I am too small

In Chinese families, many parents want their child to be an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer or a business executive. I want my children to choose their own career path. I want them to choose something they love to do.
My daughter became one of the first Asian American women fire fighters in our local fire department after 6 months’ stringent training. She is strong and determined. Her small body size sometimes creates challenges for tasks to be performed. The uniform and equipment alone are about half of her body weight. As a parent, your heart aches when your child struggles, but feel proud at the same time for their resilience.
Recently, Alice was able to take advantage of her small body size to rescue a person who was stuck in a small elevator in between 2 stories of a building. Her disadvantage became an advantage in this emergency.
Let’s celebrate our uniqueness - even if it feels like a disadvantage. Advantage and disadvantage are relative and situational. Let’s embrace each other as who we are.
✅you are not too small, you are just right.
✅you are not too tall, you are just right.
✅you are not too dumb, you are just right.
✅you are not too fat, you are just right.
✅you are not too thin, you are just right.
✅you are not too young, you are just right.
✅you are not too old, you are just right.

What else would you like to add?

Learn from the best

What do a technology executive and a renowned Hollywood voice coach have in common?

The first time I got to know about Denise Woods and her passion on giving people power to their voices was 2021 when I was reading her newly released book “the Power of Voice”. The book gave me a fresh perspective of our unique power in each of our voices. I remembered reading it in a cold winter with a cup of hot tea. Her style is like a cup of lemon honey tea - warm, healing and empowering. I included the book in the LinkedIn post of my 2021 reading list. (link in comments)

Back then, she was still a very remote figure in my life. I was not an actor and working in technology, I had nothing to do with a Hollywood dialect coach - at least that was what I thought at the time.

Fast forward to 2023, due to the WGA strike, Denise started to offer a master class on Voice and Speech with the limited free time she had. I signed up immediately. I believe I was one of the very first signed up if not the first. When opportunities arrive, I never let them slip by me. From then on, I have asked Denise to be my personal voice coach.

She helped me recognize the patterns that I have been ‘incorrectly’ practicing for the past several decades. Even though I am not ashamed of my accent speaking English as a Second Language (anymore), I want to minimize the distraction when people listen to me. I want them to deploy all their energy to my message instead of trying to understand my accent. As a result of our work, I am more acutely aware and confident in my pronunciation and speech.

She is not just a coach on accent acceleration. She is a coach for life. She emphasizes that my story is worth telling. She assures me that I have everything needed to share my message with the world to advance gender equality. She reminds me to tell stories by using both my head and my heart.

She is a sister! We started to call each other sis right away. We talk about work, life, families, the world, values, beliefs and what it truly means as a human being. We promised to march forward arm in arm.

My firm belief is that one of the best approaches to learn anything is to learn from the best. Being coached by Denise is definitely my “learning from the best” experience.

With Denise, I found the power of my voice and the power of my story.

#womenpower #voicecoaching #learnfromthebest

Confidence

What is #confidence ? You can tell whether a person is confident or not when you see their body language, when you hear them talk, and when you notice how well they are listening. People with vast knowledge aren't necessarily confident. As a matter of fact, ~70% C-level executives have #impostersyndrome .

#confidence is a #belief that you can or that you can learn.

I had the honor sharing the stage with my two great friends Huimin Xiong, Ph.D. and Joy Zhao, Ph.D, PCC. We shared the three areas of confidence (TRI) - Technical, Relational, Influential, with the Alliance for Impact Inc. community.
✅ Technical: are you confident that you have the skills to do the work and also learning for the future?
✅ Relational: Do you have the #communication skill and #emotionalintelligence to interact with people and build strong relationships?
✅ Influential: Do you have the ability to influence change?

Having more confidence requires #courage and #commitment.
One needs to have the courage to do the things that are uncomfortable and scary, and the commitment to do those (small) things again and again.

Laugh at yourself

When I was in graduate school back in Beijing China, there was a rule that lights would be turned off at a certain hour during the night so that no one would stay in the labs, classrooms and buildings. The buildings would become completely DARK. Once the lights were off, there was no way to turn them on until a certain time the next morning. Normally people would be smart enough to leave before the lights were extinguished to avoid walking in the dark. Let me remind you, this was before everyone owned a cellphone with a flashlight built in.

One night, I was so focused on my work I forgot to leave before the lights were turned off. Well, I wasn’t the only one. A young professor was also working late. We had to find our way going down multiple flights of stairs by touching the walls and feeling our movement. I, a young graduate student, was wearing a pair of high heels. For those of you who wear high heels, you know how difficult and uncomfortable it is to walk stairs even during perfect lighting. I missed a step! The heel on my right shoe broke off. I had to finish the remaining stairs with only one heel on.

Walking the stairs was not the hardest part. I needed to walk a half mile back to my dorm. The ground was not suitable to walk barefoot. While I was limping through the night, I laughed at myself. I told the professor who was empathetically and helplessly walking with me,
“It would be even if I can break off the heel from the other shoe! 😂“ I tried and failed, and kept walking.
Then I turned to the professor and said,
“Hey, it’s not that bad, I am working on strengthening my calf muscle! 😂”

The professor said something to me that I would never forget. “You are going to go far in life. Not many people can laugh at themselves under such circumstances. Keep doing that…”

When was the last time you dared to laugh at yourself?

