Perceived leadership soft skills and trustworthiness of deans in three Malaysian public universities

Soft skills comprised both rational and emotional elements, becoming a new focus on leadership, as behavior displayed during interaction with other individuals will affect effective interaction outcomes. This study aimed to examine the leadership soft skills of deans in public universities of Malaysia. This survey designed research was performed to investigate the relationship between the eight components of leadership soft skills composed of collaboration/teamwork, communication skills, initiative, leadership ability, people development/coaching, personal effectiveness/personal mastery, planning and organizing and presentation skills with perceived trustworthiness. The conceptual framework of this study is based on the Crosbie’s model of leadership soft skills and Mayer, Davis and Schoorman’s model of organizational trust. A total of 376 support staff grade 17–36 was selected as respondents through stratified sampling technique. The method of analysis used are mean score, standard deviation, Pearson correlation and multiple regression Stepwise. Findings indicated that deans implemented moderately all the eight components of leadership soft skills. Perceived trustworthiness were significantly related with all the eight components of leadership soft skills at significance level of 0.01. The significant predictors for perceived trustworthiness were communication skills, planning and organizing and presentation skills. Finally, this study also provided recommendations and suggestions for future research.