Inaugural Lecture Speech at Tun Zaki Azmi Lecture Series

Speaker: Dato’ Mohammad Faiz Azmi, Chairman, Securities Commission Malaysia

Location: Asian International Arbitration Centre (AIAC), Kuala Lumpur
Delivered: 19 June 2026

Yang Amat Arif Tun Wan Ahmad Farid bin Wan Salleh, Chief Justice of Malaysia,
Yang Amat Berbahagia Tun Zaki Tun Azmi,
Yang Berbahagia Dato’ Mary Lim Thiam Suan, President of AIAC Court of Arbitration,
Yang Arif Judges and Judicial Commissioners,
Distinguished Members of the Legal Profession, ladies and gentlemen.

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh and good morning.

I would like to start by thanking the AIAC for inviting me to deliver this address at the inaugural Tun Zaki Lecture Series. I have known Tun for many years as a client when I was the Chairman of PwC and it is my honour and privilege to be speaking at a Lecture Series in his honour.
The title of my talk today is ‘Leadership and Stewardship: A Personal Reflection of a Lawyer Turned Accountant and Now a Regulator’. In drawing up the title, I felt it would be appropriate to talk about stewardship in the context of leadership, as running things carefully and responsibly is usually seen as one of a leader’s principal obligation.

What is Leadership and Stewardship?

What is leadership? At its simplest, leadership is the act of guiding others toward a common goal. It involves holding command over a group, influencing activities, and persuading followers to work willingly.
In the corporate world, a recent study suggested there were more than 4,000 documented definitions of leadership in academic literature. So clearly it is not that easy to get consensus on what or how a leader should carry themselves.
In Islam, leadership or Khalifah, is fundamentally a trust or amanah, and a responsibility bestowed by Allah, not a privilege or a means for power. The core concept is that every human is a steward on Earth, accountable to God for how they lead themselves, their family, and their community. Every Muslim is in fact a leader or "shepherd" over their dependents, be it family, employees, or their community. Leadership begins at home.
The word leadership itself comes from the verb “to lead”, which carries two meanings: to excel or be in advance, and to guide, govern, and command others. The first meaning hints at the personal qualities of leaders, while the second captures how leadership functions within organised groups. Both meanings matter, because leadership blends who a person is with what they do.
Stewardship is sometimes described as the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care. When the word stewardship first appeared during the Middle Ages, it functioned as a job description, denoting the office of a steward, or manager of a large household. Over the centuries, its range of reference spread to the oversight of courts of law, employee unions, college dining halls and many other organisations.
In recent years, the long-established "management" sense of stewardship has evolved a positive meaning, which is ‘careful and responsible management’. This is commonly found nowadays within contexts such as stewardship of the environment or family business.
Why do these two go together?
I believe leadership and stewardship should go hand in hand today. We live in a world where people are not questioning whether leaders are competent or properly selected. They are questioning more whether leaders are trustworthy and whether they carry themselves with integrity and are fair and accountable. And given the lack of trust today in governments, scientists and institutions, perhaps that is why many leaders today are struggling to manage their stakeholders. Not because they lack good leadership skills, but because they have not demonstrated responsible stewardship to their stakeholders.

Leadership qualities

Let me now turn to the crux of my address. In order to illustrate how the qualities of a leader apply in practice, we need a framework to refer to. One such framework, outlined by the Center for Creative Leadership, lays out 12 essential leadership traits or qualities of a good leader:

Self-Awareness,
Respect,
Compassion,
Vision,
Communication,
Learning Agility,
Collaboration,
Influence,
Integrity,
Courage,
Gratitude, and
Resilience.

Let me take a few of these traits and illustrate them with some examples.

