In 1997, I was appointed as Staff Sergeant for Red Crescent Society. I was from an all-boy high school. I wanted to do something different as new leader. I happened to know a few beautiful Red Crescent girls from another all-girl school who attended same tuition class. Driven by alpha male hormone, I mooted a crazy idea that was never done before in the history of both schools: Joint ‘leadership’ camp. Upon hearing my ideas, teachers were frown with huge disagreement, but novelty triumphed with roaring support from members.
The camp went well. Anything that could go wrong, went wrong. Logistics arrangement was a nightmare. Disagreements was routine in every single committee meeting. Internal fighting due to puppy love jealousy. Injuries during the camp. But it was a blessing in disguise with many great learnings.
I certainly enjoyed my role as President of this club. I strive to create beautifully crafted, borderline disobedience experience for my club members. Because I know, deep down, each of you are screaming silently: “I do not want just another Toastmaster meeting. It is boring”. Same as what I did in high school. My Red Crescent Society members want an extraordinary experience, not just another Saturday practice.
Throughout these 12 months, we had 8 crazy physical meetings. We had four joint meetings with vibrantly youthful clubs. Speech marathons, Table Topic Marathons, heart-warming and thrilling speech contests. Working with President who likes to abuse his power can be nerve wrecking and extreme aggravation. He broke the rules of no sex, religion and politics topics, and encourage others to do the same. Common, leadership IS politics. Stupid and lewd jokes, Playboy costume, drawing parallel of sex and sales over Exco Whatsapp group. Oh ya, not to forget those absolutely time-wasting Exco meetings, many thanks to the Club President. You are welcome.
Like all wonderful things in life, it must come to an end. Tonight, is the End Game. Part of the journey is the end.
By many standards, I am definitely not a good leader, many thanks to my defiance to establishment set to “protect” us. Club members should be thankful to have this genius, billionaire, philanthropist and playdad as your Club President. I would like to share 3 secret methods I used during my term.
“If you want to lead, invest at least 40% of your time in leading yourself.” – Dee Hock, founder of VISA.
The concept is called “Self-Leadership.” There are 3 methods in Self Leadership: Self-Awareness, Self-Reflection, and Self-Regulation.
The first strategy of self-leadership is self-awareness. When we become a leader, it is crucial to be self-aware of ourselves. Yet it is getting more and more difficult. Any of you ever been in leadership position ever try to ask for feedback? Hey, team, do you have some feedback? Very often what we encounter is silence. Oh, maybe if we were lucky, we may get feedback like “You are brilliant, but everything is fine.”
In absence of external feedback, one of the things that every leader can do is to check that for themselves. One of the tools that I have is what I call character traits check. Ask ourselves: Who was the worst leader that you ever had? Think: What did he or she do that you to be a worst leader? Did he or she yell, or did he steal credits but push away blame to their followers? When I did this exercise, I reflected back to one of my ex-bosses nicknamed Everybody Can Fly Kite. Steal credit and hide behind title. What an @$$h0le.
Here is the trick. Give yourself a score of 1 to 5 for yourself how good are you, for examples at giving or stealing credits, and how bad are you at this one. For me, I not particularly good at giving credits. So, what is my plan to move that up to become exceptionally good at giving credit? Because when we find things awfully bad in others, often resonate also with ourselves.
Yet, over time, our self-awareness maybe drowned by meaningless routine. This is when the second tool, when used daily, can be of great help.
The second tool is self-reflection. Taking just a couple of minutes during the day and thinking about the challenges we are facing or about to face that day. My favourite time is my gym time with Disney channel, watching my own stellar performance how I defeat Loki, Ultron and Thanos in Avengers series. Some of my favourite questions were: how did my leadership go yesterday? How would the leader I would like to be, and face the challenges that I am about to face today? Just one or 2 minutes of those can help to raise your compassion level as well as for others.
The last one is self-regulation. You have done your awareness and reflection. But you will still encounter the moment where people come in and say “Yes, I will do everything and I have everything ready”, and we say “Let’s talk about it.” “Let’s talk what?” “The article you said was ready.” Just like Captain America Steve Roger who said we will win, yet we lost miserably in Infinity War. Crap. You will wish to shove down their throat with these words: Stop doing this, do what I told you now! This is not the best leadership but how do we do best do that self-regulation.
One tool that helped me enormously is called reframing. Whenever you feel you have this urge trying to strangle someone to get things done, stop. Ask yourself 1 – 2 seconds. On the scale from 1 to 10, how important is that issue right now? With 10 really my life goes, I will die if this is not done, so to speak. If it is a 10 you better fully engage in it. But often, it is a 2 or 3. With reframing, taking a step back can help you enormously and addressing the situation.
These are small strategies, food for thoughts, but what I would encourage you is to think about this when you have leadership position. Invest time in self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-regulation before you go out and lead others. Because very often you hear about leadership like “People want to lead others. But why not start by leading yourself?”
Back to my high school camp story. The camp went well. Anything that could go wrong, went wrong. Many scandals resulted from this joint camp. Some went on dating. Some became best friends. Some even become husband and wife. It became sweet, long lasting memories for everyone of us. I told them to grow and blossom. But in sheer disobedience, they went on to be fruitful and multiple. Beautiful memories of disobedience, rather than dull moments of compliance. It was driven by my wants. I stirred emotions of members yet created ripple effects that I never thought possible. Law of Precession is at work, for the best benefits of all of us.
I see the upcoming term is way more challenging. Infinity War of COVID-19 will continue to rage. The challenge of engaging club members without physical meeting will continue. But I have full confidence to incoming President, Geok Ean and her Exco team. For she had demonstrated her traits as a great leader. She is definitely not the play-dumb-to-find-husband (“buat bodoh-bodoh cari jodoh”) leader.
Ok, enough of these stupid jokes. Time to End Game, as part of the journey is the end. Reflecting back, I wish I could do more, yet time has come for me to pass on the gavel.
By the authority of Toastmasters International vested in me, mandate given as outgoing club President, knowing deeply that part of the journey is the end, I hereby passing the gavel to our President Tan Geok Ean for the term 2021/2022.
Signing off,
Alan Oh
President of
Friendship TMC
Term 2020/2021
Genius, Billionaire, Philanthropist, PlayDad
aka IronDad
15 June
2021, 10.11pm.
