Leading - from behind?

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I got this story from Ezine articles, and the message that it is sending forth is quite a breaker from today's prevailing culture. When the common leadership calls for the leader to be standing infront, or leading the pack, it is quite a sudden change or an uncommon thing that a leader is leading from the back.

Not so with this gentleman told about in the story. I could say equally that 'he is my type of guy, my type of leader' - quietly and unassumingly leading the pack - from the back.

Read on...

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Leading the Pack From the Back

I'll never forget this...

It's March of 2007 and I'm attending my first Toastmasters speech contest. I don't know a single soul. I arrive at the building and there's this casually dressed guy, clean-cut, a huge smile, semi-nasally voice with thin-rimmed eyeglasses directing traffic.

"It's not this building. It's two buildings that-a-way," he instructed.

"Okay chief," I complied.

As I'm parking the car, I'm thinking Mr. Traffic Cop must not be that important. He's only directing traffic. He can't be one of those higher-ups in the organization. If he were he'd be inside: busy facilitating the contest.

To my surprise, Mr. Traffic Cop spoke that evening. He gave a humorous speech about his latest adventure visiting a new dentist. He stole the show.

His calm Clark Kent exterior hid the Super Comedy Man interior. He had the audience rolling on the floor, holding their sides, in the fetal position laughing hysterically. He wasn't only good-he was "The Bomb."

I couldn't picture this earlier when I pulled up on the driveway. I thought he was someone low on the totem pole. Speaking contestants weren't supposed to be performing menial jobs. They're supposed to dress sharp and receive lavish accolades.

My bad...

I found out Super Comedy Man has filled so many roles in his home club that he is now its current president. He also leads three other clubs as their area governor. He possesses a strong resolve to pull off everything he's involved with.

Do you know what I learned from him that March evening?

True leaders do deeds...

That meet all needs...

So everyone succeeds.

What is the secret to his success? What makes him such agood leader? What does he do that gains him so much respect?

Super Comedy Man's three assets that can make you an invaluable leader:

1) Putting others first. In Star Trek II, gasping his last few breaths Mr. Spock said, "The needs of the many outweigh the need of the one." He had given his life to save the Enterprise. It was the most touching and unforgettable scene in the entire series.

This flies in the face of today's Me First Society. From early school age, children are programmed to get the best grades, land the best jobs and live in the best neighborhoods. Unfortunately, they never really stand out among the pack.

Then you hear about someone like Sister Teresa. She didn't own much, but what she had she gave away. She made the honor roll by putting others' needs first.

2) Giving from within. In the Middle East there's a body of water called the Dead Sea. Nothing lives in it because water flows in, but cannot flow out. It's stagnant.

In nature there's no stagnation. Everything that lives... gives. The seed gives fruit, the sun gives life, and the clouds give rain.

It's the same for human beings. Those who give with integrity usually get back much more than they invested. Yet can you believe there are people who never share their abundance, talents or knowledge? Hoarding leads to stagnancy.

3) Being a team player. It's no mystery that five mediocre team players can usually beat five lone ranger all-stars in almost any sport. Their secret is teamwork. The power of a united group poses too mighty a force for most opponents.

Part of participating in a winning team involves filling other roles when needed. That may include doing tasks that might be a little beneath you. Your teammates will respect you even more for taking odd jobs when needed.

You may also have to share, or step backward from the limelight. Doing so helps keep your team strong and balanced while achieving a common goal. It's called an "assist" in basketball. One player alley oops while the other gets the slam dunk.

If you are a leader or want to become one-people will watch, model and even quote you. Especially if they admire you. Put on a smile and show them you can lead from any position.

Tommy Yan helps business owners and entrepreneurs make more money through direct response marketing. He publishes Tommy's Tease weekly e-zine to inspire people to succeed in business and personal growth. Get your free subscription today at http://www.tommyyan.com/.

If you're a speaker, trainer, coach, or a consultant-the major challenge you face is connecting with your audience. You talk, shout, or recite your message while they are dreaming about dinner.

Their eyes are glossy, their minds' elsewhere, and their bodies ready to bolt. You don't have a lot of time, so you've got to grab their attention fast. Or else, you'll die wrestling against audience resistance.

But it doesn't have to be this way...

Article Directory: EzineArticles

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PLANS TO BE WORLD'S BREADBASKET

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JAKARTA - Following Brazil's trail, Indonesia is encouraging foreign and local investors to lease huge swathes of fertile countryside and help make the country a major food producer.

