Leaders must prepare for tomorrow today: Zeti

KUALA LUMPUR: Leaders need to be preemptive and prepare for the eventualities of tomorrow during this uncertain environment, said former Bank Negara Malaysia governor Tan Sri Dr Zeti Akhtar Aziz.
Zeti, who is co-chair of the Asia School of Business board of governors, said one must have policies in place before things go wrong.
“If you respond only after something has happened, it is too late. You don’t have a stable environment where you can predict, therefore you need to be prepared. Prepare Malaysia, prepare our financial systems to survive when things happen,” she said of how Malaysia survived the global financial crisis in the keynote interview on “Creating Tomorrow’s Leaders” at the IFN Forum Asia 2017 here yesterday.
“We live in an environment now and going forward that is uncertain, unpredictable, unstable, prone to crisis, with shifts in terrain arising from geo-political developments that have economic and financial implications. Therefore there is a need to build and develop the leadership in the pipeline and existing leadership needs to be continually reinvented,” said Zeti.
She said one aspect of leadership is knowing the business and having in-depth knowledge, including the experience and wisdom.
“And so people ask, are you born a leader or can you developed to be a leader? We believe you can be developed to be a leader because leaders may be charismatic and they have a huge following. But when they don’t know the business at hand, that is also an issue, because the business at hand changes.
“You have to continually have an awareness of your environment and business. There is no shortcut to developing leaders. You need to have on-the-job training,” said Zeti.
She said she “reinvented” herself a few times when she was in senior management, stressing that leaders have to build new capabilities and excel.
“You’ve to have great clarity of the goals that you want to achieve and see beyond the immediate term. To do that, you must not be distracted. You must have the discipline and courage to do the right thing.
“The ability to have integrated thinking, coordination, communication ... these are new skills you need. You’re now under greater scrutiny by regulatory authorities, media, social media, and everybody’s scrutiny, which means there are higher expectations. You’ve to be able to articulate,” said Zeti.
She added that leaders must have a vision, as well as inspire and motivate others to achieve the common vision.
“Sometimes, when everything looks like it’s collapsing or derailing, it requires strong conviction, drive and courage. Leadership needs courage to do the right thing because often times you may be told (otherwise). Have high endurance and do not panic under those circumstances ... because things can go wrong,” said Zeti.