Leadership: Will the real superhero please stand up?

by Yeoh Siew Hoon


In the movie, “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army”, our hero, who is as tender-hearted as most heroes come, struggles between good and evil.

For one defining moment, he has to make a choice to join “the villains” or stay on the side of “man”. It’s a difficult choice. The “villains” are freaks like him while “man” has destroyed the earth.

In the other blockbuster movie of the moment, “The Dark Knight”, Batman too struggles between good and evil as he is challenged to the limits by an artful, evil Joker. At one point, the Joker taunts him, “See, to them, you’re just a freak… like me!”

The Joker meanwhile succeeds in turning the “White Knight” (Harvey Dent) into a two-faced villain and, in the end, Batman has to appear to be the bad guy in order to save the world.

I won’t tell you more but watching these two movies, back to back, it reinforced the realisation about how increasingly grey our world had become.

Things are no longer as black and white as we would like them to be.

The good guy isn’t necessarily all good and the bad guy isn’t necessarily all bad, either. Heroes come with fatal flaws – for Hellboy, it’s his temper – and as Harvey Dent said, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

In the current times we are living in, is the bad guy the oil-producing countries who now have all of us over the barrel or are they the good guys because, maybe finally, they will get us thinking about new energy sources?

Is Al Gore our superhero – the Green Lantern, reincarnate, as it were – with his bold 10-year plan, announced last week, to shift the US to “renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources”?

Is George Bush the Emperor Nero of our time – his answer to the energy crisis being to lift the executive orders banning drilling for oil and natural gas off the country’s shorelines?

Or is the Dalai Lama the real superhero to whom we look for answers but whose very being raises more questions than we could ever want to deal with in our global state of restlessness?

Specific to the travel industry, is Richard Branson the superhero for his commitment of US$3 billion to tackle climate change and for his pledge to replace the bulk of his airline’s fleet with ‘greener’, more fuel efficient Boeing jets, which will burn about 27 percent less fuel per passenger than the aircraft they are to replace?

And then this week, just as oil reached US$147 per barrel, our red-caped hero dares to utter out loud what most of us think: “One of the big American carriers will almost definitely go.”

With all this happening at a time when banks, airlines, car manufacturers, and computer companies are either going belly-up or in deep ectoplasm – yes, suddenly, everyone knows Fannie and Freddie by name – don’t you wish our travel industry has leaders who are superheroes? Or, at the very least, aspire to be?

Leaders with bold ideas and visionary thoughts, leaders whose thoughts are aligned with their words and action, leaders who dare to make the right choices …

Let’s turn to Nelson Mandela who turned 90 last week and who, in the July 21 issue of Time, shared his eight secrets of leadership.

1. Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s inspiring others to move beyond it 


2. Lead from the front, but don’t leave your base behind 


3. Lead from the back, and let others believe they are in front 


4. Know your enemy and learn about his favourite sport 


5. Keep your friends close and your rivals even closer 


6. Appearances matter and remember to smile


7. Nothing is black or white 


8. Quitting is leading too

Leadership will be one of the driving themes of WIT-Web In Travel 2008. In times such as these – of uncertainty, of constant challenges brought on by the relentless pace of technology and events – leadership is needed in the travel business like never before.

Leaders who can offer some view of the future; leaders who can influence the outcome and leaders who can inspire those in the front and back to move beyond the turbulent changes engulfing our industry.

In one scene from The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne asks Alfred Pennyworth, “People are dying. What would you have me do?”

The reply: “Endure. You can be the outcast. You can make the choice that no one else will face – the right choice.”