Marwan Bin Ghalita’s Leadership Style

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Interview notes
Introduction
Leadership characteristics demonstrated by Bin Ghalita
Shortcomings of Bin Ghalita as a leader
Conclusion
References

Abstract

This paper contains an interview with Marwan Bin Ghalita (the CEO of RERA, UAE), the discussion of what accounts for the concerned individual’s styles of leadership, and the suggestions as to what can be considered the discursive significance of the case in question.

Interview notes

The Interviewer: How do you define leadership?

Bin Ghalita: The very term ‘leadership’ contains the actual definition of what leadership is all about – it is in essence a person’s ability to lead others towards the accomplishment of a particular goal.

The Interviewer: What is your leadership philosophy?

Bin Ghalita: I believe that true leaders are ‘made’ rather than ‘born’. Yet, in order for just about anyone to be in the position to aspire to become a leader, he will need to have what it takes to be able to lead others. What it means is that it is utterly important for those individuals that strive to be perceived as leaders, to radiate a strongly defined charisma.

The Interviewer: How did you learn to lead?

Bin Ghalita: I did not learn how to lead – I learned how to work on developing my inborn leadership-skills. The fact that, throughout the course of my professional career, I never ceased to lead a socially active lifestyle helped me greatly, in this respect.

The Interviewer: What is your view on the consultative concept of leadership?

Bin Ghalita: It is understood, of course, that while acting as a leader, one must be willing to provide consultation to his or her followers. Yet, I do not think that there can be any discursive limitations to the notion of leadership – the art of leading others is only partially concerned with the process of the latter being consulted by their leaders.

The Interviewer: As a young man, what was your main motivation in life?

Bin Ghalita: Back then, I used to be driven by my desire to attain social prominence. I did not want to be like many of my childhood friends, who never aspired for anything great in their lives. Somehow, I knew that I would indeed be able to actualize myself, in this respect.

The interviewer: Do you believe that education is important?

Bin Ghalita: Yes, I do. However, I think that it is only a wise and quick-minded individual, who may be considered truly educated – not merely the one who managed to memorize a large volume of some abstract information, without being able to apply it in practice.

The Interviewer: How would your staff and colleagues describe your leadership style?

Bin Ghalita: I believe that they would probably describe it as being somewhat authoritarian. For example, I never hesitated to fire those employees that used to exhibit a continual inability to live up to my expectations of them, as highly efficient professionals.

The Interviewer: What are the most important values and ethics you demonstrate as a leader?

Bin Ghalita: These would be my ability to have a comprehensive vision of what needs to be accomplished, my talent in finding mid-level managers, upon whom I can fully rely, my willingness to fraternize with subordinates, and my acute sense of personal modesty (laughs).

The Interviewer: Do you agree with the suggestion that leaders have the responsibility to encourage employees to apply an effort into developing their professional skills?

Bin Ghalita: I certainly do. Moreover, I think that it is the direct responsibility of a leader to continue paying close attention to what accounts for the rate of just about every employee’s professional progress. By doing this, a leader would be able to exercise complete control over what happened to be the direction of the organization’s spatial development.

The Interviewer: Name some situations in which a leader may fail?

Bin Ghalita: There are a number of ways, in which one may fail, as a leader. I personally believe that the greatest failure, in this respect, would be one’s inability to inspire subordinates. As a leader, I failed a few times, while hiring an individual, who later turned out lacking some of the required professional qualities.

The Interviewer: Tell us about an innovative solution you developed for a non-traditional problem?

Bin Ghalita: One time, I hired an individual, who, despite lacking a formal education, nevertheless proved himself a very valuable employee – while possessing a strong charisma; he was able to attract the potential real-estate investors with ease.

The Interviewer: What methods have you used to ensure your staff’s commitment?

Bin Ghalita: There are two methods; I usually apply, when it comes to ensuring the staff’s commitment: expounding on the great future of the ongoing project in front of employees and indulging in the informal forms of socialization with the latter.

The Interviewer: Describe a recent disagreement or problem that you had to handle personally?

