One day while His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, was touring — or as I like to call “monitoring” — a government department, the director-general told him the HR Department, led by a female director, had decided to halt hiring women in favour of men because women made up 70 per cent of the workforce. They felt it should be better balanced.

Pausing before continuing with a bit of alarm in his voice, “Are some of the women in your department performing poorly?” Shaikh Mohammad asked.

“No!” the director fired back. “Every women applying to join us is more than qualified.”

“Then hire every women who meets your requirements,” Shaikh Mohammad instructed. “And keep hiring them, even if women make up 100 per cent of your workforce.”

The percentage of female employees participating in the workforce quadrupled between 1980 and 1990, with the total number of UAE national women working in all fields reaching 100,000 by 2010.

On the one hand Dubai is making great progress towards its ambition of employing women at all levels and being a role model in a region that has room for significant improvement. At the same time, women are conspicuously absent from most management teams, specifically in the private sector.

So much so, that when women are present I take notice as it is different from what I experience on most days — being in boardrooms filled only with men.

The ambition apparent in the public sector needs to permeate the private sector where gender equality at the most senior levels is still imbalanced. I find it a bit of a conundrum as to the reason.

We have excellent examples in the public sector, and on a positive note I’ve never heard a bigoted conversation from any one of my clients. For example, I never hear a CEO say, “Don’t hire this candidate because she is female.”

So, what will it take for the ambition to spread to where my day-to-day experience is different than it is now?

Researching for my next book (‘Leadership Dubai Style’), “Openness!” is a recurring reply when queried, “In your opinion, what is the secret, the essence, of leadership success in Dubai?”

Dubai welcomes every one who can make a positive contribution, even people who want to succeed merely by piggybacking on what Dubai built. While we speak of openness — and there is no doubt Dubai is welcoming — it made me wonder, “What do we need to do to be open?”

Creating an environment where others succeed mandates a genuine open-door policy to foster an environment of working together, high performance and mutual success. In Dubai, “openness” is more than the “boss” leaving his door “open” in order to encourage employees to stop by whenever they feel the need to meet and ask questions, discuss suggestions, and address problems or concerns with management.

It’s like welcoming somebody into your home and making him feel accepted and comfortable.

Openness is very difficult because others aren’t necessarily like you. I’ve heard leaders casually complain about this, noting how easy it would be if everyone thought like they do. But they don’t!

Thus you have to be open to their ideas and ways. Had there been a closed or semi-closed mindset, there wouldn’t be Dubai. Acceptance and tolerance is critical to being able to create an environment for others to succeed. Openness needs to be part of your leadership practice and this needs to include gender acceptance.

A positive example from the private sector comes from Emirates airline where pilot Mariana Garcia Garza is one of two Mexican women to have flown an Airbus A380 — the double-deck, wide-body aeroplane — and she is aiming to make history by becoming the first woman from Mexico to captain the world’s largest plane.

Shaikh Mohammad says, “Dubai has moved beyond the phase of empowering women. Indeed, we are empowering society itself through its women; we are empowering our economy by strengthening the role of women.”

The message is loud and clear in the public sector, “Beware men, lest women deprive you of all the leadership positions in the country.”

Now this message needs to spread into the private sector.

 

The writer is a CEO Coach and author of the ‘10 Tips for Leading in the Middle East’ and other writings. Contact him at tsw@tommyweir.com