Employee motivation key to UAE growth, says leadership development expert

Two corporate facilitators have launched a Dubai-based leadership development company to boost motivation and engagement in the workplace and address what they say is a growing need for UAE business leaders to focus on the science behind performance.

A recent survey by Bayt.com found only 56 per cent of the UAE workforce is motivated. Where salary, perks and benefits (62 per cent) was the top factor motivating UAE respondents at work, other factors also scored high, like the opportunity to express creativity and showcase skills (49 per cent) and a better work-life balance (46 per cent).

Triptta Neb and Antoinette Zuehlke, each with over 18 years organisational development and training experience, have launched Conscious Leadership Consulting and Coaching (CLCC), which they claim to be Dubai’s first ‘motivation-focused’ leadership development company, teaching the science behind employee performance improvement.

Having worked across the GCC for over a decade delivering performance-focused leadership training programmes to the region’s biggest organisations, CLCC founder and director, Triptta Neb, has spent two years studying upcoming neurosciences techniques and its impact on organisational development to develop a different perspective on training.

She said: “I was becoming increasingly frustrated, as the UAE has developed dramatically over the past decade, but the training courses the country’s business leaders are sent on have not evolved accordingly.

“The global advances made in the understanding of neurosciences-based organisational development have excited me for some time. We are all emotional creatures and these emotions release chemical in our brains. The science behind the chemical reactions we experience all day while carrying out work tasks is key to how we perform at any given point in our careers, our community and our health conditions. 

“All of our products and services are based upon social cognitive neurosciences and behaviour, using scientific techniques to help people become productive, engaged and happier by looking at how the human brain is wired and what circuit is needed for each preferred behaviour.

“This approach is fundamental in establishing what motivates individuals and we will deliver courses, such as Drive, which we have bought the exclusive license for and are bringing here from the US, tapping into exactly what motivates people. Despite the survey demonstrating employees believing they are motivated by monetary rewards, science proves - for tasks requiring creativity and complex thought processes – they have little effect at all.”

The term ‘engaged’ employees is often described as individuals willing to try their best for employers and a recent survey from Aon Hewitt showed, only half of employees across the Gulf are engaged at work, with regional employee commitment levels among the lowest worldwide.

Fellow founder and director, Zuehlke, adds: “A fundamental principle of all our techniques is ‘appreciative inquiry’, which is a collaborative, strength-based approach becoming widely used globally. With this we believe it is crucial to look at the positives and what is working for the organisation instead of what is not working in order to trigger the change from within and enable organisations to improve engagement.

“Traditional development methods have been available to fix problems, whereas most companies often don’t look at what they are doing right. Identifying and focusing on what is being done right helps with the release of feel-good chemicals in the brain and allows us to be more engaged, innovative and creative in our work, allowing us to solve complex problems.”
CLCC brings the motivational master class, based on the best seller ‘Drive’ by Daniel Pink, to the region for the first time for a one-day course in Dubai on March 18, flying in US trainers to deliver the initial workshop to an exclusive audience of business leaders.