Bin Ghalita: A few weeks ago, one of my mid-level managers was reported spreading rumors about me. I asked the person to have a little one-on-one talk with me, during the course of which I punched him a few times in his stomach and expressed my hope that he never does it again.

The Interviewer: How have you influenced employees to follow your strategic vision?

Bin Ghalita: When it comes to influencing employees, in this respect, I encourage them to relate to what happened to be my strategic vision emotionally. For this purpose, I make a deliberate point in instilling workers with the spirit of a team-solidarity.

The Interviewer: How have you encouraged the learning and development of employees?

Bin Ghalita: My method of doing this is to spend time with employees in the informal settings, while presenting them with a number of different reasons, as to why it represents a matter of utter importance, on the workers’ part, to continue developing their professional skills.

The Interviewer: Do you try to have more leaders around you?

Bin Ghalita: Absolutely not – this would lead to anarchy. At the same time, however, I do encourage the company’s top managers to come up with executive decisions on their own – if the circumstances require.

The Interviewer: For how long do you think your employees will continue perceiving you as a true leader?

Bin Ghalita: It is a rather provocative question, which nevertheless can be answered with ease – for as long as I do not give them any reason to doubt my leadership abilities.

The Interviewer: What do you think constitutes a difference between leaders and managers?

Bin Ghalita: Managers are the individuals entrusted with the task of finding solutions to the tactical challenges of running an organization. Leaders, on the other hand, are the ones who generate a strategic vision of how these challenges could be addressed in the long run.

The Interviewer: How hard is it to lead others?

Bin Ghalita: There is nothing hard about it – while dealing with employees, as a leader, I act in a thoroughly natural manner, without giving any second thoughts to what my subordinates may think of it. I guess it causes them to respect me even more.

The Interviewer: What do you do if any of your employees violates the applicable rules and regulations?

Bin Ghalita: If it results in causing damage to the company’s reputation, I fire such an employee, of course. However, if such an act, on the concerned employee’s part, proves beneficial to the company’s overall well-being, he or she ends being instantly promoted.

The Interviewer: What is the main key to ensuring one’s effective leadership?

Bin Ghalita: The person in question must be capable of prioritizing his leadership-related responsibilities above everything else.

Introduction

Marwan Ahmed Bin Ghalita is a survey engineer by trade (he graduated from the University of Fresno, California). Bin Ghalita began his professional career at the Dubai Land Department. In the year 1999, he became the Department’s youngest President. While addressing his professional duties in the Dubai Land Department, Ghalita never ceased trying to increase the level of his professional competence, which in turn earned him an MBA degree in the Advanced Management Department of the Arabic Academy of Sciences and Technology (Egypt). As of today, Bin Ghalita acts as the CEO of RERA (Real Estate Regulatory Agency), which was founded in 2007 – not the least due to the fact that through the years 1999-2006, he contributed rather substantially towards the rapid expansion of the UAE economy’s real-estate sector.

Leadership characteristics demonstrated by Bin Ghalita

Throughout just about every phase of his professional career, Bin Ghalita continued to exhibit a number of clearly defined traits of a leader. The most important of these traits can be outlined as follows:

Bin Ghalita never failed to recognize the accomplishments of his subordinates, while qualifying the latter for the circumstantially adequate monetary rewards.
Bin Ghalita proved himself utterly successful, within the context of trying to endow employees with a sense of corporate loyalty.
Bin Khalifa is known for his ability to choose in favor of the proper set of incentives when it comes to motivating employees.
As a truly effective leader, Bin Ghalita appears to have always been aware ahead of time, as to what would account for the factual implications of the implementation of a particular business-strategy, on his part. This allowed RERA to ‘survive’ the real-estate crisis of 2008-2009.
Bin Ghalita has been reported to take a genuine interest in ensuring the financial and psychological well-being of his subordinates.
Bin Ghalita enjoys fame for his ability to inspire employees, by the mean of creating a ‘team atmosphere’ in the workplace, which in turn encourages workers to relate to the established corporate goals, as their own.
Bin Ghalita is also known for his strongly defined sense of humbleness, which causes ordinary employees to respect him even more.

