I recently found a piece of research looking at what employees value in their leaders. Top of the list was trustworthiness and bottom of the list was risk taking, entrepreneurial skills and charisma.

This got me thinking about leadership development programmes that we have designed and delivered in the past.

All our programmes are bespoke - each one is different depending on the needs of the business and the collective needs of the leaders in question. However, all the programmes that we have run over the past five years have been about developing leaders who are highly business aware and focused, more emotionally intelligent, and highly competent people managers. Whilst trustworthy has not been a quality that has been overtly referred to, our clients have talked about developing leaders that are strong people managers and that people will follow. Implicit in this is trust and credibility.

All of the programmes that we have developed and run have included a lot of work up front getting leaders to take a long hard look at themselves. This often involves 360° feedback, psychometrics and sometimes exercises which generate peer feedback. The feedback generated by our 360° tool, Viewpoint, will provide a clear picture of how credible you are as a leader.

Using self awareness as a foundation, our programmes are always designed to provide experiences that people can learn from. Being acutely aware of the impact of your behaviour on the people who follow you is a key focus for our programmes. A whole range of activities generate peer feedback and also self reflection to enable leaders to develop both the skills but also the mindset of a leader. Much of this is about developing into a leader that others find credible and trustworthy.

Case studies for leadership development programmes that we have developed.

Recently a client asked me help support a senior manager within their organisation. They wanted him to receive some 360° feedback and wanted it to be gathered through 1:1 conversations and the feedback delivered face to face.

I took a structured approach by preparing some statements around leadership, influencing and communication and devised a simple scoring system. I asked each person to score the statement and then captured their comments to help explain the score.

I spoke to a range of people including direct reports, colleagues and the individual’s line manager. Then, once the interviews were complete I compiled a report showing graphical information and the comments under each area.

To be honest I was quite concerned about delivering the feedback as it was very honest and I wanted it to be helpful not demoralising. However, by following the structure (and trusting the process!) I was struck by how helpful he found it.

Crucially, through the visual data on the graph he was able see clearly and accept the areas he needed to work on alongside the areas where his strengths were. From there we were able to start to plan how to make the changes.

It felt really good to know that my client actively supports their senior managers to grow and develop, and I was able to gather and give the feedback in such a way that it was constructive and helpful to him.