In this interview Mustafa Al Basheer discusses how leadership has evolved during Saudi Arabia's transformation and how the next generation of HR leaders can influence organisational culture, capability and resilience
Mustafa Al Basheer is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD (FCIPD) and SHRM-SCP with 19 years' experience leading large-scale organisational transformation in Saudi Arabia. He has built high-growth HR frameworks, pioneered data-led people analytics, and delivered Saudisation and governance strategies aligned with Vision 2030. He currently leads HR for a multi-sector services group in the Eastern Province and is completing an MBA in Business Analytics at Hult Business School.
To lead within the rapidly changing landscape of Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, a leader must possess two essential qualities: intellectual humility and a global mindset.
Intellectual humility is the self-awareness to admit that you don’t have all the answers, and to me, that’s the starting point of a learning culture. Rather than impose solutions from the top, I’ve learned to assume I’m missing something and go and find it. When I was asked to reduce a fabrication business’s heavy reliance on subcontracted labour, I didn’t assume I knew the fix; I went looking for evidence and expertise – commissioning a skill-gap analysis and drawing on technical institutes to understand what our workforce truly needed. What that humility led to was telling: rather than a quick staffing patch, we built an in-house training academy, making continuous learning a permanent part of how the organisation operates. That reshaped the culture – our Saudi employees stopped seeing themselves as temporary hands and began to see themselves as a core part of the organisation’s identity and future.
Equally important is a global mindset. Over my 19 years’ experience in the Saudi market, I have watched our workforce grow more diverse, and a leader has to genuinely respect and draw on those varied cultural perspectives to lead and inspire people. I use this to establish trust and transparency, which is what makes open, honest communication possible across a multinational team.
Ultimately, I apply both qualities the same way: by honouring each person’s role, listening before I decide, and making sure people feel their work matters. That is how you move a culture from compliance to genuine ownership.
As organisations grow and change, new leaders should focus on three main things: understanding data, leading authentically, and having a step-by-step growth mindset.
First, leaders need to understand data and business analytics. Knowing how to read workforce data helps you make fair, smart, and objective decisions, rather than just guessing.
Second, you must balance the numbers with a human touch through authentic leadership. This means being honest, self-aware, and open with your team. When things change fast, this genuine honesty builds the trust needed to keep everyone working together.
Finally, new leaders must remember that great leadership is built step-by-step. No one is an overnight success. By focusing on small, daily improvements and continuous learning, rather than trying to be a 'natural genius', leaders will build the strength to handle any future challenges.
I have been in the Saudi market for 19 years now, and as my role has grown, I’ve had to be intentional about not losing my focus. For me, staying grounded means forcing myself to always remain a student. I truly believe that putting yourself in the position of a learner – like pursuing my MBA at this stage in my career – is the most effective way to prevent arrogance. It reinforces the understanding that you don’t have all the answers and keeps your ego in check.
I rely on basic fairness in HR to keep my approach values-driven. When things get complicated, I step back and ask if the outcome is fair to both the employee and the company. It sounds simple, yet it cuts through the noise. To stay connected, my main rule is to never just sit at my desk. I get out, walk around, and talk with the people on the ground. You have to hear about their day-to-day reality in order to truly understand the people running the business. There have been times when a conversation on the floor changed a call I was about to make – something the reports alone would never have shown me. To me, that is the real point of staying connected: it keeps your decisions honest.
My advice to all new leaders is simple: if you want to remain humble, you must get comfortable owning your mistakes. It is easy to put on a front after a promotion, but taking responsibility and sharing what you’ve learned builds trust. It proves that you are accountable and allows your team to feel safe doing the same.
To shift from managing to serving, make this question a daily habit: “What is blocking your work, and how can I remove that barrier?” When you ask this, you prove that you aren't just a boss demanding output – you are a partner committed to your team’s success. Third, actively invite people to challenge you. Humility is not only about owning your own mistakes; it is about building a culture where someone junior feels safe telling you that you are wrong. When you reward that rather than punish it, you get better decisions – and a stronger culture.
Leadership here in Saudi Arabia has shaped the way I view the world. Our culture is really not about power or a great title, but about taking care of people and helping them grow.
For me, 'Amanah' is the most important word – the deep trust that comes with leading others. When I have to make a difficult HR decision, I always go back to it. I ask myself if I’m fulfilling that trust with fairness and honesty. During the pandemic, for example, there was strong pressure to release employees under a government scheme that would have saved us their payroll. Amanah pulled me the other way. I argued for keeping their contracts active and using our training budget to reskill them remotely, because the trust they had placed in us was a responsibility, not a cost line. They returned sharper than before, and we delivered our projects on time. It is worth saying that this was not a decision made on values alone. I built the evidence to support it – weighing the client penalties we would face without those workers against the payroll saving, and the real cost and time of rebuilding a trained team from scratch. The evidence and the principle pointed the same way, and that is what gave me the confidence to hold my position with senior colleagues.
