leadership story

Leadership Story

When talking about leadership, he automatically will cross into my mind. He was a simple guy but hero in my heart. He was an ordinary but legend in my soul. He is not only a great man, but also a great teacher, great mentor to me and my family. He was precise but loving, friendly, respected by people, committed while doing something, people love him and I was blessed to have such a great father.

            My father was orphan since he was a baby. His father passed away when his mother was pregnant and his mother passed away soon after he gave birth to my father. My father was taken care by his aunty. When he was seven years old, he travelled to Malaysia. Slowly step by step he builds up his career. He was involved in Palm Oil Industry and engaged a contract with Felda Corporation.

My father is a visionary man. He always reminds us that the future will be bright if we had an education. He made us aware of it consistently. The way he did and think make me want to be a person like him. My father told me that he believed I can be a very successful person in the future. He encouraged me to study hard so I could go to university and create my own life history. Besides that, he wants me to be a good example to my other siblings since I was the eldest. He always told me about my responsibility as an eldest sister.

            I still remembered when Malaysia was  facing economic crisis in 1997, my father’s business was extremely affected. During that time, selling price of palm oil decreased almost 100% and at last my father was declared bankrupt. It deeply affected our family. However, my father managed to handle the situation. He accepts it as a test from God. He started to build up a new business. Thanks God he manages to stand up again and now he has his own palm oil farm. I really admire his spirit.

            Leadership can be defined as the ability to influence people to do the job for you with continuing support. Beside my father, I do have few figures that I admire for their hardship, charismatic and all the positive values they possess. He is our nation legendary leader: Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad. I believe that majority of Malaysian was adore him. “To be a great leader, one needs to have good strategies, be knowledgeable and able to predict the future”, that is quote from him that inspire me to be a leader.

            Leadership is related to organization culture, values and the leaders of the organization itself. Organizational culture is the collective behaviour of humans who are part of an organization and the meanings that the people attach to their actions. Culture includes the organization values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits. It is also the pattern of such collective behaviours and assumptions that are taught to new organizational members as a way of perceiving, and even thinking and feeling.

            The leader is a person who is in charge or in command of others in community or organization. Leadership is a critical management skill, is the ability to motivate a group of people toward a common goal. These items will help the leader to develop their skills.

            Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of action or outcomes. As such, values reflect a person’s sense of right and wrong, “Equal rights for all”, "Excellence deserves admiration", and “People should be treated with respect and dignity” are representative of values.

            These three elements were important towards the successful of the organization. Leader has to play his role to develop a good culture and apply the rights value so that the great ideas will come to the organization. Values tend to influence attitudes and behaviour. For example, if you value equal rights for all and you go to work for an organization that treats its managers much better than it does its workers, you may form the attitude that the company is an unfair place to work; consequently, you may not produce well or may perhaps leave the company. It is likely that if the company had a more democratic policy, your attitude and behaviours would have been more positive. The values and behaviours contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of an organization.

            On the other hand, organizational culture is the sum total of an organization's past and current assumptions, experiences, philosophy, and values that hold it together, and is expressed in its self-image, inner workings, interactions with the outside world, and future expectations. It is based on shared attitudes, beliefs, customs, express or implied contracts, and written and unwritten rules that the organization develops over time and that have worked well enough to be considered valid.

            I think one of the mistakes leaders make is “fail to listen”. This is happen especially when the leader working with knowledge workers. Knowledge workers frequently know more than the boss. Command and control leaders will feel frustrated and demotivated. Being in a position of authority does not mean that a leader knows all the answers. Rather than de-motivate knowledge workers, a true listening leader will create an environment that allows such workers to shine and create value for the organisation.

            Besides, another mistake that leaders make is being perfectionist, rigidity and unlearn. When leaders make perception based on belief, they make the biggest mistake. Leader’s decision based on perception certainly creates unfavourable and unrealistic result. Leader should make decision based on people’s opinion through discussion and brand storming. His experience and within available resources also can take into consideration when make a decision.

            Lack of delegation is another mistake that frequently made by leaders. I have seen leaders crash and burn because they tried to do it all and refused to ask for help. As a supervisor, manager or team leader, we make daily decisions about the appropriate leadership style to employ in each work situation. We want to foster employee involvement and employee empowerment to enable our team members to contribute their best effort at work. Therefore, successful delegation of authority will help us help our reporting staff members succeed when they are most empowered.

            Good leaders admit their mistakes. I think many situations of failure can actually be used positively. It helps build trust by showing we are human and it can be used as a way of a leader asking for help from those around to try to ensure similar failings are avoided in the future. Also, as a leader, of course we want our followers to admit when they have made mistakes rather than they trying to cover things up for fear of being found out. By admitting failure we ourselves are giving permission for others to be honest about their mistakes. Of course how we then react to someone admitting failure is also important.

