How do you line up against what 10,000 employees across 25 countries say they want from their leaders?
The Leaders We Have Are Not the Leaders People Want
Hogan Assessments published new research that affirms a pattern we’ve also been observing for years: leaders are often weak at the unglamorous work of leading teams, but better at more high-visibility work.
One of our coaches remembers what he calls “the worst drum lesson I ever had” as an example of this same phenomenon:
“A college student from a top drumline was coaching our high school ensemble, so I paid for a private lesson. The guy’s room was full of trophies and an impressive drum kit. But he spent the whole lesson demonstrating his own skills. He was the one sitting in the chair, showing what won him those awards. It turned out he was brilliant at performing and terrible at teaching. I never went back.”
This is the difference between what Hogan calls:
- Emergent leadership behavior (aka “climbing mode”): leaders rise by being visible, confident, vocal, politically savvy. They get promoted.
- Effective leadership behavior (aka “leading mode”): Leaders build and sustain high-performing teams. They get results.
The most common characteristics of leaders around the world suggest that they’re good at getting promoted but not so good at actually helping their teams succeed.
As Krista Pederson, Hogan’s Managing Director of Asia Pacific, explained on the Science of Personality podcast: “Effective leadership is about the followers. It’s more about leadership as a resource for the team. Whereas emergent leadership is about that individual leader’s career and being able to climb through the politics and get to the top.”
The report says this mismatch is “a problem that costs organizations time, talent, and revenue.”
Two Types of Leaders
Image Source: Hogan Assessments (2026). The Leadership Divide: Global Insights on Who Leads vs. Who Should. Hogan Assessments.
The data makes the divide impossible to ignore. Hogan found absolutely no overlap between the top five competencies global executives display and the top five competencies employees say they want their leaders to display.
The most common executive traits are:
- Inspiring others
- Competing with others
- Presenting to others
- Taking initiative
- Driving innovation
But when employees answered questions about what type of leader they want leading them, the results were completely different:
- Effective communication
- Effective decision-making
- Accountability
- Integrity
- Leadership ability
Nicole Dickie, Hogan’s Senior Consultant for the APAC region, interprets these results as supporting high performance. “What this shows to me is that employees really know what they need to be successful,” she says on the podcast. “They genuinely want to work and want to be successful.”
The 3Cs and Effective Leadership
For years, we’ve been focusing on how leaders authentically change who they are to become more effective. The connection to this study is clear: if you’ve gotten promoted for being good at climbing, you need to adapt to become good at leading as soon as possible.
The recommendations from this study map closely to our 3C Adaptive Core. After more than a decade of working with leaders, we now have what amounts to a global 360 confirming what we’ve been seeing: followers want leaders with more Curiosity, Courage, and Care.
Curiosity
When Nicole shared her three main takeaways on the podcast, she pointed out the danger of “leaders relying on intuition and past experience.” This is classic low Curiosity.
Questions to build Curiosity:
- How could you move from certainty to curiosity in your decision making?
- Where do you need to slow down your thinking and deciding?
- What assumptions do you need to test before moving forward?
- How can you make your reasoning more visible to your teams so they can give input?
Courage
In Hogan’s terms, “bold” was seen as a negative trait in this study. However, employees also don’t want a leader who is highly “cautious.” How do we reconcile that? We would say they’re looking for genuine Courage.
“They want someone who’s willing to confront problems, share their agenda openly, and provide kind feedback rather than just being nice,” Krista says.
So often, when working with teams that have an accountability gap, it comes down to lack of Courage. Giving the feedback people need, facing the truth about a changing market, and (perhaps taking more courage than all) inviting honest feedback without getting defensive, what Nicole calls simply “humility.”
Questions to build Courage:
- What’s a decision you’ve been putting off, that you actually don’t need any more input on?
- Who do you need to give calm and kind feedback to?
- Where would you like to invite others to give you direct feedback?
- How can you overcome your fear of admitting you might be (or definitely were) wrong?
- Where has confidence started working against you?
Care
Krista says on the podcast “one of the stark results for me is that people want a leader that can create that sense of belonging, be very people focused.” Nicole also warns leaders to be cautious of “prioritizing tasks over relationship building.”
Questions to build Care:
- How often do you have a one-on-one conversation that’s not agenda / task driven?
- Where could you build in more visible cross-team collaboration?
- How could you get people involved earlier than normal so they feel more connected to the decision-making process?
- What do you need to stop doing because it’s being perceived as emotional distance?
Which of the 3Cs do you need to focus on to switch from “climbing” to “leading” high performing teams?
The Adaptive Leader Studio™
This is exactly the sort of exciting, deep work you can scale to your whole organization with our with leaders in our Adaptive Leader Studio. Get started today.
