What Employees Want from Leaders (and What Organizations Reward Instead)

Our new global research reveals a striking disconnect between the characteristics executives display and the qualities employees say define effective leadership. In fact, there is zero overlap between the top five competencies leaders demonstrate and the top five characteristics employees say they want from leaders.

In our new report, The Leadership Divide: Global Insights on Who Leads vs. Who Should, we compare personality assessment data from more than 21,000 executives in Hogan’s global database with survey responses from 9,794 full-time employees across 25 markets. What we found is clear: the characteristics organizations often reward in leaders do not align with what employees value most.

What Organizations Reward vs. What Employees Want

Globally, executives are more likely to stand out for inspiring others, competing with peers, presenting ideas publicly, taking initiative, and driving innovation. Employees, by contrast, prioritize an entirely different set of qualities: communication, integrity, accountability, sound decision-making, and the ability to lead effectively.

For years, organizations have often rewarded visibility, confidence, and ambition in leaders. But employees are telling us they want something more fundamental: leaders they can trust, leaders who communicate clearly, and leaders who create the conditions for teams to succeed.

What Employees Value Most

Across markets, employee responses showed strong alignment around the foundations of effective leadership. Nearly 97% of respondents worldwide identified core leadership qualities such as communication, integrity, accountability, and sound decision-making as essential for leadership success.

The findings also point to a clear set of behaviors employees believe weaken leadership effectiveness. Across markets, 72% of respondents said emotional volatility and unpredictability have a negative impact. Passive aggression, arrogance and entitlement, and extreme caution were also widely identified as behaviors that erode trust, increase disengagement, and weaken team performance.

Confidence is one of the clearest examples of this disconnect. Executives often stand out for assertiveness and self-assurance, yet 59% of employees globally said arrogance and entitlement undermine leadership effectiveness. The confidence that can help leaders advance may, when overused or left unchecked, be experienced by teams as arrogance, weakening trust and contributing to disengagement.

Our research also shows that employees want leaders who actively foster strong relationships at work. Globally, 48% of respondents said leaders should prioritize networking, teamwork, and belonging—all of which are priorities that tend to rank lower among executives.

What This Means for Leaders and Organizations

The findings suggest that many organizations may still be rewarding people who seem leaderlike (i.e., emergent leaders) over  those who can build and maintain high-performing teams (i.e., effective leaders). Too often, the behaviors that help individuals gain visibility and get promoted are not the same behaviors that build trust, strengthen teams, or support sustained performance once in the role.

Organizations may need to look beyond visibility or charisma when identifying leadership potential and place a greater emphasis on behaviors that build trust, including clear communication, accountability, sound decision-making, and relationship building. That shift should be reflected in how leaders are selected and developed, with greater emphasis on coaching, feedback, and performance systems that reward accountability, transparency, and follow-through. 

Leadership pipelines are strongest when organizations align how they identify and develop leaders with what employees actually value. These findings show that trust, accountability, and sound judgment are not secondary qualities. They are central to team effectiveness and long-term performance.

Download the Report

In the full report, The Leadership Divide: Global Insights on Who Leads vs. Who Should, we explore these findings in greater detail and offer guidance for organizations looking to strengthen leadership development.

Hogan Assessments Is Heading to the 2026 Society of Consulting Psychology Annual Conference

Hogan Assessments is heading to the 2026 Society of Consulting Psychology Annual Conference on February 6 and 7 in Las Vegas!

Don't miss the keynote on Saturday, February 7 at 4:15 p.m. from Hogan's Alise Dabdoub, PhD, director of product innovation. She'll be speaking on "Personality, AI, and the Future of Human-Centered Consulting: Ethics, Bias, and Human Flourishing in the Age of LLMs."

Learn more here: https://www.societyofconsultingpsychology.org/2026-scp-annual-conference/

See you soon in Vegas!

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