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Gulf Business
3 days ago
- Business
- Gulf Business
Insights: What exactly do leaders do and why is it so difficult?
Image: Getty Images/ For illustrative purposes We've all thought about it. What exactly does the CEO do all day? We may have considered this from the position of an employee, or launching a business and becoming the default CEO in the process, or perhaps being deep into a career full of leadership positions and taking a moment to reassess priorities. Whatever the case, it's easy to fall into the trap of idealising someone else's leadership, looking around and thinking that the well-known CEOs we see in the media are performing effortlessly. They're not. Effective leadership can be complex. According to recent data, 72 per cent of leaders report feeling burned out by the end of the day, and only 27 per cent feel they are highly effective at leading hybrid or virtual teams – a common issue these days. So, in this article, I'll look first at why leadership is so difficult and reveal how the best leaders overcome this by understanding the qualities and skills necessary for success. I'll also give my view that, ultimately, it's about mindset. You can't stop the problems, challenges and difficulties arising – and you can't fix them all, either. But you can control how you think about them and how you approach them. That's why in this article you'll find me continually going back to mindset as the key aspect of successful leadership. What do leaders do? We can make assumptions, but it's best to look at the facts, and a particularly notable piece of research was commissioned to answer this question. In a study that started in 2006 and lasted until 2018, two Harvard professors tracked the daily activities of 27 CEOs at businesses that had an average annual revenue of over $13bn. They found that, on average, CEOs worked 9.7 hours daily and spent nearly 80 per cent of weekends (and 70per cent of their holidays) working. Their time can be broken down as follows. Almost three-quarters of the CEO's time was scheduled in advance, with the rest being more spontaneous. When we break this down further, 25 per cent of their time was focused on people and relationships, 25 per cent on business unit reviews, 21 per cent on strategy, 16% on organisation and culture, 3 per cent on professional development, and 1 per cent on crisis management. When it comes to other top leadership positions, we can see a clear difference in the CEO setting the vision and driving the overall strategy, while the COO is primarily focused on the operational aspects of executing that vision. So these roles are distinct but interconnected. The CEO is shaping the company's direction and engaging stakeholders, while the COO ensures the engine runs smoothly, aligning internal processes and resources to deliver on the agreed-upon goals. This separation is crucial, as it enables the CEO to focus on outward-facing responsibilities such as investor relations, partnerships, and long-term planning, while the COO concentrates on day-to-day operations and organisational efficiency. At this point, it's also worth separating 'leadership' and 'management'. Yes, they are complementary, but they should remain distinct. Both are crucial for an organisation's success, yet many businesses today suffer from excessive management and insufficient leadership. The true challenge lies not in choosing one over the other, but in fostering both leadership and management in tandem, ensuring they work together to support and balance each other. So, let's look at what the CEO does in more detail: Defining vision and strategy: The first task of any leader is setting a clear vision for the future. This means understanding where the organisation needs to go, analysing trends, and making decisions that will shape long-term success. Strategy development is more than just planning. It involves anticipating market shifts, responding to competitive challenges, and sometimes reinventing the organisation to stay relevant. Making tough decisions: Leaders must allocate resources in a way that maximises the company's potential. But with resource limitations and competing priorities, these decisions are often difficult. Leaders must weigh immediate needs against long-term objectives and decide which projects or departments will receive funding, support and attention. Building culture: Culture is the backbone of any company, and leaders play a pivotal role in shaping and preserving it. They must communicate the company's values, encourage a culture that aligns with its mission, and ensure that every employee feels valued and engaged. When cultural issues arise, leaders must address them head-on to maintain a positive, productive environment . Managing people: From hiring the right talent to mentoring future leaders, all C-suite members, and leaders more generally, are deeply involved in people management. This includes providing feedback, setting goals, and aligning individual contributions with organisational