What qualities and or experience a manager must have in order to be effective in a fiercely culturally diverse working environment such as UAE?

I don't have any personal experience of work culture in UAE,however as leader I belive following attributes are a must for a leader to be sucessful in a religiously,culturally diversified culture.

1.You should be a good listener and have patience for the same.

2.You should have respect for your colleague irrespective of his ethnic bacgroung.

3.You should have an attitude to get along well with peers colleagues in a diversified culture

4.You should do home work to know little bit of culture of each employee in order to understand them and get the work done from them.

5.On the top of it you should know your job well and behave as a coach and not a boss A coach is a mentor who practically shows them how to do the job and A boss thinks I will sit in a chair and get the job done from people and Boss has few people to follow and Coach is Coach for the whole team.Thus A good Manager is a good Coach and will be successful in a fierce competitive and diversified work environment.

I AM IN MANAGEMENT SINCE LAST 30 YRS  , I REALISE THE MOST DIFFICULT THING IS  TO MANAGE PEOPLE, IF ANY ONE HAS THE ART TO WIN HEARTS AND COMMAND RESPECT, THEN HE CAN  BE A SUCCESSFUL MANAGER AND IT IS POSSOBILE ONLY WHEN U DONT CULTIVATE DOUBLE STANDARDS AND INFERIOR POLITICS IN BUSINESS AND IN DAY TO DAY LIFE.   GENTLE AND STRAIGHT FORWARD PERSONS WITH , SOFT TONGUE, AND STRONG  WORK ETHICS. HAVE BUILD COMPANIES AND NATIONS. LIFE IS A CHALLENGE AND ONLY THOSE CAN BE SUCCESSFUL WHO ARE DEDICATED BOLD AND SINCERE IN APPROACH.  

hi Ali and Alamgeer

thank you both for the most valuable responses. my own personal perspective is that

1. a manager needs to be to a position to understand business, political and most importantly the cultural environments all over the world.

2. important role also plays the awareness of the various trends, perspectives and tastes of many other cultures.

3. have the ability to work with employees from various cultural backgrounds.

4. able to adapt to living and obviously communicating in others cultures

5. and most important is their ability to relate to people from other cultural backgrounds not based to their culture superiority but on equality.

The obvious question from the above is how can someone acquire such skills? I personally believe that is down to the persons experience in working in multicultural environments. In a way to gain the knowledge which as a result from his/her own experiences as manager.

In a cultural diverse environment, which is the case in many countries nowadays due to the proximity caused by communications, one MUST have an open mind, listen thoroughly, understand and accept to learn a few new things from different cultures. So in UAE, you have diverse cultures + different personalities, which means dealing with each will be differnt, and sometimes you'll have to accept what you are not accustomed to

I have no experience working in the UAE but I will comment as follow;

Employees from all walks of life  they like to be valued and respected as individuals, the PM will need to be;

1/ Good listener, ask open question, understand before trying to judge.

2/ Good coach (helps people to deal with challenges themselves)

3/ Honesty and deals with uncomfortable truths

4/ Delivery always deliver his half of the psychological bargain

5/ Style, respect different styles and skills

6/ Vision and direction, make his/ her department vision relevant 

 To this end a word of wisdom, the above is a hard work and will take commitment on both sides, good luck.

In my experience GULF peoples are so sensitive  so @Patience is virtue@ here.

1.Be honest and truthful to them.

2.listen to their problems

3.Double checking is more vital

4.Be punctual and polite.

The simple answer to this question is .. Respect !!

Gaining respect for your position as manager is simple but things will never change unless your team has respect for you as a person.

workingi in UAE as a Manager depends on the discipline of work that you might be BUT you must be adaptable to the working environment, you must be expert in communication to influence everyone to realize the business objectives. you must be the one expert in your own field. Since working in UAE is dynamic and expensive, your vision, ledearship and management ability fit within the organization. you must be able to understand the needs of your employees.