By WONG LI ZA

With her youthful movie-star good looks and megawatt smile, Dr Yvonne Sum may not appear like your typical parenting expert. But her credentials in the area plus the interesting philosophy she espouses, not to mention her colourful résumé, would have you sitting up in an instant.

Have we got your attention, parents?

The good news is that the dental surgeon-turned-international speaker from Australia will be in town to talk about the cause close to her heart, “intentional parenting,” next month.

Dr Sum is set to conduct Intentional Parenting: Parents As CEOs of the Home, a two-day seminar on effective leadership at home, organised by local training outfit Leaderonomics in Petaling Jaya, Selangor, on Jan 7 and 8.

To have a glimpse of the person behind the motivational speaker, Star2 had a video chat with the 48-year-old mother-of-two and one-time pilot and actress – who bears a resemblance to famed Hong Kong-based singer/actress Sally Yeh – from her home in Sydney recently.

“Intentional parenting is a concept I started thinking about when I was a new parent. A lot of parenting workshops tend to focus on children and what parents can do to enhance their skills.

“However, if you want your children to reach their higher potential, what you do as an adult to reach your own higher potential is important. The seminar is about self-awareness and how to lead your own life,” asserts Dr Sum.

She strongly believes that the most powerful leadership is when we choose to follow someone because they inspire us, and not because they tell us to.

Dr Sum.

Leadership of the family, she maintains, is not about “command and control” but the relationship cultivated within the family.

Towards this end, the seminar is aimed at enhancing participants’ understanding of themselves as a parent and their circle of influence in the home. They will not only learn how to be a better person by growing their family but also as individuals.

“I grew up in a society where parents sacrificed everything for their kids,” continues the Sydney-born Dr Sum, one of four daughters of an architectural consultant and a homemaker. She was raised in Kuching after following her Malaysian parents back to the country at age two. Her parents now live in Kuala Lumpur.

“What I encourage parents is to be a proud role model to yourself, to live your purpose, and to be driven by your own values. Then your children will be inspired to do what is best for them,” said Dr Sum.

The speaker herself is a living proof of that.

From the air to dental chair

Dr Sum left Sarawak to return to Australia to study dentistry and it was there that she met her Seremban-born husband, whose family emigrated Down Under when he was nine.

While pursuing her dental studies at the University of Sydney, the young Sum spent three years in the Royal Australian Air Force as a pilot officer.

“I love doing different things at different points in my life. In the military, I learnt that leadership begins at all levels,” she relates.

After graduating from dental school in 1986, she practised part-time in her then future-husband’s suburban clinic in Sydney. Throughout her 15-year practice, she also took on various roles such as media consultant and resident health expert on Australian national lifestyle TV shows At Home With

John Mangos, Midday Show, Today Show, Good Medicine and Second Opinion.

Her diverse portfolio would later include writing stints with Dental Asia and the Kuching-based newspaper Sarawak Tribune as well as acting roles in commercials and an Australian TV miniseries called Singapore Sling in the 1990s.

After her son was born in 1998, Dr Sum took a break from dental practice and never went back. In fact, her career transition from dental practice to trainer and coach was not really a drastic process.

“In dental school, I realised that we were not taught how to manage stress or talk to people,” she says. Therefore even as a dental student she started conducting training sessions for undergraduates on these two aspects.

She eventually set up her current business in training and development in 2001, and got interested in parent leadership three years later. The founder and CEO of Paradox International is noted as a pioneer in Parent Leadership coaching. She conducts one-on-one and group coaching programmes focused on the transformation of personal and professional relationships.

Explains Dr Sum: “Parent Leadership is about being true to one’s own values, being one’s genuine best and hence becoming a role model for people you wish to inspire so they can live their highest potential.”

The benefits of her programmes therefore extend from family to community. Her Transformational Leadership Challenge (TLC) series uses her Parent Leadership model as a “metaphor for business and community leadership from the heart.” It also incorporates work-life balance and fosters learning partnerships at all levels of an organisation and community.

At the 14th International Conference of Thinking in Kuala Lumpur in 2009, Dr Sum presented her keynote address, TLC For Professional Women, alongside Malaysia’s former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, Maltese-born creative thinking expert Edward de Bono and British mindmapping inventor Tony Buzan, among others.

Mother and leader

One of the biggest mistakes parents make, says the certified Neuro Linguistic Programming and Neuro-Semantic trainer, is to put themselves second.

“That is very common with mothers, who tend to focus too much on the family and neglect ourselves in terms of simple day-to-day things like getting enough sleep.

“With working professionals, a common mistake stems from the guilt of not spending enough time with the children, resulting in parents giving more toys or monetary-based items to their children. Children do not want the toys but they want you to sit down with them and put a jigsaw puzzle together,” emphasises Dr Sum.

The leadership coach, whose son Jett is 13 and daughter, Xian, 11, took three years off to be a full-time mother after her children were born.

“All my leadership skills, I really learnt as a parent. The first thing I learnt was to ‘be present.’ For example, after Jett’s birth, I breastfed him and when you are breastfeeding, you basically cannot do anything else. So, one of the main things I learnt is to be present in all that I do and to enjoy the moment.”

Her children have also taught Dr Sum to be curious, ask questions and look at things from a different perspective.

“I encourage corporate leaders to apply these things (in their work and life), to understand new ways of doing things, at the same time know that we don’t always have the right answers.”

In February, Dr Sum will add another feather to her cap as she releases her first book, Start Kidding Yourself – Learning Leadership From Your Home Tribe. She has previously contributed to two other books, Emerging Trends in Professional Selling (Vol.1) and Inspired Children.

For parents and youth

Organised by Leaderonomics and supported by ParenThots, the Intentional Parenting: Parents As CEOs of the Home seminar will be held on Saturday and Sunday, Jan 7 and 8.

Time: 10am-5pm.

Venue: Cybertorium, Menara Star, 15 Jalan 16/11, Petaling Jaya, Selangor.

There will be a concurrent programme available for youth aged 11 to 18 at Cyberhub (adjacent hall).

The fee for the two-day event is RM288 (early bird) and RM328 (standard) per individual, or RM388 (early bird) and RM428 (standard) per couple.

The youth programme fee is RM68 (early bird) and RM88 (standard) per child. To qualify for the early-bird rate, register before Dec 18.

For details, go to leaderonomics.com/parenting/ or e-mail lily.cheah@leaderonomics.com or edmund.tan@leaderonomics.com.