Leadership lessons from my 30s (Part 2 of 2)

My flight from Tanzania to East Africa’s largest capital city had just landed. I was in the airport transit area, unsure how to spend the next few hours before my connection home to Washington. A Chinese-looking man suddenly approached me, his female companion in tow. Upon ascertaining that I spoke Mandarin, he pleaded for my help. He said they knew no English, and needed a translator in their interlocutions with airport officials.  

I followed the couple to a private office near passport control. The lone officer inside recognised the couple from behind his desk. I explained why I was there, stressing the itinerancy of my presence. With nonchalance, the officer invited me to convey his request: “Please tell them that if they want to enter the country, they need to pay coffee money for the papers.” Taken by surprise, I was at first unsure how to react. Seconds later, I naively thought: “Maybe I could “out-rank” this corrupt guy.” I replied that I could not relay his request as I was an IMF official. I showed him my UN-issued passport, confident in the misguided delusion that my “official status” would somehow get him to back off. He looked deadpan at me and responded: “They pay or they do not enter.” Oh how my ego failed me!  

My UN-issued official passport

The thing is, with my IMF badge on, it was rarely difficult to get things done. There were tough negotiations, of course. But doors always opened easily and I was always welcomed with courtesy and respect. On some country visits, hosts would go overboard with hospitality arrangements. It was wonderful to be fêted, despite my knowing that the fawning was but deference given to my employer. That said, it did not stop the youthful me from succumbing to self-importance on the rare occasion. Mine include the humorous airport encounter retold above. 

In part 1 of my 30s retrospective, I had cited the gift of encountering diverse places as a privilege of working at the IMF. Well, interesting places beget interesting people. One person whose story has stayed with me is S, my Cambodian counterpart in a project from the early 2000s. This French-educated official had survived the Khmer Rouge’s work camps, only to flee the country when the Vietnamese invaded in the late 1970s because he feared further persecution. S told me about the beatings he endured from the Khmer Rouge, and of his harrowing jungle escape into Thailand. From there, he re-settled in the US as a teenage refugee, learnt English and put himself through school, earning a law degree some years later. When peace returned to Cambodia in the early 1990s, S went back to Phnom Penh, started a law practice, and subsequently entered public service. 

King Norodom Sihanouk in Phnom Penh, 2001

Individual personalities aside, I also came across collectives whose professions intrigued me. An example is the UN contractors I found in post-conflict East Timor. They were a friendly bunch, experienced in post-war recovery work, and very collaborative with us and other international organisations. I learnt that many of them had just finished assignments in Cambodia before moving to Dili. With the work in East Timor winding down (it was 2002), quite a few were preparing to move to the next activity hive in Afghanistan, which the US had just invaded. More interestingly, when these contractors relocated, whole groupies of hoteliers, restaurateurs and service businesses would follow. They were, literally, a nomadic circus of post-conflict junkies that travelled from war to war.  

With IMF and UN colleagues in Dili, East Timor, April 2002

A de-commissioned cruise ship served as our hotel in Dili, East Timor, April 2002

The diversity I encountered livened my senses. Diversity was also a defining feature of the roughly 2,400 employees who made up the IMF staff. We were a motley crew of international civil servants, each of us hailing from our corner of the globe, bringing unique accents and cultural quirks. But there was always one constant among us – everyone followed global affairs closely. Politics would feature regularly on the agenda of lunchtime banter. Often, someone would probe me about Singapore’s success story. I was mostly happy to engage, save when hounded by the usual lazy tropes that caricatured my country. Listen, can we please get beyond chewing gum already? 

My time at the IMF gave me a network of contacts and friends of all stripes and colours. All of us sort relationships into concentric circles of intimacy. At our innermost core lie those with whom we have the most in common. In growing my career and our young family in Washington, my wife and I gravitated naturally towards the young couples and families within our immediate orbit. These became our adopted family. Together, we welcomed each other’s newborns, shared birthday parties, and celebrated holidays and feasts. Some of these rituals recurred with the seasons of the year. Some others marked milestones in the seasons of life.  

With a few of my closest friends from the IMF, October 2007 

As I approached 40, we had a community around us and I had a stable job. However, not being an economist, I felt I had mostly exhausted my mobility options within the IMF, having already rotated through three departments. For the same reason, I thought promotion prospects from then on could be fickle. This did not sit well with me; I did not want to just cruise. On the family front, my wife and I also concluded that, after a decade in Washington, the city had given us all it could as a new experience. It seemed time to move on. Returning to Singapore appeared attractive, both for career opportunities and for our young children to be with extended family. 

What my 30s taught me about leadership (part 2 of 2):  

• A prominent organisation is a powerful platform from which to do good work. But your organisation is merely your calling card. Never conflate it with your person. Do not take yourself too seriously.  

• Human ingenuity is an amazing thing, as seen in the myriad vocations of peoples around the world. Each person has a special calling. Each will also be tested in different ways. Do your best by your calling.

• Who you work with is as important as what you do. I found that I connected best with people who are into global affairs and curious about the world. Finding your tribe will help you understand yourself.

What did your 30s teach you about leadership?  

The next article in my mid-career retrospective series, covering part of my 40s, will drop in early 2025. Subscribe to my blog to be notified. 

(This article is part of a mid-career retrospective series on my professional life. Each article in the series recounts events in one decade of my career. At the end of each piece, I summarise what those events taught me about leadership. All articles in this series are hosted on my blog.)  

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As a leadership consultant and coach, I help organisations and individuals use good leadership practices to succeed. Email me to discuss how we can work together.