Inspire
Employees want leaders who:
Are highly skilled:
Employees want to work for competent leaders who can size up the
situation, make good decisions, solve problems and lead the organisation to higher
levels of performance.
Provide clear direction:
Employees want clear direction from the “top of the house”.
They want leaders who can articulate a strategy for achieving success – “a vision for
how we will win in the marketplace”.
Communicate honestly and transparently:
Employees want to be able to believe what
senior leaders tell them. They want an open, frank assessment of the challenges facing
the organisation, an open dialogue regarding the path forward and sincere two-way
communication.
In addition to the results of what employees want (represented in
Figure 1
), an analysis of
whether employees are getting what they want from their top leaders was conducted. This
analysis revealed that, globally speaking, the majority of employees agree that their leaders
do have the ability to deal with the organisation’s challenges and “inspire” them. The bad
news is that it is a slim majority at just 62 per cent.