This really interesting piece of research focused on six dimensions by which the trustworthiness of leaders and managers is measured: ability, understanding, fairness, openness, integrity and consistency. These dimensions, weighted by the importance respondents applied to them, were then examined against a number of factors, ranging from the size of the organisation and its industry sector to the age and gender of manager and employee, plus the length of their service and relationship with leaders and managers.
Confidence in the boss' ability to do their job is the most important factor in breeding trust among the workforce. Almost as important is the ability to demonstrate a strong sense of personal integrity. The other factors were seen as being far less important than ability and integrity. The drivers of trust in line managers are more diverse. Once again, ability is top of the list of characteristics, but integrity is marginally outweighed in importance by line managers’ understanding of the needs and abilities of others, and matched by fairness in the way that they treat them.The larger the organisation, the less trust employees are likely to show in its leadership. The most trusted bosses are those at the helm of organisations employing up to 10 people. This trust in CEOs falls off consistently as the organisation grows and reaches its lowest in organisations that employ more than 1,000 people. Overall trust in line managers is also highest in the smallest companies but falls to its lowest point in medium-sized enterprises. It then recovers marginally in the bigger organisations, which possibly indicates better manager training in larger concerns.
The longer bosses and line managers have been in post the more trust employees have in them. Conversely, the longer an employee has been with the organisation the less they trust their management team. This apparent contradiction can be explained by the effect of the length of relationship between manager and managed. Trust is at its highest between a new employee and long-serving managers, and at its lowest when a long-serving employee is working under a new leader.
Age and gender have less effect on trust than might be expected. The research reveals a small dip in trust for middle-aged leaders and managers and a general trend for employees to show greater trust in bosses who are of the same sex and similar age as themselves. Women are generally more trusted and trusting than men. But the research found that, although women tend to start employment with more trust in their managers than new male recruits, their trust decreases more sharply, ultimately falling below the levels of men.
Trust in public sector bosses compares poorly to many bosses in the private sector, although this can partly be explained by the fact that many public sector organisations are large. Trust is low in large organisations that feature a high percentage of long-serving employees and a high turnover of bosses and line managers.
Clear patterns and trends emerge from the research. Establishing trust takes time and is improved when the relationship between leader and follower is close. This finding has important implications for new bosses of very large organisations, many of which are in the public sector and feature long-serving employees. The bosses of these organisations have the steepest hill to climb to establish trust, and they will not be able to reach the summit without demonstrating a strong sense of personal integrity. If they can’t show the qualities of principle and honesty, and that they are in it for the long haul, not just as a lucrative or advantageous career move, they will not be trusted.
Emotional leadership requires:
Times like this require us to think more in terms of leadership and as leaders we need to ask questions like...
Chris
The model is intended to provoke us to think in different ways about the design and delivery of public services. The aim of Radical Efficiency is to prove that this approach can lead to the design of public services that are better, cheaper and more efficient. The idea of better, cheaper and more efficient is often described as the holy grail of public services – as something unique but everyone needs to ask themselves these questions. If you want to find out more visit the Innovation Unit website at http://innovationunit.wordpress.com/.
It is important to remember that the situation is clearly very different in real schools. The core business of schools is teaching and learning and, to achieve this, the school leaders have to find ways to overcome the many obstacles real schools are facing. To achieve their core purpose and become successful, we know that schools need to move from a culture of dependency to a culture of enterprise, discipline and hard work. That requires strong and highly effective leadership, powerful governance, an organisational infrastructure, financial resources and autonomy, professional excellence at all levels and brilliantly responsive and flexible support.
We know that some of our schools have moved very successfully in this direction and achieved great things; simply look at what John Smeaton Community College, the David Young Academy and Morley High School have achieved over the last few years. However, a small number of our schools still lack great leadership, have poor discipline and are too dependent on support.
We must develop a "can do" approach where there are only challenges and opportunities not problems. We need to contribute practical advice and insightful reflections about the issues faced by our schools; ideas rooted in the reality of effecting lasting change and adding to what the schools already know.
We know that the task we all face is enormous but we know how to do this and we simply need to be break the problems down into bite-sized, manageable strategies and tasks targeted to make a real difference.
Chris
"A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.
The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."
The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.
"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things---God, your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions---and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else---the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for th e pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.
"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first---the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled and said, "I'm glad you asked." The coffee just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend.""
Whenever things are getting you down and you need a friend remember about my offer to buy you coffee.
Chris
“I have yet to meet the man, however great or exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than he would ever do under a spirit of criticism.”
Charles Schwab
It' s funny but few people I know have learned how to deliver criticism...
