UK Training Industry Press Releases

New research from AQR and the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) shows that people would rather work for a hard taskmaster who is successful than a lenient boss who fails to deliver the goods. While team working and people focus were identified as important leadership qualities, researchers found it was the desire and ‘determination to deliver' that set effective leaders apart.

So important was this trait that the majority of 1,500 managers surveyed indicated that they would choose a hard manager who exhibited a real commitment to deliver over and above ‘nicer' bosses who took more of an interest in them as people but failed to deliver.

This is not about being nasty or nice - it is entirely about being focused on performance.

The headline findings were highlighted during the development of a unique Integrated Leadership Measure - ILM72.  The new online tool was developed by AQR under the expert guidance of Dr Peter Clough, Head of Psychology at Hull University to identify an individual's preferred leadership style. The work was supported by ILM, the largest provider of leadership and management qualifications in Europe.

Doug Strycharczyk, MD of AQR Ltd explained:

"Every manager, when facing a situation which needs a leadership response does so on the basis of their own leadership style. A good manager can take a set of resources and manage them to deliver a budgeted and acceptable set of outputs. But because every leader and manager is different and liable to make different kinds of decisions based on the same information, it is an ongoing challenge for all organisations to ensure that their teams operate at peak effectiveness.

"Understanding an individual's preferred leadership style and empowering them to utilise their unique mix of skills & behaviours (competencies) is something that many organisations struggle with. The ILM72 is designed to allow not just individuals but organisations to identify, assess and benchmark the leadership styles of their management teams".

David Pardey, Senior Research and Policy Manager at the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) said:

"Based on the findings of this measure a manager can look at their personal learning development analysis which identifies where competency gaps might exist and - from that - what they can focus on in terms of development to close those gaps. We are making the Integrated Leadership Measure available online for free to ILM's 25,000 members and believe that it will be a useful tool for them. We have also emphasized the value of such diagnostic tools in our leadership qualifications, in helping leaders gain insights into their own approach to leadership."

The integrated leadership measure ILM72 has been trialled on 1,500 managers across both public and private sectors, with a representative male/female demographic. Three global scales which encompass and build on all the existing leadership models were identified: determination to deliver, individual cohesion and team working. The results of the ILM72 questionnaire showed that whilst all three were useful, the most effective leadership competence to be a successful leader was their determination to deliver.

The new online tool has been tested against and maps to all of the current models of leadership which are commonly used by HR and training professionals e.g. John Adair's Action Centred Leadership Model, James MacGregor Burns' Transformational Leadership and the Situational Leadership models.

The Research behind the Integrated Leadership Measure:

The research behind the measure has shown that there are six components (or scales) which together describe an individual's preferred leadership style.

These are:

Task v. Person - the extent to which the leader is orientated towards meeting the needs of the task or is concerned with the needs of individuals.

Dogmatic v. Flexible - the extent to which a leader only accepts that there is one way to achieve something or is open to ideas and suggestions

Centralised v. Decentralised - the extent to which a leader has a strong need to control and channel all information or are they happy to delegate and to work through others?

Reward v. Punishment - the extent to which the leader is prepared to reward and recognise high performance as opposed to punishing in some way any shortcoming in performance.

Organic v. Structured - the extent to which effective leadership seems to come naturally in some way as opposed to a structured style where leadership is drawn from a text book following detailed plans & processes

The Means v. The End - the extent to which a leader for whom only the result matters as opposed to focusing on the Means where the leader is concerned about how the goal is achieved and will adopt standards & values to ensure that it is done properly.

Are you a hard but effective boss? - find out at: http://www.i-l-m.com/