My name is M.Miandy a/l Munusamy. I was born in Changloon, Kedah on 21 November 1978. I am graduated from University Malaya in Business Administration in the year 2002. After that, I worked at Maju Institute of Educational Development (M.I.E.D). The Chairman of MIED is YBhg. Dato’ Seri S.Samy Vellu. I was appointed as a Loan Relation Officer to handle students study loan applications. After working for 6 months, I furthered my studies in Msc. Management at The Robert Gordon University, Scotland and graduated in the year 2004. I continued my career at MIED until March 2009 and joined Civil Service on April 2009 as Assistant Secretary at Ministry of Higher Education.
The great leader that inspired my life is Dato’ Seri S. Samy Vellu. Before I elaborate more about the Leader of Malaysian Indians Dato’ Seri S. Samy Vellu, I would like to tell how I first met Dato Seri’. I cannot forget that day some years back when Dato’ Seri pulled out his handkerchief and wiped away the tears from my mother’s cheeks!I was there with my mother in Kangar, Perlis. We had come to see Dato’ Seri, who was there for a Meeting. Coming from a poverty-stricken family, I was in dire need of money to further my education at University Malaya. After my father died, my rubber tapper mother single-handedly looked after nine siblings of mine. I had secured a place to pursue a degree in Business Administration at University Malaya but it was just impossible for her to fund my education.
After exploring all possibilities, I decided to meet Dato’ Seri when he attended the meeting. My mother and I waited outside the Meeting room. We approached him as he was leaving as my mother began to explain our plight but, in a sudden outburst, he told us he was unable to help. He then got into his car and left to Alor Star. My mother and I lingered on at the hall, trying to recover from what had happened. To our surprise, we saw Dato’ Seri’s car coming back. I found out later that the compassionate Dato’ Seri had instructed his driver to turn back to Kangar, Perlis when the car had already done 15 kms. Dato’ Seri came up to us, and he asked me: “Why didn’t you tell me that your father had passed away?” Tears started rolling down my mother’s cheeks then. When he saw this, Dato’ Seri reached into his pocket, took out his handkerchief and wiped away her tears. He then gave me RM1,000 and told me to register at University Malaya for the degree programme. This moment gave good opportunity for me to continue my studies at University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur
When I started work with Dato’ Seri Samy Vellu at MIED as Loan Relation Officer, I had opportunity to learn the ways Dato’ Seri led 6 organizations under Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). He is the leader who always plans ahead before he makes any decision. He worked more than 14 hours a day. As a Minister of Works, he will meet all the Head of the 6 organisations under MIC every Monday to deliver his mission to every organisation to perform that particular week. He also will ask the HOD to send weekly report to him in order to monitor the performance all the organisations.
The strengths and great things of Dato’ Seri is that he will meet more than 500 people all around Malaysia every Tuesday morning starting from 6.00 am to 11.00 am at his office in Kuala Lumpur. He will meet all the people personally to understand their problems and delegates the works to relevant officers to tackle and handle the problems. This shows Dato’ Seri is the leader who always thinks about people’s needs.
Moreover, Dato’ Seri gives priority to time management. He always asks his officers to come earlier to office and settle their work. Dato’ Seri is also a leader who maintains punctuality to every meeting or programme he attended. In order to maintain the time management in 6 organisations, Dato’ Seri asked the entire HOD to set their watch and employees watch ahead 10 minutes. This is to make sure every employee in the 6 organisations respect time and served people at the needy time.
The most powerful leadership skills I learned from Dato’ Seri is the way he makes decision at the meetings. Dato’ Seri always will listen to the opinion from the members of the meeting. The decision he makes in the meeting will satisfy all the members of the meeting. Other than that, the decisions also will create a good and quality outcome in short duration.
Dato' Seri is also very particular when it comes to employees’ welfare. For that, he instructed the entire HOD to purchase life insurance for all employees. Reward for the best employees of the month for the entire organization also was part of the leadership skill of Dato Seri. He likes to win his employees heart. He also will allocate some funds for annual dinner and trip to overseas and around Malaysia
Strategic thinking is one of best leadership tools Dato’ Seri S. Samy Vellu used to move forward the Malaysian Indians. He always emphasize in his speeches to all Malaysian Indians all over Malaysia
Story about Dato’ Seri S. Samy Vellu shows that he is the great leader of Malaysian Indians for past 30 years. The leadership skills of Dato’ Seri likes time management, decision making, planning ahead, communication skills, setting example, evaluating and controlling makes him as an excellent leader for the Malaysian Indian community.
In order to be good leader in an organisation, leadership skill plays a major role to bring success for an organisation. Therefore, leaders of organisation should attend more leadership courses to gain more knowledge about leadership and also must learn from past leader’s skills and techniques. In addition to that, leaders also should benchmark their organisation with other successful organisation to learn best practices of the organisation.
In the modern world, leaders also must use the Blue Ocean
Table 1
Leaders should identify the factors that the organisation takes for granted should be eliminated; factors should be reduced well, factors should be raised well; and finally the new factors should be created. If leaders introduce the 4 action framework in their organszation, the achievement of the organization will be in high stage and can maintain their position in the relevant sector or industry.
Now I would like to share my experience as young leader in MIED. UPSR Achiever’s Award is annual project of MIED. I was appointed as programme coordinator for the programme in the year of 2003, 2005 and 2006. The first step that I took is identify the strengths of my colleagues. After that, I created a committee to delegate tasks according to their strengths. Then, we will discuss the programme details in the meeting 2 times every week. In the meeting, every sub-committee will present their reports. The reports help me to monitor the tasks given to every sub-committee. After that, I will prepare a special report to brief Dato’ Seri about the budget, flow and the preparation.
As a Chairman of MIED, Dato’ Seri always will guide us the best way to make the programme a success. With a small group of 25 staffs, I managed to organise them to handle 1000 students starting from registration, accommodation, lunch and award giving ceremony. We start work at 5am to 6 pm on the event day. After the event, I will arrange a special post-mortem meeting to discuss the problems encountered in the event. In the meeting we will exchange views to overcome all the problems occurs in the event in order to make the event more successful in the future. Therefore, I would like to stress that, to be a best leader, creating clear vision, mission, planning and relationship and cooperation between staff and leaders always becomes the key points for a success in an organisation.
To be the best leader I will always read more books about leadership. To build my leadership skill, I will attend leadership courses. I also will adopt Dato’ Seri S.Samy Vellu’s leadership style which I learned while working with him for the past 7 years from the year 2002 to 2009. In addition to that, I also will meet Malaysian great leaders such as Tun Dr. Mahathir, Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Ahmad Sarji to gain some knowledge from them about their leadership style.
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