Bidiversity

Women bosses come out on top in the annual Index of Leadership Trust survey, with workers saying they find female leaders both more competent and more empathetic than their male counterparts. The effect is likely due in part to the tough economic climate, writes Emma De Vita of Management Today. “When times are tough, it helps to at least know that your chief executive understands your predicament, even if he or she can’t do much about it,” she writes

It’s the second year of the MT/Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM)’s Index of Leadership Trust survey and although the recession continues to cast a long shadow, the news is mostly good. Of the 5,000 people polled (2,405 managers and 2,595 non-managers), 47% of respondents thought their chief executive officers had handled the impact of the recession either ‘very well’ or ‘quite well’. Another 39% gave their bosses an ambivalent ‘neither well nor poorly’ performance rating.

All of which means that the CEO index score, as researched by consultancy FreshMinds, has increased by four points to 63 this year. Leaders were rated particularly highly for their ability to create more open and understanding cultures. ‘It goes to show that CEOs are doing a lot of work around their own visibility, but are also empathising with the experience their people are having,’ says Penny de Valk, chief executive of the ILM. ‘It plays to the strategy of “don’t be a stranger”.’

Of particular interest is the fact that overall trust in female CEOs remains higher than trust in male CEOs, as was the case last year. But the largest year-on-year increase in CEO trust is experienced between male employees and their female CEOs – an increase of eight index points on last year. And most of this increasing level of trust was experienced by non-managers, who registered an increase of a massive 11 index points in their trust for their female CEO between 2009 and 2010. It’s a theme we explore in our interviews with Rosaleen Blair, CEO of recruiters Alexander Mann Solutions and Barbara Stocking, CEO of charity Oxfam GB, and some of their male colleagues.

What has fuelled this rise? Women rate more highly than their male counterparts both when it comes to employees having confidence in their boss’s ability to do their job and also when it comes to being principled and honest. Female CEOs score higher than male CEOs in these areas by two and three index points respectively. But the really important differentiator is chief executives’ knowledge of what their employees have to contend with in their day-to-day lives – female CEOs are seven points ahead of their male counterparts on this measure.

When times are tough, it helps to at least know that your chief executive understands your predicament, even if he or she can’t do much about it. Downsizing has meant that people are often doing two jobs: to be able not only to acknowledge that but to understand what it feels like and also help people with their predicament is a big driver of trust.

But, says de Valk, it’s wrong to rely on the gender stereotype that women are naturally more empathetic than men. ‘We know that women are not likely to put themselves forward for new roles unless they feel 95% capable, whereas men will happily do so at 65%, so what happens is that when women are promoted, they are very familiar with the tasks their people are doing.’

Cost-cutting measures have had a clear negative impact on trust in CEOs. The greater the severity and spread of the measures taken within an organisation, the lower the level of trust felt by employees for the line manager and their CEO – although it’s always the CEOs who come off worst, probably because they’re not the ones to hold hands and provide shoulders to cry on when bad news is given out.

For employees working in organisations which have suffered no negative recessionary effects – cost- cutting, redundancies or office closures, for example – the CEO trust level score is 68. The score for a CEO whose organisation has been severely affected by recessionary measures is a miserable 51 – a drop of 17 points. ‘It just goes to show that there is a massive residual consequence to taking cost cuts in your business by doing that through headcount reductions,’ says de Valk. ‘You must be able to build that level of trust back up as quickly as you can, because it will have an impact on productivity and engagement.’

There is also a dire warning here for the public sector, which over the next 12 months will be asked to make the eye-watering cuts the coalition government is demanding. According to our survey, out of all the sectors, local and national government employees have the lowest levels of trust in their chief executives. Says de Valk: ‘If they are going in with such a limited trust credit in the bank, you’ve got to ask: how are they going to avoid eroding it further?’

ROSALEEN BLAIR AND ISHPAL BANSAL, ALEXANDER MANN SOLUTIONS

Not many bosses are comfortable admitting that they’ve made a mistake. But, for Rosaleen Blair, CEO of Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS), making mistakes is part of the culture at the company she founded and key to building trust. ‘If people aren’t making the odd mistake, they’re probably not trying hard enough,’ she says.

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