"Feed Indonesia, then feed the world," was the recent call from President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono after the government announced plans to fast-track development of vast agricultural estates in remote areas like Papua and Borneo.

Between now and 2030, Indonesia expects to become one of the world's biggest producers of rice, maize, sugar, coffee, shrimp, meats and palm oil, senior agriculture ministry official Hilman Manan said.

The world's fourth most populous country, with 235 million people, Indonesia has been self-sufficient in rice since 2008 and is already the top producer of palm oil.

"If everything goes well, Indonesia should be able to be self-sufficient in five years. And then it can start to feed the world," said Mr Sony Heru Priyanto, an expert at Satya Wacana Christian University.

The first area targeted for development is 1.6 million hectares in the south-east of the largely undeveloped province of Papua, around the town of Merauke.

The Merauke Integrated Food and Energy Estate will, the government hopes, create thousands of jobs and turn an impoverished and neglected corner of the Indonesian archipelago into a hive of activity.

"We chose Merauke because it's the ideal place for food crop cultivation, such as rice, corn, soybean and sugar cane. Merauke district has 4.5 million hectares of land; 2.5 million hectares are ideal for cultivation," Mr Manan said.

"The area is flat and has a good climate. Its soil is appropriate for those crops. Sumatra is already congested with other plantations, such as palm oil, and Kalimantan is already full of mining areas and many plantation areas also."

He said Merauke's population of some 175,000 people could rocket to 800,000 if the plan takes off.

Foreigners will be able to control a maximum of 49 per cent of any investing company, and will be offered incentives like tax breaks and reductions in customs and excise duties.

"In order to avoid any forms of monopolies or land grabbing, we're limiting each company to a maximum of 10,000 hectares of land," Mr Manan said, stressing that the government was selling land use rights, not the land itself.

He said interest had come from Japan, South Korea and the Middle East.

But analysts said the region's biggest advantage - expanses of "empty" land - was also the main obstacle: The project will require up to US$5 billion ($7 billion) in infrastructure investments, from a new port to roads and runways.

And there is opposition from small-scale farmers who say their traditional livelihoods could be threatened by the large-scale commercialisation of agriculture.

"We reject the concept of the food estate. For us, food estates are another kind of land grabbing scheme. It's like going back to the era of feudalism," Indonesian Farmers Union official Kartini Samon said.

Such worries are well known in other countries with similar schemes, such as Brazil and Madagascar, where there is deep suspicion about food and bio-fuel companies monopolising agricultural land.

There are also fears for the rights of indigenous Papuans, who have long complained that their traditional lands are being unjustly exploited by outsiders. AFP

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010

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MURDER: AN ACCEPTED TOOL OF FOREIGN POLICY

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BRITISH Foreign Secretary David Miliband says it is "outrageous". The French foreign ministry has expressed its "deep concern". Even the Americans appear to be gearing up for a major diplomatic protest. And the cause of all the outrage? Not the murder, almost certainly by the Israelis, of Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai. Rather, it's that the murderers used forged British and French passports - or in America's case, that they used a United States credit card to book flights to Dubai for six members of the hit squad.

Forging passports is certainly a bad thing - but is it worse than murder? To judge by the international reaction to the killing of Al Mabhouh, it is much worse. Yet it was not all that long ago that it was thought to be, well, indecent for a government to go around assassinating its enemies. When the British government sent a group of Special Air Service officers to murder suspected members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on Gibraltar, there was an enormous international outcry. Britain was hauled before the European Court and severely admonished. Would there be such a response today? Only if the killers forged their travel documents.

In the 1980s, one element of the British Army routinely helped Loyalist death squads kill suspected IRA men in Belfast. A group called the Force Research Unit handed out names, addresses and photographs of those who were thought to be on active service for the IRA to Loyalist assassins. In those days, the whole thing had to be kept secret. When one officer referred obliquely to the practice in court, his claims were very quickly denied. But the officer concerned was never tried or even admonished - in fact, he was promoted.

The United States had, and indeed still has, a presidential Executive Order, which has the force of law, stating that "no person employed by or acting on behalf of the US government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination". During the first Gulf War, General Michael Dugan was sacked as US Air Force Chief of Staff because he suggested that America was trying to kill former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. That, he insisted, was the point of most of the bombing raids on Iraq: The bombs were being dropped on places where Saddam was thought to be.

