Poor Leaders are Costing Employers

One of the most important qualities a leader can possess is the ability to inspire trust in the workplace, however, it is something that appears to be on the decline within organisations. When trust declines in a workplace relationship, so too does productivity. Everything will take much longer and costs will increase, all to make up for that lack of trust.

Stephen M.R Covey, author of The Speed of Trust; the one thing that changes everything, calls the extra effort that goes into checking and validating employees work by leaders the “low trust tax”.
In the same way that when there is a lack of trust productivity goes down and costs go up, when there is a high level of trust, productivity increases and costs go down.

Covey believes that the need for trust in the workplace is obvious and it is a “financial, not just social requirement”. “"You can put a value on it," he said. "The ability to create trust is the number one competency of leadership needed today, more than any other”.
Trusting your employees, as a leader, makes you better at everything else that you need to achieve at work.

The thirteen behaviours that high trust leaders possess, according to Covey, are;

1. Talking straight – They say what is on their mind, and don't hide their agenda. Most employees don't believe their bosses are communicating honestly.
2. Demonstrating respect – Actions show leaders care. They should be sincere. People will notice if an action is motivated by a lesser reason.
3. Creating transparency – Leaders should tell the truth in a way that can be substantiated. Transparency is based on principles of honesty, openness, integrity and authenticity.
4. Righting wrongs – To right a wrong is much more than apologising. It involves making restitution. With customers it might include that free gift along with the sincere apology.
5. Showing loyalty – Leaders need to give credit to the individuals responsible for success. A leader should never take credit for the hard work of others.
6. Delivering results – The fastest way to build trust is to deliver results. 
7. Getting better – When others see leaders continually learning and adapting to change, they become inspired to do the same. Covey suggested two ways to get better. First, seek feedback from those around you. Second, learn from your mistakes;
8. Confronting reality – If leaders are honest about the difficult issues and address them head-on, people will trust them. 
9. Clarifying expectations – It is important to focus on a shared vision of success up front. When expectations are not clearly defined at the beginning, trust and productivity both decline. A lot of time is wasted due to leaders not clearly defining expectations.
10. Practising accountability – Leaders must hold themselves accountable, and take responsibility for poor results. It is a normal response to blame others for failure, but when leaders fail, they need to take responsibility for themselves.
11. Listening first – Actively listening builds trust. Leaders need to learn not to go through the 'mechanics' of listening and give the impression they are listening when really they are not.
12. Keeping commitments –This is one of the most important components of inspiring trust in the workplace. When leaders keep a commitment they build trust. Leaders must be careful when making commitments, and make only those they can keep. 
13. Extending trust - Leaders should extend trust to those who have earned it and are still earning it, but show caution to those who have given reason to believe that they are not capable of being trusted.

How our Emotional State Affects our Employees

Research is now discovering that emotions are capable of affecting memory, perception and cognition. All of these things can influence how an employee performs at work.

When people are influenced by the moods of others, especially those in managerial positions, it can impact their behaviour at work. This is called “emotional contagion”. How we feel can spill out and infect other people, essentially making us walking mood inductors.

We even have cells in our bodies called mirror neurons which allow us to be in touch with how other people are feeling by simply observing them. Neuroscientists have recently discovered that empathy is driven by these mirror neurons which are located in the frontal cortex of your brain. Mirror neurons fire in the same way whether you're watching someone do something or you are actually doing that same thing yourself.

At work, it is often the leader’s responsibility to set the mood for the rest of the team in the workplace. The emotions people bring to work are as important as their cognitive skills, and especially so for leaders. If you are a leader, consider that managing your moods is one of your chief responsibilities.

A good way to look at it is, your mood, positive or negative, will remain in a room long after you have left it and the mood you generate is directly related to how you make people feel.
There has been little research done on the ramifications of group emotions. If you consider the effects of emotional contagion, it is easy to assume that within the workplace groups are reflecting the influence of key emotional people within their team. Usually the leaders.

The key to stopping this emotional contagion is awareness, however often another person’s negative mood affects you unconsciously. If you realise that someone else’s bad mood is affecting you, you can control it. For this reason, making people, especially managers, aware of emotional contagion is vital. It is important to understand that when employees are exposed to the moods of leaders who are giving off feelings of anger or hostility, it can have toxic effects on their performance.

The same goes for feelings of confidence and enthusiasm. This is why it is so important for leaders to understand that they can utilise mood contagion to create a positive emotional climate for their employees.

When managers learn to control their own emotions and know the emotional triggers of their team, they can manipulate the atmosphere of their workplace.

Leadership Development

A great leader can motivate and inspire employees by making them feel as though they are working alongside management and not for them. Poor leadership can have as great an impact on the organization’s success or failure as a recession.

Ongoing development for leaders helps companies. Businesses that invest in leadership development enjoy distinct advantages. These advantages include:

• Improved bench strength
• Improved employee retention
• Improved bottom-line performance
• Improved ability to attract talent
• Solving problems earlier and at lower levels
• Increased organizational agility
• Improved business sustainability
• Greater market value over time
• Development of leader, team, and organization competencies
• Ability to outperform the competition with increased market share, revenue, profitability, and rising stock prices
• Sustained performance
• Distributed leadership at all levels

While it is common for companies to measure engagement levels within employees, top companies are now paying particular attention to engaging leaders and employees with strong leadership potential. They are starting to look at what actions and behaviours demonstrated by leaders create engagement within their workplace. The idea being to then replicate it and drive engagement in their company.

In top companies leaders are being tasked with fostering organisational talent within their company, this contradicts the attitude of many other organisations. Effective leadership development produces leaders who can coach, mentor, and develop other leaders in the organization, providing a steady stream of leaders at all levels.

Leadership development can no longer focus solely on the senior team. Leaders must be developed at all levels throughout the organization to ensure an organization’s
success.

Although it’s typical to evaluate leaders on their past performance, top companies are assessing leaders on their potential more frequently and thoroughly. These companies are using personality profiling to ensure a perfect fit for an organisation instead of simply assessing their skills.

One of the greatest benefits of training employees and leadership development is that it can discover diamonds in the rough among your workforce. Often some of the best leaders are in fact already working for you bur have not had the opportunity to develop or display their skills.


Regular leadership development can create a culture of lifelong learning among your employees. No matter what business you are in there is always something your employees can learn that will benefit your business.


When employees and management obtain significant and effective relevant training and work together with mutual respect, everybody benefits from it the end result is increased productivity.

By developing leaders in this way, the main measure of success is organisational performance as opposed to divisional performance.