Rudy Giuliani

A possible future candidate for the presidency of the United States, former New York Mayor and honorary knight of the British Empire, Rudy Giuliani is a major public figure. It is impossible to forget the images of him, sleeves rolled up, tacking the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre.

Giuliani will make his first ever trip to the Middle East to address the Leaders in Dubai conference on November 29-30, expected to be the city's largest event since the 2003 Annual Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

According to Giuliani, there are five principles that are common to any leader. The first is having a set of beliefs and knowing what they are. The second is courage.

He says: 'Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is feeling fear and being able to overcome it. Optimism is essential to courage and is a lot more fun than pessimism.'

The third principle, he believes, is preparation. 'If you prepare for everything else relentlessly, you will be able to respond to the unexpected as if intuitively.'

Giuliani assumed that New York was under threat from terrorism, and built on lessons learned from a terrorist bomb in 1993.

He created the Office of Emergency Management and built a $13 million emergency command center in the World Trade Centre complex. He increased security and restricted access around City Hall, and held drills playing out disaster scenarios, from anthrax attacks to truck bombs to poison-gas releases.

The preparation and the drills ensured that when 9/11 happened, everyone in city government knew how to respond. Then in the weeks after September 11, but before anthrax was sent to targets in Manhattan, Giuliani held meetings with the FBI to discuss the threat.

From these briefings, Giuliani was able to brief the public properly: he treated the public to honest information and when he told the public not to panic, they didn't.

Principle four is teamwork. As Giuliani explains: 'No leader ever operates on his or her own. A leader needs to know his or her strengths and weaknesses and figure out how to counterbalance the weaknesses. All human institutions have weaknesses.'

Finally, a leader needs to communicate. 'You've got to be able to talk to people and express what you believe. Listening matters as much as talking.'

Giuliani has been called 'the leader the nation yearned for' and his forthright views on leadership and politics have made headlines over the past decade. He will join six of the world's most influential business leaders for the Dubai event, including General Electric's former CEO, Jack Welch.

Giuliani will be prepared for a mixed reception. He refused a $10 million donation from Saudi Arabia's Prince Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz soon after the 9/11 attacks, a controversial though understandable decision.

This is not to say he was expressing anti-Arab sentiment, rather that he declared that political comments were not appropriate at the time. Giuliani in fact insisted that the first 9/11 memorial service should include a Muslim imam and he was vocal in his comments that the city's Arab-Americans were not to be blamed.