Transformational Leadership Style Analysis

This assignment provides an in-depth analysis of the transformational leadership style of Saleh Al Abdooli, highlighting its key components and effectiveness in driving human resource development and employee engagement. The author discusses the challenges they face in implementing this style, including a lack of experience as a leader, but aims to become more extroverted and open-minded in future. The assignment draws on various references, including academic articles and books, to explore the concepts of transformational leadership and its impact on employee engagement.

Running head: ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
Topic: Organization Behavior
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

1ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
Introduction
Effective leadership is one of the most important components for an organization to
become successful (Vasu et al., 2017). This essay will discuss the key qualities of a
transformational leader and the impact of such leadership on organizational success. Saleh Al
Abdooli, the present CEO of Etisalat, a telecommunication service provider in Middle east has
been selected as the transformational leader for this discussion. With the leadership style of
Saleh Al, Etisalat has able to achieve maximum success within just 5 years (Etisalat.ae, 2018).
Appraisal from his followers and positive commitment of human resource has been effective due
to transformational leadership approach, which will be further discussed.
Critical Thinking of Transformational Leadership Style
According to McCleskey (2014), transformational leaders possess five major personality
traits, which are extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness and
Conscientiousness. While considering the leadership qualities of Saleh Al Abdooli, it can be
understood that he is quite extrovert and loves to accompany any level managers, supervisors or
even employees within very short period. Moreover, being a transformational leader, Roueche et
al. (2014) pointed out that one must be well open towards gaining new experience though
innovation and strategic motives. This has been the same with Saleh Al Abdooli as he rebuilt the
network and technology sharing protocols from scratch for Etisalat from 3G to 3.75G and finally
introduced fiber-connectivity in 2014. Furthermore, being a transformational leader,Breevaart et
al. (2014) highlighted that one must be agreeabletowards employee demands and this has been
the greatest quality of Saleh Al Abdooli has he has always tried to settle collective demands from
any level of Etisalat.

2ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
According to Engelen et al. (2015), transformational leader works one among the sub-
ordinates by creating a vision of change and implement the same with royal motivation from
employees within the organization. Saleh Al joined Etisalat in 2012 and since then created the
vision of becoming the strongest and widest network provider in Middle East. Since 2012, Saleh
Alinspired all operational managers andsupervisors across branches of the nation to work a team.
Eventually, he acted as the motivator, morale developer and performer guidance through variety
of mechanisms. Qu et al. (2015) pointed out that once an organization becomes successful in
creating the sense of collective identity and operates unitedly it surely becomes to be the greatest
ownership. While considering the impact of Saleh Al’s transformational leadership style on
Etisalat, it can be found that the organization has the lowest attrition rate from 2013 and has the
highest pool of talented employeesacross Middle East telecommunication sector. Moreover, his
leadership has actualized Broadband Internet services (Al Shamil and eLife) and 4G Mobile
Internet access in Etisalat leading it to cover more than 90 percent of country’s populated
areas.Therefore, it can be said that being the transformational leader Saleh Al has able to satisfy
the human resource and motivate them by creating the vision through inspiration to be the part of
the biggest telecommunication company in Middle East.
Saleh Al started his career with Etisalat group in the year 1992 as the Mobile System
Planning Engineer. He had to undergo several roles and worked under several supervisors. Being
one of the nest performers, he was promoted to become the Chief Engineer in Mobile Systems
Planning and Managing Engineer to the Chairman of Etisalat Group’s technical committee.
While being through such a long journey, Saleh Al had experienced the employee grievances,
causes of employee dissatisfaction, impact of work pressure, negative impact of organizational
culture and value of rewards. Therefore, while being the part of high level employee, Saleh Al

3ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
always tried to listen and mitigate employee grievances. He always tried to be the part of system
and process rather being the controller or manager. As pointed out by Avolio (2016),
organizational leaders must always ensure employee satisfaction and guide them to achieve
success, similarly Saleh Al stood by his fellow project team members and guided them to
achieve target and deliver projects within stipulated deadline. In this way by performing as an
active leader with employee-centric approach Saleh Al has able to acquire the qualities of
transformational leader.
Considering the above example of leadership, and as pointed out by Schmitt et al. (2016),
it can be identified that the main components of a transformational leader are influencing nature,
inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration. A
transformational leader contains the qualities such as motivating and inspiring employees, create
a vison for future, satisfy employee grievances and create a suitable blend of culture that satisfies
all level of employees (Dong et al., 2017). While considering myself, I feel to cover some of the
components and qualities of transformational leader which are influencing nature, individualized
consideration and agreeableness. On the other hand, I lack the most important qualities which are
being extrovert, openness to experience and being intellectual for strategic innovation.
I believe myself to become a transformational leader in future because at present I not get
the scope to socialize in the workplace, however in forthcoming days while working in groups
and communities in an organization I will definitely become an extrovert and share my
inspirational thoughts with employees. Moreover, I have the fear to experience new scope but in
future I will need to work with experienced talented workforce from whom I will gather
knowledge and openness to experience. Finally, I will need to gather ideas related to

4ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
organizational stakeholders and based on that implement my innovative and creative power by
guiding and directing employees to perform in new direction.
Conclusion
Transformational leadership has been found to have best components of a leadership style
that helps in stimulating and developing human resource base. While considering the
transformational leadership style of Saleh Al Abdooli, it has been found that only through such
motivational and visionary approaches Etisalat has able to establish the highest market share in
telecommunication sector of United Arab Emirates. I have able to understand all the components
of transformational leadership style however, I will need to mitigate my shortcomings pertaining
to being extrovert, openness to experience and being intellectual in future to become a successful
leader.

5ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
References
Avolio, B. J., Keng-Highberger, F. T., Schaubroeck, J., Trevino, L. K., & Kozlowski, S. W.
(2016, January). How Follower Attributes Affect Ratings of Ethical and Transformational
Leadership. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2016, No. 1, p. 16854).
Academy of Management.
Breevaart, K., Bakker, A., Hetland, J., Demerouti, E., Olsen, O. K., & Espevik, R. (2014). Daily
transactional and transformational leadership and daily employee engagement. Journal of
occupational and organizational psychology, 87(1), 138-157.
Dong, Y., Bartol, K. M., Zhang, Z. X., & Li, C. (2017). Enhancing employee creativity via
individual skill development and team knowledge sharing: Influences of dual‐focused
transformational leadership. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38(3), 439-458.
Engelen, A., Gupta, V., Strenger, L., & Brettel, M. (2015). Entrepreneurial orientation, firm
performance, and the moderating role of transformational leadership behaviors. Journal
of Management, 41(4), 1069-1097.
Etisalat.ae. (2018). Etisalat UAE | Go Smart. Etisalat.ae. Retrieved 25 March 2018, from
https://www.etisalat.ae/en/biz/go_smart.jsp
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and
leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.
Qu, R., Janssen, O., & Shi, K. (2015). Transformational leadership and follower creativity: The
mediating role of follower relational identification and the moderating role of leader
creativity expectations. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(2), 286-299.

6ORGANIZATION BEHAVIOR
Roueche, P. E., Baker III, G. A., & Rose, R. R. (2014). Shared vision: Transformational
leadership in American community colleges. Rowman & Littlefield.
Schmitt, A., Den Hartog, D. N., & Belschak, F. D. (2016). Transformational leadership and
proactive work behaviour: A moderated mediation model including work engagement
and job strain. Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, 89(3), 588-610.
Vasu, M. L., Stewart, D. W., & Garson, G. D. (Eds.). (2017). Organizational Behavior and
Public Management, Revised and Expanded. Routledge.