This morning, Tong, Tarn, May and I had a conference call with Chris Bradford (the co-founder of African Leadership Academy) to seek his advice for launching Asian Leadership Academy. We were again reminded of a big challenge we face: building leadership and life-long network of empowered individuals (which are supposed to be the goals of both academies) takes time. African Leadership Academic is a boarding school where top students from all over Africa live there, days and nights, for two years. Asian Leadership Academy, at least for now, was not intended to be a school (unlike Africa, we probably already have too many schools in Asia) but rather to be a program to adding missing components (leadership, entrepreneurship, etc.) to existing schools. Students come, stay with us for a limited amount of time and then get back to their normal life. Moreover, with limited resources we have to start with, we cannot make the pilot program very long, for example, we plan for only about five days program in Spring 2013. Five day program is probably not enough to change someone's life. Still, it is essential first step toward any other bigger programs. Now the question become how can we get the most out of this five days.
I don't have an answer for that but let me recollect different camps or retreats or other short programs I have been to in my life and try to pull out different components I think are related to leadership and network building. Off the top of my head, I think of
-Thailand science week camp 2001, 4 day long, I was in grade 12
-Biology Olympiad camp 2000 and 2001, 3 weeks long, I was in grade 11 and 12
-Thai scholar summer orientation 2003, 2 months long, I was in my first year in the US
-Siebel scholar conference 2012, 3 day long, ..this one just happened less than two weeks ago.
For all programs above, I made a number of good friends whom I still keep in touch up to today. Will I ask these people for help if I want to start a company or running election? Very likely. I would say that I'm even more close to these people more than many friends I know for years in my primary school or high school. Interestingly, I think the reason why we are connected so quickly has little to do with formal programs provided by organizers. There is more to do with the "free time" we had here and there together... in the bus.. during dinner.. and late night before we went to bed. Another important factor is the sense of mission or external pressure putting up us. For the science week camp and olympiad camp, we knew we would have exams or contests near the end of the program. For Thai scholar orientation, we knew we would soon end up living alone for the first time in our life in a boarding school in the US. ..Everyone was stressed out one of way or another..someone broke down.. someone acted like a jerk.. but most of us.. we understood one another more.. It's like a group of soldiers who end up getting along well knowing that they have a common enemy. Yet, the other factor, I think, is the sense of mutual respect. For almost all programs above, we had to compete to get in. We entered the program knowing that each and everyone of our peers was the cream of their schools, districts, provinces...and that's really true. On one hand, we were intimidated by the long list of achievements these people have of their resume. On the other hands, after we joked around together a little bit, we realized that they were also just regular kids like us...sometimes they were stressed out..sometimes they didn't know what they wanna do next with their lives..sometimes they were "afraid of" us the way we were afraid of them. I think that is one very important moment of truth: to learn that all these so-and-so elites are just human beings..like us. None of these camps directly tried to teach leadership but the realization of self-respect and mutual respect, to me, is probably the most fundamental foundations of leadership.
11 pm 24 Octerber 2012, Palo Alto, CA USA
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