Building trust in any relationship is not easy and takes time, including the employee-leader relationship. Trust may seem like a catch-all term, but it has a definite meaning. In your organization, the level of trust your employees have in their supervisors, managers, and executives can determine whether leadership faces a union organizing campaign, maximize employee productivity, communicate effectively with the workforce, get innovation from employees, and deliver many other benefits. Trust is built through leadership accountability, and leadership accountability is essential to building a positive organizational culture.
Revisiting the Principal of Leadership Trust
Trust is an emotion-based feeling, but its expression is measurable. Trust is an essential element of positive employee relations and employee engagement. Psychologists define trust in various ways, but it is reflected in a set of beliefs and behaviors. Behaviors include acting in a way that shows dependence on someone else, believing a person will act in a certain manner or is dependable, and feeling confident that someone cares. The behaviors reflect an internal thought process and have an emotional dimension. Trust is a positive emotion, and mistrust is a negative one that, cognitively speaking, is like the emotions of dislike and fear.
Trust in the workplace in leaders and their team members is always important, especially during times of continuous disruption like today's business environment conditions. Successful crisis management and change management are successful only when employees and leaders trust each other to make changes, take risks, and express themselves honestly. Trust lowers the stress level, too, because employees believe their leaders will always look out for their best interests. Even if difficult decisions must be made, like layoffs, trust drives a belief the leaders will act fairly and take responsibility for their actions.
Trust may be an emotion, but leadership accountability is based on behaviors or actions. Trust is earned. It's never a given and should never be assumed. The 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer special report found that 79 percent of employees trust their coworkers more than they trust their manager, head of Human Resources, and the CEO. This has serious implications.
For example, you are implementing a change initiative that affects the design of jobs or presenting the company's position on unions after finding signs of union activity. If employees trust coworkers more, they are the people whom employees will turn to for advice, information, and guidance. Without trust, teamwork won't flourish, and leaders will struggle to succeed because communication is ineffective. That's how important trust in the workplace is for people and the organization as a whole.
What is Leadership Accountability?
Leadership accountability is defined in different ways. The simplest definition is the act of holding oneself accountable to others, but that simple definition doesn't explore the depths of accountability and authenticity. As leadership coach Tom Hanson wrote, "Creating a culture of integrity and accountability not only improves effectiveness, it also generates a respectful, enjoyable, and life-giving setting in which to work." Leadership accountability doesn't work in a vacuum, and trust is not blind.
The principle of leadership accountability embraces the workplace culture, communication, leadership style and skills, personal characteristics, and organizational mission, goals, and processes. The reason is simple: Accepting responsibility for leadership behaviors occurs within the organizational setting and involves people – employees, peers, professional colleagues, customers, and other stakeholders.
Trustworthy and accountable leadership doesn't make decisions in a void without input from others. They meet challenges and own the process for finding solutions and results. The results may be neutral, positive, or negative. Let's face it; everyone has known managers who accept responsibility for successes but quickly shift the blame to other people or circumstances. They refuse personal accountability for negative results, team mistakes, missing deadlines, or not meeting goals. This kind of leadership behavior hurts the organization's culture when leaders are not accountable for their decisions.
The interesting thing is that leadership accountability can supports positive organizational culture, and your organization's culture should support leadership accountability. Leadership development can cultivate leaders who accept responsibility for their decisions and actions and will strengthen the culture through their behaviors. This is true for any workplace model.
Since the pandemic started, there has been a shift with more employees working remotely full-time or 2-3 days a week. When the remote workplace model was instituted, some remote workers became "islands" because their supervisors or managers were unfamiliar with maintaining leadership accountability with team members working in different locations. The managers and supervisors were uncertain about communication processes, setting new expectations for work performance, and so on. As employers adopt various workplace models, leadership training on accountability focuses on helping leaders apply leadership accountability principles by adapting actions to the workplace model.
For example, accountable leaders still assign tasks, but they establish a new communication system so team members can continue collaborating as a remote or hybrid team. They set goals and clear expectations for the delivery of work but establish systems for two-way feedback and submitting work that is acknowledged. Leaders do daily check-ins to replace the ability to stop by employee desks or visit work locations.
Leadership accountability requires managers to be flexible as they accept responsibility for their decisions.
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