A recent survey concerning leadership reveals, among other things, how employees feel about their leadership.
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Fierce Inc., the leadership development and training company, has released survey findings that reveal people’s sentiments towards leaders in both business and politics. Fierce conducted the nationwide survey of several hundred professionals to identify how their views on leadership compared in the business and political worlds.
“What we found is that people want the same qualities in their leaders, regardless of the context. Whether it’s heading a large corporation or the country, leaders need the same traits to be successful,” said Susan Scott, founder and CEO of Fierce.
When asked if the personal qualities of the CEO of their current employer influenced their decision to join the company, respondents were almost equally divided (53% indicated they agreed, 47% did not). However, nearly 70% of respondents revealed that the personal qualities of their organization’s CEO did influence their decision to stay with or leave a company.
“Once people have made a decision to be a part of an organization and invest their time and energy into it, the stakes are raised and the actions of that leader hold more weight,” said Scott.
Desired Qualities of a Leader
- When presented with a variety of characteristics, 51% of respondents ranked “communicator” as the most important quality for business leaders, and 56.18% ranked it as the most important quality for politicians.
- Along with strong communication skills, open-mindedness, respectfulness, and transparency, all ranked in the top five qualities desired in a leader for both political and business positions.
“Radical transparency is a vital philosophy at Fierce and is at the very center of our increasingly hyper-connected world,” said Scott. “And transparency goes both ways. When communication is one way, from the leader to everyone else and the reverse isn’t welcomed, you don’t have communication. You have directives, often resulting in lackluster compliance. A true exchange of ideas, opinions, and perspectives throughout the decision-making process allows leaders to make better-informed decisions, creates buy-in and makes it easier for people to understand why certain conclusions are reached, even when there’s disagreement.”
Business Leaders Are Trusted over Politicians
- One differentiator between the two forms of leadership was trust. The majority of respondents (63.35%) consider CEOs and business leaders to be more trustworthy than politicians.
- When Fierce asked respondents if they were confident that business leaders and CEOs would deliver on their promises, 72.52% responded favorably.
Tomorrow we will provide some analysis from Fierce on what this all means.