Case Study Leadership Style

Salim Humaid Al-Shuaili

 Managing Change and Leadership

Table of Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 3

Nature of Maybank Management ................................................................................................... 4

Maybank Strategic - Commitment to the Environment .................................................................. 5

Maybank Programme - SEARCH................................................................................................... 6

Maybank Programme - LEAP 30 ................................................................................................... 9

Conclusion: ................................................................................................................................... 12

Reference ...................................................................................................................................... 13

2|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

Introduction
Since 1960 Malayan Banking Berhad (Maybank Group) started in Kuala Lumpur and today
become the leading financial banking services provider in Malaysia providing and catering to the
demands of consumers, investors, entrepreneurs, organizations and corporations. Maybank has
the largest network among Malaysian banks of over 2,200 branches and offices in 20 countries,
employing 47,000 Maybankers and serving over 22 million customers. Maybank has expanded
internationally; it ranked first among listed Malaysian companies and among the top 500
companies in the Forbes Global 2000 leading companies of the world. (Maybank Annual Report,
2012)
Nowadays banking industry is facing huge challenges because of the rapid change factors of
information and technology, globalization changes market trends. Finance banking service
industry in Malaysia is affected by different environmental factors; political, economical, social
and technological. Maybank is surrounded by various factors that affect its performance in the
steady growing banking industry. It is significant for Maybank to develop strategies and to do
better transformation in its unique banking services change to attract new customers and fulfill
customer demands under the Malaysia strong competitive banking platform. In order to achieve
its goals, leadership in Maybank lead to develop an improvement performance plans to become a
financial services leader in Malaysia. Maybank use different strategies to maximize value for its
shareholders profits by staying diversified across geography and business stability and capturing
growth opportunities in uncertain changes markets.
Maybank has been selected in this report to critically analysis on the role of leadership among
Malaysia organization because Maybank as the benchmark in Malaysian financial banking
services industry; however, many challenges rise to affect the sustainability of Maybank.
Therefore, in this report aims to discuss and analyze how Maybank use leadership role to
develop different approaches in achieving sustainable banking market.

3|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

Nature of Maybank Management

Analysis in the banking industry it is important to understand the desired and actual performance
levels. There are two ways to measure value creation performance first the Economic
Performance which is the banks internal value creation which is the result of increasing business
profitability and finding profitable growth opportunities. Technically, economic performance is
measured by the increase in value added, meaning the increase of excess profit earned as
compared to that of alternative investments of similar risk. The second way is the Market
Performance which is the banks external value creation which is the value created for the
shareholders or total shareholder return (TSR). Technically, TSR is the difference in market
value from the beginning of the shareholding period to the end, plus any dividends paid out
during this period. Internal and external value creation is usually in lockstep over longer periods
such as five years.
According to the Gupta et al. (2005) study indicated the more competitive nature of the service
industry requires more time and effort to be committed to leadership creation. With this in mind,
Maybank adopted a performance improvement plan since 2008 in order to become a financial
service leader in Malaysia by 2015 focusing on three strategic capabilities: secure Maybanks
position as the leader in financial services in Malaysia, strengthen regional presence through
enhancing and improving the quality of operations in seven out of 10 Asian countries Maybank
operates in today, next is to look for opportunities in other profitable growth markets in the
banking region and become a talent and execution- focused company.

4|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

Maybank Strategic - Commitment to the Environment

Recently, environment issues were pay highly attention from a nyone within or outside Malaysia.
Maybank has a strong policy that supports environmental issues, its support the environment
through its services especially the online services. Efforts to reduce its carbon footprint
encompass both its operational as well as product offerings. The Maybank 21st Century
Structured Deposit is a structured capital guarantee deposit that allocates part of its investment to
sustainable sectors, namely commodities in Maybank (Maybank Annual Report, 2012). The
Banks efforts to reduce its carbon footprint encompass both its operational as well as product
offerings. In its daily operations, environment- friendly practices are frequently encouraged. This
includes recycling of paper, electronic communication, utilizing energy-saving practices for
lighting and air-conditioning as well as pool printing to reduce use of individual printers and
consumables. In introducing new products, Maybank is offering more paperless transactions,
online statements and implementing e-payment. Customers are also being encouraged to switch
to online statements instead of receiving printed copies.

