Leadership Research Summary:
- Many critical and unexpected situations are handled by people that have never met. In the literature, development of immediate trust has been identified as a prerequisite for such temporary groups and leadership to function well. Limited experimental research has studied what leadership stimulates immediate trust between strangers.
- The present study investigated how four leadership styles, combining autocratic or democratic leadership behavior with low or high emotional stability, is related to immediate trust in a leader displayed through a 45-s video vignette of a car accident. A sample of 280 adults, randomly assigned to one of four conditions (1, autocratic/stable; 2, autocratic/unstable; 3, democratic/stable; 4, democratic/unstable) rated immediate trust after watching the vignette. The results show that autocratic and emotionally stable leaders were on average rated higher on immediate trust than all other leadership styles, after controlling for generalized trust.
Leadership Research Implications and Findings:
- The main aim of the present study was to learn more about the relationship between immediate trust and leadership during urgent situations, involving time pressure, personal risk, and need for cooperation with unfamiliar people. Notably, all hypotheses received support – and a stable emotional state combined with autocratic leadership came out as the best predictor of immediate trust. This supports previous studies, like Hannah et al. (2009) and Lapidot et al. (2007), suggesting that a directive and autocratic leader will be perceived as more competent and able to deal with an urgent situation by reducing ambiguity and stimulate a sense of control. On the other hand, this result seems to contradict Hyllengren et al.’s (2011) finding that a more democratic approach is preferable. However, it is possible that in a sample of experienced rescue workers, a more democratic leadership approach would have been preferred and seen as more trustworthy, in line with theory of situational leadership prescribing a directive approach toward less mature followers, and more delegation and involvement when working with experienced personnel (e.g., Thompson and Vecchio, 2009). Thus, a replication of the study with a more experienced sample is warranted. We would nevertheless emphasize that studies of inexperienced people, like in the present study are relevant, given that many critical situations, like car accidents, are initially managed by inexperienced bystanders. Our study therefore has good ecological validity.
- As a limitation, this study has no mechanism variables included to explain the relationship between leadership and trust. Here, several variables could have been included. For example, as mediator, it may be that autocratic and stable leadership stimulates followers’ positive outcome expectations due to perceptions of leader competency and ability to cope with stressful conditions, which in turn may transfer into trust (cf. Sweeney, 2010; Olsen, 2018). Alternatively, an autocratic leadership approach may reduce perceptions of role-ambiguity and stress among the followers in an urgent situation, which may stimulate trust. This may also include moral stress, stemming from a perceived gap between a moral obligation to act rapidly, and a lack of response, which in turn may stimulate trust (Nilsson et al., 2011).
- Furthermore, it should be noted that the current study does not include an assessment of trust accuracy (Schilke and Huang, 2018). The ability to decide wisely on whom to trust may represent a life or death matter in dangerous situations, and thus of high importance. Therefore, future studies should also focus on predictors of trust accuracy in these situations, possibly in terms of individual differences like level of experience, psychological hardiness or gender. Also potential perceptual biases like conformity pressure or stereotypes which may reduce accuracy of trust decisions could be relevant here. It should also be noted that emotional stability, as portrayed in the vignettes, may be interpreted as confidence more than emotional stability. Thus, in future studies, perceived level of confidence should be included as control variable.
- Taken together, this study underscores the importance of acting calm and emotionally stable in order to obtain immediate trust from followers, as previously shown by Hyllengren et al. (2011). This will in itself represent an important training aim for emergency workers. Thus, another relevant line of research could investigate interventions designed to stimulate emotional stability and trust-building leadership, as well as trust accuracy to support educational programs for emergency workers like paramedics, fire departments, police and military. It is noteworthy that few contemporary programs focus on immediate trust – and trust accuracy (Olsen, 2018). This is a challenge for the future.