By Chua Ee June

PETALING JAYA: “Despite spending a lot of money on leadership development, we are still short of good leaders,” said Leaderonomics founder and CEO Roshan Thiran at the recent Malaysian Annual Real Estate Convention (MAREC’18).

According to him, poor leadership is often mentioned as the cause of problems that arise in any organisation. Roshan said that leadership is different for each individual because the starting point and end goal for each person will not be the same.

“Leaders are determined, assertive, humble, loyal and most importantly, they have a vision,” said Roshan, adding that a great leader is identified by his or her ability to grasp the right timing for every little action.

Roshan said effective leadership involves the setting of a goal, which is a clear vision of what the leader and the organisation want to achieve. The leader should also be self-aware and is capable to determine the current position of his organisation. Plans should be devised to achieve the desired goal. Lastly, the execution is also important as the leader utilises the skills necessary to carry out the plan.

He said very few companies in Malaysia achieve greatness due to organisational and individual constraints. After careful research on various successful and failed organisations, Roshan designed the following model which can be used to pinpoint the four main organisational constraints:

• Leadership that lacks conviction and vision.
• Wrong business model coupled with bad strategy and execution which lead to inferior products or services.
• A flawed structure which does not support the business model.
• An unprofessional working culture that tolerates incompetence and low performance among the employees.

Concerning the individual's constraints, Roshan mentioned that the most significant obstacle lies with the reluctance to learn and the lack of self-belief. “Generally, people are not willing to go through the pain of learning something new,” he said, adding that people prefer to stick to the status quo as they are afraid of the change that learning will bring to them.

According to Roshan, the act of believing can also limit one's ability to perform. Individuals who do not believe in themselves will have a fixed mindset of only doing things that are within their comfort zone.

“The only way you can become the best is by the accumulation of experience and to do that, you must be willing to accept feedback from others, to learn from your mistakes and develop new skills,” he said.