Leadership secrets of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi
Leading change is hard. Leading an entire nation through change — from military rule toward democracy — is perhaps the most challenging job any leader could face. If anyone is an example of effectively navigating such change, it’s “The Lady” — Myanmar’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Next month, Myanmar (the country’s official name, though it’s still referred to as Burma) will reach a critical step in its steady but turbulent progress toward openness and democracy. On November 8th, despite recent rumors to the contrary, the nation will hold its first “modern” democratic national elections, the first-ever under its newly formed constitution established in 2008.
Many analysts see these elections as a signal to the world that decades of harsh military rule are at an end in Myanmar.
Arguably, Myanmar could not have made it this far without the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi.
What are the secrets to her leadership success?
As a citizen journalist, I’ve spent years in awe of “The Lady,” studying the leadership style of Aung San Suu Kyi, both the politican and the person. I’ve traveled to neighboring Thailand. I’ve also been a western buddhist meditation practitioner for many years.
Great qualifications aside: she’s the daughter of one of the most prominent political figures in Myanmar’s history; her father, Aung San, led a revolution that helped gain Burma’s independence from the British (but was assassinated before being able to see that independence himself) is considered the modern Father of the Nation.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 but couldn’t formally accept the prize until 2012, after she was released from house arrest as a political prisoner in her own country.
She’s chairperson of the leading progressive party in Myanmar, a political body she founded, the National League for Democracy, or NLDP. She wants to run for president in next month’s elections, but a curious clause in Myanmar’s constitution prevents those married to foreigners (Aung San Suu Kyi was married to the late Dr. Michael Aris, a British historian of Tibetan and Himalayan culture, and mother of their two children born outside Myanmar) from holding the office of president. Some say this clause singled out Suu Kyi to intentionally block her rise to the presidency.
She’s author of best-selling books, including Freedom from Fear, originally published in 1991, then re-released in 2010.
Leadership through Wisdom and Compassion
What differentiates Aung San Suu Kyi is her ability to lead through both power and gentleness, the willingness to act with decisiveness and laser-like precision while simultaneously tempering her politics with wisdom, kindness, and compassion.
Understanding Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership style is to understand Buddhism, meditation practice, mindfulness, and skillful means. It emphasizes a deep willingness of the leader to put other’s benefit ahead of oneself.
One need not be a Buddhist or even particularly religious in any sense to comprehend what Aung San Suu Kyi does as an effective leader.
Here, compassion is best understood as not giving something to someone else as a token gesture, but rather letting go of the tendency to strive toward specific agendas. Compassion is getting the job done with a deeper understanding of how confusion stems from our own ego.
For a leader to be truly effective, they must embody compassion and wisdom together. Compassion is a desire to relieve suffering. But even those with the greatest motivation to help alleviate suffering can never become successful without wisdom — the insight and intelligence to discern which of our actions truly relieve suffering and which ones escalate it.
A quiet mind and selfless service to others
Aung San Suu Kyi offers a leadership approach based on the path of a bodhisattva, a Buddhist practitioner who vows to work for the benefit of others to alleviate suffering “for the benefit of all beings until all can attain (their own) enlightenment.”
A bodhisattva can manifest as any person, regardless of spiritual or religious affiliation. (In the Buddhist tradition, there are formal vows one can take, but a bodhisattva is said to arise in the mind, beyond any personal or physical form and not necessarily confined to a specific religious tradition per se.)
One need only the right motivation and diligence to work with one’s mind to stabilize this motivation to be of selfless benefit to others.
Take the military, for example, a hot topic in Myanmar after decades of brutal military rule. For Aung San Suu Kyi, the military is not an instrument of power but rather a vehicle of service to the people. The military should follow rather than aggressively lead. Leadership in this sense is about strength but also about care, duty and responsibility. Being a good soldier — or a good leader — is just as much about mindfulness as it is about defense and military strategy.
Military leadership provides human well-being, service to the people on a human level. Modesty, courage, energy and thought make up a “complete man,” a complete leader.
For Aung San Suu Kyi, leadership is about bringing out the best in others. It’s about nurturing the best qualities in others. Confidence is not ego-ism. Confidence comes from integrity and a willingness to be of genuine help to others, by putting the benefit of others ahead of oneself.
Leadership through meditation and Skillful Means
As the daughter of a former Buddhist monk, Aung San Suu Kyi has been steeped in the culture of meditation practice all her life. Taking up meditation herself as a young girl, she says she found the practice difficult at first. But later in life, she found meditation to be invaluable, especially during her long years under house arrest as a political prisoner between 1989 and 1995.
As a leader, Aung San Suu Kyi uses the insights gained through meditation — or mindfulness — as a tool of skillful means. Skillful means in the Buddhist sense is right thought in balance with right action or intent. It’s seeing how our intention, our action, and our mind are constantly interlaced.
One need not be Buddhist — or even particularly spiritual — to practice meditation. This is a skill available to anyone, aspiring leader or otherwise.
Leadership tempered by difficulty in life
Aung San Suu Kyi is no stranger to the depths of difficulty and strife in her life. She’s endured many arrests and detainments in prison. She spent her 64th birthday locked inside Insein prison in Yangoon sharing biryani rice and chocolate cake with her guards.
She’s endured long periods of isolation from her sons — including 10 years as a political prisoner under house arrest during which she had virtually no contact with the outside world. She’s had to experience the untimely death of her husband and the death of her father by assassination. In many ways, her leadership style has been tempered by these life difficulties, like steel forged in a furnace.
These difficulties have also strengthened her compassion as a leader.
As her country faces difficult challenges, such as the Rohingya crisis, including ethnic violence and mass migration centered in Myanmar’s western Rakine state, Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership will surely be tested. We can expect to see her maintain a “middle way” path between strength, wisdom, and compassion.
Calling upon the world
Aung San Suu Kyi represents a new kind of global leader. Traveling the globe, including a recent trip to China in June, she’s skilled in her ability to tap into global civil society and influence world public opinion. She’s able to advance her pro-democracy “brand” on a mass scale, far beyond the borders of her home country. She sees the whole world as her stage and successfully magnetizes global attention to her cause for freedom.
In a recent video blog, she has called upon global citizens everywhere to help ensure a free and fair election this November:
“Please help us by observing what happens before the elections, during the elections, and, crucially, after the elections. This is the best contribution you can make to peace and progress in this country by ensuring that our people feel their will has been respected in the way of genuine political and governmental change.” — Aung San Suu Kyi
Sources
“Myanmar to hold landmark vote as planned on November 8 — state TV,” Reuters, 13 October 2015. — http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/13/myanmar-election-idUSL3N12D36V20151013
Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nobel Lecture on 16 June 2010 at Oslo City Hall — http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=1809
Aung San Suu Kyi — Address at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, 26 October 2013 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ECulJ-fik
“Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s Revolutionary Leader,” by Joshua Hammer, Smithsonian Magazine, September 2012 — http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/aung-san-suu-kyi-burmas-revolutionary-leader-17728151/?no-ist
Freedom from Fear — Collected writings from Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, Penguin Random House, July 2010
“Aung San Suu Kyi celebrates 64th birthday with jail guards,” The Guardian, 19 June 2009 — http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jun/19/burma-aung-san-suu-kyi-birthday
“Myanmar’s Suu Kyi calls for free and fair elections,” Reuters video, September 7, 2015 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZCtorWQQ3c