priorities. Leaders often have to make tough calls about staffing, including making personnel changes to support the business's strategic needs. Navigating crisis and change: Crisis management requires resilience, composure and a relentless focus on finding solutions. These can range from team conflicts to communication breakdowns between departments or even simple errors that need immediate attention. Fires can flare up unexpectedly, and leaders often need to drop everything to deal with them. Delivering financial performance: Every leader is ultimately responsible for their organisation's financial performance. This includes setting revenue targets, controlling expenses, and ensuring the company remains profitable and sustainable. Balancing financial goals with other priorities often requires tough trade-offs. Why is leadership so difficult? Leadership is often difficult because it encompasses three key challenges that never stop. First, there is the constant presence of uncertainty with leaders required to make decisions with incomplete information, weighing risks against potential rewards. This ambiguity can be a persistent source of stress, as each decision influences the organisation's future and the lives of employees and stakeholders. Second, accountability adds immense pressure. Everyone has a boss, and leaders are answerable to shareholders, employees, customers, and the wider public, leaving them under intense scrutiny. They must take responsibility for both successes and failures while navigating criticism. Finally, the challenge of competing demands makes leadership especially taxing. Balancing financial goals, employee satisfaction, and other priorities requires leaders to manage short-term needs without losing sight of long-term objectives – a delicate task made even more challenging when resources are constrained. How can you address the challenges and prepare for leadership? Let's start with mindset. Leaders who embrace a growth mindset will view challenges as opportunities to learn (rather than obstacles). They seek feedback, adapt to new information, and continuously strive to improve. This mindset helps them remain flexible in ever-changing environments and keeps them open to innovative solutions. By treating challenges as stepping stones, these leaders cultivate resilience and inspire others to do the same. Leadership often involves high-stakes situations that can be emotionally draining. To manage these pressures, many leaders invest in emotional resilience training, learning techniques such as mindfulness, meditation, and cognitive behavioural strategies. While we saw earlier that leaders often don't spend much time on professional development, learning these new approaches can help them process stress, maintain composure, and approach challenges with a clear mind. In short, do the job better – and for longer. Maintaining physical and emotional well-being through exercise, rest, and reflection ensures leaders remain sharp and balanced. After all, resilient leaders are better equipped to navigate complex dynamics and sustain their focus in demanding roles. So, while leadership responsibilities can be rigorous, the mindset brought to these tasks makes all the difference. Great leaders understand their team's diverse motivations and work to align individual goals with organisational objectives. They practise clear, two-way communication, ensuring that expectations are mutual. Adaptability is also key as team dynamics and corporate goals change; successful leaders adjust their approaches to remain effective and supportive. Strong leaders are also attentive listeners who foster a culture of open dialogue, encouraging collaboration and idea-sharing. Yet, leadership comes with challenges, including navigating personality clashes and managing diverse team dynamics. Not everyone will resonate with a leader's style or decisions, and not everyone will like you, but what matters is the ability to inspire trust and respect even amid differences. And let's not forget delegation. Delegating tasks empowers teams, builds resilience across the organisation, and allows leaders to focus on high-impact decisions. As Bill Gates said, 'As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.' It's not all struggle for leaders. One study showed that around 63% of C-suite executives find meaning in their work, with those numbers dropping off considerably as you move further down the organisational chart. Ultimately, the role of a leader – especially in large organisations – encompasses a wide array of challenging tasks and responsibilities. While these tasks are inherently difficult, leaders can develop the mindset and resilience needed to rise to the challenge. Through a combination of practical strategies and mental preparation, they can equip themselves to lead effectively, inspire their teams, and navigate the complexities of modern business. Leadership may never be easy, but with the right approach, it can be both rewarding and impactful. The writer is the head of Meydan Free Zone.
