Nothing enhances performance like a good team atmosphere. In fact, research from UK headquartered management consultancy Korn Ferry Hay Group shows that business performance can improve by up to 30 per cent when employees experience a great climate with energising work, a positive atmosphere and a feeling of being a part of their team’s success.

During challenging times such as these, that improvement in performance can mean the difference between success and failure. And the biggest influences on team climate? Your managers and how they lead.

The best leaders create a climate that motivates their team. Think about your own personal experience. How much better have you performed when you have been motivated, involved and clear about what’s expected of you.

Adaptive approach

By improving your leaders’ effectiveness, you will improve business performance. But how can you go about that? Our studies have shown that the world’s top leaders draw on a repertoire of six different leadership styles, changing their approach according to the situation, the challenge and the person they are dealing with at any given time.

Companies should concentrate on helping their managers develop and use a broader range of leadership styles. We see a ‘tipping point’ into high performance when leaders use three or more distinct styles. Having this mix of styles gives leaders a broader range to draw upon, making them more flexible and better equipped to adapt to shifting circumstances.

Approximately 86 per cent of leaders who create a high-performance climate regularly use three or more styles in their work.

In the Middle East, however, more than two-thirds of leaders rely almost exclusively on just a couple of styles. Of these, Directive is the most dominant.

As the economy tightens, with oil prices remaining low and unstable global markets, leaders are relying even more heavily on this style. They tend to take a command-and-control approach to managing their people, seek little input from direct reports, monitor tasks closely and give a lot of corrective feedback. Does that sound like anyone in your organisation?

While this is appropriate in certain scenarios, including times of crisis, it is less effective when used over a longer period and can diminish engagement. Organisations must be careful that their leaders balance the need to deliver short-term results with a long-term perspective.

Mixing things up

Using a mixture of styles is important, but it can be difficult to know where to start. Our research shows that there is one style that, when added to a manager’s repertoire, will have the biggest impact on leadership success: the Visionary style.

Leaders who use the Visionary style are able to mobilise people to strive towards shared outcomes through empathy and clarity. They set unifying goals, explain the reasons behind decisions and sell the benefits of taking a course of action so that employees end up believing in the end goal just as much as the leaders do.

The data we have collected shows that the Visionary leadership style greatly increases the likelihood of creating a motivating climate and our analysis of the Middle East shows that more than two-thirds of leaders in this region who create high-performance climates use the Visionary style in their work.

Six-point plan

The Visionary style can be powerful, but to really reap the benefits of effective leadership, we recommend adopting a structured approach. Our six-point plan will help leaders develop the skills they need to motivate and develop their team to perform at their best.

As with everything worthwhile in business, creating a high-performance climate takes time, effort and dedication – but consider the business impact if each of your leaders was able to unlock the full potential of their team.

Step 1: Assess your current work environments

The first step is to understand the organisational climate that your leaders create. It is important to ensure the organisation knows what it is working with, with no biases involved in building up the follow-up action plans.

Step 2: Create clarity

One of the biggest discrepancies between good leaders and the rest is that they clarify the ‘big picture’ to their people, and help them understand how they fit in. Top teams that support this, through constant communication of their long-term direction and everyone’s role in achieving this, will make each individual leader’s job much easier in creating a positive work environment.

Step 3: Set some specific performance criteria

One effective way by which the best leaders set performance objectives is through a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for their people, objectively set at the start of the performance management lifecycle and closely monitored throughout the year.

Step 4: Support your leaders in cascading responsibility

Organisations that are bureaucratic, with multiple levels of ‘red-tape’, are unlikely to draw clear lines on accountabilities and decision-makers. Leaders can make a general improvement here by setting clear boundaries of responsibility, and delegating work appropriately.

Step 5: Improve the culture to reward for performance

Organisations that support a reward-for-performance culture, encouraging leaders at all levels to reward based on merit, are more likely to have engaged employees. The key is to provide clear, regular and specific feedback on what employees are doing well to continuously drive up their learning and engagement.

Step 6: Benchmark internationally

For the Middle East to continue its trajectory as a global economic force, calibration is required at an international level. This is particularly true for work climates, which typically touch on the lives of employees from various cultures. What differentiates the best leaders in the Middle East from the rest?