5|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

Maybank Programme - SEARCH

Leadership is a process of interaction between leaders and followers where the leader try to
influence followers to achieve a common fixed goal (Northouse, 2010). Maybank conducts a
comprehensive assessment of its employees, the efficiency of its competitive position and its
organizational structured. Maybank strategy identify work environment and capability needs,
business needs and performance needs. According to (Farouk, 2010) study on the relationship
between emotional intelligence and high managerial performance, shown there is a talent gap
between knowing and doing in Maybank management employees because of no consistent way
of approaching management leadership development such as training was mostly infrequent, not
scalable and required large investment of time, effort, energy and money. With this problem in
mind, Maybank has designed a leadership capability Program SEARCH based on four dimension
of transformational leadership (Avolio et al. 1997) that set the leadership framework to maintain
sustainability of Maybank managing organizational challenges. Program SEARCH consists of
STRATEGIC VISIONING, ENGAGING AND DEVELOPING TALENT, SPIRIT OF
ACHIEVEMENT, CULTIVATING RELATIONSHIPS, CUSTOMER CENTRICITY and
INNOVATION AND CHANGE (Maybank Annual Report, 2012). Each element in Program
SEARCH is matching with of the four dimensions of transformational leadership, idealized
influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.
Maybank describes the leadership philosophy as the leadership competencies needed to guide us
in lives. According to the (Mattew, 2009), strategic vision is an importance qualitative measure
tools for organizational effectiveness. Strategic visioning and leadership takes place most
importantly link the organization soul to a systematic body that is rightly fit together by
organizational planners. Besides, Maybank is building a responsible leadership because
responsible leadership can be defined as the ability that involving cultivating and sustaining
relationships to different stakeholders and in co-ordaining responsible action to achieve business
shared vision (Thomas Maak, 2007). Maybank has an early result through using its strategies to
sustain its performance until 2015. Maybank filling the gaps from every level by using SEARCH
leadership capabilities as shown in the figure 2.

6|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

Figure 2: Programme SEARCH in Maybank Management Segments

Source: Maybank Annual Report 2012

To build a foundation framework to drive every level management behavioral changes among
leaders and managers, Maybank has designed Programme SEARCH targets from first- line
managers to premium top managers. Several trainings have developed under SEARCH to filling
the talent gaps mentioned above and raise awareness level of leadership understanding. Firstly, at
the level of leading self among managers in Maybank, Programme SEARCH helps the
participants able to reach high performance with identify what effective leaders do, as well as
implemented behavioral changes using leadership purpose and values learned from the lives of
leaders. Furthermore, participants will apply leadership values and identify these values in
themselves through self awareness in order to become effective leaders who are able to inspire
and guide their team members. This is surely matching with the dimension idealized influence
which concerns the formulation of vision and awareness to motivating followers to work beyond

7|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

their self- interest (Dionne et al. 2004). And also, participants will gain insights on how to
transform and evaluate themselves as a leader by learning the ways of a true leader.

In other hand, participants learn how to effectively lead others under program SEARCH.
Participants will be able to learn various effective leadership styles that they can use in different
situations to influence the behavior performance of their followers. Under dimension
inspirational motivation, leaders will understand the ways communicate with sufficient
assertiveness to ensure that their followers will be able to complete the assigned tasks and reduce
conflicts between co-workers (Bass & Riggio, 2006). Finally, Programme SEARCH helps
Maybank in managing organizational challenges such as leaders will be able to come together in-
depth analysis into solid effective strategic questions in order to reduce the time and energy for
strategy planning formulations to actual implementation. Next, leaders will learn critical
thinkings that can be used from planning stage to implementation of strategy, as well as identify
and overcome the basic pitfalls in implementing a strategy. Last but not least, participants will
develop a globalization mindset strategy and improvements into the nature, importance and
applications of business innovation within a banking environment (Nicholason, 2007).
Organizations need to have capable leaders to motivate and lead their employees in their
assigned tasks and achieve the organizational goals. Transformational leadership style has
positive relationship with job satisfaction, it is deemed suitable for managing government public
organizations in Malaysia (Voon et al, 2010).

