Business leaders in UAE not engaging their staff, according to Core Group survey

Therefore the way that they are managed during these challenging times is of paramount importance.

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. 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.