Business leaders in UAE not engaging their staff, according to Core Group survey (page 2 of 2)

Therefore it is not surprising that many of the business managers and leaders in positions of authority today are not well equipped to deal with the current situation," Halligan added.

If this is the case and leaders and managers are missing out on the ability to motivate their teams towards peak performance, what can we do?.

The Core Group recommends a four step plan of action:
• Realise the importance of the leadership skills in your organisation and the real impact they can have on company performance
• Define a set of desired leadership competencies (not management skills) that you want to see to some degree in all your managers and leaders
• Measure the effectiveness of the management team across these dimensions
• Start developing coaching and change management programmes with some form of incentive built into the system to encourage the display of these new behaviours by the managers.

What happens if companies don't do this? According to Halligan, it could make the difference between riding out the recession or becoming another statistic.

"Every leader we have ever dealt with will tell you that people are his most important asset. That is only true if the employees feel valued and well respected by their manager. If managers and leaders don't start paying as much attention to the interpersonal skills side of managing their people as they do to the technical skills they have acquired, then morale will drop, motivation will diminish and performance will suffer," he said.

"If you think that you can afford for that to happen in today's economic environment, then continue with business as usual. If not, then invest some time to think about how you are really managing your most important asset. With the way the investment markets have performed recently, it may be the most profitable investment you make this year," Halligan concluded.