8|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

Maybank Programme - LEAP 30

Due to the effects of recession in the major industrialized economies, Malaysia's economic
growth is decelerating in 2009 as regional economies. The worsening reduction in Malaysia's
industrial and export data shown that GDP growth in 2009 are slower than the government
forecast and has thus huge risk of a stagnation in 2009. As such, the operating environment for
the banking sectors is expected to become more challenging for longer time period due to reduce
of corporate capital expenditure and slower consumer spending, leading to prospects for slower
loans growth and deterioration in asset quality, with limitations also expected to be under
pressure due to continued intense competition. There is good timing for Maybank to adopted
strategic programme for the reason bring up sales performance for branches undergoing the sales
stimulation program. Maybank has used different strategies to achieve their goals.

A transformation and sustain strategic programme of Maybank named LEAP 30 (Lead, Execute,
Achieve, and Progress) involving 30 initiatives designed to maintain and upgrade Maybank
leading position in the Malaysian financial services industry and to expand the business market
by 2015. Programme LEAP 30 its performance implementation plan, taking the Maybank Group
through a strategic transformation and evolution journey to secure leadership and realize its
aspiration spirit to become a leading regional financial services group. LEAP 30 is one of the
leadership approaches called The Why-What-How, defines as popularize strategic thinking
that state the goal and vision, achievement clearly state and finally the ways to be implemented
(Matthew, 2009). LEAP 30 is consisted of several core strategy of Maybank Group. Firstly,
Lead strategy is meant by secure solid leadership in Malaysia and strengthens regional existence.
Secondly, Execute term is needed to ensure timely implementation of identify planned initiatives.
Furthermore, Achieve 100% of financial and service quality targets of Maybank in financial
banking services. Next, Progress as a Maybank Group and as individuals and finally deliver 30
initiatives to achieve Maybanks goals. The Programme LEAP 30 will help sustain for market
leadership in Malaysia across all high margin and profitable product levels, strengthening
Maybank's regionally and internationally, and to position the Maybank Group as a talent and
centralized- focused organizational.

9|P age
 Managing Change and Leadership

LEAP 30 as part of strategic transformation plan of Maybank Group taken effective steps to
improve its capital asset by undertaking announced a rights issue. The rights issue will support
the Maybank Groups aspiration spirit to be among the top 5 banks in South East Asia by capital
asset size and banking service performance by 2015. But there are pitfalls in globalization (Fang,
2006). Global mindset is necessary to be an effective leader in the global environment (Levy et
al. 2007). Maybank will continue growing its position and market share through improvement in
retail domestic banking operations through continued upgrading and expansion of its availability
network, competitive service offered and product sales as well as leveraging on its internet
banking platform. With the current and recent key management progress and appointments of the
LEAP30 performance improvement programme, the Group expects to improve the execution of
business, talent initiatives and enabling to enable Maybank to better compete in the tougher
operating environment.
Figure 3: LEAP 30 Performance Improvement Programme

Source: Maybank Annual Report 2009

According to what (Slack & Lewis 2011) said, transformation strategy content is concerned
with strategic decisions that shape and develop the long-term direction of the operation. To
transform the Maybank, LEAP 30 introduces strategic initiatives to stimulate product sales,
strengthen customer care, improve implementation time and service processes and internal
10 | P a g e
 Managing Change and Leadership

systems, enhance talent sharing, and raise standards for service. With the re-alignment of the
organization into three business phases, the 30 initiatives launched in year 2010 under LEAP 30
were launched into the relevant phases and continued to drive these initiatives. Programme
LEAP 30 strategies are being implemented in two horizons up to the year 2015 as present in
Figure 3 above. In the first horizon, 2008 to 2011 which will focus on impacting all of
Maybanks major business sectors, covering consumer, enterprise, non-profit organization
investment and Islamic banking, operations, international business, insurance, as well as human
capital development. The first horizon will take place in two waves, namely Wave one from
2008 to 2010 and Wave two from 2010 to 2011.The second horizon will be from 2012 to 2015.
Maybank uses a careful assessment of customer needs to develop such workforce requirements
as resources, competencies, processes and abilities to achieve Maybank goals.
Now, LEAP 30 office was renamed as Transformation Office and is now part of Maybank Group
Strategy and Transformation. LEAP 30 will integrated all sectors within Maybank towards
achieving the Groups vision. The LEAP 30 Transformation initiatives continue to reinforce a
strong service-oriented culture and attitude in the Maybank Group based on implementation the
Maybank Group Core Values to improve customer care values and increase customer
acquisition. Maybank continues to face the challenges associated with the current environment
factors and addressing them. Kotter (2007) observed several large companies trying to make
effective changes in their organizationas to address a new and modern environment. It is clear
that change is not immediate action but must be a proper plan that is well analysis market trends
and executed. Maybank can achieve their goal of enhancing long-term shareholder value with
together with the transformation effort made within the context of the Strategic Transformation
Plan.

