HMD 225: Contingency Theories Module 7: Topic 7 Assignment Purpose: Evaluate your credibility One important aspect of leadership is credibility. Leaders who are not trusted by their followers or lack relevant knowledge or will have a very difficult time gaining buy-in. Instructions: Read content within this topic. Read Chapter 8 within your text. Task: After your readings, complete the following questionnaire by: Evaluate your credibility.pdf & 1. Answering the 14 questions based on the provided scale 2. Calculating your expertise and trust scores 3. Plotting your results on the provided graph Include your graph plotting and expertise and trust scores in your submission. Task: After reading the material, write two par graphs (with amini num o 400 words) to answer the two questions below: What will you need to do to build your current level of credibility whether at your current job or a future position you seek? More specifically: 1. How will you build your expertise? 2. How will you build your trust?Evaluate your credibility One important aspect of leadership is credibility. Leaders who are not trusted by their followers or lack relevant knowledge or will have a very difficult time gaining buy-in. Let's use the question below to evaluate your current credibility score. Use the following scale to respond to the items: -3- Strongly Disagree Disagree So-So Agree Strongly Agree People see me as a subject matter expert. 2. I have a development plan that is reviewed and updated regularly. 11 13. I constantly seek opportunities to broaden my knowledge and skills. 4. I know how my part of the organization contributes to the overall success of the organization. 5. I know where our organization is going. 6. I know the strengths and weaknesses of our competitors and where the industry is headed. 7. I keep abreast of the economic, regulatory, and social trends that could affect the industry or our organization. 8. I behave in a manner consistent with my personal values. 9. I speak out for what I believe in, even if it is an unpopular viewpoint. 10. I can keep confidences and protect sensitive information. 11 . I encourage discussion of ethical issues before making decisions. 12. I spend a lot of time listening to others' perspectives on work issues. 13. I have strong relationships with my team members. 14. I always complete tasks on time and follow through with commitments. Credibility consists of two components, expertise and trust. Items 1-7 focus on expertise including level of technical, organizational and industry knowledge and skills. Items 8-14 focus on trust and ask leaders whether they are standing up for what they believe in, following through with commitments, and building strong relationships with co-workers. Add the sum of items 1-7= Total Expertise Score 28-35 You see yourself as an expert within the organization. 21-27 A solid score, but you could do more to develop your skills. Less than 21 You probably need to develop relevant knowledge and skills. Add the sum of items 8-14= Total Trust Score 28-35 You see yourself as having a high level of trust in the organization. 21-27 A solid score, but you could do more to build trust. Less than 21 You may be new to the job/organization, you may not be standing up for what you believe in, or you may need to build better relationships with others.Building Credibility Interviews with thousands of followers as well as the results of over half a million 360-degree feedback reports indicate that credibility may be one of the most important components of leadership success and effectiveness. " . Employees working for leaders they thought were credible were willing to work longer hours, felt more sense of ownership in the company, felt more personally involved in work, and were less likely to leave the company over the next two years.' Given the difficulties companies are having finding and retaining talented leaders and workers and the role intellectual capital and bench strength play in organizational success, it would appear that credibility could have a strong bottom-line impact on many organizations. Credibility is a little like leadership in that many people have ideas about what credibility is, but there is little consensus on one "true" definition of credibility. This section will define what we believe credibility is, present the two components of credibility, and explore what leadership practitioners can do (and avoid doing) if they want to build their credibility. Leaders know that while weir portion may give worth authorin; their behavior came when naper. Leaders go flat They set an example and hulld commwar might Jim Houses and Barry Poser, leadership scholars Paper: 267 The Two Components of Credibility Credibility can be defined as the ability to engender trust in others. Leaders with high levels of credibility are seen as trustworthy, they have a strong sense of right and wrong, stand up and speak up for what they believe in, protect confidential information, encourage ethical discussions of business or work issues, and follow through with commitments. Sometimes dishonest leaders, personalized charismatic leaders, or power wielders can initially be seen by followers as credible, but their selfish and self-serving interests usually come to light over time. Credibility is made up of two components: expertise and trust. Followers will not trust leaders if they feel they do not know what they are talking about. Similarly, followers will not trust leaders if they feel confidential information will be leaked, if their leaders are unwilling to take stands on moral issues, or if their leaders do not follow through on their promises. Much about these two components of credibility has already been discussed in the " Chapter 3 sections "Building Technical Competence." "Building Effective Relationships with Superiors," and "Building Effective Relationships with Peers." What follows is a brief overview of these three skills as well as some additional considerations that can help leaders build their credibility. Building Expertise Expertise consists of