Tarek Khalifa is 21 years old and is junior brand manager at a popular beverage company. He also reads management and finance at a university in Dubai; and is a prime example of what some leading business schools have dubbed as an emerging global trend.
The trend is also visible in the UAE, which is seeing increasingly younger professionals take on senior positions as the 21st century changes the way leadership is taught and executed.
"Our studies teach us leaders should be assertive and strict but in my field just being lenient and friendly works for me," said Khalifa. "They [university] teach us how leaders should be, but I personally don't see it as relevant or a true representation of real-life management."
Khalifa added that current taught leadership styles may apply in the senior corporate world but may not apply to spunkier companies targeting young managers who understand a youthful customer base.
However, academics at some of the world's top business schools, with bases in the UAE, would disagree with him when it comes to postgraduate and executive education.
Professor David Sims, Head of Management Faculty at Cass Business School said the standard top-down leadership approach of centuries past is no longer relevant or effective in the global age.
"In the 20th century leadership was taught as an image of one heroic person cleverer and braver than everyone else, which was never really a true description of what was happening anyway," he said. "Leadership has to be [academically] developed into more of an activity, [selling an idea] where to work well, several people have to be involved," added Professor Sims.
A shift in power
"The global trend of younger people having more professional responsibilities than in the past happens more in emerging markets [like the GCC region, China and South Korea] as new companies grow faster than they do in mature markets [like in Europe]," said Joaquin Uribarri, IE Business School's Director of Marketing and International Development.
He added that "young blood" is emerging in leadership positions globally because of their fluency in navigating around an ambiguous globalised world. "You find they are more comfortable with this situation because they are used to it," he said. "So they can be better leaders, make better decisions and not be paralysed by fear when faced with change and turbulence, which older managers in their 50s and 60s, reaching the end of their careers, find difficult," added Uribarri.
He added that such changes may also, in part, be due to the economical power shift from West to East, which varies in leadership styles.
The UAE scenario
"When you think about young leaders and Emiratis in the UAE, it's clear they come into significant responsibility at a visibly younger age than other geographies," said Philip Anderson, INSEAD Alumni Fund Professor of Entrepreneurship. "The Emiratisation government policy to have local talent in key roles forces younger Emiratis to take on significant responsibility as early as possible," he added.
Anderson said another driver in the GCC for younger professionals taking up leadership posts is due to the nature of the culture.
"Personal trust is extremely important, far more than experience; who you know trumps the fact that you are a lot younger than someone you have to deal with [on a business level]," he said.
Anderson added that in other cultures, in the US for example, experience would be more heavily weighted in terms of appointment to a leadership position. "For that reason professionals would be allowed to grow more in the business before being given big responsibility."
"Responsibility given to younger leaders is something I've definitely seen with regional effects in the Middle East," said Jurek Sikorski, London Business School's (LBS) Associate Director of business development and career services.
"What I've seen with LBS students in Dubai is that entrepreneurship has very much come to the forefront and in that role they have to be doing more across different functions; and with that comes greater responsibility," he added.
However for some who are part of this global trend, like Susan Abu Ali, a 28-year-old partner development manager at a UAE investment company, leadership roles handed to the young is not necessarily always effective, especially when they are prevented from implementing real change.
"They are all young and inexperienced," she said about her managerial peers.
"They are mainly in their late 20s and just want to get the job done; very rarely will you find someone who knows what they are talking about," she added.
Abu Ali said that although her peers in senior managerial roles are young and seemingly contributing to the global trend, the true power still remains at the top.
"The rules come from the top but they don't know what it's like to be in mid-management and deal with the day to day," she said.
"The top down approach isn't working, companies show they are being advanced and embracing the 21st century but in reality nothing has changed," added Abu Ali.
Reinforcing, Abu Ali's point, Professor Sims used media-mogul Rupert Murdoch as an example.
"He thinks he can behave how he did in the '80s without using the wisdom of the younger people who work for him," said Professor Sims about Murdoch's drive to charge for online news.
"[It's] out of date and out of touch with the online world…and if people at the top don't start making use of young people's ideas then they will be lost."
