How Leaders Are Made Not Born in America

An Interview With Loung Ung - Cambodian Genocide Activist & Author

May 8, 2009

In an exclusive interview with Suite101, Ung shares her lessons gathered from a lifetime of experiences on how leaders are made and not born in America.

Raised in a Chinese-Cambodian culture where women were seldom seen and rarely heard, Loung Ung finds joy and success in being ‘loud’ and ‘proud’. In First they Killed My Father and Lucky Child Loung Ung shares her story of survival, her years as a refugee in America and the sister she left behind. In this exclusive interview with Suite101 she shares her lessons on how leaders are made and not born in America.

Q. What are the top three to five lessons you have learned on how leaders are made not born?

You don’t have to lead alone, be authentic and always think outside the box. In America the leadership model is often based on individualism. There is a perception that you have to be a strong individual and push forward alone to make it. I think that’s a myth.

Leaders Don’t Have to Lead Alone

There is a philosophy in the West that we have to do things alone to be credible leaders. If you do it alone, you leave something behind. As women we are natural connectors and organizers. During my time as an activist with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, we won the Nobel peace prize in 1997. Yes, Jodi Williams was the coordinator but we won this as a global community and we all were very proud of that team effort.

Loung Ung Encourages Authenticity

When I first started working with the Campaign, I was surrounded by mainly middle-aged white males and I was trying very hard to act, think and speak like my white male counterparts. I remember a meeting, waiting for the “white” voice in me to come out, but instead I was quiet.

Somehow I believed that if I could speak like them, my thoughts would be more credible. Instead this way of thinking shut me up! I realized I had to speak in my own voice: I had to be authentic and speak as a Cambodian-American who spent time in a war zone and grew up as an immigrant in a small American town learning English as her forth language. It was then; I became alive, more vibrant, and more real. I became me.

Great Leaders Think Outside the Box

For a long time I thought activism was about going out on the streets, protesting, screaming at rallies, speaking and giving lectures to get the message out. Instead it’s more important to be inventive with your resources, regardless how big or small. I wanted to use my personal story to draw attention to the bigger picture issues of war, peace and diplomacy and raise awareness of the challenges that come with it in the global setting.

Q. Do you think those lessons are applicable across the globe? Why or why not?

Based on my travels- absolutely! In addition, women leaders are particularly challenged across the globe. It is a patriarch world. For women it’s not enough to be a leader and break barriers but understand the barriers and be strategic about them.

As women we are natural connectors and organizers. Women are more closely connected to the earth, society and to each other. And when we get there together it feels great!

Q. If you could give one bit of advice to all emerging leaders in this new economic reality, what would it be?

There is a great quote by Archibald Mcleish that I love. He writes: "We are deluged with facts, but we have lost, or are losing our human ability to feel them.” Today, global information is constantly changing. Things are moving faster than ever. But the demand for instant gratification has to shift in this new economic reality. You can’t have the desire to change the world and expect to do it or happen in one day. Have an action plan and know how you feel about it.

Let me just tell you this story, as a freshman in college, I knew the first day of classes that I wanted to go abroad in my junior year. Instead of waiting until my junior year, I made a plan and started to set that plan in motion in my freshman year. I made friends with foreign students and signed up for language classes. I knew I wanted to go abroad and in my junior year I made it to Cannes.

It sounds simple, but in the age of greed and instant gratification we seem to have forgotten about the strategic benefits of having an action plan.

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