            In order to become a better leader, there are five qualities come from Kouzes and Posner’s research into leadership that was done for the book The Leadership Challenge as below :

a)    Honest

            When we start a leadership position, we need to assume that people will think we are a little dishonest. In order to be seen as an honest individual, we will have to go out to display honesty. People will not assume we are honest simply because we have never been caught lying. By demonstrating honesty with ourselves, with our organization and with outside organizations, we should increase our leadership influence. People will trust someone who actively displays honesty, not just as an honest individual, but as someone who is worth following.

b)    Forward-Looking

                         The whole point of leadership is figuring out where to go from where we are now. While we may know where we want to go, people will not see that unless we actively communicate it with them. Some leaders have a clear vision, but did not wish to share it with others. People need to know that a leader has a strong vision for the future and a strong plan for going forward.

c)    Competent

            People want to follow someone who is competent but this does not mean a leader needs to be the foremost expert on every area of the entire organization, but we need to be able to demonstrate competency. For a leader to demonstrate that they are competent, it is not enough to just avoid displaying incompetency. Some people will assume we are competent because of our leadership position, but most will have to see demonstrations before deciding that we are competent. As a leader, one of the safest ways to “toot you own horn without blowing it”, is to celebrate and bring attention to team achievements. In this way we indirectly point out our competency as a leader.

d)    Inspiring

               One technique to develop our ability to inspire is telling stories. Stories can help us widely illustrate what we are trying to communicate. Stories that communicate on an emotional level help communicate deeper than words and leave an imprint much stronger than anything we can achieve through a simple stating of the facts.

               Learning to be inspiring is not easy especially for individuals lacking in charisma. But it can be learned. Take note of people who inspire you and analyse the way they communicate. Look for ways to passionately express your vision. While there will always be room for improvement, a small investment in effort and awareness will give you a significant improvement in this leadership trait.

e)    Intelligent

               Intelligence is something that can be difficult to develop. The road toward becoming more intelligent is difficult, long and cannot be completed without investing considerable time. Developing intelligence is a lifestyle choice. To develop intelligence we need to commit on continual learning in both formally and informally.

               Everyone considers their intelligent. If you ask them to explain parts of their expertise and spend the time to really understand as demonstrated by asking questions, their opinion of your intelligence will go up. After all, you now know more about what makes them so intelligent, so you must be smart as well. Your ability to demonstrate respect for the intellect of others will probably do more to influence the perception of your intellect than your actual intelligence.

               By consciously making an effort to exhibit these traits, people will be more likely to follow you. These are the most important traits that people look for in their leaders. By exhibiting them on a regular basis, you will be able to grow your influence to its potential as a leader.

            In order to ensure I continue to grow and develop as a leader, I have to identify my strengths as a key to effective leadership. I need each other to reach organization goals. Each of us only has some of the skills needed to do a great job. Therefore, we need to surround ourselves with people to fill in our gaps. Seventy-nine year-old Muriel Tower, an experienced entrepreneur, said, “You get things done through other people. Number one in business is getting the best person for the job. Number two, delegate. Number three, supervise–go back and see that they did it.”

            The authors of Megatrends for Women write, “Male or female, the effective leader wins commitment by setting an example of excellence.” I will strive myself to excellent to develop as a leader. Couse and training is important and a key part of person’s development. From training, I could develop new skills, acquire knowledge, and build my capability. Strive for excellence and you will motivate others to do the same.

            Besides that, I need to improve my decision making skills. Decision making is an essential leadership skill. If i can learn how to make timely, well-considered decisions, then i can lead my team to well-deserved success. Decision making is important to :-

a)    Better Utilisation of Resources

b)    Facing Problems and Challenges

c)    Business Growth

d)    Achieving Objectives

e)    Increase Efficiency

f)     Facilitates Innovation

g)    Motivates Employees

Life is short. Why participate in an activity if we don’t enjoy it, and if we participate, why not do so with all of our energy? A leader is anyone who inspires and influences people to accomplish organizational goals, they motivate others to pursue actions, focus thinking, and shape decisions for the greater good of the organization. Leadership is about building teams and communicating so that everyone works together. Leadership is a key ingredient to successful businesses and championship teams; those that create this environment tend to be the ones on top. As a conclusion, below are famous quote leadership, just for sharing.

 

Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.

-Peter F. Drucker

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

- John Quincy Adams

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.

- John C Maxwell

The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.

- John Buchan

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can't blow an uncertain trumpet.

– Theodore M. Hesburgh

Leaders are more powerful role models when they learn than when they teach.

- Rosabeth Moss Kantor

All Leadership is influence.

- John C. Maxwell
The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.

- Faye Wattleton

Leadership is not magnetic personality, that can just as well be a glib tongue. It is not "making friends and influencing people", that is flattery. Leadership is lifting a person's vision to higher sights, the raising of a person's performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations.

- Peter F. Drucker

A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.

- John Quincy Adams

A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.

- Anon

Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.

- Jack Welch

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

- Kenneth Blanchard

Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.

- Ralph Nader

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

– George S. Patton

Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.

- General Colin Powell

The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.

- Jim Rohn

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.

- Theodore Hesburgh

A good leader inspires people to have confidence in the leader, a great leader inspires people to have confidence in themselves

- Eleanor Roosevelt
Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.

- Harold Geneen

Leadership is the key to 99 percent of all successful efforts.

- Erskine Bowles