What Makes Good Leaders

Leaders often make this mistake; they don’t really embrace and truly live by what they say. Good leaders lead by example, but unfortunately, there are plenty of leaders out there that does not practise what they say. They might say one thing but deep inside their heart, they don’t really mean it. It is just a habit for this type of leader to give an impressive speech to impress those who listen. They will dig as much information and ideas they read from any leadership or motivational books. Then, they pick those great ideas about leadership and paste the ideas into their speech. Or, it could be that their speech is written by someone else, perhaps an advisor or consultant, and they are just there reading it for the sake of giving a talk in a ceremony they attended.

For example, many leaders talk about the importance of being open to new ideas and criticisms so as to create an innovative culture in their organisation, and to do that, they encourage their subordinates to air different views and opinions. But for some hypocrite leaders and most of the time, in reality, that is not the case. The practise is a total reverse from what has being said. When it comes to subordinates giving different views, especially when it is different of the views of that particular leaders, they will be punish, penalise or even threaten that they might be losing their jobs. These subordinates, who are trying to be frank of the current situation, hence airing their opinions on how can further improvements be made, often find themselves unrecognised and their voices ignored. It happens because there are leaders who see those great ideas coming from their “inexperience” subordinates as somebody who are trying to oppose them, hence, embarrassing them. For these leaders, talents are threats to their survival; hence, the so called “right move” to take is to sideline these talents, shut them up and to throw them out from an organisation.

Such practise if it continues, could, in the long run, result in deficiencies in an organisation. It will cause subordinates to have the tendency of keeping their ideas to themselves, hence, keeping their thoughts from their leaders. Most of the time, it is the subordinates who are working on the operational side, therefore, their knowledge of certain details on some matters could be better than what their leaders know. If this “everyone please be silent” practice continues, it could badly ruin the innovative culture in an organisation. Hence, that explains the static or rigid culture of an organisation, where over years of operations, they could not change and adapt to a new environment and they will soon become irrelevant to the society they live in.

Soon after, their roles will be taken over by some other organisation that can outperform the role of this static organisation. This is because the “close door” policy of that particular organisation restricts them from accepting new and fresh arguments and ideas of how certain things should and could be done. When it comes to meeting, only a certain people who are the leaders themselves are allowed to speak up, while the rest are just listeners. It creates an environment of passiveness as nobody dares to talk. Those who dare talking are one who supports and flourish the idea of the leaders. Is this symptom good for an organisation? How do the leaders know should there be any deficiencies in the decisions they made if every member of the organisation just nod their head every time the leaders speak up? As a result, the decision made by those leaders might not be the best because it is not properly discussed and filtered through. In the end, it is the stakeholders that would be affected by the wrong decision. Funds will definitely be wasted and channelled inappropriately once wrong decisions are made. For a profit motive organisation, it is easy to define and track performance. But for non-for-profit organisation, where performance could hardly be tracked, hence, all the wasted funds will go down the drain without anyone noticing.

These listeners, even if they have disagreements with what have been decided in a meeting, they would just keep quiet. This type of autocratic leadership style pose a very great danger to an organisation, hence, requires huge and massive transformation programme to change the whole system. It indirectly implies that no talents are allowed into the organisation. Only those who follow obediently without having to exercise their mind will be accepted as member of the organisation. In a much globalised world today, where pool of talents is very scarce, this scenario could further alleviate the talent problem in our country. Talents who feel that they wanted to contribute to the nation building would not want to work in the rigid and static environment, where their minds are forced to “closed down”, hence their knowledge and skills could not be fully utilised. It is well known that Malaysia has invested a lot of money, worth billions a year, into education. It would be such a waste if these talents migrate overseas.

To become a good leader, one must be inspirational to the others. Only then, others would respect and follow the leaders. One way to be inspirational to others is by respecting and appreciating our subordinates. A good leader will not hesitate to listen and accept different views, even if it is different from his or her view. The principle applied is pretty simple; a leader may not know everything, so does the subordinates. The best ways to uplift an organisation status or potential is by listening to every possible idea thrown, and then filter the ideas and choose the best among them. There is no harm to listening to other people’s opinion, no matter how radical it may be. If a leader feels that the idea is not practical, he could just discard it. But we won’t be able to judge how well or bad an idea is until we hear to the proposition.

Only by letting everyone speaks freely can we have a dynamic and innovative organisation. This is because everyone will strive to figure out what’s best for the organisation. Each and every one of us has different mindset and perception on how we see things. Leaders must realise this reality and start thinking how can these brain be utilised and how to benefit from them. Sidelining talents might give the leaders short term gain for themselves, but in the long run, it would be such a huge loss for the organisation. This type of mentality of sidelining talents reminds me of a classic story of “Temasek and the swordfish”. Temasek was home to a gifted 10-year old named Hang Nadim. One day, Temasek was attacked by swordfish. Many people were killed during the attack. The king decided to consult Hang Nadim, who suggested a brilliant idea to overcome the problem and succeeded. But the king got worried as he is afraid this smart kid would try to overtake his power as king, so he killed the smart kid, only to realise that he had lost such a good talent that could further contribute ideas for the nation building in the future. The story might be a classic one, but it has its relevance until today.

Malaysia, heading towards a developed nation by 2020, cannot afford to lose more talents. Talents are required to further develop this country. A leader must not only think of his short term gain, but give priority to the country’s long term gain. Differences in opinion and view are absolutely normal. The abnormal would be everyone in the organisation has the same thought and idea on a certain matter. Hence, leaders must see differences in opinion as blessing for the organisation, not the other way around. A good leader plays an important role to facilitate and organising these differences so that it would benefit the organisation.  

Great culture of an organisation is pretty much influence by its leaders. Great leaders lead their organisation into existence. Existence means the organisation’s presence is felt in a good faith by those who are affected. There are so many organisations out there that their presence is also felt by people, but in bad faith. For example, some organisations are seen as barriers to trade and commercialisation, as they set too much bureaucratic rules and procedures that dampen trade. Hence, it is important for an organisation that has long existed to study and do research about their roles and functions. An organisation that wants to enhance their roles and capabilities must look into how they contribute to achieving outcomes. There is no benefit in organising too much ceremonial events that in the end, it leads the organisation nowhere. It is the implementation or post ceremonial event that matters, not the ceremony itself. Members of an organisation must realise that organising ceremony is not the outcomes they want to achieve; it is the content of what the ceremony represents that matter and serve the outcome of an organisation.

I am among Dr Mohd Asri Zainul Abidin, the former Mufti of Perlis admirers, due to his intellectual scholarship. Apart from that, he is also a man of reform. His thoughts and ideas are purely derived from the Quran and Sunnah. Hence, he calls for every Muslims to devote themselves to those basic sources in Islam. He rejects fanaticism to a particular school of thought in fiqh matters. But he strongly support for accepting all opinions among different known Muslim scholars as long as those scholars have evidence from the Quran and Sunnah in deriving their thoughts. In most of his speech, he stresses that what we do in this world will definitely be rewarded once we die. So, it is important to stick firmly to principles that have been shown to us as prescribed in the Quran and Sunnah, even if it means we might lose the worldly gain.