No US official advocating assassination would face the sack today. It has become an essential part of policy: America routinely uses unmanned drones to kill those it thinks are important figures in the Taliban. Only last week, a drone killed Mohammed Haqqani - the brother of a senior Afghan Taliban commander - in Waziristan. No one has objected: There hasn't even been an outcry about the additional deaths caused by these weapons, which don't discriminate between the good, the bad, and the women and children.

There is, of course, a critical difference between targeting Saddam and targeting Haqqani or Al Mabhouh. Saddam was a head of state. The others were not: They were merely members of terrorist organisations.

There is an unspoken rule that no leader should order the assassination of another. The rule is self-enforcing: Heads of state, particularly in democracies, are visible targets and even the most diligent security service cannot guarantee their safety. Aware of their own vulnerability to a determined assassin, presidents and prime ministers are eager not to establish a precedent that leaders are fair game.

Lesser mortals, however, obviously are. When Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, was murdered by what almost everyone now believes was one of Russia's state security organisations, the British government contented itself with a relatively mild protest, and the expulsion of a few diplomats when Russia refused to extradite the chief suspect. That was it.

This apparent international consensus that assassination is a legitimate tool of foreign policy is a very sinister development. State-sponsored murder is still murder. And murder is still a worse offence than using forged passports. The Daily Telegraph

From TODAY, Monday, 22-Feb-2010

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S$2.2b deals sealed at Singapore Water Week

By Tang See Kit, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 29 June 2009 1730 hrs

SINGAPORE: This year's Singapore International Water Week (SIWW) has seen more deals flowing in, despite the current economic downturn.

The four-day event, which ended last week, saw S$2.2 billion worth of deals signed. This is six times what was achieved last year.

The SIWW saw several industry players like Hyflux and GE inking deals to boost research and development as well as further enhance their global presence.

Singapore's water-technology firm Hyflux expanded its plans in the Middle East region by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Swiss-based ABB for the company's project in Algeria worth S$28 million.

Hyflux also entered a joint venture with General Desalination Company (GDC) to develop two seawater desalination plants in Libya.

The SIWW also witnessed industry players collaborating with educational firms to expand their research and development capabilities.

Multinational company GE entered a partnership worth S$150 million with the National University of Singapore (NUS) to work on a research and development centre to develop safe drinking water systems across Asia.

Event organisers said these deals signified that the water industry is poised for further growth across all sectors, despite the gloomy global economy.

SIWW's managing director, Michael Toh, said: "I think (for) the water industry, the solutions provided have to cover all these (different areas). You know, in the plant, you have instrumentation, (and) you need chemicals, you need the pumps, you need the valves. So I think as a whole, the industry will grow."

Currently, Singapore's Environment and Water Industry Development Council (EWI) aims to triple the value-added (VA) contribution from the water industry to S$1.7 billion, which represents 0.6% of the GDP, by 2015.

Employment within the sector is also expected to double to about 11,000 people, with a majority in the professional and skilled categories.

Moving forward, organisers are seeking to brand the Water Week as a global platform for water solutions.

Jimmy Lau, managing director of Singapore Airshow & Events, said: "The whole value chain of the water industry is here and there will continually be discussions going on and looking for solutions, which is what the Water Week here in Singapore concentrates on. And so we expect the event to throw up a lot more opportunities, both technology as well as getting more funding for projects for water."

The SIWW attracted more than 10,000 attendees from 85 countries, up from last year's 8,500 visitors. More than 420 companies from some 28 countries took part in the SIWW.

28 new products and technologies were also unveiled for the first time at the event's Water Expo's Innovation Corner.

- CNA/ir

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Hyflux in joint venture to develop 2 seawater desalination plants in Libya

By Tang See Kit, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 24 June 2009 2052 hrs

SINGAPORE: Singapore-based water treatment firm Hyflux has made its first foray into Libya. It has entered a joint venture to invest and develop two seawater desalination plants there.

The plants which use membrane-based reverse osmosis technology will be located in Libya's two largest cities - Tripoli and Benghazi.

Hyflux signed the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with the General Desalination Company (GDC), the commercial arm of Libya's Ministry of Utilities on Wednesday.

The two plants will provide a combined total of at least 900,000 cubic metres of drinking water every day.

This exceeds another Hyflux project in Algeria which is the current single largest desalination plant in the world with a capacity of 500,000 cubic metres per day.

That project has a value of S$632 million.

Hyflux will be providing the two plants with its award winning Kristal Ultra Filtration pretreatment membrane and process technology.

Hyflux did not provide a specific investment figure for its latest projects.

But it hopes to set "new benchmarks in terms of size and efficiency" for the Libyan plants.

