RRU's Faculty of Management invited learners, staff and faculty to a lunch and learn session with Eva Kwok, chair and chief executive officer of Amara International Investment Corporation, on June 1. Kwok is a member of the RRU Fellows Council and generously shared with the university her views about leadership; her insights into corporate versus small business leaders; and her observations on the ways in which women are transforming leadership in the business world.

by Phil Saunders

Sweeping across various themes in the realm of leadership, Kwok says good leaders are a blend of art and science and that leadership is easy to talk about but much harder to practice, especially in a crisis.

When Eva Kwok was president and chief executive officer of the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology, she was twice the brunt of unflattering editorial cartoons. One depicted her as a Dickensian Christmas goose; the other as a puppet of the Saskatchewan government. Finally, during a rather contentious strike at the Institute, she arrived home one day to a giant pile of horse manure on her front lawn -- an unsavory way rural folks have of letting you know how they feel.

Her response?

She said that her lawn needed fertilizing anyway!

The lesson for leaders at Kwok's lunch and learn on the Quarterdeck was that you have to have a sense of humour and realize that even though you can’t control what is said about you, you can control how you respond to it.

Kwok knows a thing or two about what it's like to be a leader. She's a former board member for the Bank of Montreal, Telesystem and CK Life Sciences International Holdings. She's a former director with Fletcher Challenge, Clarica Life, Coca-Cola, AT & T Canada, Melcorp, Scott Paper and Saskatchewan Oil and Gas. And she was, at one time, vice-president of the Asia Pacific Foundation.

Leadership is born out of crisis

Sweeping across various themes in the realm of leadership, Kwok said good leaders are a blend of art and science and that leadership is easy to talk about but much harder to practice, especially in a crisis.

“Look at General Motors,” she said. “Its history of success is unprecedented yet GM would not be in the crisis it is in today if it had learned an important lesson about why big companies need to change and adjust to maintain their success. The leaders at GM did not have the vision to move the company into the future.”

For Kwok, leaders need to inspire and motivate. She used as an example the recent Listeria outbreak at Maple Leaf Foods. President and CEO Michael McCain appeared on national television taking full responsibility for the errors that contributed to the contamination of the company's products. In doing this, she says, he gained the support of his employees and was eventually seen positively by the public. A poll conducted by the University of Alberta, in fact, shows that Maple Leaf’s approval ratings were higher after the Listeria outbreak than they were beforehand.

“People need to be inspired to be the best they can be in any organization,” Kwok says, “The key is to treat people the way you would want to be treated. That’s the mark of good leadership.”

Mars versus Venus

As a prominent business woman, Kwok has some sharp criticism about the environment in which women are expected to lead. She says that despite prevalent stereotypes about men and women, there are some universal truths about how men and women differ in their approaches to leadership.

“Women are more intuitive but, in a business setting, they aren’t encouraged to use their intuition,” says Kwok. “It’s a gift that I believe we should use more often. Women are also better listeners than most men and women have different ways of expressing themselves.”

Another fundamental difference between men, women and leadership styles relates to approaches to team-building.

“Women tend to be more collaborative while men tend to be more direct, focusing on specific tasks and deliverables,” she says. “As a result, women tend to be better at team-building than men.”

Kwok concluded her talk by suggesting that an increase in the number of women leaders in business is helping shatter stereotypes but she also wondered aloud why fashion sense is still something women leaders seem to be measured by more often than men and whether confidence and toughness will continue to be seen primarily as a male attributes.

Kwok’s business track record is proof alone that stereotypes are being shattered and that fertilizer she found on that fateful evening in Regina actually led to the growth of a robust leader in Canadian business!

Now is time to apply for next MBA program

The Faculty of Management at RRU Royal Roads University (RRU) offers MBA programs in Executive Management which includes specializations in Leadership and Management Consulting as well as Digital Technologies Management and Human Resources Management

Several graduate executive certificate programs, offered through the university's Centre for Applied Leadership and Management, also ladder into the MBA degree. These include:

Professional Communication Management Graduate Certificate
Strategic Human Resources Management Graduate Certificate 
Project Management Graduate Certificate 
Executive Coaching Graduate Certificate

There are still spaces available for the MBA program which begins November 23, 2009. Email mba@royalroads.ca to learn more.