ANGER: BETWEEN A LEADERSHIP FAILURE AND THE TRIUMPH OF COMMON SENSE
Vince Lombardi, the legendary American Football coach, once said: There are occasions when being hard and being tough immediately is the easiest way and the kindest way, really, in the long run. We have to be hard sometimes to get the most out of people. We have to be hard sometimes to get the most out of ourselves, and what can appear to be cruel at a particular moment can eventually turn out to be a blessing in the long run. (Lombardi 2001, p. 134)
The above quote flashed vividly in mind as I waited patiently for the cars lining up in front of mine moved at snail pace on Jalan Sudirman on a rainy Monday evening in late January 2007.
I was recalling the incident taking place earlier in the morning of the same day. It has never occurred to me before in my professional career that I exploded into an ugly outburst with a colleague at the office. Although I knew that I was wrong for letting such an outrage, I kept wondering whether the display of emotion that day showed my toughness or just simply a display of foolishness. The more I pondered, the more I believed that I committed a serious leadership failure and thought really hard what courses of actions I could take to correct this.
Background:
Last year, Rabobank International Indonesia ("RII") secured a mandate to arrange a syndication loan facility for a big and well-known integrated oil palm company in Indonesia. In this fund-raising exercise, RII teamed up with a multilateral developmental agency ("MDA") to underwrite the whole amount, quite sizeable for the Indonesian standard.
After both RII and MDA agreed to split the responsibilities, we moved fast to speed up the internal process. Interna ...