengagement? Far too often is the simple answer. The Blanchard research also cites another study indicating that 45% of employees say "lack of trust in leadership is the biggest issue in work performance." (And at this time we won't even touch on trust issues and our political leaders - we'll save that swamp for another day.)

Trust always critical variable. Here I'd like to inject a just few thoughts from my own decades of management experience. In my time in the Fortune 500 world, I worked with, and observed, scores of different types of leaders over many years. My personal conclusion: Trust is always one heck of a critical variable. It's huge. I worked closely with leaders with whom I'd readily entrust the safety of my firstborn. And (not so proud to say) at times I worked closely with leaders whom I'd trust about as much as I would a timber rattler in tall grass.

My takeaway? It's not complicated. It's just human nature. People want to do their best for people they trust.  Why wouldn't they? There are motivating implications for all sorts of desirable behaviors, as this study notes, from productivity to long-term retention. And the flip side of this management coin? How do employees normally respond to untrustworthy leadership? Well, let's just say people tend to give timber rattlers a pretty wide berth.

So I was pleased to see the results of this study. It's always nice to add data to values you've long believed to be true.

*   *   *

Victor Lipman is an executive coach and author of The Type B Manager.

Nearly a quarter century of Fortune 500 management experience. Long interested as practitioner in the subject of management, both good and bad, effective and ineffective...