In a recent Report issued by the Chartered Management Institute (UK), CMI researched 1,533 CMI members across private, public and not-for-profit sectors, looking at manager behaviour. The key insights coming out of the research were:

• Managers are more likely then most to be lacking in empathy – up to 28% of managers have a risk of lacking empathy when making decisions.
• Managers become more robotic and less caring at work – suggesting that too many people switch off their humanity at work and prefer to follow orders.
• With age comes reason, and with maturity many more mavericks – Managers in their 50s score 27% lower on obedience and 12% higher on reason compared to their 20-something colleagues.
• Do we care? Women and men have different ethical preferences – an average, femal managers score 5% higher then men on the ethic of care at work – so diversity really matters.
• Religious faith affects ethical decisions – Managers with a religious faith (any faith) reported higher scores across all three ethical preferences.

CMI recommends the following actions for Managers:

• Care more – make time to look at how you make decisions
• Stand up for what you believe
• Be a Leader – provider values-based leadership, people will follow you because of your character and values, not because of the size of your job title
• Be inclusive – be open to challenge and dissent – diversity of thought is critical so make difficult decisions with others
• Be professional – use the good practice that’s already out there
• Ask yourself the RIGHT questions – such as ‘are we acting with integrity’, ‘would we be happy if the truth was published?’