Muhammad Azam Roomi on how Drucker’s ideas chime with Islamic leadership

Pillars of wisdom

Peter Drucker’s ideas and principles have uncanny similarities to the main tenets of Islamic leadership, remarks Muhammad Azam Roomi

In my research, I have been exploring the Islamic perspective of leadership, and Peter Drucker’s work is quite applicable to that topic. Indeed, there is a possibility he may have learned about the cultural attitude of Muslims, or

Islamic leadership theory.

Islamic leadership is based on three pillars:

• Mutual consultation • Justice with equity • Freedom of expression

Those pillars are joined together with five qualities:

• Personal integrity • Enhancement of relationships • Effectiveness • Ethical conduct • Moral uplift

These are values that have been mentioned in modern management literature time and again. But the three pillars, and the qualities that bind or strengthen them, have been part of Islamic history for the past 1,400 or 1,500 years. The teachings inherent in these elements are being exercised by leaders working here in the Middle East.

The world has much to learn from this region. While the philosophy I have outlined above already exists in much of the current literature on best-practice leadership, here it can be found in a clearer, more distilled form. What I’ve learned is that the best leadership comes from the heart. It’s about hunger for wisdom, and expecting the best from your followers and peers. By the same token, you must accept responsibility for any issues that occur in your organisation, and respond with courage. And you must think about others first.

Whenever I read a Peter Drucker book in the context of my own research, I find a number of striking similarities. The origin of wisdom is nature. So perhaps Drucker, a wise man and thought leader, drew upon that for his ideas of effective leadership: of employees being assets, not liabilities – and of the most important aspect of communication being not so much what is said, but listening.

That is one of his most famous quotations. And it resonates clearly with Islam’s concepts of mutual consultation and enhancement of relationships – for that enhancement depends upon a leader being a good listener, having empathy, thinking of others and trying to understand what they want.

In Islam, leadership is based on mutual consultation. Leaders must share knowledge and Drucker perspectives with their peers or followers. That talks about is a process that Peter how a leader Drucker advocates. And if we turn to the second must examine pillar, justice with equity, issues we find that Drucker talks about how a leader must through a examine a particular issue lens of justice through a lens of justice. He also says that a leader must make room for freedom of expression.

So, this is a time when Western scholars can engage with and learn more about the concepts behind Islamic leadership theory, and discover how universal they are. If you go into the roots of those concepts, you will find that key areas have plenty of lessons for a wider audience – indeed, for the whole world – and that these principles of leadership are especially valuable for these turbulent times.

Dr Muhammad Azam Roomi is professor of entrepreneurship at Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammad Bin Salman College. He is also a business-growth coach and an angel investor