Ardantya Syahreza is a multi-tasking guy who amazed us with his leadership achievements. He is a Deputy Director of Persada Hospital in Malang, East Java. His leadership experiences in handling 700 employees in his hospital's family business shouldn't be in doubt. In fact, he already learned about being leadership since he was a student at Brawijaya University. Ardantya was a President of AIESEC Indonesia who made him have frequent interaction with global young people to talk about global issues and how we can address the issues through youth exchange programs. You can also read more about him here.

Through an interview with The S Media, Ardantya gives us insight into how to be a successful leader at a young age. 

We call you a truly multitasking man as your businesses come from various industries. How do you sharpen your fresh ideas every day?

I have learned that in order to keep our ideas alive and up to date is by always learning and be open to anything new continuously. Being open means we put ourselves as a forever-student. We are not smarter than anyone, and we want to learn about everything.

I also think that younger generations are smarter than me, and I could learn about digital, startups, and anything new from them. 

Is this pandemic affecting you a lot in terms of productivity and your journey in the professional world? What do you think this pandemic could change millennials' path to leadership?

This pandemic definitely impacts our hospital business. As a hospital, of course, we have to cater the public health issues. But on top of the rush and crisis, Persada Hospital made to achieve more in 2021. When things are changing, we just need to ride on the waves. This will require speed to adapt and change. Not all organizations and leaders can make things happen in such a quick response. The winner is the one who can adapt the fastest. 

This pandemic will make our millennials more perseverant in facing problems and more creative to face challenges. It will make every millennial to be more adaptive and faster to adapt. 

As a leader, you must have experience in handling employees from gen Z or millennials. Is that difficult as we know that young employees today are considered more unruly and behave as they want?

Gen Z and Millenials mostly tend to take easy on things. They are not pushing things to the max. Therefore, in certain cases, leaders must show examples and create a reward-punishment system to create such productive culture among the gen Z and millennials. 

In order to keep ourselves relevant with the current times and even lead changes or transformations, we need to be fast in adopting new trends and new approaches. Well, to be honest, I am often attending webinars and reading various articles regarding digital, technology, organization transformation, leadership, and many more.

There are so many young generations today that have high eagerness to be a successful entrepreneur like you. But most of them are mood-swingers. How do you see this phenomenon?

Being an entrepreneur means being alone. Being an entrepreneur is being a human being who has a strong purpose and passion to work on certain issues. An entrepreneur is someone who can not live without any strong purpose. They will work hard to achieve the purpose and gather people and resources to make things happen.

I do not see the young generations are mood-swingers. They are really smart, instead. But, they do have to lack in their emotional quotient. How they can be more persistent and able to engage and respect people is something that young generations need to learn more.

Do you have such an inspiring mentor or role model that you admire? What is the most valuable lesson that you learned from him/her?

Mr. Benny Subianto – he is my uncle, an older brother of my father, who crawled his career from a salesman in United Tractors until become one of the 100 richest men in Indonesia. He passed away on January 4th, 2017. 

I admire him because I love the story behind all the career and business success that he achieved is what I admire from him. The value of working hard and building a reputation is what I learned from him. He was also a gentleman who likes to help people. He helped so many people no matter they treated him back in different ways. But I learned from him that doing good to others is the most precious asset in life. 

First, you need to have a strong idea to address any issues. In order to lead a company, we need to know how we want to be different and unique to address customers’ problems. Secondly, as a leader, you need to have a strong will to achieve your vision. A strong attitude will lead to our persistence, a never-say-die person, and always try to find a way to make things happen.

Lastly, as a leader, you are a leader who needs to learn from your team and also empower them to become the next leader. No leader can lead an organization without good leadership skills.