Courage

Acting with courage. It can be hard to speak up at work, whether you want to voice out a new idea, provide feedback to a direct report, or flag a concern for someone above you. That is part of the reason courage is a key trait of good leaders. Rather than avoiding problems or allowing conflicts to fester, courage enables truth-telling so leaders can step up and move things in the right direction.
In my career, I have known many CEOs who led their organisations, but they are always answerable to stakeholders outside their organisation. The biggest challenge is being able to say ‘no’ when it matters. I have always admired how they each, in their own way, were able to speak to truth and managed to convince their stakeholders why something should not proceed. Most survived but there were casualties along the way as well. But being a leader also means having the courage to walk away and resign rather than doing the wrong thing. Of course, life is not binary or is always a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and in many cases compromise is usually the order of the day. But you must know where the line is and not cross it.
Perhaps one piece of advice is to refer to the old Affin Bank advert which likened themselves to bamboo, that is, being able to bend, so as to not break in strong winds. Be like bamboo.

Vision

Vision is used to motivate others and garnering commitment, which is an essential part of leadership. Understanding what you and your team hope to accomplish is important, and communicating the vision in a way that connects the overall direction of the organisation to the values of your individual team members can help to inspire trust and drive priorities forward.
I have been privileged to work with many corporate leaders between the Pak Lah administration in 2003 to my retirement in 2023. Some of the large organisations you see today, went through a form of revival as part of the GLC transformation in the early 2000s under Khazanah or through their expansion of their corporate activities to regional and international markets. Behind every success story we see today stands leaders who had a strong vision.
Two that stand out in my mind are Tan Sri Azman Mokhtar and Tan Sri Nazir Razak. Both are well read and clever, had a vision and desire to move forward, and they were willing to take calculated risks. But the key to me was how they built their management teams and ensured everyone understood where they were going and what each of the team needed to do. One indication of their success was the diversity of the teams they built, not just Malaysians but people from around the world who shared their vision. Tan Sri Nazir for example had a knack of finding the right people within his organisation and developing them into different senior roles. However, what made it work was that all of his team bought into his vision of transforming a little merchant bank into one of the top 5 ASEAN banks that you see today.
Tan Sri Azman, being the well-read person he is, inspired his team with what was possible. Who can forget how he transformed the GLCs into the regional players they are today or forged new entities like IHH Healthcare. But what stood out to me was his vision to ‘Build True Value’, which is the balancing of profit with economic and societal returns. This was even before social impact became a thing.

Collaboration

Let me take another trait, collaboration - or being able to work with colleagues across different ranks, backgrounds and experiences. Good leaders can work with a variety of colleagues from differing positions, backgrounds and experiences and learning to work across various types of divides and silos.
One thing I realised early in my career is that people rarely remember every technical detail of a leader’s decisions. But they remember clearly how that leader made them feel during difficult moments.
One of my senior partners in PwC was very good at collaborating. He was equally loved by clients and staff alike and it really stemmed from the fact he was able to keep his temper in check, was careful not to hurt people with his words and was extraordinarily patient. I think in all the years I have known him, I have only seen him lose his temper once. That is not to say he was an angel, he did have a temper but he never brought it to work. One of my daughters once remarked to me that when he spoke to her as an intern, her impression was that by giving her his full attention and focus, she felt as if she was the most important person in the room. He didn’t fidget with his phone nor looked at his watch. He gave everyone the time they needed.
Another example is Tun Zaki himself. Tun was chairman at Astro when my ex-firm were the auditors. I observed that Tun frequently made time to mingle with the management and employees across the organisation; not out of obligation, but from genuine curiosity and respect for people. He listened. He asked questions. And he seemed equally comfortable engaging with top executives as he was with editorial staff, support staff, and even security guards. What stood out to me was that he gave time and attention to people across every level of the organisation. I think there is something profoundly important about that. You can’t lead without being open and engaging with all your team members.