technical competence as well as organizational and industry knowledge, so building expertise means increasing your knowledge and skills in these three areas. Building technical competence, described earlier in L Chapter 3, concerns increasing the knowledge and repertoire of behaviors you can bring to bear to successfully complete a task. To build technical competence, leadership practitioners must determine how their jobs contribute to the overall mission of the company or organization, become an expert in those jobs through formal training or teaching others, and seek opportunities to broaden their technical expertise. Nonetheless, building expertise takes more than just technical competence. Leaders also need to understand the company and the industry they are in. Many followers not only want leaders to coach them on their skills-they also look to their leaders to provide some context for organizational, industry, and market events. Building one's organizational or industry knowledge may be just as important as building technical competence. However, the ways in which leadership practitioners build these two knowledge bases are somewhat different from building technical competence. Building technical competence often takes more of a hands-on approach to development, but it is hard to do this when building organizational or industry knowledge. One way to build your organizational or industry knowledge is by repularly reading industry-related journals, annual reports, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Ina, or various websites. Many leaders spend 5 to 10 hours a week building their industry and organizational knowledge using this approach. Getting a mentor or being coached by your boss is another way to build such knowledge. Other leadership practitioners have taken stretch assignments where they work on special projects with senior executives. Often these assignments allow them to work closely with executives, and through this contact they better understand the competitive landscape, the organization's history and business strategies, and organizational politics. The bottom line is that your learning is not over once you have obtained your degree. In many ways, it will have just started. Finally, note that expertise is not the same thing as experience. It has been said that some leaders get one year's worth of experience out of five years' work, whereas others get five years' worth of experience from one year's work. The latter kind of leader presumably develops greater expertise for any given period of work than the former. Leaders who get the most from their experience regularly discuss what they have been learning with a partner, and they frequently update their development plans as a result of these discussions. Page 268 Building Trust The second component of credibility is building trust, which can be broken down into clarifying and communicating your values, and building relationships with others. In many ways leadership is a moral exercise. For example, one key difference between charismatic and transformational leaders is that the latter base their vision on their own and their followers' values, whereas the former base their vision on their own possibly selfish needs. Having a strong values system is an important component both in the building blocks model of skills and in leadership success. Because of the importance of values and relationships in building trust, the remainder of this section explores these two topics in more depth. Ly Chapter 5 defined values as constructs representing generalized behaviors or states of affairs that are considered by the individual to be important. Provided that leaders make ethical decisions and abide by organizational rules, however, differences in values among leaders and followers may be difficult to discern. People do not come to work with their values marked on their foreheads, so others typically make inferences about leaders' values based on their day-to-day behaviors. Unfortunately, in many cases leaders' day-to-day behaviors are misaligned with their personal values; they are not living their work lives in a manner consistent with their values. An example of a leader not living according to his values might be illustrative. An executive with an oil and pas firm was responsible for all drilling operations in western Canada. Because he felt the discovery of new oil and gas fields was the key to the company's long-term success, he worked up to 18 hours a day, pushed his followers to work similar hours, had little patience for and would publicly disparage any oil rig operators who were behind schedule, and almost fired a manager who gave one of his followers a weekPape 268 Building Trust The second component of credibility is building trust, which can be broken down into clarifying and communicating your values, and building relationships with others. In many ways leadership is a moral exercise. For example, one key difference between charismatic and transformational leaders is that the latter base their vision on their own and their followers' values, whereas the former base their vision on their own possibly selfish needs. Having a strong values system is an important component both in the building blocks model of skills and in leadership success. Because of the importance of values and relationships in building trust, the remainder of this section explores these two topics in more depth. Ly Chapter 5 defined wales as constructs representing generalized behaviors or states of affairs that are considered by the individual to be important. Provided that leaders make ethical decisions and abide by organizational rules, however, differences in values among leaders and followers may be difficult to discern. People do not come to work with their values marked on their foreheads, so others typically make inferences about leaders' values based on their day-to-day behaviors. Unfortunately, in many cases leaders' day-to-day behaviors are misaligned with their personal values; they are not living their work lives in a manner consistent