Leadership in Me, My story..

I’m K Vishnutharan, graduated in 2008 and my first leadership commitment started in the same year as I was attached to Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) as Process Engineer and Assistant District Administrator for IWK in Hulu Selangor district. It was a heavy responsibility for me at that age to manage the whole district of Hulu Selangor but I was confident of my ability as I did possess some leadership experience from being the student representative during my university life. My assigned task was all about maintaining the quality of processed water by IWK within the range given by Environmental Department which covered almost 87 sewerage treatment plants in Hulu Selangor, it also involves attending and solving the public complaints and liaising with local authority every month to improve our service delivery to public. I realized that it is not an easy task to maintain an efficient productivity all the time because in parallel it involves many elements including external factors (machines breakdown, process failure and weather) and internal factors (worker’s values and ethics, organizational decision and unity within the organization).Thus I realize, a leader should play a vital role to manage all this factors in order to bring a positive growth towards the objectives planned efficiently.

My leadership experiences broaden my horizons when I joined the civil service as Administrative and Diplomatic officer (PTD) on 24^th April 2009 where I was positioned in Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Enforcement Unit of Moneylenders and Pawnbrokers Division (Headquarters). During the first year of my service, I was given the responsibility to prepare Moneylender’s bill to be presented in Parliament as per our Prime Minister’s decision to amend the Moneylender’s Act 1951 due to illegal moneylender’s issue in 2009. Basically, my leadership skills were tested during the second year where I was posted in the same department but as Head of Enforcement Unit in Sabah branch to govern and enforce all the moneylenders and pawnbrokers in Sabah and W.P Labuan. Previously, this office was headed by a Superintendant of Police with a police team, but later the police officers were transferred out due to external responsibilities by Royal Malaysian Police, thus our ministry ordered to send a PTD officer to head the enforcement unit until the replacement of new Superintendant of Police and other officers to the unit.

      For the first week in Sabah branch, I took my time to observe the situation and understand the need and necessities of the office at all perspectives, in terms of enforcement and administration. Thus, I came to realize "something have to be done in this office" to transform this organization into a productive factory. By utilizing the experience gained from my previous work places, I construct a list by sorting out the actual need that to be done, practice and executed in the organization. Thus, I presented the findings during the first management meeting for Sabah branch which was held on 30th of April 2010 as a strategic planning for the year 2010 to be executed together. We named it as "Halatuju Unit Penguatkuasaan, Bahagian Pemberi Pinjam Wang dan Pemegang Pajak Gadai bagi tahun 2010".This strategic planning includes all the enforcement and administration’s need to be achieved and Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for all the officers. I worked consistently with the same effort throughout the year until we achieved a positive growth towards the objectives as planned for both enforcement and administration.

In my leadership experiences during my working life, I would like to name a leader who inspire and gave me a tremendous impact, where he helps me to design and improve my leadership skills according to the values and ethics of the organization. Superintendant M. Chandrasehkaran who joined and lead our Enforcement unit on 1^st July 2011, have a great quality of a leader where he always stress on personal fair approach to everyone in the organization which cultivates and improves the unity and self motivation among all of us. “Working together means Winning Together” is the tag line introduced and highlighted by him all the time to improve our team spirit and unity, thus we share the same objectives together, no matter from bottom line to the front line, we have the self of belonging’s value towards our organization, office and more to our achievements together from our strategic planning.

Every day, we practice “Think Tank” group session at 9am to share our knowledge, planning and progress from all of our staffs in order to cultivate knowledge sharing mentality and level the frequency of mindset, thus together we cultivate the value of “Leading without Title”. He always give an importance to everyone in the office to voice out as he believes people who are doing the work knows about the work better, thus he listen to everyone for their problems in order to understand the situation better, discuss and finally comes up with an ideal decisions where he implement them collectively. “A decision made, is the decision of ours” that what we practice. Sincerely, even now I have attach importance to self of belongings towards the organization and good work that we practice together parallel with cultivation of positive energy through motivation and sharing the success of unity and teamwork. Supt. M. Chandrasehkaran always teaches me the ways of being a good leader in sense of producing a great teamwork first, then progress to achieve the missions together as “One Power”.

But in certain cases, some leaders tend to deviate from this path driven by their own definition as leader. Basically, leaders are meant to lead people. But some leaders tend to make mistakes in the process of leading their subordinates towards achieving their objectives. They have “top-down authority attitude” where they feel that they are always better in all aspects including making the best decisions at all the time. They tend to start the conversation with “no”, “but” or “however” where this terms indirectly says that “I’m always right and you’re wrong”. Basically this situation will lead to communication breakdown among the boss and the subordinates, eventually will cause a gap between them which will affect the growth of the organization later.

