What Talent Really Want From Leaders Today

“To lead the people, walk behind them.”

Lao Tzu

Talent today are stressed, highly disengaged, ready to leave organizations when the economy improves and doing less work with more resources

A recent national study by Dale Carnegie Training placed the number of “fully engaged” employees at 29%, and “disengaged” employees at 26%.

This suggests that almost  three-quarters of employees are not fully engaged and providing less effort on the job than those fully engaged.  The number one factor the study cited influencing engagement and disengagement was “relationship with immediate supervisor.”

Maybe there is a disconnect between what talent are looking for from their leaders and what bosses today think they are doing to keep high performing and high potential talent engaged.

We were interested in mining some data from our own management 360-degree assessment called Manager View 360 (MV360) and analyzed a random sample of leaders (over 2,500) from diverse industries to compare self-perceptions of strengths with those from direct reports of these leaders.

Analysis of this data allows us to at least compare what managers think they are doing behaviorally compared to how their own bosses and direct reports are experiencing them. Any “gaps” might be interpreted as an indicator of what leaders may need to do more frequently or more effectively to meet the needs of those direct reports providing feedback.

HOW LEADERS RATE THEIR STRENGTHS AND DEVELOPMENT AREAS

We did a comparison of how leaders in managerial positions rated their own strengths and development areas and compared these to how their own bosses and direct reports experienced them. We see some interesting conclusions:

1. Strengths: Managers seem to feel they create a climate where talent are informed, feel comfortable to share their feelings, develop their teams and are decisive. In general, their bosses agree.

Direct reports in our sample (10,000+) seem to experience leadership above them as pretty strong in various aspects of communication, making quick and firm decisions and effectively delegating.

2. Development Areas: The biggest self-reported are of development for leaders was performance management, holding talent accountable, following up on poor performance and making sure a clear “line of sight” existed between performance goals and evaluating progress. This task orientation was clear with only one interpersonal skills perceived to be lacking by managers–active listening.

Again, bosses of these leaders seemed to also see these same weaknesses–perhaps because they also have a strong task orientation that sets a tone for most managers to follow.

Most interestingly, direct reports seemed to want more participative leadership from their managers. They viewed managers as not demonstrating the “transformational leadership” to resolve interpersonal differences, build a strong team, recognize and reward the efforts of talent working so hard and most importantly–not feeling involved in planning, decision making and problem solving processes that positively contribute towards engagement.

To win the talent war today it appears that managers should sharpen their skills around building high performance teams and increasing the use of participative leadership approaches.

Our data suggests that managers are acting as if they are leading in “white water environments” where decisive, authoritative and transactional approaches to leadership is what is required to facilitate performance and commitment to the discretionary effort required today to survive.

However, talent seem to be asking for more involvement in the things they have control over and given the time they are putting in at work, to work on teams they value, enjoy and respect based on how they evaluate the actual practices and behaviors of their leaders.

What do you think talent want from leaders today to remain productive and engaged?”….Be well…

Ken Nowack

Kenneth Nowack, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist (PSY13758) and President & Chief Research Officer/Co-Founder of Envisia Learning, is a member of the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations. Ken also serves as the Associate Editor of Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. His recent book Clueless: Coaching People Who Just Don’t Get It is available for free for a limited time by signing up for free blog updates (Learn more at our website)