SINGAPORE executives do not think very highly of the quality of business leadership here, nor do they see good opportunities or efforts to groom leaders.

About 28 per cent of 330 Singapore executives in a poll rated their leaders 'very good' or 'excellent', compared with 37 per cent in a global sample of more than 12,200 executives from 76 countries.

On the other hand, almost a quarter (24 per cent) of Singapore executives rated leaders in their organisations 'fair' or 'poor', compared with 21 per cent in the global sample.

The executives - who themselves have some leadership roles at junior, middle and senior management levels - were polled by talent management firm Development Dimensions International (DDI) for its annual global leadership study.

But human resource executives in Singapore seem highly confident of leaders here - more so than the leaders themselves, apparently. Almost half of those polled were confident of their leaders' ability to steer the organisation to success, compared with just 35 per cent of HR people globally.

Singapore executives overall are not impressed by leadership development efforts here.

Only 38 per cent are satisfied with what their organisations offer in the way of grooming leaders - which is not too far off the global finding of 41 per cent. And there's no strong endorsement from the HR folks either: Only 27 per cent of HR people here rated the quality of leadership development efforts as high.

According to DDI, which presented the findings at a talk yesterday, one reason for the negative view of leadership grooming efforts here is the large proportion of multinational companies and leaders with regional responsibilities and assignments.

While Singapore organisations are mindful of the need to develop leadership - and align it with business priorities and communicate the importance of doing so - support and actual execution of the training programmes are poor.

In any case, much of the leadership development efforts are focused on so-called 'high potential' staff, with less thought put into grooming other leaders in the rank and file.