Leadership: Ho Ching's Strategy and Influence

This article discusses the leadership approach of Ho Ching, the CEO of Temasek Holdings. It explores her tactics of influencing others and her major sources of power. The article highlights her success as an influential leader and provides insights into her strategies.

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Name of the Student
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Author Note

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Introduction:
In the era of modernization, leadership is seemly desirable competency which has been
clearly documented in an array of literature. This competency, in its essence, is the capability to
explicitly articular a roadmap for others and motivates others for focusing on their efforts for
achieving the desired goal (Kovách 2017). The leadership is also defined as an ability to
influence through development of vision and mission with the aim of achieving something more
than ordinary (Nabers 2016). The purpose of the paper is to discuss the leadership of one famous
leader through her inspiring story of success. The case study represents the leadership strategy of
Ho Ching, a businesswoman who became a chief executive officer (CEO) for Temasek
Holdings. The paper will discuss the approach of her towards leadership, her tactics of
influencing others and her major source of power in the following paragraphs.
Discussion:
Ho Ching as an influential leader:
Throughout history and literature, the power is described as the capacity to cause change
and influence as the degree of actual change in the target‘s behavior. In relation to the power and
influence, leadership strategies are one of the potentials and desired approach to use the power
for influencing others in order to bring the desired change. In the current context, while Ho
Ching, the chief executive of Temasek Holdings has been recognized as a powerful leader, she
was also known as an influential leader (Chao 2017). The first highlighting example is that her
ability to influence change as a president and CEO of technologies group and now she is
influencing others as s the CEO of Temasek holding.

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As discussed by Yang et al. (2015) in order to accomplish the leadership, a leader must be direct
in her speech and continue to coordinate with her followers through the process of leadership. Ho
Ching has exhibited these features of leadership approach throughout her work and career. She
has the ability to influence the corporate companies to invest their billion dollars with this
Singapore Company, which made her one of the most successful businesswomen around the
globe (Liu 2017). She attained this position and able to influence others through her education
and experience she gained throughout her life. When she became part of the investment
company, their portfolio worth 50 billion and was only subjected to the companies of Singapore,
indicating a very limited vision of this company. However, she devoted her attributes to the
broadening of Temasek’s focus beyond Singapore. While she was the CEO, she pushed for
more open policy and an aggressive drive into the Asian market (McClelland 2017). When she
was the CEO of the company, the company gained the holding around Asia, especially India and
now throughout the world (Stolarchuk, 2019). At a conference top of Indian companies, Ho
appealed to look To India in order to bring the growth for Asia. Asia had a major loss of sparkle
in 1977 because of the financial crisis but the sparkle returned after Ho took the initiative to
bring opportunities for Asia. After Flourishing the business throughout the world, their portfolio
worth more than 108 billion and now the portfolio cost 223 billion, indicating her attributes of an
influential leader (Chowdhury et al. 2018). She was also represented in the time in 2007 as the
most powerful leader. Hence, she can be recognized as an influential leader.
Tactics of Ho Ching for influencing the behavior of others:
Published literature described a number of traits such as behavior physical ability and
power relationship as crucial attributes of the leadership. Communication and influencing others
through that communication is what brings success to the leaders. Taking a deep insight into the

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current situation, in an excerpt of one of the Ho ching’s speeches, it was highlighted that in order
to influence the behavior of others, she used two kinds of influence tactics in her speech such as
inspirational appeals and rational persuasion. As discussed by Wadsworth and Blanchard
(2015), rational persuasion observed in leaders when one uses logical arguments with the
assistance of credible evidence in order to inspire others. She was rational in forming her logical
arguments and she presented the factual data while stating the growth of Asia and she published
the annual report with the details of the performance with the company (Stolarchuk, 2019). the
transparency in her speech and action not only boost the confidence of the workers that work
with her but also influence other industries to make a profitable deal with her, indicating great
tactics to influence others. On the other hand, inspirational appeals are defined as the approach
when someone makes request or proposal in such a way that it induces enthusiasm, inspiration,
and emotions in the target group (Lee et al. 2017). In this current context, it was observed that
Ho Ching uses sensible persuasion and motivating appeals in order to influence listeners during
her speech. One of the examples of her rational persuasion was observed when she was
mentioning the growth of Singapore. She stated that Singapore trade with the collaboration of
India has flourished in the business market by 50 percent and now they have enjoyed a
respectable cumulative average growth rate of approximately 7.5 percent (Stolarchuk, 2019).
This careful statement showed not only the example of her educational impact but also a balance
influence. Ho used this specific number for describing that Singapore has gained immense
success after trading with India with the intention of proposing the fact that others can share a
similar kind of success with her (Wang et al. 2016). She also explained how it is advantageous
for the companies to expand the business market into Asia the market has grown to 50% in the
last 10 years. The mention of the fact with the exact number reflects the rational persuasion with

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logic. She also mentioned that confidence is observed in the Indian market that they began to
reach out to the world business market over the last five years. Considering the inspirational
appeal, she mentioned that a wave of development has been observed with a population of 3
million (Plouffe et al. 2016). She also mentioned that if Asia continues to work smart, hard and
shows the competitive strength to flourish across the border, the outlook will be very promising
in the future.
A major source of the power of Ho Ching:
As discussed by Martins (2018) power has been played an important role in leadership
practice. Leadership is defined as an exercise of power and therefore, leaders must develop a
way of flourishing power. Literature has documented that Ho Ching has been named one of the
most powerful leaders in Asia. Power can be described as the ability of one person to inspire the
behavior of others for achieving the desired goal and attitude towards others. In this current
context, she has two major power which facilitates her attitude towards others and the ability to
influence the behavior of others. The first power that facilitates her leadership trait is expert
power which was because of her education connection and experience. She was a government
scholar with a degree of an electrical engineer from Stanford who started her civil service and
later worked for defense minister of Singapore. As discussed by Salovaara and Ropo (2018)
expert power is the power based on employees perception that leaders possess extraordinary
competency or skills that others do not possess, as observed in this case of ho Ching. Another
power she has legitimate power, which was earned because of her position as chief executive
officer of the Singapore based company, Temasek Holdings. As discussed Power (2016),
legitimate power is the power which is derived from the position one has as a leader. In this
current context, it was observed that upper management of East Asia, especially Japan obeyed

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her instruction without questioning the decision. Lastly, she has the referent power which came
from the position she had as a spouse of Lee Hsien Loong, the current prime minister of
Singapore (Plouffe et al. 2016)..
Conclusion:
Thus it can be concluded that leadership is considered as the ability to influence through
development of vision and mission with the aim of achieving something more than ordinary. The
paper explored the leadership approach of Ho Ching, her tactics of influencing others and her
major source of power to influence the behavior of others. She was an influential leader since
she pushed for a more open policy and an aggressive drive into the Asian market. While she
gained the position, the portfolio of the company began to increase. In order to influence the
behavior of others, she used two kinds of influence tactics in her speech such as inspirational
appeals and rational persuasion, which reflected through her speech. For influencing others, she
had three crucial power such as legitimate power, expert power and reward power which made
her one of the most successful businesswomen around the globe.

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