Do today's decision-makers have the wrong priorities?

The Institute for Employment and Employability in Ludwigshafen, Germany and Hays, a HR (human resources) consulting firm, surveyed 665 decision-makers – managing directors, HR managers and department managers – in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

According to their HR Report 2014-15, the most important tasks of a leader are to establish a feedback culture (71 per cent), motivate employees (69 per cent) and identify development opportunities for |their subordinates (66 per cent). 

Managing the day-to-day business came in last at 9 per cent among the most important tasks for a leader.

The survey also showed that the by far most important requirement for a leader is his social competence (78 per cent), followed by method competence (14 per cent) and professional competence (7 per cent). 

By far the biggest need for action was in the area of social competence (72 per cent), since many leaders fall short in this area.

A huge majority (79 per cent) of the leaders in the survey saw “lack of time for leadership tasks” as the biggest stumbling block, while more than half (55 per cent) saw “a reduction of their control function and a switch to more individual responsibility of their subordinates, or empowerment” as the second biggest hurdle. 

Moving from “a being present at the workplace” orientation towards a results orientation came in third at 48 per cent.

What can we make out of the results of that report? 

A lot of work still needs to be done in terms of leadership in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and probably in many other countries including Thailand.

What is striking is that 79 per cent of the leaders have too little time for leadership tasks. That’s what they were hired for in the first place and it surely is part of their job profile. 

It looks like many of those decision-makers have the wrong priorities. They prefer to splash around in the shallow water called “day-to-day business” – although only 9 per cent stated that it is an important task for a leader – rather than enter the deeper leadership water where you sometimes will have to deal with currents and swirls.

There are still by far too many “command-and-control” type of leaders around. Many executives have problems in delegating responsibility to their subordinates and empowering them. And the focus has to shift from watching only the physical presence at the workplace to the results contributed by an employee.

A lot more needs to be done 

 to improve the social competency of leaders. After all, we know that your EQ (emotional quotient) is a much better indicator than your IQ (intelligence quotient) of how successful you will be in life. While IQ is used to determine academic capabilities, EQ is a better indication of success in the workplace.

Leaders possessing strong soft skills perform better at driving hard results while executives with weak interpersonal skills are rated poorly on their ability to deliver good business results, especially over time, and receive predictably |poor ratings as people managers.

The development of soft skills has to begin at schools and universities, not only at the workplace where people often get only their first interpersonal skills training after being promoted to a supervisory role.

So what are you going to do to get your leadership priorities right and enhance your leadership skills? And how can you make a contribution to improving the state of leadership at your company?

 

Heinz Landau is the former Chairman & Managing Director of Merck, Ltd., Thailand. He can be reached at [email protected]