Many of Australia’s leaders are not meeting the needs of their employees, resulting in a perceived leadership crisis in corporate Australia, according to a new report surveying over 1300 leaders.
Commissioned by Six Degrees Executive, the ‘Future of Leadership in Australia’ looks at the current state of leadership in Australia, finding major gaps between how business leaders are currently operating and the values their employees are increasingly seeking.
The research reveals that Australian leaders perform best on the traits employees care about the least, and rank poorly on the attributes they value deeply.
Indeed, attributes that historically may have defined successful leaders, such as work ethic and a track record of success in the company were no longer regarded as indicators of a successful business leader.
Moreover, preferred traits such as team building and interpersonal communication skills saw current business leaders ranked poorly by respondents.
Indeed, more than a third of the respondents rated their leader’s ‘ability to communicate effectively’ as poor.
Moreover, 92% of respondents do not feel that there is a strong pipeline of leaders in the Australian workplace, and four in ten believed their organisation is poorly placed to develop leaders, indicating leadership expectations will continue to stay low without significant change.
Six Degrees Executive CEO Paul Hallam said leadership is fundamentally changing and it has never been more evident.
“The leader isn’t the smartest person in the room, but hires the smartest people in the room and then provides vision and inspiration,” said Hallam.
“This is confronting for corporate Australia as it means the traditional structures and processes of the past will not serve us in the future.
“We see this in our work every day. It is no longer enough to appoint leaders who are simply job proficient.”
Hallam added that technological change, the rising importance of values-based cultures and a different understanding of motivational pressure points mean that leadership styles that worked in the past won’t necessarily work today.
“Great leaders understand this, and they are constantly looking for new ideas and insights to inform their decision making,” said Hallam.
“Great leader also need to have the emotional intelligence to harness the power of diversity and drive outcomes.”
Moreover, the managing director of Google Australia, Jason Pellegrino, said information flow has changed, transparency has changed, and the desire for authenticity by both customers and employees have changed.
"So all effective leaders in the modern world are people who listen, process and then paint a vision and desire,” he said.
Meanwhile, Georgie Harman, CEO of beyondblue said the findings of this research wasn’t surprising.
“People are increasingly looking for purpose and meaning in what they do and a blending of personal and work values,” said Harman.
“As a career choice, the not-for-profit world is becoming more competitive with the corporate world. The culture of beyondblue combines a business head with community heart, and we’re happy to offer flexibility to secure the right people.”
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