Estonians doubt managers' skills

 TALLINN -- Enterprise Estonia has released the latest in a series of somewhat pessimistic assesments of the nation's managerial skills. Only 1% of the general population surveyed in the latest poll believed that Estonian managers are more skilful than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe with around 75% rating them average or worse.

According to Veigo Kell, Manager of the Management Awareness Programme of Enterprise Estonia, the survey shows that Estonian managers have not been able to achieve a reputation equal to that of European managers among the population. "I do not believe all respondents have had real long-term contact with European managers; rather, the survey points out that the behaviour of our managers fails to meet the expectations of employees," Kell commented.

He added that such an attitude may, to some extent, reflect the cultural background of Estonia, where the manager is mainly seen as a ramrod. "A manager is often not seen as a leader, and managers often do not see themselves as leaders, either," Kell noted.

Another explanation might be that the survey simply reflects an Estonian tendency towards pessimism that generally accentuates the negative while eliminating the positive.

35% of the respondents think that the leadership skills of the Estonian and other European leading employees are on the same level; 40% think the leadership skills of Estonian managers are on a slightly or much lower level. In cities smaller than Tallinn, such as Tartu, Pärnu, Narva and Kohtla-Järve, people are more inclined to believe that the skills of Estonian managers are lower than the European average. A total of 52% of the residents of these cities were of that opinion.

Non-Estonians are even more critical. Their numbers include more of those who have a lower opinion of Estonian managers, and fewer of those who regard the Estonian managers to be on the "same level" with European ones. "If 42% of Estonians regard local managers as being on the same level, then only 20% of non-Estonians are of the same opinion," Kell commented on the results. According to Kell, the responding managers were the ones who evaluated their leadership skills at the highest level; 16% of them thought the skills of Estonian managers are better than those of the leading managers in Europe.

The survey was conducted by Turu-uuringute AS at the request of Enterprise Estonia, within the framework of the Management Awareness Programme. It was an omnibus-survey with the size of the sample being 1000 residents of Estonia aged 15-74.