What Drives the Man with the World's “Most Impossible Job”?

There is a reason why the United Nation’s first secretary general called the role, “the most impossible job in the world."

Consider this: The SG is a politician without constituents, a leader who manages more than 40,000 employees from 193 member states. The SG commands
worldwide attention in times of terrible tragedy: a war breaks out, an epidemic sweeps a country, innocents are kidnapped, warlords are on the march. Each time, the SG releases a statement and embarks on quiet diplomacy. Then he is taken to task, accused of empty words or of backing the wrong cause, of overreaching or not being aggressive enough.
“Impossible,” in fact, may be an understatement.
Yet seven years into his time as the UN’s eight Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon has been determined to prove that impossible doesn’t mean ineffectual.
When he sat down recently with LinkedIn to discuss his legacy — he has just over two years left in his last term — he focused not on putting out fires burning around the world, but on solving two global issues that will have outsized impacts: Getting the world to commit to solving climate change and bringing about gender parity. The first will take every lever he can pull — and the challenge and payoff are both massive — the second he’s doing by, first, changing the UN.
“When I first took over my job… there were not many women leaders,” says Ban. “There are many women in the lower rank. And mostly, the senior positions were taken by men. You know, I was coming from a very conservative country, Korea. But I thought as a secretary general that human rights and social, economic and political opportunity of women should be [the first things to] promote. So I began to recruit very able and capable and intelligent-- women leaders from around the world. And now I'm very glad to tell you that we are almost at par between men and women at a senior level [at the UN].”
It’s a rare bit of chest pounding for Ban, who honed his skills by mastering the South Korean bureaucracy. Growing up poor in war-torn Korea — books were an extravagance; class was held under a tree — Ban became fixated on the idea of public service after winning a trip to the US as part of a Red Cross-sponsored essay contest (read more about that trip and his inspiration here: “If I Were 22: From Post-War Korea to Meeting Kennedy.”) He worked his way up through the ranks of the South Korean government, eventually serving as Korea’s foreign minister before being elected to take over as Secretary General from Kofi Annan.

He’s quiet and measured, preferring to listen over preaching. But getting the world’s governments to tackle climate change will require much more than behind-the-scenes maneuvers. This September, for instance, the UN will be hosting a climate change summit in New York and Ban is asking governments to stand up and, on the record, proudly commit to hitting certain goals. It’s social proof taken to a global level. “I'm telling the world leaders that they should keep their promises,” he says.
Over the course of our interview, Ban covered not just the macro — tackling the biggest problems facing the planet — but micro: how he leads.
He explained that one of his core tenets was that you can only stay in touch by constantly moving and meeting people. And so, true to his word, after the interview finished he hopped on an elevator and went to the top of the Empire State Building, 64 stories above LinkedIn's office, to view a small portion of the world he's hoping to change and to shake hands with those will be will be affected — he hopes — by his actions.
Some highlights:
Why he wakes up a 5 a.m. every day (6 on Sundays):
[W]hen I get up, early in the morning — when it is really necessary, you have to reduce your sleeping time, because I have only 24 hours -- each day I try to think, what should I do for whole world, particularly for developing world people, who would be looking to the United Nations?
Why he’s taken on climate change as his top priority:
While the countries in the world have been really trying hard to make ... their countries prosperous, they have not paid much attention to the limit of our planet. The United Nations' goal is to make this whole world sustainable in social, economic and environmental ways. But we have to respect and understand that there is a planetary boundary limit.
On how much time we have left:
I'm afraid to say that we may be stepping on, you know, a tipping point… We may be able to-- achieve a sustainable world-- for succeeding generation, for coming generations. But otherwise, we may have to regret we have not been doing.
How he manages:
I try to lead by example. First of all, I want to show that I am like you and I'm one of you and you should also be me or you should be also part of United Nations. Then I always try to do and to show that this is the right way. This is a motivation. Constantly move and constantly meet people.