Ricky’s Online Business Blog

Born and grown up in Ipoh, Ms Stephanie Lai dropped out of college and started to work in an international bank as receptionist at the age of 19. One day, she saw a good opportunity to be promoted to a marketing position. However, her application was denied because an applicant needed to have worked for at least five years in three different departments before being eligible to apply. The job then went to a colleague..

The colleague did not stay on long at the new job. The position was opened up again and Stephanie tried to apply for the second time. Thanks to her diligence and resourcefulness, this time she managed to get it. Although she had to accept the job without a formal promotion and a pay rise, she went for it as she just wanted to learn new things. In the eight years that followed, she had dealt with corporate figures like C-level executives and financial controllers and gained much exposures. On the fifth year, she was formally promoted.

After over a decade in the bank, Stephanie left and started her own Kumon centre in Sunway in 1997. In the beginning, she employed no staff but learned up to do every aspect of the business herself. Unlike other Kumon centres, her centre was open for only two days a week. Why waste costs like electricity when all students could be made to come on two days only? Later, she started to hire staffs including her younger brother. In 2005, her brother took over the business as she moved on to AsiaWorks Training.

Stephanie then spent one and half year in AsiaWorks and laid down its basic training ground work. Afterwards, she got herself certified in business coaching from Brad Sugars’ company ActionCOACH in Las Vegas. She took up the franchise and became a business coach in Malaysia. She started coaching business owners in individual and group coaching to help them succeed in their business.

In 2008, she took up another opportunity to work with an investment company from Europe. However, she got embroiled in legal disputes later when the company’s CEO was charged for criminal breach of trust. A period of setback started as she spent much time and money fighting for her innocence.

During this period from 2008 to 2010, her beloved father passed away. These incidences had given her a double blow. But it was during this time that she took many effective actions to take up certifications she is using today, including neuro-lingustic programming (NLP), hypnotherapy and training. In particular, she decided to become a certified trainer as many clients saw her potentials in training and she kept receiving suggestions for training.

In 2010, Stephanie started her training company. She got only two clients in the first year and less than 10 clients in the second year. However, in 2012, a break came when suddenly she received many requests for training. Up to August 2012, her client base has grown to over 10 companies.

Today, Stephanie is known as an entrepreneur who picked herself up from the ashes and as an upcoming trainer specializing in soft skills in the training industry. Besides, she provides services as a hypnotherapist in a clinic. She also acts as consultant to European companies in their business expansion into this country and region, and helps matchmake them with local companies and business people.

As the eldest daughter with two younger brothers, Stephanie was deeply influenced by her late father. Her father came from a poor family whose mother died at a young age. Since childhood, he had been tortured and mistreated by his step-mother. However, he did not complain but lived on forbearing all hardships. He knew he owned nothing but the ability to think. He clung on the principle of endurance or forbearance (Chinese: 忍), which later brought success in his life and left a legacy to his children including Stephanie.

At the age of six, instead of accepting his fate, Stephanie’s father decided to change his own course of life. He earned for himself to enter into Standard One in a primary school by working on the street. He sustained his education by successfully negotiating with the headmaster to work for the school. He worked his way up and finally got himself a degree in computer engineering from Australia in those nascent years of computer in the 1960′s. His various achievements included programming and engineering the whole ticketing and communications system connecting the turf clubs in Malaysia at that time. Today, his story has been told in Stephanie’s training course called “Dare To Be Great”, moving and motivating many people including insurance professionals in Million Dollar Round Table (MDRT).

Ms Stephanie’s first advice to budding entrepreneurs is to turn ideas into actions, instead of just talking about them all the time and suffering from “analysis paralysis”. On top of that, her father’s principle of endurance to suffer all difficulties, accept all good and bad in any given situation, take ownership of one’s own problems instead of blaming other people or the environment. The principle works not only in business, but in life too.

Here are a few ideas about leadership that I’m agreeable with:

• Leadership is a service. A leader is one who provides a service called leadership.
• A leader is just one part of the team.  Everyone in the team plays his or her own role.  The leader plays a role by providing leadership.
• Since leadership is a service, a leader is one who serves others by providing that service. He or she is a servant (one who serves) to others.  The leader is a servant leader.
• Leadership is a calling.  It is something bestowed to the leader.  It is not his or her thing. The leader serves for something higher than just him or herself.
• Leadership is nothing glorious. It is not about the leader. It is not about anyone’s reputation. It is not about exalting the leader him or herself. He or she has no need to take credits.
• When his or her job is done, or his or her term with the team is over, the leader should just step down and let others take over. The leader should not stay on for the sake of ego.
• The leader is not one who sits behind and instructs people to do things. He not only knows the way, but he walks the way, and shows the way too.
• Leadership is about more than just inspiring others to be their best, but is also about inspiring others to be better persons than before.
• A leader teaches others to fish.  He or she does not fish for them.  But when necessary, the leader does fish with them.
• A leader does not just seek to complete the tasks given, but seeks to take care of the people working with him or her too.  The leader should seek to make them better persons after working together than before.

Sun Tzu says, “Hence his victories bring him neither reputation for wisdom nor credit for courage” (故善戰者之勝也，無智名，無勇功).  Once a leader’s job is done, just get lost!  The world is not about the leader.

My view may not be complete, nor even correct.  But if you feel disagreeable on anything, please feel free to disagree.

Now it’s February 2010, I have completed two semesters of MBA course in Graduate School of Management in Universiti Putra Malaysia (GSM-UPM) since joining in July 2009.