Harvard Business Review
22-05-2025
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
Agentic AI Is Already Changing the Workforce
As AI matures, the availability of so-called 'digital labor' is exploding, expanding the very definition of a qualified workforce. What was once the exclusive domain of human talent has now been joined by AI agents capable of handling many tasks once considered beyond the reach of automation—and as a result, according to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, the total addressable market for digital labor could soon reach the trillions of dollars. This requires a major shift in outlook. Emerging research out of Harvard Business School and the Digital Data Design Institute shows that AI agents are fast becoming much more than just sidekicks for human workers. They're becoming digital teammates—an emerging category of talent. To get the most out of these new teammates, leaders in HR and procurement will need to start developing an operational playbook for integrating them into hybrid teams and a workforce strategy. Those who take the time to do so will unlock not just efficiency but a more scalable and resilient form of collaboration. It's already happening: Deloitte, for example, reports that it in the process of applying AI agents to 'every' enterprise process, including a marketing agent that orchestrates many tasks focused on optimizing their customers' journeys through their site. And some talent firms, among them rPotential (a spin-off from global staffing giant, Adecco) have reimagined themselves as not just providers of human talent but also architects of a broader model that includes both people and AI. To succeed in this new environment, your organization must actively shape how AI is integrated into its labor strategy. Leaders in HR and procurement who act now will retain control over how AI is sourced, structured, and regulated in the enterprise, whereas those who hesitate risk missing out on new growth opportunities—or, worse, being blindsided by compliance, ethics, and performance issues they never saw coming. This is a general strategic concern when it comes to anything disruptive: You can no longer ignore new technologies, especially AI, hoping they'll go away. You have to be deeply engaged with building your systems so that you deeply understand how you need to adapt as the world changes. Firms that delay will also struggle to attract top human talent, as more candidates will expect smart, AI-supported workflows that enhance their productivity and creativity. Meanwhile, faster-moving competitors will embed AI directly into their operating models, enabling them to out scale and outlearn by increasing output without adding headcount. In addition, as large enterprise and government buyers begin to demand robust, auditable AI policies and governance frameworks, organizations that lack maturity in these areas will find themselves at a disadvantage, potentially losing out on critical contracts and partnerships. Inaction, therefore, is not just a missed opportunity—it's a tangible business risk. Seven Critical Actions Drawing on our collective experience within data science and AI, and in the open-talent and staffing ecosystem, we've devised framework to help you get started—a guide to help HR and procurement teams design, test, and scale a new kind of workforce strategy based on the idea of human-AI teams. Map work tasks and outcomes. The objective here is to deconstruct each role or project into its component tasks and outcomes. Just as you would define competencies for human candidates, you need to identify the tasks that can be better, faster, or more cost-effectively handled by AI agents. For instance, high-volume data validation or repetitive call-center functions might be prime candidates for AI. Meanwhile, tasks requiring complex judgment, persuasion, or deep domain expertise may still lean on human insight—or a hybrid approach. The key thing to remember is that you're not just 'buying labor' anymore. You're buying an outcome that might come from a combination of people and AI. So, start each sourcing discussion with a nuanced breakdown of tasks, so you can tailor the right mix of talent. Assess AI capability. It's vital to understand which AI models and platforms align best with your specific tasks and workflows. To do that, build an internal taxonomy of AI capabilities that map to your common roles not only in, say, data validation or call-center functions but also other roles, including marketing analyst, customer-support rep, scheduling coordinator, and so on. Language models might excel at drafting marketing copy, but specialized computer-vision agents might be best for quality checks in manufacturing. By creating a capabilities 'catalogue,' you can avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. In procurement terms, this is your RFP for AI solutions. Know which models solve which problems, and partner with staffing or technology vendors that can prove domain expertise. This ensures you're not paying top dollar for AI hype that may not match the actual needs of the business. Integrate your hybrid team. If you want AI agents and human teams to work well together, you need crystal-clear role boundaries. So, develop a hybrid-workforce strategy in which you define which tasks AI will own, which tasks people will own, and how the escalation of problems should happen. For example, if an AI customer-service agent receives a complaint about a complex