Bin Ghalita as a charismatic leader

What has been mentioned earlier leaves only a few doubts that Bin Ghalita can indeed be considered a charismatic leader? The reason for this is apparent – the manner, in which he handled the interview-questions, and the above-provided information, concerned with his leadership qualities, do imply that the person in question relies rather heavily on his ability to ‘read’ employees psychologically while trying to increase the effectiveness of their professional performance.

In its turn, this exposes Bin Ghalita as the affiliate of the specifically charismatic paradigm of leadership, based upon the assumption that one’s ability to lead others positively relates to his capability to inspire people (Levine, Muenchen, & Brooks, 2010). The validity of this statement can also be illustrated, in regards to the sense of corporate responsibility, on the part of Bin Ghalita. After all, Bin Ghalita never ceased to remain a committed advocate of the idea that, in order for a leader to be able to live up to the title, the concerned followers may never stop considering him a thoroughly trustworthy individual.

The rationale behind this idea is that people who fully trust their superiors are much more likely to act in a professionally enthusiastic manner, as compared to what is being the case with their ‘non-trusting’ counterparts (Choi, 2006).

As a charismatic CEO, Bin Ghalita believes that, in order for an individual to prove himself an effective leader, he does not have to merely understand the ‘intricacies of leadership’, but to have them incorporated as the organic parts of its existential mode. In its turn, this can only be possible if the concerned individual possesses a certain psychological quality that enables him to effectively address challenges, without having to continually assess the appropriateness of the deployed approach for dealing with them, in regards to what happened to be the leadership-related theoretical insights, contained in the books on leadership.

Finally, as it can be well seen from the provided responses, Bin Ghalita has a good sense of humor – something ‘must-have’ for just about anyone, who intends to take practical advantage of the paradigm of charismatic leadership.

Bin Ghalita as a transactional leader

Along with having what it takes to inspire trust in people, Bin Ghalita appears thoroughly aware of the fact that the deployed approaches towards motivating employees, must be fully consistent with what happened to be the affiliated external/internal circumstances. This, of course, provides us with a certain rationale to suggest that Bin Ghalita can be considered a transactional leader, as well. After all, the concept of transactional leadership is based upon the idea that, when it comes to inspiring others, true leaders should always keep in mind the so-called ‘stick and carrot’ principle (Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987).

Allegorically speaking, the inadequately performing employees get a ‘stick’ (in the form of being laid off), whereas, the most efficiently performing ones get a ‘carrot’ (in the form of being promoted). Because Bin Laden is known for his low tolerance towards those employees, whose professional performance appears to lack in quality, there can be no doubt, as to his affiliation with the conventional (transactional) methodologies of managing.

What also justifies our suggestion, in this respect, is that, as a leader, Bin Ghalita always strived to enhance the effectiveness of the headed organizations’ functioning, by the mean of referring to the affiliated workforce, as such that contains a number of seemingly ‘hidden’ performance-boosting resources. This, of course, is nothing but a clearly defined transactional approach towards leading an organization.

Bin Ghalita as a coaching leader

Even though, as it was pointed out earlier, Bin Ghalita can be well-referred to, as the advocate of the charismatic and transactional concepts of leadership, he also appears to share the values of the so-called ‘coaching’ approach to motivating subordinates. The main theoretical premise, upon which this approach rests, is the idea that it is specifically the prospect of being able to increase the extent of their professional adequacy, which motivates employees more than anything else does (Welch & Welch, 2005).

Therefore, there is nothing incidental about the fact that, as Bin Ghalita pointed out in the interview, under certain circumstances, he does encourage employees to indulge in the executive decision-making– by acting in such a way, Bin Ghalita provides his subordinates with the opportunity to distinguish themselves, as the potential subjects of promotion. Moreover, it also increases the employees’ chances to attain self-actualization, in the professional sense of this word.

