| Poor
Leadership Costing UK Business
£6+ Billion* per Year
A new study released reveals that UK business is suffering from
the poor leadership skills of Britain’s bosses. The survey
shows that business leaders fail across the board at setting clear
objectives, motivating staff and weeding out poor performers.
The study commissioned by Ros Taylor Ltd, a leading firm of Chartered
Psychologists, asked over 1500 people from different sized organisations
throughout the UK about leadership in the work place. They found:
• 77 percent of respondents said their boss was not interested
in them
• 90 percent said their boss did nothing about poor performers
and
• 79 percent claim their boss does not set clear objectives,
• 89 percent said their boss lacked innovation and was unreceptive
to new ideas
“That’s only 15% of people we asked who thought their
boss was any good and 8% who thought they were inspirational”
said Ros Taylor, Managing Director of The Ros Taylor Group. “I
wish I could say I was shocked – but the truth is it’s
slightly better than I expected. The fact is that while businesses
are quite rightly paying attention to their cost base – squeezing
every last ounce of value out of the food chain – they are
not so cleverly overlooking a very real business and financial
asset. Leadership. Let’s forget the old clichés about
“soft skills” – bad leadership costs shareholders
and stakeholders real money. While companies are spending millions
on automation and the new IT architectures they could be spending
thousands and saving millions by sharpening up their leadership
assets.”
Taylor went on: “Think about it. Many line managers, heads
of department and directors are on a minimum £100K+ pa.
These people represent something of the order of a £200K+
investment for the company. As a psychologist I am intrigued that
companies who bend over backwards to “think smart” ignore
this area. It’s the “one thing” they could do that
would deliver tangible results - and yet the vast majority just
don’t do it. They probably think that, in the old cliché
“leaders are born, not made” and yet in our business
we disprove that on an almost daily basis. They can’t leave
the innovation and blue sky thinking that comes from truly inspirational
leadership to chance – or for that matter to a quirk of genetics
– it’s odd to think that multi national companies who
factor the canteen subsidy into the cost of a sausage roll don’t
have a “leadership development plan”.
Ros Taylor is author of The Science of Leadership, a programme
to transform your company. For more information about the next
Leadership Experience click on events
1. By CCB Research http://www.CCB-Research.com.
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