[Vnbiz] Staying to be a leader - how to change?

[Tran Dinh Hoanh]

Dear Brother Hien, sisters Thu Huong & Dieu & CACC,

Thanks for the question, Brother Hien.  That would make me talk about
myself. I would be happy to share.

But before that, let me thank sister Dieu for the good article.  You are
absolutely right that there are many "leaders" who have been trained
overseas with every little knowledge of Vietnam who are presumed to "lead"
Vietnam.  That is such a sad affair. And I have seen many of them since I
was in college in Vietnam until now.

For over the period of 60, 70 years, we have had many leaders whose
knowledge about Vietnam is close to zero.  We have tens of millions of
Buddhists, they know little about Buddhism.  We have millions of Christians,
they know little about Christianity.  We have millions farmers, they
know little about farmers and rural life.  We have a long tradition of
historical legends, they understand little about it--say, what does the Phu
Dong Thien Vuong story really means?  What does the Trong Thuy My Chau story
really say?  What does the story An Tiem and Qua Dua Hau really say?

We now have a new generation of knowledgeable, energetic and confident youth
coming up that would be the main force of this country very soon.  Let us
make sure that this generation will come up as an enlightened generation and
will take Vietnam through a major turn, to put our nation on a vigorous road
for centuries to come.

The leadership issue is simple: We have to understand the people we
manage.  The intellectual, by virtue of its intellectual capacity, is the de
factor brain, the de factor manager of the country.  There is no excuse for
an intellectual to simple have a PhD in physics or computer science and is
ignorant about his culture and his people.  Such intellectual is doing more
harm than good to the nation, because he doesn't have the capacity to know
where he is wrong.

Sister Dieu is correct that we just have to go and learn about the country
and the people.  The best way to learn about the people is to "blend in"
with them, meaning, to go with them and to stay with them in such a way that
we become a part of them and outsiders can't see the difference between us
and them.  To understand the rural folks, the best way to do is to visit
your relatives in the countryside and stay with them for while, eat their
food, drink their drink, talk their talk, be happy with their joy, worry
about their concern, ask them about their rural life more than tell them how
good things in the city are.

But we cannot do that simply as a matter of intellectual learning.  We have
to do that with a heart of love.  When you have a lover, don't you want to
know what he is doing, what makes him happy, what makes him sad, what he
dreams for?  In the same way, we have to have the burning love for our
people in our heart first.  That love will automatically tell us to do the
right thing, ask the right question, act with the right attitude.  That love
will naturally bring us closer to our people.  Love is not just a word or an
intellectual concept.  It is a feeling in the heart.  We have to feel the
fire of love for our people in our heart.  Then our heart will
automatically push us to our people, will make us look at all the farmers as
our aunts and uncles and  brothers and sisters.  Then we will know exactly
how to learn to understand them.

That leads me to brother Hien's question about myself.  Of course, I have my
down time like everyone else.  But you just don't see it because you don't
live with me, and I don't write about it.  :-)  However, you are correct
that I am generally positive.  You question is "How do I stay positive all
the time?"

I can go over the long history of my search for personal development.  But
not to bore everyone and just to make it short and sweet, I will mention two
things:

1.  I have learned positive thinking from every personal development book
under the sun, to train my mind to keep thinking "The glass is half full and
never half empty" and "Every person is fundamentally good, with some
weaknesses, not fundamentally bad."  (Confucius:  Nha^n chi so+ ti'nh bo^?n
thie^.n .  Bibble:  Human is created in the image of God).

However I find that all the psychology training can only help to some level,
but not super-good.  Until ...

2.  I know how to pray constantly to God, all the time, many times during a
day, about happy things, about bad things, about anger,
about disappointment, about hope, about joy, abut everything, more or less
like talking to a close friend.  Then I start to be able to draw from such
boundless source of energy what I need to help me stay calm and gentle and
loving all the time.  I pray not because I am religious or devoted or
whatever, because I am not.  I pray because I know absolutely that I am too
weak to be good.  I just have to pray constantly so that I may get the
constant help.

That's all.  I can expand these two short paragraphs into two very long
messages to go over my growth experience.  But I guess these two summaries
may be sufficient for now.

Thanks for asking, brother Hien & sister Thu Huong.

Have a great day!

Hoanh



On 4/7/07, huong dang thu <hdangthu at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> [ Vietnam Business Forum ]
>
>
>
> dear sis & bro,
>
> Sis Hien, thanks for your question for bro Hoanh. How meaningful it is!
> Lovely bro, we really want to listen to your sharing. I know it's a great
> question but hope you can find way to make it simple but useful. I think you
> are always like that way-simple but useful. ^-^
>
> sis Dieu (we've already had 'older sis',' younger sis'. But in our case,
> we are as young (and as beautiful ^0^) as each other, so can we call each
> other...equal sis?? ^.^). thanks for your message. It's very meaningful. How
> good it is to have a sis with great thinking like you ^-^. i also very
> interest in our country-Vietnam. And I plan for learning more about it. If
> you want to travel our country in the "di de hoc" way, you can share with
> me. I have a group of students who passionately travel around VN. we can
> share and make some trip together ;)
>
> 7/4 is the World Health day, rite?
> wish my bro & sis excellent health!
> HeO
>
>
-- 
Tran Dinh Hoanh, LLB, JD
Attorney of Law
Washington DC
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