11 | P a g e
 Managing Change and Leadership

Conclusion:
As a result, which we conclude under the light of journals, books and scientific articles, I believe
that organizational change which are based on leaders vision and then followed by innovative
approach to get this vision, has a relatively strong and closer relation with improved
organizational performance and leads to possible innovation. Initial examinations of leaders
reported the differences between followers and leaders. These attempts to separate specific
individual traits led to the conclusion that no single characteristic can distinguish non-leaders
from leaders. Situational leadership discovered the complexity of leadership but still proved to be
insufficient because the theories could not predict which leadership skills would be more
effective in some particular situations. The contingency models focused on the fit between
leaders' behaviors, situational variables and personality characteristics but did not clarify which
or what combination of these determines the effective leadership. The Subsequent leadership
studies differentiated effective from non-effective leaders. The comparison of non-effective and
effective leaders led to identify the two dimensions, consideration and initiating structures, and
discovered that effective leaders were high performers in both of them. This situation approach
to leadership supports the contention that effective leaders are able to address both the tasks and
human aspects of their organizations.

12 | P a g e
 Managing Change and Leadership

Reference
1. Avolio, B.J., Bass, B.M., & Jung, D.I. 1997. Replicated confirmatory factor analyses of the
multi-factor leadership questionnaire. Binghamton, NY: Center for Leadership Studies,
Binghamton University.
2. Bass, B., & Riggio, R.E. 2006. Transformational Leadership (2 nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
3. Dionne, S.D., Yammarino, F.J., Atwater, L.E., & Spangler, W.D. 2004. Transformational
leadership and team performance. Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 17, No.
2, pp. 177-193.
4. Farouk, Shameem A. 2010. Investigating the Relationship between Emotional Intelligence
High Managerial Performance in Selected Corporation in Belgium and Malaysia. ProQuest LLC.
5. Fang, N. 2006. Reflections on the challenge of globalization. Contemporary Chinese Thought,
37(4), 72-86.
6. Gupta, A., J. McDaniel, and S.K. Herath. 2005. Quality Management in Service Firms:
Sustaining Structures of Total Quality Service. Managing Service Quality, 15(4):389-402.
7. Kotter, J. 2007. Leadinf Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard Business School
Press.
8. Levy, O., Beechler. S., Taylor, S., & Boyacigiller, N. 2007. What we talk about when we talk
about global mindset: Managerial cognition in multinational corporations. Journal of
International Business Studies, 38(2), 231-258.
9. Matthew R.F. 2009. Leadership and Organizational Strategy. The Innovation Journal: The
Public Sector Innovation Journal, volume 14(1), article 3.
10. Maybank Annual Report, 2009.
11. Maybank Annual Report, 2012.
12. Nicholson II, W.D. 2007. Leading where it counts: An investigation of the leadership styles
and behaviors that define college and university presidents as successful fundraisers.
International Journal of educational advancement, Vol. 7, No.4, pp. 256-270.
13. Northouse, P.G. 2010. Leadership, theory and practice (5th ed.). Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
14. Slack, N. & Lewis, M. 2011. Operations Strategy. Prentice Hall. pp. 464.

13 | P a g e
 Managing Change and Leadership

15. Thomas Maak, 2007. Responsible Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement, and the Emergence
of Social Capital. Journal of Business Ethics. Springer DOI 10.1007/s10551-007-9510-5.
16. Voon M.L., Lo M.C., Ngui K.S. & Ayob N.B. The Influence of Leadership Styles on
Employees Job Satisfaction in Public Sector Organizational in Malaysia. International Journal
of Business, Management and Social Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 24-32.

14 | P a g e