Richard Zinkiewicz - Personal Blog - “Listen to Daddy”

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Whoever said bringing up a child is easy! Today the lack of discipline in certain aspects of my life has certainly come back to bite me in the form of my 12-year old son, Ricky, who all this while has been living with his mum. Now that he’s come to live with me, I’m faced with my own worst enemy...myself. What could be more challenging than getting someone to follow the principle of “Do as I say, not as I do,” particularly in cases where you know that you’re not exactly leading by example. It’s tough, I tell you! One minute I’m telling him to turn off the telly and focus on his homework and the next minute, I’m reaching for the TV remote myself. My intent for my son is well and good, but the more I observe him, the more I feel that he is exactly like me – he would tell me that he WANTS to do something I ask him to, but he won’t end up doing it.

Ricky has good social skills, but his value system is something that isn’t totally in place yet, so he’s at the age basically where he’s testing to see how far he can go. I ask him what time he gets off school and everyday it’s a different answer. Sometimes he says 4.30pm, and then another day it’s 5.30pm, when in actual fact he finishes at 3pm. One day I call him at 4.30pm and ask him where he is, he tells me he’s at school. But then I find out he’s actually sitting in the toilet at McDonalds. Gosh...most days I’m faced with a mental battle as to whether I should use the ‘carrot’ or the ‘stick’ to get him on track. So far I’ve been using the ‘carrot’...making a simple request or giving him an instruction to see whether he follows it. There are days when I threaten him or just start talking to him about his future. The problem is, someday you get to the limits. If you threaten him, you’ve got to carry out some kind of punishment.

Being put in a situation like this makes me think of how mum managed me when I was younger. How did she do it??! We lived on a farm, and she was a single parent, so she was always busy with something. One day I told her I was going next door to see the neighbour’s son and instead I took off with him to the quarry. Well, God has a way of making the truth known, and somehow she found out. She was far from happy! Well, you know how white peas become really hard when you set them out to dry under the sun. She made me kneel on them for 20 minutes. Talk about painful! I can still remember it till today, so it must have made some impact.

Growing up, I was fearful of mum..but it was out of respect, more than anything else. I remember, when I was six I had a taste of my first cigarette. In Poland, at the time, ciggies had no filters, and trying it for the first time at that age, I certainly didn’t like the taste of it, not to mention the fact that it went down the wrong pipe! Arghhh! Never had another ciggy after that. But meanwhile I had to cover up the smell so mum wouldn’t get even a whiff of it. So when I got home after my little escapade, I immediately went into the garden and grabbed a few cloves and popped them into my mouth. Oh...it was strong. When I walked into the kitchen mum could smell the cloves and asked me why I was eating them. I had to lie...told her I loved cloves. So really, Ricky is doing pretty much what I did as a kid. He’s still confused between lying out loud, and learning to manage the truth.

Even today, being a Director requires me to encourage others and push for change. But how do I do this when I’m also part of the problem, thanks to my own lack of discipline. As a leader I don’t have the luxury of questioning myself openly. I have to give others the perception that I am in control...that I know what I’m doing. You think Vijay doesn’t make mistakes? Of course he does, except that he has the knack of turning his mistake into a positive, and in most cases the best thing he has ever done! Here, I have people walking after me telling me, “Oh Richard, don’t worry, you’re only human!” Sometimes that just puts me back in my comfort zone and makes me feel like it’s alright to make a few mistakes, no harm done. Nothing changes in the process.

At the end of the day, I feel it’s a trial and error process. When it comes to bringing up a child, in some respects we’ve got to have some ground rules. And in some respect we’ve got to make room for some adjustments. If Ricky exhausts all his breaks, and if he fails to follow what I say, he has agreed to be punished. The million dollar question is – can I carry it out?

Interesting story? How about sharing?

Saturday, February 20, 2010 1:37:30 PM (China Standard Time, UTC+08:00)

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Richard Zinkiewicz
Group Director for International Operations
QI Ltd

Richard Zinkiewicz is Group Director for International Operations on the Board of QI Ltd, a global conglomerate with over 25 offices worldwide, including 3 major centres in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Joining QI in April 1999 as Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Zi, as he is popularly known, has been a critical member of the core management team responsible for the Group's expansion through vertical integration of its core businesses, balancing of cash flow needs, and diversification into new business sectors through investment opportunities.

Mr. Zinkiewicz has over 25 years international business experience, initially qualifying as a Canadian Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Whinney (now Ernst & Young), and later on holding key senior positions in Canada, Europe and Asia. It was in the early 90's where Mr. Zinkiewicz gained a deep understanding of the powerful and unique network marketing business model and the art of balancing and managing the needs of the company against the needs of its distributors.

It was this experience that kept him in good stead when he joined QI Ltd, whose flagship subsidiary, QuestNet, operated as an international direct selling and network marketing company. In the years that followed, he helped with the phenomenal growth of the QI Group of Companies, representing the Group as its public spokesperson and advocating the tremendous potential of the network marketing industry in different parts of the world as well as proudly touting its corporate mission of RYTHM (Raise Yourself To Help Mankind) and its consensus management style decision making.

Born in Poland on a farm outside Luban, Mr. Zinkiewicz moved to Canada with his mother and sister at the age of 10. He was significantly influenced by his mother whom he considers his true hero and from whom he learnt his most important lesson, the importance of black and white honesty. He says, "the human mind often tends to rationalise in the grey area, but my mother taught me the importance of simple, straight forward and sincere honesty''.

Surprisingly, apart from his mother, his heroes are not any major world leaders of the past or present, but everyday people that he meets in the course of his life. "I believe you can learn a little bit from everyone, even and especially those you may not like much because those are lessons you will remember always." He counts his elementary math teacher and a former boss in Ernst & Whinney as two significant people who helped shape his thinking. He respects and admires historic explorers, international athletes, and anybody who embodies the attributes of hard work and excellence.

His philosophy in life is simple, "everyday I remind myself it is important I do something positive to help someone and leave the world a better place to live in".

An avid outdoor person, Mr. Zinkiewicz hikes regularly, works out at the gym and loves adventure sports. When he is not zipping around the world closing business deals, he lives in Hong Kong with his wife Vanessa Liu and their two dogs, Oscar and Milky.