Desired Leadership Qualities in Corporate World

Having facilitated the leadership camps and workshops that we have, it was most interesting to read what Business Times had to say about the poll done by the Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI). Is the content of the training courses that we're conducting relevant with equipping them with the skills necessary to make it as a leader in the corporate world?

If you happened to have read the article, yes the title reads "Do women make good bosses? Yes, say most top execs" (I can almost hear half of readers saying "yeah that's right"), what caught my eye was the graph of the various desired leadership qualities that these top execs suggested when polled. To get those who have not seen the article up to speed, SHRI polled 192 senior executives (HR Director and above) on various issues, including whether gender plays in part in a good boss, and on the desired leadership qualities.

Interestingly but not surprisingly, Ethics and Integrity was the most desired quality, according to 53% of those polled. Leading by example (52%), Visionary (51%), Communication (48%), and Accountability (37%) made up the rest of the top 5. (Click on the diagram to see the full graph.)

In addition, another thing to note from the report was that most of the bosses, "many of whom are chief executives and managing directors", possess the key traits of leading by example and being visionary, with 54 per cent of respondents indicating that there is still room for leadership training.

Having read this report, the next questions that came to mind included "Is CCI training our leaders and our participants right?" as well as "How can we train our participants to possess these qualities in order to prepare them to become better leaders of the society?" With 3 of the top 5 traits being linked with character development, the solution to these questions seem to point towards the same answer: CCI MUST carry on with character development.

The reason for this is rather simple. While communication skills can be trained, traits like Ethics, Integrity, Leading by example and Accountability are characteristics that are picked up from young, and are hard to "train" as it is simply a part of the person.

Hence, as facilitators that we at CCI are, instead of hoping that participants pick these traits up along the way, let us focus on inculcating such values into the future leaders as we contact them through our activities!