I also believe that our culture is about generosity; to me, that means more than hospitality. It means being generous with what I know. A leader shouldn’t hoard information; we should be teachers and mentors. When we share what we know and work together to create harmony, people stop seeing their job as just a way to earn a salary and start feeling like they’re truly a part of it. That’s how you turn a workplace into a community, and that community is the basis of everything we do.
If you want to lead well in Saudi Arabia today, you have to look beyond management techniques and anchor your leadership in our core cultural principles. I suggest these three pillars to help younger leaders develop their identity and lead effectively.
First, use Amanah as your compass. It is much more than just being honest; it is a deep sense of stewardship. When you realize that your team’s trust is a responsibility you must protect, you stop playing short-term games and start focusing on what is truly just and fair for the people you lead.
Second, be generous with your knowledge. Do not become so attached to what you know that you forget the value of sharing it. You can impact the world by mentoring others, teaching them, and encouraging them to grow. By helping even one person succeed, you increase the quality of the entire group and strengthen the organisation as a whole.
Finally, remember that leadership is not about being the loudest or most powerful person in the room; it is about building a community. When you make people feel seen, respected, and part of a shared mission, they will naturally give their best. Focus on building that community, because that is what endures: people who feel genuine ownership stay, give more of themselves, and carry the culture forward long after you have moved on.
Vision 2030, led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has been a real turning point for me – and for all of us as Saudis. Watching him work to change our country has changed how I think about leadership. We aren't just sitting in offices and doing our jobs anymore. We're helping build the future of our country.
This changed how I see HR. It's not just about training or 'capability building' as a routine task. To me, it's about getting our people ready for the fast changes happening in our market. I focus on staying flexible, because we need to meet global standards while keeping our own identity.
I try to bring that same energy to my team. I don't just hand out tasks – I explain the 'why'. I want them to see how our daily work connects to the bigger goal of the Vision. When my team sees that their work really matters for the country, they become stronger and more focused. We're building our future together – and that makes the hard work worth it.
A clear example is the workforce strategy I led to reduce a fabrication business’s reliance on subcontracted labour and build sustainable local capability—directly serving the Vision’s goal of empowering Saudi talent. I approached it as the CEO’s strategic partner, not as an HR function: I framed it for the board not as a training initiative but as a way to reduce our exposure to labour-cost volatility and workforce risk. The results made the case in terms the board could see – project margins rose by around 20–25%, client satisfaction climbed from about 80% to 90%, and our project awards grew from an average of two to five. That is what capability building means to me under Vision 2030: not routine training, but people strategy that delivers national goals and business results at the same time.
I believe emerging leaders must go beyond traditional management to play an active role in the Kingdom's transformation — a transformation that is already delivering real results, with Saudi unemployment falling to 6.8% and beating the Vision 2030 target of 7% ahead of schedule (Ministry of Human Resources).
In my view, three capabilities are essential:
First, master adaptive agility. Change in the Kingdom is moving fast. Leaders must be able to read the market, anticipate what's coming, and act decisively – all while keeping their teams focused and morale high.
Second, cultivate human-centric data literacy. Technology is driving our transformation – the digital economy already contributes around 15% of national GDP (Vision 2030 Report) – but numbers can’t tell you the whole story. Effective leaders combine analytics with empathy to remove systemic barriers and empower the people around them.
Third, lead with purpose. Vision 2030 is a national mission, and leaders must connect each person's daily work to that larger goal. When your team understands that their individual contribution is a building block of our national success, you build the kind of ownership and belonging that makes a team resilient enough to succeed through constant change.
I have a habit of 'cognitive cross-training' to stay effective during periods of intense organisational change. I intentionally spend time learning things outside of HR, such as 3D modeling and architectural design.
These aren’t just hobbies; they are essential brain exercises. When I move from HR strategy to the technical precision of drafting architectural plans or building 3D environments, I engage entirely different parts of my mind. I also make it a priority to solve complex puzzles and play games that require high-energy, strategic thinking. These challenges keep my problem-solving skills flexible and prevent 'tunnel vision.' By constantly pushing myself to learn and think differently, I can approach HR problems with the creativity of a designer and the precision of an engineer. Just as importantly, stepping into a completely different discipline resets my mind – it is how I stay centred when the pressure is highest, letting me come back to a problem calmer and clearer than I left it.
I'd recommend turning a few simple practices into daily habits.
First, be consistent. Keep your promises and be someone your team can rely on – trust grows when people know what to expect from you.
Second, listen more than you speak. When you genuinely listen, people are far more likely to listen to you in return and stand behind your decisions.
Third, take the blame when things go wrong and give your team the credit when things go right. This is the one I feel most strongly about: shielding your people when things go wrong, and stepping back when they go right, earns a loyalty that no title or authority ever can.
Fourth, be transparent. Always explain the 'why' behind your decisions so your team feels respected and included.
