Trust has long been studied in organizational life. Most recently, we have been studying how to build trust among the Gen Z workforce, and given that the election cycle is upon us, we asked ourselves, “are the building blocks for leadership trust in the private sector transferable to political leaders?” You decide.
Trust in a leader in industry rests on three components:
- First, does the leader have the ability to do the job?
- Second, does the leader have integrity?
- Third, does the leader act for the good of those he/she leads, that is, act benevolently, and not in a self-serving way?
Drilling down, management scholars have further defined the critical abilities for the successful leader. The first essential piece part of ability is technical – does the leader have the core knowledge for this particular position?
The second is human – does the leader have interpersonal skills, ranging from communications to emotional intelligence for this position? Can the person manage people, and does he / she possess what are commonly referred to as “soft skills?”
The third is conceptual –can the person think critically about sensing challenges, fixing problems, or seizing opportunities? Do they have the mental stamina to shift in the short term and foresee in the long term?
The headlines are replete from outside the political arena with instances where one or more of the elements of the trust model were violated, and the person was fired from the job.
We have read about Ivy League University presidents where their ability to do the job was doubted. Elizabeth Holmes, the former CEO of Theranos, and Enron’s Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling acted without integrity. They perpetrated fraud at their respective companies.
Rajat Gupta, formerly at McKinsey, acted in his own self-interest and was eventually found guilty of insider trading by the SEC. These stories make the headlines but there are many more instances where trust is fractured or broken because of a leader’s inability, lack of integrity, or self-serving behavior. Without trust, the leader is out.
So how is trust built? Over time, subordinates in an organization observe the leader’s behavior. Do they have evidence that confirms a leader’s ability or lapses? Have they seen instances of integrity miscues? Have they seen the leader act with benevolence in the face of a challenge?
The time element is critical here. Subordinates, team members, clients and others are continually evaluating the 3-legged stool of trust, to see if the leader can continue to be trusted. Does the totality of the leader’s behavior provide the data points to continue to build the arc of trust? If so, the organization will reap the benefits of employee satisfaction, higher productivity, willingness to innovate and embrace change, and more, again according to research by others.
In the private sector, if a leader does not have the ability, market forces, golden parachutes, takeovers, bankruptcies and more will eventually come forth. Ethics board, regulations, whistleblowers, laws and more will eventually unearth potential integrity lapses. Self-serving leaders will lose the faith of their teams, and, again, market forces can expose lapses in benevolence. In short, private sector leaders will eventually be ousted if they cannot do the job, or fund projects that continually lose money, or lie about products and services, or give out false investment advice, or engage in insider trading, as examples.
More often than not, the challenges in the workplace are novel and unscripted, making it that much more critical that those in an organization trust a leader who understands the issues in play, acts with honesty, and finds solutions where the organization’s betterment is always paramount.
Now, overlay this 3-factor model to political leaders — those who run for elected offices.
Does the model still work, or does it fall apart? Examine the three components of trust to political leaders. What abilities must political leaders have to lead those they wish to represent? Intellectual curiosity, economic prowess, critical thinking, ability to communicate, compliance with the bureaucracy, fund-raising or what? As individuals seek higher levels of political office, they become more removed from local citizens.
In turn, citizens have to rely on the media in all its forms to determine if a given politician really does have the ability to do the job. That can certainly skew one’s determination of the candidate’s ability. Or do voters just take a mental shortcut, deciding that the party label is the proxy for ability and subsequently trust a politician because of that affiliation?
Is the integrity bar for CEOs at the same level as politicians when candidates give their stump speeches or make claims, say, about economic accolades? In a given situation, is the good of all whom one serves paramount, or does the party allegiance matter more, to preserve power? After all, it was a given constituency that voted a person into office.
Does that political leader act benevolently only to those who voted for him/her? In turn, do voters solely act in their own self-interest by their vote, a behavior that does not have a parallel in situations where leaders are not elected?
Without a doubt, C-suite executives have risen to their ranks, in part, because they have been able to navigate office politics. And they have to be able to respond to many stakeholders, just like their counterparts who run for or hold political offices. But being politically astute in the private sector is nonetheless preceded by ability, integrity, and benevolence.
For a moment, suspend one’s cynicism about political leaders. Can the three-factors model apply? Should it? Or is there another model that predicts when followers will trust them?
Karen Boroff is professor emerita and dean emerita at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University. Anthony Caputo is an organizational psychologist and COO/CPO at Remesh. Ruchin Kansal is the founder of Kansal & Company, which advises companies on digital business, growth strategy, and innovation and solves the most pressing corporate leadership challenges. He also is a professor of practice at Seton Hall University.
