Type of leadership needed today
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What is leadership, talents, insight, foresight or all the ivory tower assumptions ? Yes, it is easy for all to agree that leadership is an important and critical element in government.
The real issue is not importance of leadership. All too often, the problem is not with the need for leadership but how to exercise and implement the leadership qualities referred to and accepted by all.
So let us look at what we need in actual practice. When leaders talk about leadership, do they have a conflict of interest and want to assert their style or brand of leadership or do they objectively refer to the qualities desired by the people which will bring about the greatest good of the greatest number or do they only expect people to accept whatever they are doing out of their own narrow-mindedness, self-centredness or face.
If leaders are able to brandish about abstract concepts like leadership, vision, foresight, insight to justify their own actions and policies after the facts or criticisms or problems are they still capable of objectively exercising good leadership qualities in the actual work place?
What kind of leadership qualities did we have previously and what kind of leadership should have expect from our leaders today ?
Should leaders be expected to brandish their abstract and undefined leadership qualities as stated in the foregoing or should they be expected to work with observance of good procedures, processes, codes of corporate governance, passion, moral uprightness or nobility of spirit?
It would appear that if leadership qualities remain to be talked about in abstract and intangibles, it will be too easy for leaders to ignore accountability and seek convenient justifications and excuses to cover over their mistakes, negligence or ignorance.
In practice leaders often seem to be concerned only with look-good policies, assumptions and justifications of their actions without basing on true implementation abilities.
Despite many years of such rhetorics, what have we achieved in terms of leadership other a system of taxing and recovering fullest costs depriving them of essential services in housing, transportation, utilities and medical care.
The ordinary citizens are suffering from dropping wages, unemployments with the domestic economy being heavily squeezed out of their survival by government's getting into businesses of all sorts to compete with its own citizens.
What happen to all the talents of our own citizens or do we have no talents?
The Asian Financial crisis has exposed self-centredness as the ultimate cause of financial instability.
Why is it that after so many crises and experiences our leadership is still seen as promoting leaders' own individualism and self-centredness resulting in malpractices in all the NKF going on in so many organizations.
Sad to say, apart from look-good presentations and technocratic statistical digests, very few of the academic leaders have measured up to a high standard worthy of note or commendations.
Taking into account the above-stated problems do our leaders realise that the worse form of leadership is to keep talking about leadership in a top-down leadership system with covering up of mistakes due to self-centredness of men seeking to cling on to power.
The real challenge is to work out a system of collective leadership where all leaders are openly laying out all the major decisions with guidance and processes set up which allow such challenges to be effectively delegated or decentralized to be performed in teamwork and results-oriented manner which involve and motivate all in doing their parts to upgrade total success of all.
There appears great obstacles to overcome because of many narrow-minded policy assumptions already implanted in leaders' minds for too long so much so that people have accepted them as real.
In the fast-paced technology and knowledge-based age will leadership by individuals make such a big impact and what happen if they can only keep talking about leadership and talents but cannot find the open and collective implementation leaders needed for success.
What we actually need most may be simple down-to-earth broad-based technology and knowledge application by the masses.
Therefore we should strive to translate all intangible to attainable work processes which will allow staff to take over and exercise their broad-based knowledge application and teamwork.
We will need to recognize shortcomings and weaknesses like stated in the "20 major major government policy errors" as posted to the Feedback Unit since 2002.
We can keep talking about benefits of investing in grandiose plans like biomedical researches, but if we do not have ministers and senior officers well versed in translating the whole plans into action processes then again we will fail to restructure the economy to value-adding technology-driven economy talked about for years. -
You know Robert, I salute you and your never-say-die attitude.
You have a made a difference. -
Hello Rock^star,
I agree with you all the little red dots out there make a difference. -
I guessed some of the minister need tio benchmark themselves like Korea or HK but it seemed they quite reluctant to do it.Originally posted by robertteh:Hello Rock^star,
I agree with you all the little red dots out there make a difference. -
luvmibiz wrote:
You are saying that if some robbers have the courage to rob the bank, why do we find small fault with people like white-color criminals who do so in different ways for at least they are not like those robbers trying to resort to violence to rob the banks.
Yes....Suharto, pal of our "leader", was a multi-millionaire, perhaps even billionaire....Mahathi, secret pal of our "leader", is perhaps also a billionaire. If Singapore is more successful than both countries, why is our "leader" not a billionaire? I think this is his argument. And it creates a conflict of interest, balancing poorly the passion and the monetary returns....As Singaporeans, shouldn't we support our "leader' so much so that he also shares the performance comparable to the 2 "retired" "leaders"? Hahahahaha.....BCK is one who supports with both his legs and hands and dick as well.....question is...are the rest as supportive? If not, is he still a leader? A leader with no followers?
I fully agree that some leaders in SEA were worse than our leaders who are of course not as worse as these kinds of leaders you mentioned.
But when our leaders do not have the courage to rob the banks then they should not try to compare with these robbers.
Our leaders were trying to belong to the first-world kind of leaders who govern with democracy and democratic principles based western concept of democracy but at certain point they became confused and try to have the cake and eat it.
It is either they practise the western style of democracy or try to be like Suharto or Kim Jong Il. If they want to be like Suharto or Kim Jong Il it is fine. The world will know what to do with them. Citizens too will know what to do with them. In such a scenario, they must then show a different kind of courage and persevere to the end like Kim Jong Il and not try to be hypocritic and play angel and devil all at the same time. -
This regime warrants only comparisons with other regimes run by despots and tyrants - Zimbabwe, North Korea and China will make better benchmark standards than Korea or HK - for what is inherently similar between this regime and those shady ones is the lack of accountability...Originally posted by will4:I guessed some of the minister need tio benchmark themselves like Korea or HK but it seemed they quite reluctant to do it.
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ACCOUNTABILITY is not even in our gov's vocabulary...