Finally, never stop learning outside your own field. Exploring areas like technology or design gives you a broader perspective and helps you solve problems more creatively. That curiosity is what makes you a stronger, more effective leader.
Looking ahead, I see three critical challenges for Saudi leaders, especially as we prepare for Generation Alpha – the digital-native generation who are now starting to enter the workforce:
First, using AI while keeping the human touch. AI is changing how we work, but the real challenge is using it to handle the boring, repetitive tasks so we have more time for what truly matters: mentoring and connecting with our people. We must use technology to support our employees, not replace them. I also see this as an investment question tied directly to Vision 2030. Saudi Arabia has one of the youngest populations in the region – around 71% of Saudi nationals are under the age of 35, with a median age of just 23.5 – and that is a genuine competitive advantage if we act on it. The leaders who invest early – putting digital tools, AI fluency, and modern ways of working into the hands of our young Saudis now – are the ones who will turn that demographic into national capability rather than leaving it untapped. Technology adoption, for me, is not a cost line; it is how we equip the next generation to carry the Vision forward.
Second, bridging the skills gap. As technology moves fast, leaders must become 'architects of learning'. We need to create a culture where constant learning is normal, helping our teams, including the young talent of Gen Alpha, work alongside AI tools rather than feeling replaced by them.
Finally, leading a multi-generational workforce. We are now bringing together experienced professionals and the new, tech-first Gen Alpha. The challenge is to bridge that gap. We must use data and AI to make fair, objective decisions, while making sure that every employee, no matter their age, feels that their work is a vital part of our country’s success. Underpinning all of this is the national talent challenge. As localisation targets rise, the hard part is not simply hiring more Saudis—it is that the market cannot yet supply enough skilled technical talent to meet demand. In my experience, the answer is to stop treating this as a recruitment problem and start treating it as a building problem: investing early in academies, structured training pipelines, and long-term development so we grow the capability the Kingdom needs rather than competing over a pool that is too small. Leaders who master this, turning localisation from a compliance obligation into genuine capability-building, will be the ones who move the Vision forward.
Looking ahead, there are four future-ready capabilities I would encourage aspiring leaders to start building now, especially as we prepare for Generation Alpha – the digital-native cohort born from 2010 onwards - who will begin entering the workforce over the coming decade:
Human-AI fluency: Don't just learn to use AI; learn to lead alongside it. That means asking the right questions, making sense of data-driven insights, and knowing when a decision calls for human judgment, ethics, and empathy instead.
Adaptive cognitive flexibility: Think of it as cognitive cross-training. Step outside your comfort zone – whether that's design, data, or technical modeling – and get used to solving problems from unfamiliar angles. The more perspectives you can draw on, the faster you'll navigate the rapid change we're all facing.
Inclusive Relational Intelligence: As digital-native Generation Alpha enters the workforce, leaders have to bridge the generational gap. Learn to build psychological safety, so that seasoned professionals and young talent alike feel their work is a valued, vital part of our national growth.
Building Capability Beyond Yourself: The most future-ready leaders measure themselves not by what they deliver personally, but by the capability they leave behind. That means treating succession and talent development as core work, not an afterthought - deliberately building benches, growing the people who will step into critical roles, and making sure the organisation is more capable and more resilient than you found it. In a market moving as fast as ours, the leaders who endure are the ones who make themselves replaceable, because they have built something that outlasts them.
Mentorship has shaped my career more than any single promotion or qualification. Over my 19 years, the mentors who made the biggest impact didn’t just give me orders – they asked the hard questions instead of handing me the answers, trusted me with responsibility before I felt ready, and pushed me to see potential in myself that I didn't know I had.
I’ve also learned that mentorship isn't limited to the office. I’ve found great mentors in many places — through workshops, professional courses, and networking outside of my daily job. These experiences taught me that learning from others is something you do everywhere, not just at work.
This is exactly how I lead today. When I mentor young people, I don't just focus on their daily tasks. I help them develop a 'big-picture' view, encouraging them to learn new skills outside their field and see how their work supports our national mission.
My goal is to be the kind of coach I wish I’d had. I create a space where they feel safe to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them. I don't just want to tell them what to do; I want to help them find their own voice. Investing in them is the best way I know to help build the future we are working toward under Vision 2030.
To build real relationships with mentors, focus on being a serious, curious learner instead of just asking for favors. Don't go looking for someone to hand you a promotion—look for leaders who inspire you by the way they think, and ask them how they solve problems and make tough decisions.
Don't limit your search to your boss, either. Some of my best mentors were people I met at workshops, courses, and industry events, which are great places to meet leaders who bring a fresh perspective.
Always respect their time: instead of asking 'Can you mentor me?', ask specific questions about a skill you're trying to build. And once you get advice, act on it – follow up and share what you learned, because that shows you're worth their investment.
Above all, be genuine. When you show real respect for someone's experience and a true hunger to grow, a lasting relationship tends to follow naturally.
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