They are leaders who still live in complacency, gained from the past achievements that might happen a decade ago. This attitude will lead to no change in the value and ethics of the work. For example, the whole standard operation procedures (SOP) or any practices remain same even though changes happened tremendously in terms of environment and technology. Leaders should always have the sense of urgency to cater the recent technologies and changes that turn out in surroundings in order to deliver the best service to the public. Otherwise, this complacency attitude will lead to dissatisfaction of public towards our service hence reflects a bad impression on our Government’s credibility.

It has been a trend for higher rank officers to condemn and criticises directly towards the subordinates when mistakes occur especially in the public or in the meeting. At times, leaders make disruptive comments without any solutions, and tend not to cultivate the value of self of belongings towards the outcome given by their subordinates if it turned wrong. Ultimately, this situation will cause low spirits; reduce of positive energy among them which later gives tremendous consequences to the value and ethics of their work. As a leader, he should rectify the actual cause of the problem, inform and discuss with them, thus come up with a correct solution to solve the problem, further trigger off them to produce and serve more innovative work in the future.

Being allocated in a particular organization or position itself, reflects a person is already in charge of a task and exposure to lead and monitor the activities surrounding him which can be classified as introductory phase of becoming a leader. In this point where a person can be updated with the issues and trends related to their task. In addition, involvement in organizational activities, courses such as Diploma Pengurusan Awam and conference allow for one to broaden their horizon line due to exchanging the views, sharing information, participating in activities and others.

           

       There are other reliable sources that could guide a person to gain a brief view on leadership and one of the resource which I came across would be a book title “Leadership is dead – How Influencing is Reviving it” written by an author named Jeremie Kubichek. The author emphasis on the principle of giving trust to become trustworthy and be credible in order to build an effective leadership. According to Jeremie, a true influence leader can be summed up and defined as: -

·         leads with vision,

·         leads from the head and the heart,

·         practices humility and services to others (let’s go of status and self preservation),

·         influences rather than pushes or demands,

·         invests in the success of others first,

·         rises above unethical practises,

·         pressure and petty politics,

·         attracts a diverse and dedicated team of future leaders,

·         delivers more than expected,

·         wields the tool of forgiveness, gratitude and laughter

·         reaches out to make the last first.

Jeremie goes on “Leadership is influence. Influence is power. How that power is used comes from the intent of the leader, from the motives of the heart” as states in page 78. It can be concluded that being as a leader, an individual should liberate rather than dominate using the empowerment given in positive way to achieve a goal.

            

           Other than that, another source that would be a very useful tool for a person would be research finding of current state of leadership published by Development Dimensions International via www.ddiworld.com. This research provides golden tips on current state of leadership and development with effort needed to strengthen the capabilities. At the same time, we have to keep in our mind that these external sources will be able to give a light perspective and theory on leadership but to sharpen the skill, a person should handle the challenges and situation practically to gain experience and techniques.  To be a good leader is in your own hand. 

            In order to achieve the mission as a leader, i am intensifying my leadership skills being as an enabling force, and the ability to organize, manage, perform and control to gain a sophisticated alignment of positive output with the cooperation of my fellow colleagues and subordinates as well that will add value towards my division. 

            I will always like to embark upon challenges and obstacles that help me to build a stronger foundation of strength and capability in me. This is because each and every problem gave me a great opportunity to experiment my skills and multiply my knowledge and experience in order to pave a way towards the solution which it can be classified as the learning phase.  There are some times where I have gone through failures and mistakes in my career that never loosen my spirit but I always believe it being as my stepping stone to guide and sharpen me into more credible and charismatic leader. Mistakes are the part and parcel of our life and we must always be an active learner to be as a competent leader in this globalization and high technology world. One thing sticked into my mind, when our Chief Secretary to the Governmentof Malaysia, Y Bhg. Tan Sri Mohd Sidek bin Haji Hassan said  during his speech with us in INTAN Bukit Kiara on 8^th November 2011. He stressed to us that as a leader we must always have a vision ahead of current practices and objectives, where we must visualize the success and progress ahead, thus act accordingly now. This will keep us moving with high motivation without fail to produce excellent result towards the vision.

            Other than that, I do so have some idol and inspirational people who have achieve a lot being as a leader such as Mahatma Gandhi who fights for his country in a peaceful manner, gathering his own follower and monitor them towards independence without committing into war and bloodshed. Our local icon, the founder of Air Tune Sdn Bhd, Tan Sri Tony Fernandes who tasted success in very young age amazed me and become a motivation for me to lead an organization to achieve vision, mission and objectives. In conclusion, the journey of a leader is never ending process and one needs continuous effort, diligence and strength to accomplish as a leader. At the same time, a leader also should be able to link all his/her subordinates to get together to attain their goal.

            For me, a leader is the one who always cultivate unity and teamwork, progress and share the success together and always have the self of belonging towards the organization at any time. “Working Together means Winning Together”.

K Vishnutharan A/L Kalimuthu

851001-08-5639

Sidang C

Reference :

http://www.ddiworld.com

“Leadership is dead – How Influencing is Reviving it” - by Jeremie Kubichek,  Published by Howard Books, Publication year 2011.