billing dispute that concerns an amount above a certain dollar threshold, a rule might automatically route it to a human specialist. By documenting roles, protocols, and 'hand-off' points when responsibilities shift in a workflow from one party to another, you build trust across your organization, preventing conflict or duplication. Redesign your business (and workforce) model. This requires envisioning new ways to procure and deploy talent, including full-time employees, temporary hires, freelancers, and AI. To do that, you'll need to consider multi-tiered models such as client-owned digital labor (you license or build your own AI solutions, effectively bringing 'digital employees' in-house); leased digital labor (you 'rent' AI agents from a third party, in a manner akin to traditional temp staffing); and fully outsourced AI subdepartments (you partner with a vendor that runs entire processes, such as order fulfillment or call centers, using both AI and a small team of human experts). Align these models with your financial, compliance, and strategic needs. For instance, leasing AI might be ideal for seasonal spikes, whereas fully outsourced solutions could be more efficient for repetitive but critical functions. Keep in mind that your role is to integrate and manage a wide spectrum of labor types, which will require developing new KPIs and cost structures that reflect digital labor's unique economics (scalability, near-constant uptime, quick retraining) compared to human labor. Set legal and ethical ground rules. The point here is to proactively address bias, liability, data governance, and broader societal implications of AI-led work. To do that, you'll need to collaborate with legal, compliance, and ethics teams to draft enterprise-wide standards for AI usage. These policies should define whether and how AI learns from proprietary data, how to detect and remedy bias, and how to safeguard personal or sensitive information. If your enterprise is global, anticipate a patchwork of regulations in different jurisdictions. This is important: Ethical missteps —like discriminatory hiring algorithms or data misuse—can ignite PR crises and create regulatory liabilities. Many governments are moving quickly on AI legislation. Firms that proactively create frameworks and foster AI culture early will be able to adjust and react to future legislation much better than firms who wait and are forced to start the process after any legislation. Capture value continuously as it evolves. To do this properly, you'll need to constantly monitor performance, measure outcomes, and refine your AI-human mix. Think beyond a one-time AI deployment. Establish feedback loops that measure performance, update AI training data, and revise your sourcing strategies. For instance, if your AI-based scheduling tool frequently encounters edge cases requiring human intervention, you may need more advanced AI training or more robust human oversight. Traditional 'set it and forget it' approaches to staffing don't apply here. AI's value compounds over time as it learns from interactions. Negotiate contractual agreements that let you capture improvements while also respecting the intellectual property (IP) rights of your vendor or the data sovereignty of your enterprise. Remain human-centric. AI reduces the need for people to conduct mundane tasks and elevates the importance of high-value, human-led tasks. Ensuring that employees can continue to carry these latter tasks out not only sustains morale but also delivers differentiating value to your enterprise, which is something your competitors can't simply download. So invest in forms of training and skill development that enable employees to not only adapt to working alongside AI but also leverage AI to amplify their own impact. Focus on capabilities like relationship building, ethical decision-making, and creativity—areas where humans still have a distinct edge. Preparing for Radical Change Whether you adopt AI labor directly or source it through a staffing or open-talent provider, ask yourself these pivotal questions to guide your strategy: When AI is trained on your proprietary data, who owns the resulting capabilities, you or the owner of the AI model or agent? Are new legal frameworks needed, including employment-like contracts for AI agents, and who bears liability if the AI makes a mistake? Are there oversight and equity questions that remain unresolved? What guidelines exist for choosing between humans and AI for certain jobs, especially when ethics, brand reputation, or job protection are on the line? And, ultimately, an open question for discussion: How will the very definition of 'work' evolve when AI agents become embedded in teams, possibly even gaining legal or ethical status? It's not necessary to answer all of these questions upfront, but use them as a guide and continue to answer them along your journey. These are not theoretical concerns—they're strategic inflection points. The organizations that move first to resolve them will shape how the future of work is defined and who controls its value. As you consider how to move forward, reflect on the guiding principle of human centricity. While AI can handle many tasks more quickly than humans, your enterprise still relies on the insight, empathy, and relationships that only people can deliver. By maintaining this dual focus—on unleashing AI's efficiency and safeguarding human creativity—you stand the best chance of driving sustainable growth.
