We are sent a lot of surveys at Personnel Today. Quite often the message appears stark, even attention-grabbing, and sometimes we actually write about them. But on occasion the message evaporates as you read through the results, or the sample size is so small or skewed that no conclusions can be safely drawn.
One survey this week was particularly intriguing. It was headlined: “One in 10 workers apathetic towards quality of leadership”. Just one in 10?
It claimed that “Britain’s productivity is under threat” because one in 10 British workers (12%) would not question the quality of leadership in any scenario.
One in 10 leaders themselves were apathetic saying they would not question their own leadership in any scenario and only 10% of British workers would not question the quality of leadership in any given scenario, “including when there is an abuse of power, passive aggressive behaviour, micromanagement, or poor treatment of a fellow colleague”.
We’re a bit fickle by nature, us hominids’
It initially struck us at Personnel Today that as the UK’s productivity tends to lag other major economies, it wasn’t much of an additional threat. We then wanted to know why the fact that 90% of employees were not apathetic about leadership quality was given such little weight.
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The survey, by leadership experts Right Management, found that building trust (33%), communicating with impact (21%), and inspiring passion (20%) were the “top three behaviours that most people associate with an impactful leader”.
Lorraine Mills, principal consultant at Right Management, said “Trust works both ways, so it’s concerning that ten percent of workers aren’t willing to challenge poor leadership behaviours whatsoever. And how can leaders effectively build trust when one in every ten isn’t willing to question their own leadership style?”
Perhaps, given that we are a country that still has fabulously rich kings and queens and a landowning aristocrat class, there is a strong trait here of not challenging leadership.
Mills, thinking of that 90% who aren’t apathetic, added: “It’s important to remember that most workers would bring poor leadership into question.” Ah, that’s what we were thinking!
She added that the majority identified several reasons for calling out poor leadership, with the top three choices being because of an abuse of power (36%), leaders not listening (34%), and leaders failing to own up to mistakes (32%).”
Top of the list of scaries was the fear that the ‘boss wants to talk’
So is there a problem or not? What would be a good figure for being apathetic, if not one in 10? We felt it was hard to draw a conclusion.
The Sunday scaries
Another study sent to Personnel Today this week showed a distinct lack of apathy towards leadership. This survey, by Currys, revealed that over half of Brits suffer from pre-work anxiety, admitting to experiencing a phenomenon called the “Sunday Scaries.” The study features a list of 12 pre-work horrors that workers go through, with almost a quarter of people getting anxious when they hear they have to go into the office.
Top of the list of scaries was the fear that the “boss wants to talk”, with 35% selecting this as one of their work-related anxieties. “Receiving a no-context message from the boss asking for a ‘chat’ seems to be a very common worry among UK employees,” said the study.
Another issue with trying to quantify human emotions is that we often can’t make up our minds what exactly it is we’re feeling. We’re a bit fickle by nature, us hominids. Do I feel apathetic towards my manager? “No, err… yes! Hmm… no, again.” Am I worried about going to the office on Monday morning… “I did at one point, then I remembered there would some good banter and that I was going a bit stir crazy at home last week.”
We thought we might carry out a survey along the lines of “four in 10 employees aren’t certain whether they are apathetic or experiencing fear of the office at any given moment” but then decided that productivity could suffer as a result.
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