Gratitude

Being thankful can lead to higher self-esteem and reduce depression and anxiety among your subordinates. Gratitude can even make you a better leader. Yet few people regularly say “thank you” in work settings, even though most people say they would be willing to work harder for an appreciative boss. The best leaders know how to demonstrate sincere gratitude in the workplace.
One piece of advice I had from my predecessor in PwC, Dato Seri Johan Raslan, was that you can never thank people enough. One of the things he taught me was that at the end of the day, before I switched off from work, I should send out a note or email to one of my junior staff to thank them for the work they had done. The fact it came from the Chairman was a powerful recognition and it cost nothing to make them feel they were part of the wider team.

Compassion

Compassion is one of the most powerful and important acts of leadership. It is more than simply showing empathy or even listening to understand - compassion requires leaders to act on what they hear. This is the core of compassionate leadership.
I remember getting a piece of advice from the late Datuk Tan Chin Nam, a developer. I once asked him as a businessman what principle did he always live by. He said something profound. In business, you have to be ruthless in making decisions but be compassionate in carrying it out. So for example, you may need to remove a staff member but once the decision is made, you should not be marching him to the door but allow him to leave in his own time and with some dignity.

Stewardship

Let me round up by explaining how some of the leadership traits are equally relevant when we think of stewardship, which is the careful and responsible management of what is entrusted to you.
The three traits that spring to mind are respect, integrity and resilience.
Treating people with respect is one of the most important things a leader can do. It will ease tensions and conflict, create trust and improve effectiveness. Respect is about more than the absence of disrespect, it often starts with valuing others’ perspectives and being inclusive.
Integrity is also an essential leadership trait for the individual and the organisation. It is especially important for top-level executives who are charting the organisation’s course and making countless other significant decisions. It is important that your organisation reinforces the importance of honesty and integrity by leaders at various levels and that you ‘walk the talk’.
Finally, Resilience is more than the ability to bounce back from obstacles and setbacks – it is the ability to respond adaptively to challenges. Practicing resilient leadership means you need to project a positive outlook that will help others maintain the emotional strength they need to move forward and overcome setbacks. No backup plan is perfect, so in the final analysis it is your team’s ability to work together to solve problems that will carry the day.
So taking all this together, let me thank Tun again for the opportunity to speak to all of you. Thanks to him, I have now read a lot more about leadership and stewardship for this address and it has made me reflect again on my life choices. Many of the things I do, I feel are consistent with these 12 traits but being human, I could do a lot better. In some ways, I wished I knew all this at the beginning of my career and not just at the end.
Like many of you, I have learnt the skills of being a leader by observing both good and bad leaders in my career. We obviously have emulated the good ones and tried not to follow the bad. Reading about the 12 criteria I realised that being a leader means more than ordering people around. You need to develop the human side of yourself by being humble, being compassionate and respecting your team.
An interesting example of leadership with humanity was Napoleon, the former Emperor of the French. Napoleon Bonaparte was adored with near-fanatical devotion by his troops. He wasn't just a brilliant strategist; he was a master of human psychology.
He used to address his soldiers as comrades, issuing bulletins in clear, inspiring language that made them feel respected. He often knew veteran soldiers by name and would personally pin medals on the bravest men right on the front lines, making each soldier feel seen and valued. He famously led from the front showing his men that their Emperor was willing to endure the same cold, hunger, and danger they faced. Napoleon also created a system where talent and courage alone determined your rise. A common soldier could become a Marshal of France, sending the powerful message: "If you are brave enough, you can win everything”. In short, Napoleon succeeded because he understood his soldiers' deepest yearnings: respect, recognition, and a sense of purpose. An interesting role model for us to ponder.

Conclusion

Let me conclude by making this observation. The world in my mind does not merely need more ambitious or technically competent leaders. This is a given. Instead, it needs more trustworthy stewards. People who combine courage with humility. Strength with compassion. Vision with responsibility. Authority with humanity. Because while leadership is temporary, the consequences of leadership is everlasting.
Finally, I would like to again thank AIAC for inviting me to deliver this address and to thank you all for listening.