On Friday I went to a gala dinner hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Singapore. The after-dinner speaker was Dr Jose Ramos-Horta, the president of Timor Leste, or East Timor.
In case you’re not aware, Dr Ramos-Horta survived an assassination attempt in February. This was his first trip out of the country since he returned for recuperation.
By using personal anecdotes with which we could identify, the president of the smallest country in Asia managed to make us feel like if we were only to spend a couple of hours together, we’d become good friends.
Firstly, he let us know that he had only handwritten notes for his talk rather than formal remarks. This was because, even though he has the budget for first class flight, the airline he flew with didn’t have even business class seats, and when the person in front reclined his seat, the Doctor couldn’t get his laptop open…
He told the tale of the assassination attempt beautifully, with an extraordinary amount of detail that only a skilled story-teller would give. He even talked about the dream he had during the coma, and the one nightmare he had had since.
Hello! The president of a country told us about his dreams and nightmares – you don’t get much more intimate than that.
He spoke of how he had bargained with God as a young student, letting God know that if he passed a written exam that meant he didn’t have to do the oral exam, young Jose would go to church every day, but if he had to take the oral exam, he would only attend on Sundays.
Well, even though he had not studied hardly at all, he passed the exam. Jose didn’t fulfil on his side of the bargain. Perhaps the assassination attempt all these years later was God’s revenge, he wondered.
And so it continued.
It was one of those interesting situations where showing apparent weakness, and humility, led us to see a strong man who spoke from the heart.
I have no idea of his skills as a leader (a bit of loose cannon, I wouldn’t wonder), but I left feeling he was a smart, warm man. A big part of that was his intimate conversational style of presenting and him risking showing us apparently unedited parts of his private life.
Something to think about next time we start editing our life in order to create an impression of strength…
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