Need to nurture leaders who lead with conscience — Wan Azizah

KUALA LUMPUR: Datuk Seri Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said there is a need to nurture leaders who lead with conscience, guided by their moral compass in their personal actions as well as business endeavours.

The Deputy Prime Minister said such leaders would conduct themselves and their businesses with integrity, ethics and respect for one another.

She pointed out that governments and political leaders did not always lead in this area, some breaching the trust of the people, denying facts and lying on the world stage.

“This gives us all the more reason to create environments for conscientious individuals to thrive, where there is a commitment towards creating value contribution to our nation and society,” she said at the 2018 CSR Malaysia Awards presentation yesterday. The event honoured outstanding achievers and inspiring corporations for their efforts to create a better Malaysia through their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives.

In this regard, Dr Wan Azizah said leaders should take part in CSR activities because they believed in it, not because it was mandated by the authorities.

She said that in this world of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and financial returns, there were bound to be leaders who were myopic and short-term in their outlook, concerned with what was measured by their superiors. “They become cold leaders who lack empathy and whose concern is just about meeting the next quarter’s KPI,” she said, adding that some would resort to doctoring figures and relying on creative accounting to hide their losses and abuse.