The reason for this is that, while addressing a particularly challenging task in the workplace, employees are often able to realize what accounts for their ‘true calling’, as professionals. The fact that Bin Ghalita does act rather quickly when it comes to taking advantage of the ‘coaching’ leadership-concept, can also be illustrated, in regards to his suggestion that there is indeed much in common between the notion of leadership, on the one hand, and the notion of consultation, on the other.

Shortcomings of Bin Ghalita as a leader

Although there can be only a few reasons to doubt Bin Ghalita, as a true leader, there nevertheless appears to be a number of shortcomings to the manner in which he goes about addressing the leadership-related challenges. These shortcomings can be formulated as follows:

Bin Ghalita appears to hold a somewhat uncritical view of himself, as a self-made man. Even though there is nothing wrong with one’s strong belief in its own powers, as a leader, this may undermine the concerned person’s ability to adequately react to the unpredictable fluctuations of the affiliated professional environment.
Bin Ghalita exhibits a certain tendency to regard a number of vaguely sounding semi-professional terms (e.g. ‘team spirit’), as such, that represent an undisputed truth-value. Yet, these terms are essentially discursive – as time goes on, they are being gradually deprived of their original meaning. In its turn, this may result in reducing the extent of Bin Ghalita’s intellectual flexibility – hence, making him less effective, as a transactional leader.
Bin Ghalita places too much confidence in his ability to resolve conflicts in the workplace single-handedly. Even though this does help him to enjoy the reputation of a ‘macho-man’, which in turn contributes to Bin Ghalita’s ability to inspire respect in employees, there is a counterproductive effect to it. This effect has to do with the fact that consequently, his reputation as a leader becomes more vulnerable to the prospect of being shattered, if he fails even slightly, while on the task.
Bin Ghalita adheres to the idea that leadership should be ‘instinctual’. However, whereas, in many situations, this idea proves thoroughly legitimate, there are certain cases when the idea’s practical application may bring about a number of counterproductive effects. This simply could not be otherwise – especially given the fact that, as of today, the very process of technology-driven Globalization continues to gain an exponential momentum, which in turn assigns many previously unheard overtones to the notion of leadership.

Conclusion

The case of Bin Ghalita, discussed in the earlier parts of this paper, can be well-referred to as such that indicates that, contrary to what many managers believe, the concept of charismatic leadership is far from being deemed outdated. The very fact that, while remaining strongly affiliated with this concept, Bin Ghalita ended up being put in control of the real-estate sector in Dubai, substantiates the validity of the above-stated more than anything else does.

There is, however, is even more to it – Bin Ghalita’s responses to the interview questions, as well as the paper’s analytical sub-chapters, appear to contain a certain insight into why it is specifically charismatic individuals, who often prove themselves, effective leaders, with ease. Apparently, such a state of affairs has been brought about by the fact that there are indeed a number of inborn undertones to the notion of leadership.

At the same time, the case of Bin Ghalita also suggests that, in order for a leader to enjoy the de facto respect of employees, he cannot act in the strongly defined authoritarian manner. Quite on the contrary – the realities of post-industrial living create many objective preconditions for the notion of charismatic leadership to be increasingly perceived synonymous with the notion of intellectual flexibility (Crant & Bateman, 2000). We can only wish that Bin Ghalita will realize this fact soon enough, as it would substantially increase his chances to remain on top of the competition, as a leader.

References

Choi, Jaepil. (2006). A motivational theory of charismatic leadership: Envisioning, empathy, and empowerment. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 13 (1), 24-43.

Crant, M. & Bateman, T. (2000). Charismatic leadership viewed from above: The impact of proactive personality, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21 (1), 63-75.

Kuhnert, K. & Lewis, P. (1987). Transactional and transformational leadership: A constructive/developmental analysis. The Academy of Management Review, 12 (4), 648-657.

Levine, K., Muenchen, R. & Brooks, A. (2010). Measuring transformational and charismatic leadership: Why isn’t charisma measured? Communication Monographs, 77 (4), 576-591.

Welch, J. & Welch, S. (2005). Winning: The ultimate business how-to book. New York: HarperBusiness.

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