Recently it dawns upon me that I should reflect on my MBA experience after each semester and write it down. It will be great later in life to look back and relive the wonderful experience I have had in this stage of life. So I would like to record down these experiences in the first semester (July to October 2009) while the memory is still fresh…

It’s been years since I wanted to go back to school. Unlike my friends, I have taken a weird and slow route by taking only 2 subjects per semester, due to my personal reasons for taking MBA. In the first semester, my two subjects were Accounting for Business Decision, and Organizational Behavior.

Though I have had a little background in accounting before, this subject in managerial accounting has been quite a learning experience for me. Under the guidance of our good lecturer Dr Foong, I have been made to see beyond the numbers and look into the rationales behind accounting decisions made by businesses.  I was even once challenged and “cornered” by her publicly in class for a decision made to the extent that I felt like losing face. But I’m glad to have gone through this learning process.

The students in accounting class were divided into groups. Due to a little “expert power” in the subject matter, I emerged as natural leader of my group of six members. We had many discussions together for our assignments, completed one class presentation, and had some arguments too.

Thinking back from now, this group in accounting class has been the strongest group I ever joined so far in two semesters. Almost everyone is someone is his or her own way – either as a good leader or team player. Yes, I think we have scored well together, thanks to team members working together

Accounting group members

As for Organizational Behavior (OB), it’s been an eye-opening experience to learn about human behaviors in organizations. But more importantly, it actually helped me to discover myself. I especially liked the self-assessment quizzes in the textbook. These tests had helped me to know my own weaknesses, especially in assertiveness, conflict resolution and negotiation.

All students were also required to stand before class and present on selected topic. Drawing on my past MLM experience and other life experiences, I presented on “Self-Efficacy – If You Think You Can, You Can!”. It was the first time I shared such authentic life story to many people. The sharing has since been one of the presentations I like most so far.

As part of coursework for OB, I also paired up with a classmate to produce a training booklet for managers on negotiation using Sun Tzu’s Art of War. It is completed with two case studies, one from the then crisis in MCA, and another from the US-Malaysia talk for free trade agreement. I have been reading about Sun Tzu for some years, and now so glad to be able to apply the principles learned in a real life topic

Due to time constraints of our initial group leader in OB class, he passed on to me the responsibility to coordinate our group work. We did fairly well in our group project and presentation on “Have You Got A Lady Boss?” I have also learned to use Google Apps to conduct online survey!

MBA is part of my self-development plan.  In this first semester, I have learned about being a team leader and a team player. Wherever I have been put to serve, whether as a leader or follower, just play my role to the best and serve lah. Don’t complain!

I have learned before that leadership is a service. A leader is one who serves others. It is not about personal ego and glory. When you have done your job, just get lost and let others take over. I subscribed to the idea of servant leadership. But I have not had the chance to practise until first semester when I could serve in both Accounting and OB groups.

But it had not been all smooth sailing, and I have encountered problems too. The first situation was when two group members had some conflict with each other. As group leader, I had mediated between them too. Though it’s resolved and they are now well as before, I also discovered that I could not handle conflicts very well. It’s been quite lucky to me that the conflict did not escalate to affect the group performance.

In the second situation, one capable group member turned down my request to perfect her work, that I had to get another member to take over her part in the last minute while everyone was busy. To be frank, it hurt me and inconvenienced others. But I found myself having problem confronting team members when they did not go my way. I should also have clarified expectations of what I wanted more clearly. But most importantly, I have been taught to exercise “grace”, be forgiving and not hold grudge against anyone when feeling wronged. (No grudge ever held because later in second semester we teamed up again and she has delivered good job)

Another skill I gained was speed reading (with speed understanding). Previously I was not able to read fast. But in the MBA course, sometimes we are required to absorb a lot of materials in short span of time. At first, I complained about having to read 120 pages in just 4 days in one instance. But now I found myself reading much faster than before. Thanks to MBA

In overall, the first semester has been a good start of a self-discovery journey.  I have enjoyed the campus life very much, to the extent that I wish I could stop working and concentrate on studies alone.

I’m satisfied with my performance in the first semester. I was also socially active, and participated in class a lot, especially when compared to second semester later. I’ll write about the more eventful second semester. Stay tuned…

How about the start of your MBA? Did you share any similar experience with me?

I’m not a born leader.  I often think I’m better off as an adviser to a leader, rather than being a leader myself.  But there are situations in life which put us in the position of leadership.  So I have no choice but to learn to lead as well.

In learning to be a leader, I subscribe to strength-based leadership, among other practices.  It means to focus on other people’s strengths, instead of weaknesses, in leading and coaching them.  Instead of spotting their mistakes, we try to spot their plus points and encourage them accordingly.

Since we will see what we focus on, so by strength-based leadership we will seek to discover and reward the good points in others.  Hopefully, their confidence and morale will increase and will produce even better work and be better team members.

Generally speaking, it has worked out quite well so far.  However, my trial is not without problems.  But these are not problems with strength-based leadership.  They are my problems.

In focusing on strengths, I tend to overlook their weaknesses.  As a result, when a team member does not do his or her job well, I tend to brush it aside and not confront the member so that he or she can do better next time.

In focusing on strengths, I also tend to inflate a member’s ability.  If I find someone capable of doing something, I am inclined to consider he or she good in other areas as well.  However, such assumption can prove to be wrong.  At least once recently.

Also, when a member really does something wrong, I tend to give him or her benefits of doubt.  This maybe alright.  But I even try to rationalize and explain away his or her mistake.  Seems like I’m not facing the reality.

When I spot a member doing something obviously wrong, I also tend to avoid conflicts in order to maintain our relationship. I guess this is related to my tendency to be a nice guy.  It may be OK for a short-term team or project.  But it will not bring any benefit if we are together for long term, to the well being of both the team and the member.

I still want to adopt strength-based leadership in life, but perhaps with some adjustments and corrections.  Any feedback?