Team members react differently to leaders who have a reputation for fairness. They resist less, listen more intently, and act on what they learn. Perceptions of fairness conferred to a leader will color how people process and accept feedback. Even when they don’t agree with the criticisms offered, team members give the benefit of the doubt to fair leaders, presuming their intentions and feedback come from an honest place.
Todays post takes me back to my early I/O days when I went deep on studying the effects of procedural and distributive justice in the workplace. An example from a past employer - our Security Team and Employee Relations Team consistently received the lowest scores from employees on an internal support services survey. The conventional excuse for the low
Scores was that ER were viewed as the HR Police and Security were the actual Police (most of them were retired law enforcement). The Security Team not happy being at the bottom, contacted our team (we ran the survey) and asked us if there was anything they could do to raise their score. We trained up their teams on the differences between procedural and distributive justice and they made the necessary changes to their investigation procedures. They saw marked improvements in subsequent surveys. If I remember correctly, they went from bottom last to surpassing ER and IT which they viewed as a success.
Interesting example, Dave. Sounds like the security team might have only taken time to be open for training by finding themselves in last place. If they didn't think the assessment was already a fair tool, they might not have responded by coming to you at all when seeing their results?
The key was to convince the low scoring departments that something could be done. They had for a long time written the low scores off because of the nature of their work. They did not think it was possible to improve and we showed them how.
Thank you for sharing these nuggets of leadership insights. In my experience, truly great leaders realize early on in their leadership journey that all eyes and ears are tuning in to everything you say and do. For the fortunate aspiring leaders, a mentor shared this nugget of advice early in your leadership journey.
Your professional reputation and credibility is created via personal and professional experiences over time. The measure of fairness is borne out of these vicarious and personal experiences.
Impactful feedback is only possible when your credibility and professionalism are grounded on trust and love.
Todays post takes me back to my early I/O days when I went deep on studying the effects of procedural and distributive justice in the workplace. An example from a past employer - our Security Team and Employee Relations Team consistently received the lowest scores from employees on an internal support services survey. The conventional excuse for the low
Scores was that ER were viewed as the HR Police and Security were the actual Police (most of them were retired law enforcement). The Security Team not happy being at the bottom, contacted our team (we ran the survey) and asked us if there was anything they could do to raise their score. We trained up their teams on the differences between procedural and distributive justice and they made the necessary changes to their investigation procedures. They saw marked improvements in subsequent surveys. If I remember correctly, they went from bottom last to surpassing ER and IT which they viewed as a success.
Interesting example, Dave. Sounds like the security team might have only taken time to be open for training by finding themselves in last place. If they didn't think the assessment was already a fair tool, they might not have responded by coming to you at all when seeing their results?
The key was to convince the low scoring departments that something could be done. They had for a long time written the low scores off because of the nature of their work. They did not think it was possible to improve and we showed them how.
Thank you for sharing these nuggets of leadership insights. In my experience, truly great leaders realize early on in their leadership journey that all eyes and ears are tuning in to everything you say and do. For the fortunate aspiring leaders, a mentor shared this nugget of advice early in your leadership journey.
Your professional reputation and credibility is created via personal and professional experiences over time. The measure of fairness is borne out of these vicarious and personal experiences.
Impactful feedback is only possible when your credibility and professionalism are grounded on trust and love.
Thanks, Juve. For your comments.
We'd would love seeing your personal examples int he comments more often! It makes us richer for reading them.
Thank you. I appreciate the work of your team.