Managerial skills: Expectations about a leader's behavior [Habilidades gerenciais: Expectativas sobre o comportamento de um líder]

Abstract

This article has as its objective to research the social and behavioral skills currently presented by the leaders and which skills are considered the ideal ones according to their subordinates' point of view. Identify, through the employees' perception, the leader's behaviors that contribute to the work environment comparing the real perception to the idealized one. A survey was used to outline the research. This method provided the questioning of a sample of people whose behavior we wanted to know. The sample was composed of 34 subjects from different functions, all of them from an automotive company. The questionnaire is composed of demographic data of the sample and 31 questions adapted from Costa's work (2007). The data was submitted to the quantitative treatment using the Sphix software. Besides the data referred to the sample descriptive analysis, there was also the comparison between the real perception and the one wished by the respondents. Although there are positive points about the behavior of the leader when having assertive attitudes and serving as a role model to his subordinates, it was verified, in most of the cases, that the current relationships inside the researched company still present an unfavorable environment prevailing the dissatisfaction with the way the leader behaves. Such feeling was observed where, in the idealized situation, there is the need to rely on the leadership, to have access to information, freedom in managing the job, work feedback and the need for a behavior with more empathy from the leaders of the areas. Copyright © (2010) by Associação Brasileira de Metalurgia Materiais e Mineração (ABM).