Dr. Alexander Dony, Asia Pacific Region Director of P&G, presented a lecture at the “Fudan-Standard Chartered” JOIN Forum on November 6 evening in the School.

The lecture was entitled “Leadership lessons – helping you succeed to make it to top of the organization”.

During the speech, he shared with the School faculty and students his thoughts on “10 leadership principles”, explaining how to cultivate top-level leadership skills.

Dr. Alexander Dony, Asia Pacific Region Director of P&G

He has been working for P&G for 12 years.

He said that the very first skill that one excellent leader should have is enthusiasm and active attitude toward work.

He said that: “In one corporate unit, the employees who stick to their own philosophy of profession and are fully devoted to their work are easier than others to succeed. During the meantime, their attitude of optimism will expand to others around them.”

Second leadership principle is capability. Capabilities are the core in business decision making, as well as the benchmark for selecting new employees. Take Chanel for example. Its success is relying on the integration of perfect capabilities of design, production and sales.

Mr. Dony illustrated the other leadership principles, including readiness to develop and promote the employees, improvement and innovation, frequent communication between different levels of corporate ladder.

He said: “Communication creates room for mutual trust. Especially when your company is confronted with crisis, one leader has to communicate and exchange ideas as frequently as possible.”

The last two principles of leadership are credibility and efficient teamwork. One leader’s credibility will help to discover the path to problem solutions.

You have to believe in what you are doing, and during the meantime you have to lean forward to listen to others’ thoughts and views, he added.

School Development Affairs Office Director Wanlin Wu presents a gift to Mr. Dony

In the final session of the speech, Mr. Dony interacted with the MBA students and answered their questions, such as “how to combine Eastern styles of leadership with the Western ones”, “brand building and marketing for fast consuming products”, “how to deal with public relations crisis”, “which are specific approaches to improve self leadership”, among others.

November 12, 2009