What People Want to See in Their Business Leaders
Most often we think of leadership from the perspective of what an executive must do to create competitive advantage and build a business. But leading business success requires something even harder to gain than great ideas; it requires followers, collaborators, allies and other supporters. Having a title and authority will rarely gain a leader the kind of passionate support needed to draw out the best from the people who work for and with them.
Yet the nature of leadership has many attributes and is highly subjective based on the value systems of the organisation. This drove Babson College to survey the readers of Babson Insight with the following question “What leadership behaviours do you value the most?”
Mid 2005 Babson surveyed their readers to find out which leadership behaviours they valued the most. The following survey results are drawn from the 280 responses received from people in more than 20 countries.
Survey Summary
Question: What leadership behaviours do you value the highest? Please rate the following leadership behaviours on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest value. Rate as many as you find useful to identify the most important behaviours that create a response of motivation and loyalty in you and others that you work with.
| Leadership Behaviours |
Avg. Rank |
| 1. Communicates a clear vision |
9.1 |
| 2. Keeps his or her word |
9.1 |
| 3. Builds teamwork |
8.7 |
| 4. Works hard to ensure that recognition and reward goes to proper people |
8.7 |
| 5. Focuses on fixing problems, not blame |
8.7 |
| 6. Listens to the truth without retaliating |
8.7 |
| 7. Inspires by their examples; leads from the front |
8.7 |
| 8. Is consistently looking out into the future to prepare us for what may come |
8.7 |
| 9. Honest, not brutal |
8.6 |
| 10. Puts interests of others and the team before ego and self-gain |
8.6 |
| 11. Makes everyone feel the importance of their contribution |
8.6 |
| 12. Loyal to their people |
8.5 |
| 13. Maintains a positive, focused, calm attitude even under great stress |
8.4 |
| 14. Encourages us even when we fail |
8.3 |
| 15. Seeks to turn failures into useful learning that fuels future success |
8.3 |
| 16. Creates visibility and new opportunities for people |
8.3 |
| 17. Supports new ideas |
8.3 |
| 18. Energetically pursues resources needed for the team to succeed |
8.2 |
| 19. Has strong understanding of the business |
8.3 |
| 20. Is very open to suggestions |
8.2 |
| 21. Available to talk when really needed |
8.1 |
| 22. Does not play favourites |
8.1 |
| 23. Pushes back to higher ups when necessary |
8.1 |
| 24. Does not court upper management while treating subordinates badly |
8.1 |
| 25. Good at influencing peers |
8.1 |
| 26. Very approachable |
8.1 |
| 27. Is not afraid of conflict about work-related issues |
7.8 |
| 28. Is careful in considering decisions |
7.8 |
| 29. Usually seeks opinions of others |
7.8 |
| 30. Protects staff from political infighting |
7.7 |
| 31. Does not ask others to do things they won't do themselves |
7.6 |
| 32. Encourages direct disagreements with his/her and among others |
7.0 |
Generally, there are some interesting observations we can make from these numbers.
The first of these is to say that people overall confer leadership on others for much more than just professional capability. Many of the behaviours ranked highly by the readers had nothing to do with vision or business knowledge, but rather represented judgements on how the leader treated them and others like them.
Looking deeper, many of the behaviours noted here revolve around creating an environment of shared effort, responsibility and benefits.
Lastly, it is particularly interesting to note that the famous vision-thing that is often discussed as a leader attribute actually shares the same top value among followers as integrity. In a sense then, readers seem to be saying that “how you get there” is just as important to those who would support you as “where you are going”.