Leadership and the leader's six roles

Tareq al-Suwaidan defines leadership as 'the ability to move people toward a goal', and holds that whoever wants to practise pure leadership works only in six roles; everything else is management and is handed to others ¹.

First, planning: not necessarily planning himself, but making sure the organisation has a strategic and an operational plan into which his vision and ambitions entered ². Second, opening new horizons for the work — innovation: new markets, products, services and methods, since the manager is too busy with the daily to think deeply ³. Third, building key informal relationships — with officials, funders, major customers, key suppliers and senior staff — and these are not delegated ^{4 5}. Fourth, solving the chronic problems others have failed to solve ⁶. Fifth, developing himself and those he supervises, continuously ⁷. Sixth, appreciation and honouring the distinguished — not to be delegated; he thanks them publicly, and he learnt from the Prophet ﷺ's sira that he used to grant titles to the distinguished, such as Abu Ubayda, al-Zubayr, Umar and Abu Bakr ^{8 9}.

He distinguishes leader from manager: an organisation needs both — one without a leader attends only to the daily, one without a manager only to the distant; and whoever can combine both is advised not to, but to remain the leader and hire a competent, trustworthy manager ^{10 11}. His rule is that a leader attends no more than fifty per cent of working hours; the rest goes to thinking and building relationships ¹². If he keeps one administrative role it is the financial decision — signing the cheques — because watching the money reveals to him all that goes on ¹³. When founding something new he practises heavy management alongside leadership, then lightens the management over time; the normal span is six months to a year, never beyond two ^{14 15}. And his advice to whoever wants to lead is to refuse a job description, for the leader is the principal reference entitled to intervene in anything whenever he chooses ¹⁶.