Concepts

Curricular Focus:

On leadership attributes and leadership skills:

• Self Leadership: On positive psychology & personal mastery
• Servant Leadership: On leadership values & skills
• Entrepreneurial Leadership: On entrepreneurial mindset

Specific Attributes & Skills:

Bi-cultural Competency: A bi-culturally competent Hwa Chongian possesses the knowledge and a set of congruent behaviours and attitudes, to work effectively in cross-cultural situations (vis-à-vis Eastern & Western culture) .

That is, having cross-cultural capabilities to embrace and adapt to different cultural context.

• Bi-cultural: refers to the integrated patterns of culture, beliefs, values and institutions.
• Competency: refers to the capacity to function effectively in other cultural contexts. Operationally defined, it refers to the ability to integrate and transform knowledge about individuals and groups of people to achieve the desired outcomes.

Adapted from: Cross T., Bazron, B., Dennis,K., & Isaacs, M. (1989), Towards a culturally competent system of care, volume I, Monograph, Washington D.C.

Self leadership:

Self leadership is the foundation for all leaderships. It is an enabling process whereby the students learn to define who they are and what they want, through better self-understanding and personal mastery. It is also constructed within the framework of positive psychology and rooted in our strong foundation of Chinese values. It is about empowering oneself to personal excellence and achieving total wellness.

Servant leadership:

The Hwa Chongian as a servant leader is one who has people at the core of his being. He is therefore one whose primary purpose for leading is to serve others, by enabling others to accomplish their tasks and realize their potential. He is also someone who is grounded in strong fundamental moral orientation. Hence, the emphasis on People, Tasks and Character.

Entrepreneurial mindset (Entrepreneurial leadership):

A Hwa Chongian with an entrepreneurial mindset is able to adopt a new way of thinking, and has the foresight and the ability to combine differing perspectives into new alignments. He has the ability to identify and seize opportunities to undertake initiatives that go beyond mere incremental improvements to bring about a positive impact on the society at large. In short, the Hwa Chong entrepreneurial leader would be a visionary person who is able to inspire a team to bring about a transformation in the world of uncertainties and change.

Surie & Ashely (2008), Surie & Ashely (2008); Chen (2007); Kuratko (2007); & Gupta, MacMillan & Surie (2004) in Bagheri (2009) identifies three critical components of entrepreneurial leadership, that of proactiveness, innovativeness, and risk taking.

1. Proactiveness: is being active to influence and lead the future rather than waiting to be influenced by it, exploit opportunities, and accept the responsibility of failure. It is being able to anticipate future problems, needs for change, and improvement.
2. Innovativeness: is the ability and tendency to think creatively, develop novel and useful ideas in opportunity recognition, resource utilization, and problem solving.
3. Risk taking: is the willingness to absorb uncertainty and take the burden of responsibility for the future with prudential and calculated risk.

Adapted from: Bagheri, Afsaneh (2009), An Exploratory Study of Entrepreneurial Leadership Development of University Students, European Journal of Social Sciences – Volume 11, Number 1 (2009).