Nobody’s great at everything, but if there’s one skill that managers generally need to work on, it’s their communication.
Forty-eight percent of people say communication is their direct manager’s biggest weakness, according to the latest reading of an ongoing query by Comparably. More than 10,000 people responded to the query.
The results coincide with National Boss’s Day on October 16.
Communication first, accountability second
The results place communication at the top, followed next by accountability (20% of the vote), positivity (16%), honesty (9%) and work ethic (7%).
Men and women are aligned
Men and women were almost identical in their ranking, with 48% of men and 45% of women putting “communication” at the top.
Positivity becomes less important as age increases
Communication continued to be the number one choice when segmenting the results by age, though an interesting trend emerged: people in younger age groups tended to say their bosses need to improve their positivity more so than people in older age groups.
For example, among the generation of workers between 18 and 25 years old, 21% of respondents said their boss needs to improve their positivity. That number shrinks to 16% among workers between 31 and 35, and 13% among workers between 46 and 50.
18 to 25
31 to 35
46 to 50
The latest results are as of Oct. 17.