We learn by making mistakes. Simply watch a small child learning to walk. The best way to correct our mistakes is by finding something to praise before we are criticised. In this way people show faith, confidence and trust in our abilities and talents and we will be more willing to listen once we know the intention is to be helpful and constructive.
Praise works. Top football managers dish out praise and appreciation regularly and publicly. Genuine praise is not flattery. We are all more willing to listen to advice when we know the boss has faith in our abilities.| If colleagues live with criticism If colleagues live with hostility If colleagues live with ridicule If colleagues live with jealousy But if colleagues live with tolerance If colleagues live with encouragement If colleagues live with praise If colleagues live with fairness If colleagues live with approval If colleagues live with security If colleagues lives with acceptance and friendship Chris |
This is more than just a series of goals or the Education Leeds vision - it's about our values and our culture and helping colleagues to understand where they fit into the bigger picture. We must be prepared to confront the harsh realities when things go wrong and give and receive honest feedback. We need open, clear, two-way communication and active listening to continue to build teamwork across the company and across Children's Services. If we get this right I believe that things will happen spontaneously; colleagues will understand where the pressures are, what the challenges are and how to manage the workload. They will then collaborate to get jobs done by building creative teams, dynamic partnerships and strong and meaningful relationships.
In a genuine 'one team' culture, everyone wins, loses and learns and most importantly everyone improves and develops together.
ChrisRemember that nothing can be learned through talking. Asking questions and listening should represent 80% of our interactions with colleagues.
Remember that respect is always earned over time and by example.
Chris
I would as always welcome your comments and feedback.
Chris
It's all about brilliant learning in brilliant learning places!
Discuss.
Chris
We need to remember that we are all talented, brilliant, gorgeous and wonderful; all potential high achievers wherever we work in this crazy enterprise; in the school kitchen, the playground or the playing field, the classroom, the laboratory, the workshop, the office or at Education Leeds...
We all try out new recipes and approaches, we test assumptions, we experiment with new concepts and ideas, we look at data and outcomes and we constantly search for the magic ingredient that can lead to a breakthrough and help us make even more of a difference to the lives of our children and young people. In our constant search for brilliant; brilliant food, brilliant systems, briliant provision and brilliant outcomes, we must be creative, methodical, pragmatic and demanding and our personal standards have to be focused, relentless and uncompromising. Only our brilliant best is good enough for the children and young people, the families and the communities we serve. It is important that we all remember that achieving the outstanding, the brilliant, the magical comes from putting your heart and soul into your work. It is about being passionate and loving what you are doing to bring out your absolute incredible potential. The words 'passion' and 'love' are there because they are the secret to brilliant. If you don't love what you are doing with a real passion, you are wasting your life and you should take your magic and your potential and go and do something else!It has been an incredibly difficult week full of meetings, challenge and frustration but interspersed as always with little interludes of real magic. I visited South Leeds High School as part of the Corporate Assessment tour we arranged fo the city's inspectors and auditors. We celebrated the achievements of yet another cohort of fantastic Higher Level Teaching Assistants. I attended the beginning of the RM/Education Leeds 'Demonstrating Transformation Conference where Professor Tim Brighouse gave the keynote address. I visited East Ardsley and Kirkstall St Stephen's CE Primary Schools. I had breakfast with some of the Templenewsam Halton Family of Schools headteachers and lunch with the Seacroft and Manston Family of Schools headteachers.
I have to admit that I have struggled over the last three weeks and I am sorry to say that on occasions I have lost the plot. I have become very tired, depressed and negative and I recognise that I have started to undermine the very special culture, values and relationships we have all worked so hard to nurture and develop here at Education Leeds. However, thanks to some friends and colleagues, I am pleased to say that at the end of the week and over the weekend I have readjusted the volume and the balance. I have managed to relax, unwind, refocus and re-read Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. It’s a great book, first published in 1937, and things don’t get any clearer than this:'Whatever you do keep it simple' should be etched on the wall in every staff room, every office and every room at Education Leeds. Complexity is the curse of the digital age. It is a type of intellectual pollution that drives out clarity of purpose, smothers thinking and common sense and impacts negatively and destructively on colleagues happiness, productivity and engagement. We all know that achieving absolute simplicity is something none of us will ever achieve but if we don't make some real effort, if we don't train ourselves to look for ways to simplify, we can guarantee our lives will become more complex, busier, less efficient and even more stressful and destructive.
Keep the faith.Chris
This job we do is too important for any of us to be ordinary. We must all strive. each and every day to be extra-ordinary, to be outstanding and to be brilliant.
Chris
Chris
Chris
And when the going gets tough and the challenges seem impossible:
Happy New Year
Chris
