Although good communication skills, demonstrating integrity and having the ability to motivate are the top three most desirable leadership attributes, few UK workers believe that their boss displays them.
Instead a survey among 1,047 employees undertaken by ICM Research on behalf of executive search and leadership consultancy Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann revealed that just under one in 10 consider their organisation’s top manager to be inspirational, while only 12% think they have either charisma or personality.
Although good communication skills are commonly associated with effective leadership, only one in five respondents believed that their managing director demonstrated such characteristics.
A mere 13% considered their leader to be motivational, even though this was cited as being the second most important attribute, while just 14% felt that they had integrity.
Tom Vardy, managing director at Korn/Ferry Whitehead Mann, said: “Many employees think their boss doesn’t have the necessary leadership attributes. Our experience tells us that, in reality, most business leaders do have these qualities, certainly in large companies, but some demonstrate these more effectively to shareholders or the media than to their employees.”
The best leaders succeed in proving such characteristics to all stakeholders, however, whether they were shareholders, customers, the media, colleagues or employees, he added.
As for what workers considered to make a bad leader, the top factors were arrogance, poor communication skills and an uncaring attitude. Staff were also unimpressed by bosses who were obsessed with targets, were more interested in investors than them, were indecisive or risk-averse or focused on cost control issues rather than promoting growth.
Vardy said the survey indicated that personnel tended to rate most highly those attributes that affected them and their interaction with their boss.
“Strategic skills or the development of the leadership team are two examples of characteristics important for leaders. However, the majority of the workforce didn’t refer to this through the course of our research,” he added.
