Date: Friday, Wednesday, 5 April 2023
Time: 14.00 - 15.30 GMT+7
Platform: Zoom Meetings & YouTube Livestream
Speaker: Dr. Dino Patti Djalal, Founder and Chairman of Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI)
Moderator: Dr. M. Nadzri Mohamed Noor from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Traits and Features of Leaders
This is an important point - that everybody has a treasure inside. The question is: can you find and develop it? I say this out of personal experience, my father Hasjim Djalal, a poor kid from the most remote village in West Sumatra who, somehow, found his way to an Ivy League university in the United States. He had nothing, he hardly spoke English, but he had a determination to get out of his village and make something of himself. The second point is that leadership is a rare quality but it can be learned, trained and developed. Nelson Mandela could lead South Africa because he was a very, very special leader and he was one in a million, or maybe one in a billion. He's irreplaceable until now. Having said that, generally, leadership can be learned. It can be trained. It does not mean that
you're going to be Mahatma Gandhi or Mandela, but it does mean that you can develop that leadership muscle - it's a mental muscle to increase your capacity to lead the people in your organisation.
What is the most important question or aspect that a leader must have?
In my view, what distinguishes a leader from everyone else is a sense of having or knowing what the destination is. A leader has to know when he occupies a leadership position, either structural or informal, have a sense of where the people that he or she is leading, and also a sense of how to get there. I think a key part for a leader is choosing your team well. I mean, having the right talent is key to a leader's success. It makes all the difference in the world. So, having the right team is really critical and it affects everything. Next is the importance of authority. Power and authority are two different things. You may have power, but you may not have authority. Meaning people respecting you.
The Most Important Currency in Leadership
The most important currency in leadership is judgement and by far, what separates a leader from everybody else from his subordinates, his staff, from his followers, from his people is because he or she is expected to have superior judgement analysis, which defines the quality or the calibre of a leader. Judgement is to be applied in all decision makers and to have that judgement was really difficult and requires a great deal of thinking and statesmanship.
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