PP5506 AOL-Blog 2

iii) Was TT Durai, of Singapore’s National Kidney Foundation, an effective leader?

                By conventional standards of measurement, leadership is about 2 main things: task management and people management. However, I think there is a third crucial element to leadership, which may have often been overlooked --- expectation management. In most cases, the expectations that a leader has to manage are encompassed within the task itself such as hitting certain performance targets, expanding the organisation to a certain level etc. However, such clean-cut assessment of a leader no longer holds true when the organisation involved is one built upon certain moral values and is thus heavily bounded by public expectations. This invariably complicates the assessment of an effective leader, because whether the leader conducts himself/herself in a way that meets public expectation becomes a determining factor of his/her effectiveness.

Former CEO of NKF, TT Durai would most likely have been shortlisted under the league of effective leaders by conventional standards. It is unfortunate, yet unavoidably realistic that the assessment of effectiveness is often contextual-based. In Durai's case, the contentious point being the organisation that Durai is leading is not any profit-making corporation, but a charitable organisation that operates on public funding.

                Assessing TT Durai purely from a normal leadership perspective, he is no doubt highly effective. At an international level, his NKF dialysis program was so successful that other countries such as Bangladesh, China, India, Malaysia and Pakistan have sought the expertise of NKF. At a national level, he has transformed the originally barely surviving NKF into Singapore’s largest and most well-known charity, helping a substantial number of poor kidney patients. At an organisational level, his innovative fund-raising tactics has brought in a steady stream of funding for NKF and built up a strong reserve. Lastly, even at a personal level, Durai has shown himself to be a highly-motivating and endearing leader when despite public backlash, he received unwavering support from staff who reacted with emotional outburst and tears upon hearing his resignation announcement.

Unfortunately, Durai was not just leading any company, but a charity that demands high moral accountability, which means public expectation forces are at play.  Public not only demands the leader of a charitable organisation to run the organisation well, but also to conduct himself morally, and in line with what the organisation stands for, in this instance, behave charitably. Flying first-class on business trips and having elaborate renovation in the office, while is likely a norm that will not lead to any batting of eyelid in the commercial world, instantly becomes a behavior that is highly unbefitting when scrutinised under the charity lens. This situation was especially apparent in the case of Buddhist monk Shi Ming Yi, former CEO of another charitable organisation, Renci Hospital who suffered a dramatic downfall like Durai due to misuse of funds. Like Durai, Ming Yi’s extravagant lifestyle attracted strong criticism despite consumerism is not any big sin by normal human standard, but of course, public does not see Ming Yi as just a CEO, but a leader of a charity, coupled by his status as a religious leader.

From these cases, it is apparent that the context (the nature of the organisation) in which the leader exists cannot be divorced from the assessment of the leadership effectiveness. In fact, the context decides one of the most important criteria in assessing a leader; a charitable organisation, a religious institution and a commercial entity would definitely not have the same set of criteria to determine an effective leader. Therefore, in the case of Durai, he is an effective leader, but in my opinion, not an effective leader for NKF.

An additional read on Leadership in the charity sector, challenges and opportunities