Should Leaders Throw Rocks At Each Other?

Although the 12 Parliament Session has begun, some members of the ruling coalition has yet to stop bickering each other.

The latest was when the former Selangor MB, Khir Toyo told reporters that the Hindu Temple demolition, alleged to be one of the major factors for Selangor BN dismal performance in the last GE, was MIC President, Samy Velu's idea. Read full report here and here. Samy slammed and said 'It is Khir's fault'.

On seeing that this is not good for BN, PM Abdullah Badawi told both leaders to stop it.

And then another headline picked Khir Toyo as saying 'Blame the keris not the broom' for the poor performance.

I had quarrels with my brothers that compelled my parent to stop us from bickering each other. We were children then. Now that we have families of our own, we understood why our parent had to come in between us to resolve our differences. They had gone and we missed them a lot. As leaders, they had indeed taught us to place greater importance on building relationships rather than bickering on each other. Thereafter, we move on to do what we were supposed to do.

Sometime in November - December 2006, I held a series of 12 Management Training sessions for Mayban Fortis. Mayban Fortis, Takaful Malaysia and MNI then were going through a merger process. I had quoted and shared a case story of the Canadian's 1982 Everest Expedition in these sessions.

The 1982 Canadian Everest team had the best climbers from all over the world. The leader knew that even though they had the best people in the entire world at what they did, the trip would not be a success. This was because everyone in the team wants to get to the top for themselves. They did it for the glory of their own country and not for the good of their team. Not only that they never got to the top, at one point these successful climbers were throwing rocks at each other. What was frustrating, was to see them throwing rocks at each other when they were supposed to be in a team. And, what seemed to be even more crazy was that they dare throw rocks at each other when they were just attached to each other by ropes.

The above local news headlines are no different from this case story. More often than not, while leaders claimed they deserved their positions we still see them throwing 'verbal rocks' at people who are supposed to be on their team. Why? Only they can tell the reasons for doing so. But....surely we can learn from the experiences of the Canadian's 1982 Everest Expedition Team. And we too can list the leadership lessons learnt.