Asharqia Chamber of Commerce held a lecture entitled "Leadership Challenges in the Age of the Kingdom's Vision of 2030" on Monday, 16 July 2018 at the Chamber's headquarter.
The lecture was attended by the Chairman of the Chamber, Abdul Hakim bin Hamad Al-Ammar Al-Khalidi, and was presented by Dr. Mazen bin Abdul Razzaq Bilila, Former member of Shura Council.
Former member of Shura Council, Dr. Mazen bin Abdul Razzaq Bilila, called for more efforts to develop administrative leadership to achieve the required successes in the institutions that to be developed for them including all the required administrative aspects. He emphasized the factors/effects/ outcomes of effective leadership, which they are as follows: (functional correlation, internal motivation, overall leadership, return on investment "ROI", follow-up after training).
Dr. Bilia said, "in order to succeed our efforts to develop effective national leadership, we must-before accounting for productivity- contribute with them in achieving their commitment to work."
As leadership development must be comprehensive and integrated in all four aspects: (performance, personal, motivational, and strategic).
He stressed that the success of the desired development depends largely on the basic follow-up phase of post-training applications, and giving a longer period of follow-up.
He explained, "Through a simple reading of the rapid global changes, we find that the methods of leadership have not changed during the last hundred years. Over the past 50 years, it has been based on five performance indicators for leadership, but now the leadership is measured with 45-75 performance indicators."
He also emphasized that the active leadership, which we seek develop in our national institutions, is the overall leadership that leads the staff to the best.
He pointed out that the famous Bayt.com website published a statistical study on the employees' vision for development in 13 countries (including Saudi Arabia), where
81% of those polled said they would leave the job if they did not invest in them and don't provide chances for development for the better.
He stressed on what Henry Mintzbery, an academic writer and a leader who are currently studying in Canada and has more than 150 research papers and has 15 books in administrative sciences and one of his most famous studies on the types of administrative structures, wrote about the patterns of administrative structures.
He believed that it is not possible to create leaders in the classroom only, but one can learn to define leadership in MBA programs, as well as practical leadership can not be learned through theoretical methods.
Regarding the functional correlation, Balila said that it means positive attitude toward work, regularity and longer stay, better work performance, and thus increased productivity.
He pointed to the need to teach the workers the fact of what works, "as the real worker does not say I use the hammer and cement, rather, he says 'I build projects and higher towers.'"
He stressed that this is the task of the aspiring leader that have to embrace effective administrative leadership.
Regarding internal stimulation, Bilila said that the incentives that managers usually make are three: (punishment), which includes discounting, dismissal; or (reward), which includes commissions, rewards; or (changing the internal view towards work), which is the best incentive among all of them. It is the responsibility of the influential leaders within the work, "which we need to develop at this particular time."
He pointed out that the low self-motivation of employees were produced by dumping in the systems of punishment and reward, which is the most obvious in the work that requires creativity and initiative.
In this regard, he pointed to the argument of many researchers and experts by saying that driving people on the basis of external stimulation is an undesirable task. It brings up many negative effects such as the resistance to new ideas, discontentment, lack of association with function, isolation and despair, blatant challenge and rebellion, narcissism, deceit and lies, the negative feeling of victimization, lack of respect for authority, low self-esteem, and lack of independence in decision-making.
At the end of the lecture, the chamber's chairman, Abdul Hakim bin Hamad al-Ammar al-Khalidi, honored the former Shura Council, Dr. Mazen bin Abdul Razzaq Bilila, with a commemorative shield.
