One of the most critical components of leadership is the ability to inspire confidence. After all, if nobody is following, you’re not leading.
DecisionWise recently completed an extensive analysis of its 2011 Employee Survey results. These results are taken from over 9.2 million responses to questions related to employee engagement across various industries, companies, job levels, etc. These findings paint a less-than-desirable picture of the perceptions of leadership—or at least the confidence in senior leaders—across the U.S.
Questions related to compensation, of course, resulted in the lowest scores. After all, none of us is paid what we’re worth, right? No surprises there. However, questions related to confidence in leadership related some interesting sentiments.
The findings?
When asked to provide a rating from 1-5, with “5″ indicating “strongly agree,” the statement, “I am confident that we have the right people in senior leadership positions in this organization,” generated a dismal response.
Less than half of those surveyed—46%, to be exact—responded favorably to questions regarding confidence in the senior leadership of their organizations.
Nearly 1/3 responded negatively to this question, with the remainder providing neutral responses. In other words, more than half of employees surveyed lack confidence in the heads of the organizations for which they work.
The ramifications of this fact are visible in a number of ways. Lack of support, lowered performance, inability to change, employee attrition, decreased quality and output, and employee burnout are among the many possible negative outcomes. In fact, further statistical correlations from this study show a clear relationship between employee confidence and the ability to retain key talented employees.
If less than half of an organization’s employees have confidence in the leadership team, are they following? Logic would say, “no!”
… and if nobody is following, you’re not a leader.
We work with leaders who score low on engagement and what’s interesting is their lack of clarity on what exactly it is that they need to do to build trust and lift engagement. So we designed an assessment that pinpoints exactly what the leader needs to focus on based on the composition of the team and bingo! By identifying just three priorities they are able to lift satisfaction and engagement levels by focusing on the areas that matter the most to their team. This problem is easy to rectify if 1) the right data is gathered and 2) the leader is willing to change. People only trust when their expectations are meet, so first and foremost uncover expectations, meet expectations and then you will see results.
Tanya – I work with organizations on multiple levels – coaching leaders to understand what “leadership” means, including the amorphous conversation of “what is engagement?” and “how do I create it, and measure it?” Of course in between is the conversation about “why”.
This study shows a bigger problem in my opinion. We are struggling economically, no surprise as we struggle to trust. Build trust in any organization (or country) and you build confidence and cooperation and collaboration and connection and…….
Sadly, most executives use a form of the traditional top-down command and control approach to managing people, an approach which by its nature tends to demotivate and disengage employees. Engagement is a choice.
The last time as an executive I created a highly motivated, highly committed, and fully engaged workforce with sky high morale and innovation, they literally loved to come to work, were more than 300% more productive than when disengaged and were easily able to out-compete our competitors. This is quite easy to do and I did it several times. That said, most executives are willing to leave top-down and don’t believe such a workforce is a possibility.
I think this relates to what Drew Dudley said here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership.html
That is, we have made leadership roles so far above ourselves that perhaps when we come face to face with real leaders in our organizations, we can’t accept them as leaders due to the hero-worship that surrounds the ideal “leader.” Let’s face it, not every branch manager can be as life-changing as Gandhi. Perhaps the problem isn’t in having the right shepherd, but in the attitude of the flock.
One reason might be the external environment faced in most parts of the world today. Because many employees may still be wondering whether or not they have jobs tomorrow, they question the leaders’ abilities to keep things afloat. When a leader cannot clearly articulate, with certainty, the organization’s vision and next step, and assure employees along the way that all will be well, trust in the senior team waivers.
Correct leadership is something that we rarely see, I believe, and naturally people tend to dislike being told what to do. History shows from presidents, to religious leaders, even parents, we resist hierarchy.
A good leader, perhaps from observation, is either naturally gifted with the talent, or has educated himself to get there. It seems most of us aren’t just given this skill and since we don’t always see people/companies in self-improvement leadership workshops, stats like this come readily.
A functioning team works best, like the previous commenter Steven mentioned, with the serious effort of both the “flock” and the leader. We need to work at it.
a part of what could be the thinking of employees is many can’t accept their boss as a leader due to the hero-worship that surrounds their ideal leader….and this results in a respect level that isn’t up to par toward that boss…….or the other idea is that everything that their boss does isn’t resulting with satisfaction for the employees and thus any employee begins to think that they are better suited for that leadership position and might begin to undermine the authority or not be confident with the leader in the organization.