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Business Leaders in the UAE receive poor ratings by their employees
Dubai based Leadership and Employee Engagement specialists The Core Group, have just conducted a survey across the UAE asking employees to give their feedback on their managers on a number of key leadership dimensions. The results were not inspiring.
Steve Halligan, founder and Managing Director of The Core Group explains, "We asked a number of questions of employees based around four key leadership skills. The first was trust, as without this there can be no basis for a workable relationship. The scores were actually quite shocking. Two thirds of employees said that their manager is not trustworthy in that they cannot be relied on to keep their word."
"Asked about honesty 60% said that they felt their manager was not being truthful all of the time. A massive 70% felt that their manager was not being sincere all of the time. All of these behaviours have a tremendous impact on the level of trust between manager and employee and the feedback clearly shows that this is woefully lacking in most organisations," he added.
The survey didn't only look at the positive aspects of leadership skills. Halligan went on to explain, "We know from other research projects we have run, that the ability to lead is not just about doing positive things. We all have the capacity to exhibit poor behaviours in the workplace and leadership is as much about not doing these negative things as it is doing the positive ones. However, when we look at how business leaders are performing on these negative issues, we see a similar story."
43% of managers and leaders were seen to acting as loners the majority of the time - a behaviour that causes employees to feel uninvolved and unwanted. When looking at another negative behaviour - being ruthless - 27% of employees said that their manager behaved in this way most or all of the time.
But perhaps the most worrying of the negative trust traits is that of being sly and deceitful. Over one third of employees said that they witness this unhealthy form of behaviour most or all of the time from their manager.
The survey also looked at three other key leadership qualities - creating a culture of hope, showing employees that their work is worthwhile and exhibiting/building a culture of competence. In each case the results were similarly worrying.
So what does this mean in terms of our business leadership skills in the UAE.? According to Halligan, the leaders and managers are not necessarily to blame. "Most people get promoted into a management position when they exhibit some form of technical competence at what they do. Before they know it, they find themselves running a team of people and yet have had very little preparation for the role. The majority of management training concentrates on the basic competences you need to maintain the status quo - planning, organising, controlling, allocating tasks and monitoring performance."
"Yet real leadership is more about your personal qualities than your technical abilities. These are fine when times are good as people are generally self motivated. But what happens when we are facing real challenges and your team come to work each day uncertain of whether they will have a job come going home time? The ability to inspire and motivate your team becomes paramount.
Rana Mesbah
