PENANG, July 2015 - Someone who is born or trained to be a leader need to possess a high standard of integrity.

That was the gist shared by the Pro-Chancellor of Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Tan Sri Datuk Mustafa Mansur from his experience in the session 'Lesson of Success By A Leader' with the ASEAN student leaders at the ASEAN Future Leaders Summit (AFLES) 2015 Programme at the USM Dewan Budaya here recently.

"A leader can contribute to a better organisational system if he/she applies the quality of excellence on integrity; on the contrary a leader with excellent qualifications but without integrity will stumble eventually," he said.

He added further, good governance of an organisation need to be put in practice and implemented in the best manner possible and this requires a high level of integrity so that success can be achieved and driven in accordance with the organisation’s objective, coupled with an adherence to the management values of the organisation.

He said someone who wants to be the leader of an organisation must identify a role model to be used as a yardstick to be successful in his/her career as a leader, and the concept of rewarding an individual by the organisation should be encouraged based on the performance of the individual in the organisation.

"As Malaysia has been selected to be the Chair of ASEAN this year, the AFLES programme is a major milestone to the communities of this region to sit together and think about the future direction of ASEAN in more detail," he added.

Earlier on, Mustafa Mansur launched the USM AFLES 2015 Programme.

The conference, which lasted for 10 days took the student leaders from the 10 ASEAN countries, consisting of 160 individuals, to four locations -- the Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and the Prince of Songkla University (PSU) in Thailand.

Also present at the sharing session were USM International Office Director Associate Professor Dr. Anees Janee Ali; Shelton International College and RPT Singapore Director Patrick Hogan; AFLES 2015 Project Director Imran Sarwar; and the principal officers of USM. 

Translation: Sharifah Zafirah Syed Nassir/Text: Hafiz Meah Ghouse Meah/Photo: Mohd Fairus Md. Isa