The developments are also in line with the company's strategy to focus on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Sam Ong, group deputy, CEO/CFO, Hyflux, said: "This is a very iconic, significant milestone for Hyflux. This is a new geographical expansion. We believe we are going to put more resources into the MENA region, and that includes Libya. And we believe North Africa and the Middle East region will continue to be big market potential for Hyflux. This will add significantly to what we are able to do in Singapore, Southeast Asia, India and China."

The details of the joint venture project including conceptual designs and finance models will be finalised in the months ahead.

Hyflux also said it will be talking to bankers recommended by its Libyan partners to discuss project financing.

The construction timeline has not been finalized but Hyflux said the plants will be built one after another. - CNA/vm

From ChannelNewsAsia.com; see the source article here.

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Obama seeks fresh start

Will this really trigger a change, an impact in the US, the whole world?

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will journey to the centre of Arab-Muslim civilisation this week to begin the daunting task of draining deep mistrust of the United States felt across the Islamic world.

In Egypt on Thursday, Mr Obama will make a personal address to the world's Muslims, harnessing his own ancestral ties to Islam and globalising his message of change in a speech rich in trademark political ambition.

His trip comes as some observers scent a moment of opportunity amid the perpetual Middle East crisis.

But others see only peril, with a showdown gathering pace between Washington and Israel over Jewish settlements and no end in sight to Iran's nuclear drive.

This trip's first stop, on Wednesday, will be Saudi Arabia, for talks with King Abdullah, seeking Arab support for US peace efforts.

But the highlight will be the speech at the University of Cairo, co-hosted by Al-Azhar University, an ancient hub of Islamic scholarship.

Mr Obama may try to use the charismatic rhetoric which helped make him president as a balm for region-wide mistrust of the US.

"I want to use the occasion to deliver a broader message about how the United States can change for the better its relationship with the Muslim world," he said last week.

The speech will also be a promise kept — way back in the presidential campaign Mr Obama pledged to speak before a major Islamic forum.

In Egypt, he will make references to the Islamic faith of some of his paternal family in Kenya, time spent in Indonesia as a young boy and contacts with Muslim communities in Illinois.

"The President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world," said foreign policy adviser Denis McDonough.

Some analysts predict though Mr Obama may fall short. "There's nothing Barack Obama could say to Muslims on June 4 that will make the US popular and he shouldn't try," said Mr Jon Alterman, of the Center of Strategic and International Studies.

"America's underlying interests are simply not allied with the policies that many Muslims around the world would like to see the US pursue."

The US image in the Muslim world has been stained by the invasion of Iraq, stalled Palestinian hopes for statehood and Bush administration acquiescence in Israel's offensives in Lebanon and Gaza. AFP

From TODAYonline.com, World news – Monday, 01-Jun-2009; see the source article here.

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70-80 good price for oil: French economy minister

AFP - Sunday, May 10

RIYADH (AFP) - - French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said Saturday that it would be good if oil prices settled at between 70 and 80 dollars a barrel.

"We want less volatility, more predictability," Lagarde said ahead of talks on Sunday with oil giant Saudi Arabia's petroleum minister Ali Naimi.

"Most people would agree that anywhere between 70 and 80 dollars would be good," she said.

Lagarde was on a 24 hour visit to the Saudi capital for discussions on a range of bilateral economic issues, including promoting France's high-speed rail expertise for the multi-billion-dollar Mecca-Medina rail project, and fashioning cooperation on nuclear power technology.

Lagarde said that Saudi King Abdullah and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had earlier agreed to seek mechanisms to stabilize oil prices, after last year's climb to nearly 150 dollars a barrel and subsequent plunge to just 30 dollars.

However, she said, the possible mechanisms for that still need to be explored.

Oil prices topped 58 dollars a barrel in New York trading Friday, the highest since mid-November.

Lagarde, who will meet King Abdullah and other top economic officials Sunday, said she will also encourage Saudi Arabia to follow up on its pledge to contribute to the expanded capital of the IMF.

This follows the G20 agreement in London at the beginning of April to triple the IMF's funds to 750 billion dollars.

"We all have to contribute more," she said, noting that most of the G20 members had yet to confirm their contributions.

"In London all of us, including the Saudis, signed a commitment, so we have to deliver."

Lagarde said she would also discuss with her Saudi counterparts updating the French-Saudi tax treaty to address issues that had arisen since the treaty was first signed some 20 years ago.

From Yahoo! News; see the source article here.

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