LONDON–Good news: good leadership behaviors are highly contagious. Bad news: so are bad leadership behaviors.
A new survey of 2,000 employees in the United Kingdom conducted by the Institute of Leadership and Management found that nearly three-quarters of U.K. professionals emulate the workplace attributes they see in their colleagues. Some of the most contagious traits are also the most critical to get right, including communication, copied by a fifth (18%) of workers, problem solving (9%), and customer service (10%), noted Karen Higginbottom, in a post on Forbes.com.
“Workers imitate colleagues for different reasons depending on the infecting behavior,” said Higginbottom of the ILM research. “For example, three quarters (74%) of people who copy the humor of their colleagues think it will help them work better with colleagues, a third (29%) who emulate delegation and organization skills do so to get promoted or receive a pay rise, while 41% of people who imitate the creativity, inspiration or innovation of others are aiming to improve productivity.”
But the research also found a worrying discovery, which is that people are most likely to mimic what they’ve seen in others in risky or stressful situations, whether that’s an unfamiliar or difficult professional position (50%) or when something goes wrong at work (32%), noted Higginbottom.
“Surprisingly, people are not influenced by traditional hierarchies when it comes to who they emulate,” Higginbottom shared. “Almost half (49%) of respondents revealed they replicate behaviors from people across their organization regardless of their age, and a similar number (46%) say they copy behaviors from people of all levels of seniority.”
Who's Being Copied
John Williams, director of digital strategy for ILM, said that one key finding is that employees don’t just copy senior people, they copy their colleagues.
“We recognize that leadership doesn’t just happen at the top of the organization,” said Williams. “It permeates throughout an organization. If people are learning behaviors from colleagues and seeing their colleagues getting ahead and those behaviors aren’t great, then they will copy those behaviors.”
For the full report, go here.