with their values. An example of a leader not living according to his values might be illustrative. An executive with an oil and pas firm was responsible for all drilling operations in western Canada. Because he felt the discovery of new oil and gas fields was the key to the company's long-term success, he worked up to 18 hours a day. pushed his followers to work similar hours, had little patience for and would publicly disparage any oil rig operators who were behind schedule, and almost fired a manager who gave one of his followers a week off to see the birth of his son back in the United States. As these behaviors continued over time, more and more of his followers either requested transfers or quit to join other companies. Because of these problems with turnover and morale, he was asked to participate in a formal coaching program. Not surprisingly, his 360-degree feedback showed that his boss, peers, and followers found him difficult to work with. These results indicated that he put a premium on getting ahead and economic rewards; yet when he was asked to name the things he felt were most important to him as a leader, his priorities were his family, his religion, getting along with others, and developing his followers (altruism). Obviously there was a huge gap between what he truly believed in and how he behaved. He felt the company expected him to hold people's feet to the fire and get results no matter what the cost, yet neither his boss nor his peers felt that this was the case. The executive had misconstrued the situation and was exhibiting behaviors that were misaligned with his values. Although this case is somewhat extreme, it is not unusual to find leaders acting in ways that are misaligned with their personal values. One way to assess the degree to which leaders are living according to their personal values is by asking what they truly believe in and what they spend their time and money on. For example, you could write down the five things you believe most strongly in (your top five values) and then review your calendar, daytimer, checkbook, and credit card statements to determine where you spend your time and money. If the two lists are aligned, you are likely living according to your values. If not, you may be living according to how others think you should act. And if there is some discrepancy between the two lists, what should you do? Of course, some discrepancy is likely to occur because situational demands and constraints can influence how we behave. But large discrepancies between the lists may indicate that you are not living consistently with your values, and those you interact with may infer that you have a different set of values than those you believe in A good first step in clarifying such a discrepancy is to craft a personal mission statement or a leadership credo that describes what you truly believe in as a leader. Examples of different leadership credos for managers across corporate America can be found in 2 Highlight 8.1. Several aspects of leadership credos are worth additional comment. First, leadership credos are personal and are closely linked with a leader's values-a credo should describe what the leader believes in and will or will not stand for. Second, it should describe an ideal state. A leader's behavior may never be perfectly aligned with his or her personal mission statement, but it should be a set of day-to-day behaviors that he or she will strive to achieve. Third, leadership credos should be motivating; leaders should be passionate and enthusiastic about the kind of leader they aspire to be. If the leader does not find his or her personal mission statement to be particularly inspiring, then it is hard to see how followers will be motivated by it. Much of the inspiration of a leadership credo stems from its being personal and values based. Fourth, personal mission statements should be made public. Leaders need to communicate their values to others, and a good way to do this is to display their leadership credos prominently in their offices. This not only lets others know what you as a leader think is important; it also is a form of public commitment to your leadership credo. Pope: 269 Sample Leadership Credos HIGHLIGHT 8.1 As a leader, I ... -. . believe in the concept of whole persons and will seek to use the full range of talents and abilities of colleagues whenever possible. -.. will seek to keep people fully informed. -.. will more consistently express appreciation to others for a job well done. ... will take risks in challenging policies or protocol when they do not permit us to effectively serve our ourtomen. -.. will selectively choose battles to fight-rather than trying to fight all of the possible battles. -.. will actively support those providing the most effective direction for our company. -.. will seek to change the things I can in a positive direction and accept those things I have no chance or opportunity to change. Source: Asparr Leadendo (Micnap International, 1953]. Another key way to build trust is to form strong relationships with others. There is apt to be a high level of mutual trust if leaders and followers share strong relationships, if these relationships are weak, the level of mutual trust is apt to be low. Techniques for building relationships with peers and superiors were described in ! Chapter 3. Perhaps the best way to build relationships with followers is to spend time listening to what they have to say. Because many leaders tend to be action oriented and are paid to solve (rather than listen to) problems, some leaders overlook the importance of spending time with followers. Yet leaders who take the time to build relationships with followers are much more likely to understand their followers' perspectives on organizational issues, intrinsic motivators, values, levels of competence for different tasks, and career aspirations. Leaders armed with this knowledge may be better able to influence and get work done through others. More about building relationships with followers can be found in 2 Chapter 12 under "Coaching."