Developing UAE professionals to lead from the front

Companies in the region are failing to prepare their future leaders: according to a new survey by Mercer of 60 Middle East companies, half do not have a clear or defined leadership development programme in place.

Tarek Al Marzouqi was one of 47 employees chosen by his company for an 18-month leadership development programme to prepare its future senior management. Ravindranath K / The National

Tarek Al Marzouqi has a very good reason to believe he will be a leader one day.

The engineer was one of 47 employees selected by National Petroleum Construction Company (NPCC) for an 18-month leadership development programme to prepare its future senior management.

“It’s great that the company sees such things in me and I believe it is a good way of appreciating our work,” says the 37-year-old Emirati from Abu Dhabi, who has worked for the company for 13 years.

“We really feel that we are going to take an important role in the future in this company.”

But not enough firms in the region are preparing their future leaders, according to talent consultants.

A survey by Mercer of more than 60 companies across the Middle East found that half of them do not have a clear or defined leadership development programme, compared to 74 per cent in Latin America and 58 per cent in Asia Pacific.

“A lot of organisations in the region don’t have clear or defined leadership evolvement strategy,” says Khaled Alturki, the principal of Mercer Consulting Middle East. “It is quite alarming.”

A majority according to the survey, 60 per cent, admitted that they do not hold their line managers accountable in developing leaders. And some do it only to a small extent.

One of the biggest problems lies in the fact that the top tier does not view the issue as important.

“As a matter of fact, close to 62 per cent reported that their top executives spend less than 10 per cent of their time developing their current or future leaders,” says Mr Alturki.

“It is not necessarily that they are not interested in leadership. They are just not doing enough to grow the leaders. There is this huge push to get results and get results now, and a lot of the top tier leaders are just focusing on that,” he adds.

To make matters worse, some companies are actively excluding one group from leadership roles – women. They often blame their clients because they don’t see women as credible, says Mr Alturki.

“Sometimes they are excluded from informal networks and a lot of the discussions and negotiations sometimes happen in these ‘outside office’ meetings. They also feel that some internal reasons like managers are perhaps unwilling to promote non-traditional candidates,” he adds. Other consultants agree leadership development is lacking in the region.

Analysis by CEB shows that a third of professionals in the UAE have the potential to be effective leaders, making it the highest number in the region and the 12th strongest supply globally.

But that does not mean that businesses have the correct mechanisms in place to prepare the leaders of the future, says Mohamed Farid, managing director for the Middle East with CEB.

“Our research shows that companies are chronically misidentifying true leadership potential, which is driving top talent to rival organisations and putting bottom-line performance at risk,” he adds.

So how do companies prepare their future leaders?

Putting a defined leadership development strategy in place is a good start, says Mr Alturki. And once one is in place, implementing it is crucial. Managers should be made accountable for developing talent.

“Companies should really look into women leaders and that whole segment because it is completely untapped and that is one way to really improve the bench of the candidates in the pipeline,” says Mr Alturki.

“It starts from the top. Once the top management team understands that this is important and it is urgent and they start communicating that downwards, that is really crucial.”

A recognition about the top management of NPCC drove the company to implement its leadership development programme 18 months ago.

“Our leadership team is ageing. They are very loyal. They have been here a very long time but they are not getting any younger,” says Janine Lau-Pope, vice president of human resources at NPCC.

“Change that is coming whether you want it or not. That’s how we started thinking about this whole process because we have been around for 40 years and are very successful and we want to be even more successful in the next 40 years.”

Before Mr Al Marzouqi began the leadership development programme he was focused on engineering skills. Then he was introduced to concepts such as organisational behaviour, working with people and emotional intelligence.

“By having such soft skills we believe we have the best combination of technical and soft skills that have given us the tools to lead the company in the future,” he adds.

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