This talk is about leadership and crisis management, given by Prof. Datuk Ir. Dr. Wahid bin Omar. Leadership is not a position, all of us play a leadership role at anytime, anywhere. Both positional leadership and non-positional leadership are important and impactful. Leadership is like a servantship. A leader is a servant of a team, not a leader of a team. The speaker also considers the relationship on a team as "leader and team" instead of "leader and follower".

Crisis is a part of leadership that cannot be avoided. Crisis is a difficult, dangerous, unstable critical situation or affair that require immediate attention and important decision. Example of crisis are COVID-19 pandemic, 1MDB scandal, Bank Bumiputra scandal, Asian Financial Crisis, flash flood, water shortage. Crisis can be caused by natural disaster, leadership, politics, economy, accident, pandemic, strike, mismanagement, incompetent, scandal, corruption, family, public relations, constitutional, resource and identity. Crisis can have many negative impacts such as chaos, image degradation, stress, low morale, confusion, impact on business, disruption, diverting resource, trust and become a vigilant of others taking advantage.

Crisis management is one of an important skill for a leader. A leader should have specific competencies to manage the crisis. The leader should have high integrity, take charge of the crisis, not blaming on other, be truthful, transparent to others, be open-minded and the leader should be quick to turn the crisis into opportunity. The leader should also be clam and trust his intuition, be ready to do business not as usual and a task force is needed to be establish. The task force should have a swift response in action, understanding issue, finding solution and post-mortem. In crisis, a leader should also have good communication in internal and external to stop rumors, create friend and eliminate the enemies. The leader should always avoid blaming but win other's heart. To avoid further confusion in crisis, there must only be one voice. Lastly, the leader should accept the brutal truth and move on, do not deny the crisis. Crisis is like a trial; it defines the moment of leader. It tests the true value of leadership and organization, resilience of organization to tight the loose ends in the team. A leader should turn the crisis into new opportunities, it is an opportunity to change.

The speaker continues to share about his experience in crisis management. There was fire on a transformer, the speaker took charge of the accident even though it is not handled by him, assurance and fact are given and there is not blaming in the process. There was some racial issue in one of the lecture slides and caused a public affection. The speaker apologized openly without questioning who is responsible. There was financial crisis and it quickly became an opportunity to make changes and develop new business model. There was also an issue of father and child killed by go-kart. The speaker does not push the problem to others, he took charge of the matter, visit the family and resolved the crisis. There was also issue about student fee. The speaker sticks to the truthfulness and resolved the problem even though there will be losses in money. Last but not least, the global pandemic of COVID-19. Many online systems were planned without anticipating the pandemic and the pandemic struck early. The pandemic became a good opportunity to create more networking with international partner.

In the end, the speaker gives his tips on leadership. Don't put your position where you feel frighten. A leader manages individual to contribute to an organization. If a follower refuse to change, persuade and influence can be done but after a period of time, a brutal way may need to be used for the good of organization, not personal goods. He also mentioned, everyone should listen to each other, and a good leader always listen to others.

In this talk, I learn about how to handle crisis. Crisis is unavoidable and every leader will face it. Instead of being defeated by crisis, a leader should take charge of it, take the responsibility and create a new opportunity. A leader should not be frighten but is strong to lead a team through the crisis.