“Once, I remember going back home, I found my car splashed all over with red paint. I knew who did it, because I caught him ponteng class. I wasn’t afraid because I know them and knew how to navigate. You need to know not to go head-to-head with them, but you still need to get them into order. That is the challenge.
You just have to be sincere, humble, be friends with them. You don’t want to be punched in the head when you walk out of school right, so you just explain to them what might happen to them. Don’t be stuck up and langsi. I found out early in life that there there are many, many ways to solve a problem (with difficult people), not just one way.
The whole experience made me a more rounded person in how you deal with tough people when you are a prefect. Now at my age I see that you have to deal with a lot of difficult people.
When you want to deal with people you need to know first how to motivate them. I used to be a high demanding, aggressive, hot tempered boss. So people worked under a lost of stress under me, which eventually burns you.
And it burns you when people come to you and resign – not because they are bad but because I am just too tough. I have toned down and learn.
So until now I learn that people don’t owe you anything. You are as a manager. People leave not because of the job, they leave because of the manager, right? So you just have to learn how to be a good manager.
So make sure that whatever position that you are in, especially with my small company, with my people I try to teach them beyond what they are doing on their job, try to bring them up to a higher level, spend some time with them – teach them.
And dealing with the tough performer – I always believe in meritocracy. Know that your performance is dynamic, it always changes. You can be a top 20 performer today, and you can be at the bottom 10 the next day. So you need to keep your performance up. There are always people who are better than you, so you need to always be savvy.
If you want to climb the corporate ladder, always aim to be the Top 20, so try not to be in the Bottom 10 – you will know when you are there. You need to tell them what to improve. You as an individual and as an employee you need to know what is your goal. I would advise people to follow their passion. I only work with my passion.
I don’t do my job because its my job, I do it because its my passion. We spend a lot of hours in a job. Many people do a job because they want to sustain their lifestyle. I don’t believe in that. I will perform if I really like it. If I am put in a position in a company that I really hated, I know I am going to be bad at it.
Sometimes when there are job offers which pays comfortably – they are high paying for a reason, but I know that I myself and am past that.
With Millennials, and working with young graduates, I noticed that they lack focus and just don’t know the reason WHY they are working. They take on any jobs. Sometimes I ask them a simple question, what is your goal?
And many millenials say ‘I want to be rich’. I said: who doesn’t want to be rich? That’s not a goal. That is never a goal. You think about it. I don’t think you want to be rich, or do you want to be financially free? That’s a goal, and there’s plenty of ways to be financially free – and you will be rich when you do things that you are good at.
Treat people with respect, and just be sincere. People can see.
For me, I have found out what my passion is – from my time working in China with a marketing research company, I found out about Gigagigs.
GigaGigs, is an app that instantly connects you with micro tasks that are simple, fun and easy-to-do, and pays you upon completion of these tasks.
We have had 80,000 downloads and 15,000 users and collectively they have earned rewards close to RM 300,000 since we started 1.5 years ago.
And all the while I have been in corporate and was never exposed to the startup ecosystem – and that’s how Malaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre has helped us out. They made me see their big network of entrepreneurs and you can see all the innovations and ideas of other people, and that opened my eyes of what Malaysians can do and how I could apply it my industry to solve problems.
My vision and aim now is to expand out to South East Asia.
I’ve been in the corporate life for 20 years – its been a comfortable life, so why did I want to get out that into the startup life?
I could have a comfortable or an uncomfortable life. Asking myself that question made me realize that this is something that needs to be done for the greater good, I love the app so much that I am willing to take a bet to make this work. And true enough it has grown by leaps and bounds.”
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Humans of Kuala Lumpur is partnering withMalaysian Global Innovation and Creativity Centre(MaGIC) in featuring inspiring and impact-driven entrepreneurs, problem solvers and startups in their mission to solve Malaysia’s problems!#HumansofMaGIC
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa
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(This post was first published on August 18th 2018)
