Leadership Dojo: Be Gracious To People, But Be ‘Brutal’ In Achieving Results, Says Zainal Abidin Jalil

From humble beginnings, group managing director of DNeX Zainal Abidin Jalil has an amazing and inspirational leadership story in becoming who he is today through sheer hardwork and resilience in facing ‘intellectually-torturing’ times at work.

This former head honcho of Malakoff played a key role in steering this local company to become global because of his foresight in identifying and unlocking the hidden potential and capability of the company.

Some key takeaways from Zainal:

• Your past glories and achievements are history. Your paper qualification is just a passport to enter the workforce. The rest is up to you to learn on the job.
• Be open to your moments of truth where you may be pushed and challenged to take on roles that are out of your league. Treat the experience as part and parcel of your character-building process.
• Swallow your pride and be humble to learn. Don’t think you know everything, because you don’t. You are always a work-in-progress.
• Practise good governance. Work in white area and eliminate grey area (ambiguous working environment) because if you let the grey area fester too long, it will eventually turn black.

The best advice Zainal had ever received was from his American colleague:

Always be gracious to people, but be ‘brutal’ in achieving results.

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