Singapore has been inefficiently managed because it has followed
a top-down system where one man takes control of all major policies
but he cannot implement many goals and challenges despite all the
policies.
It could have become a greater nation where people willingly carry
out their parts in producing a more vibrant and self-relient
economy.
It is time to ponder over what kind of leadership PM Lee should
adopt. Personally I think he should be more proactive and
pro-people and not practise the past habit of denying problems
without solutions.
What is leadership? What are leaders supposed to do or accomplish
?
In my personal opinion, leaders should possess the following
qualities :-
(1) Passion,
(2) Ability to Motivate followers,
(3) Ability to get people to work with coordination and apply
knowledge.
(4) Ability to translate complex goals and ideas into
implementation processes to bring about competitiveness, technology
start-ups and jobs etc.
(5) Invest monies and perform tasks with Accountability and
Transparency
(6) Collective leadership by core team to make major
decisions,
(7) Sense of integrity free from theoretical assumptions or
controls that stifle mass participation in knowledge
application.
A leader should first possess the passion to persuade people to his
beliefs or visions and not insist on people's acceptance of his
visions, precepts or assumptions.
He should serve his followers as humility of servant with
reliability, or sense of justice, empathy to attain social and
economic wellbeing of all.
He should be honourable, possess integrity and not engage in artful
arguments or fallacies or rhetorics or empty promises.
He should understand the needs and aspirations of people and the
intimate relationship between social, cultural sphere and economic
vibrancy so as to nurture and unleash their skills and talents of
the people.
A leaders should provide his people with broad-based practical
education to facilitate widespread application of technology and
knowledge.
He should empower people to work for results by laying down
challenges and goals in participative processes to enable all to
compete together as a team.
He should practise collective leadership for accountability and
transparency and produce teamwork that is creative, entrepreneurial
and proactive in every field.
A leader should be proactive and people-friendly and avoid using
petty controls and regulations, or practise artful creative
accounting, double taxing and recovering of costs to full market
values that will cause hardship.
He leader should regard people as true partners so that all will
have a part to play as a team and all will be totally involved in
decision making and effective implementation working towards
results.
Above all a leader should motivate his followers in maximizing the
utilization of resources to realize innovations, entrepreneurship,
application of knowledge and value-add competitiveness.
When leaders identify all challenges and tasks for team performance
through objective-steps processes, they will empower the team to
reach for overall efficiency and productivity with coordination and
application of knowledge at all levels to attain results and
objectives.
If PM LHL cannot change the leadership style of his father,
Singapore will remain the same - people migrating to other
countries, losing our talents to others, talented people will stay
away and not willing to contribute with views or good suggestions,
preferring to earn monies and let the country's social and economic
problems stay unsolved..
It will not make any difference if MM Lee retires or not if he
cannot bring about the above-stated changes through his son.
