Editor’s Note: Using Our Powers For Good

Our team had great fun putting together this week’s issue centred around The Avengers! Just reading the great articles contributed by our team of thought leaders – our heroes (and villains!) have been sliced, diced and seen from every angle.

Therein lies the power of storytellers – those who write the stories, and also those who are able to analyse, connect the dots and bring to real life the lessons learnt – a power that we consciously use in every interaction we have each day.

Elisa Dass helps us understand the various permutations of knowing a person’s talent and/or motives so that we might identify who are the Thors, Hulks and Iron Men we work with – and how we might want to approach them differently.

What happens when we are surrounded by the death and destruction of our dreams and hopes? Roshan Thiran, channelling Spidey and other superheroes, reminds us that suffering can lead to success.

From Sara Yee, we have a handy guide to the dos and don’ts that she has gleaned from being a great fan of The Avengers (although, sporting her recently acquired Loki paraphernalia, she may have a curiously dark side!).

Adrian Yap makes a beeline to another baddie – Ultron – for leadership lessons. Did that make you sit up in your seat? To be sure, it’s about what not to do.

An avid fan, Lily Cheah walks us through what we may have missed had we solely watched our heroes on the silver screen – the trials and tribulations of the leader of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in the shape of Phil Coulson.

What is normal anyway? An interesting take on the “mere mortals” Hawkeye and Black Widow by Dineshsethu Ramachandran. Christopher Moore also weighs in on other heroes in our midst – the modern day heroes – saying that it is not enough to have superpowers, but to know when to use them.

And in his debut article, Daniel Lee talks to us about the building blocks of effective teams.

Sunday 21 June 2015 is Father’s Day. How can we forget our superhero dads? Zaid Mohamad talks about the role of parents in nurturing leaders, and we feature the heartfelt messages from readers paying tribute to their dads.

Back to suffering and success, I recently asked a CEO how she would define success and in her reply, she quoted Maya Angelou: “Success is also about liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”

There have been various low points in my own life. One that comes to mind is lapsing into a coma for a month and losing the skills we might take for granted like walking. The day I awoke, I vowed to continue walk again, continue making a difference – and ensuring that I would always use my “powers” for good.

To our readers, I hope we all recognise that we all have powers and it is our choice to use them – great or small – to make a difference in our little corners of the world.

Onward, upward!

KAREN NEOH
Editor

 
First appeared on Leaderonomics.com. Published in English daily The Star, Malaysia, 20 June 2015