I’m a Leader….You Can Trust Me

“Honesty may be the best policy, but it’s important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second best policy.”                    

George Carlin

A recent 2008 survey from Blessing White (The State of Employee Engagement) asked 7,500 employees on four continents about how much they trust their managers and senior managers.  The results suggested that 47% strongly disagreed, disagreed or had no opinion about their trust in senior leaders in their organization but only 15% reported the same level of indifference or mistrust with their manager.

I think we can all agree that we’d like leaders (and all talent) to possess a high degree of trustworthiness, honesty and integrity.  If only we could figure out the best way to measure and predict these traits in leaders!

A sizeable body of research has accumulated on honesty/integrity assessments and a fairly recent issue of Personnel Psychology contains the fifth in a series of comprehensive reviews on the “state of the art” of testing in this area ((Berry, C., Sackett, P. & Wieman, S. (2007).  A review of recent developments in integrity test research.  Personnel Psychology, 60, 271-301)).

In general, integrity and honesty tests can be “overt” (e.g., theft attitudes and admissions of wrongdoing) or “covert” (typically personality based assessments attempting to get at underlying traits and qualities that might predict dishonesty, counterproductive work behavior, etc.).

Four highlights of this wonderful update are worth noting:

1. Honesty/Integrity Assessments Do Predict Counterproductive Behavior: More research suggests that these tests do a pretty good job of predicting fraud, theft, stealing, absenteeism and even academic cheating.

2. Peers May Be Valuable at Predicting Integrity: Some recent research has found that peer reported integrity correlate with interview ratings of integrity (r = .28).

3. It’s Not too Difficult to Fake Honesty Tests but Not Much Evidence Exists that Candidates Actually Do: One interesting finding in this review is that items rated as more private and invasive are less fakable.

4. Integrity Assessments Tend to Engender More Negative Reactions Than Other Types (e.g., personality, interviews): In previous research, even graphology (handwriting analysis) had a better image but as the authors point out this often cited study might be hard to generalize since it was based on “perceptions” of which selection approach was most favorable.

Implications for Leadership and Talent Management Selection:

1. Maybe more talent management/succession ratings should consider including peer ratings specific to “integrity” of future leaders.

2. Most interview processes don’t add much to predicting future leadership success–they have poor “incremental validity” beyond personality and intelligence (OK, I know everyone uses them anyway) so maybe more time should be spend trying to measure key relationship intelligence and collaboration factors that are negatively associated with counterproductive work behaviors.

3. Double check references and focus on peer ratings for supplementing data you have on “handicapping” leadership success and future performance.

4. Most of the current generation “five factor” personality inventories don’t typically explain much variance in predicting honesty so it’s best to use both an overt personality measure (e.g., “Big 5” assessment) and covert honesty test to do a better job of predicting dishonesty and counterproductive behavior in applicants at all levels.

5. Newer generation personality inventories can be useful to evaluate other traits and qualities useful to predict performance, retention and postive citizenship behavior ((Nowack, K. (1997). Personality Inventories: The Next Generation. Performance in Practice, American Society of Training and Development, Winter 1996/97)).

6. Get to know candidates outside the formal application process and work setting.  The game of “mutual seduction” is pretty compelling and with the current leadership pipeline shortage everyone tells each other what they want to hear.  You learn alot about a person outside the formal selection interviews so take a walk and head to lunch to learn more about their experiences, passions and signature strengths.

If you haven’t heard, a recent study study for the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University found 56 percent of MBA students acknowledged cheating, compared with 54 percent in engineering, 48 percent in education and 45 percent in law school.

Maybe we need to start earlier in the honesty/integrity assessment process…..Be well….

[tags]interviews, integrity, honesty, counterproductive work behaviors, dishonesty, theft, cheating, absenteeism, performance, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack, Envisia Learning, Envisia, trust, trustworthiness[/tags]

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)