#resilience #life

McDonald's...and...Eggs with Tomatoes

What do they have in common?
I was wearing a bright yellow sleeveless top. I had to grab a sweater due to the cold air conditioning. The one closest to me happened to be red. Red over yellow is an interesting combination for clothing. My daughter and I immediately realized it and we spoke at the same time.
"Huh, McDonald's" / "Huh, Eggs with Tomatoes" (the literal way to say it is "Tomatoes fried eggs" - but that's a topic another day)

The difference is that my daughter was born and raised in US, and I was born and raised in China. We associate things to the culture we are familiar with. The culture difference is ingrained in our default thinking patterns - big or small.

As leaders, we need to be cultural intelligent. We may not have all the answers, but we are willing to learn. We provide safe space for people to be who they are and celebrate our differences and uniqueness.

#culture #leadership

Who are you?

You may answer "I am a software engineer of ABC". What if you are not allowed to use your job title?
"I am a parent." What if you are not allowed to use your family function?
and on and on.
I got inspired by the late Wayne Dyer when reading his book. I started to ponder how I would answer this question myself. Here is what I wrote down in my journal March 2022 during Women's History Month.
"...How can we make celebration of women a movement instead of a moment? Everyday we need to remind ourselves how wonderful, powerful, beautiful we are.
I am LOVE.
I am POWER.
I am JOY.
I am the language."

How would you answer this question?
There are two days that are the most important days of our lives - the day we were born and the day we discovered why we were born. I hope you have discovered your second most important day.

#life #love #joy

3 monks

Once upon a time, there were 3 monks who lived in a remote monastery. When there was only one monk, he fetched water by himself. When two monks were present, they fetched water together. However, when all three monks were present, they each believed the other two will fetch water. As a result, they didn't have any water the next day.

When it's everyone's responsibility, quite often, it becomes nobody's responsibility.
Find something that seems to be owned by everyone but no one, own it, that's an opportunity for you to stand out as an exceptional leader.

What Is Executive Presence?

When asked, people have many different answers or no answer. They may say that you can feel it and you will know when someone has executive presence...or not.
The definition from Forbes.
"In its simplest terms, executive presence is about your ability to inspire confidence — inspiring confidence in your subordinates that you’re the leader they want to follow, inspiring confidence among peers that you’re capable and reliable and, most importantly, inspiring confidence among senior leaders that you have the potential for great achievements."
How does one inspire such confidence in others? It's every moment and every interaction. It's every action and every word. It's during the ups and also during the downs. It's when you agree and when you disagree. It's when you celebrate and when you are under stress. It's the clarity in your thought and you are able to concisely communicate it to others depending on your audience. It's the energy you bring to everything and everyone.
In order to have executive presence, you need to think like an executive, look like an executive, and act like an executive. Most importantly, you need to believe you are an executive...only if you believe.

I am happy to have discussed such an important topic with our Alliance for Impact Inc. audiences.

BTW, I didn't like the word "subordinate" - no one is another person's subordinate. I always tell our team that "You are not working for me. Instead, you are working for the company, the customers, and yourself. "

#executivepresence #leadership #executive

Hell Yeah or No

❓ How often do you do things that you don't enjoy?
❓ How often do you do things because you don't want to disappoint other people, such as your spouse, your parents, your children, your boss, your coworker, people you don't even know because you firmly believe that they are watching your back?
❓ What if you choose to only do the things that give you joy, meaning and purpose?

I used to be a people pleaser because I was taught to be other-centered ever since I was a little girl. I did things that pleased others but depleted my own energy well. I stayed in unhealthy relationships because I didn't want to hurt other people. In turn, I hurt myself.

Now, I use this principle for my decision making, especially the major ones. "Hell Yeah or No" (Derek Sivers) - If it's not a hell yeah, then it's a no.

disclaimer: This is the only situation I have been using the word "hell".

Try it! Let me know how it works for you.

#leadership #decisionmaking #selfhelp

Dreaming in English

I am an extravert. I became introverted temporarily when I landed in America for my graduate school. The feeling of not being able to express myself was frustrating, to say the least.
When someone talked to me, I would do translation twice.
1️⃣ I translated what people said into my native language to comprehend what they meant. Then
2️⃣I thought of my response in my language and translated it to English.
However, by the time I was ready, people may have already moved on and my response wasn’t relevant anymore. I would repeat this cycle again and again. If I got lucky, I might be able to comment a “yes” or “no” at the end of a conversation. Most of the time, I didn’t bother to think of a response…let me just simply understand what people were talking about.

Gradually, the speed of my translation got faster and faster...until one night I was dreaming in English. That’s when I knew that I have reached a milestone that I didn’t need to do two way translation as much anymore.

To this day, I carry a list of the words that I just learned or I didn’t know how to pronounce correctly. Let me share just a few examples:

✏️ Salmon - the fish we regularly eat for dinner. You notice there is a “L” there? My kids learned how to pronounce •salmon• from me. When they went to school, they were laughed at pronouncing it as “Salmon” instead of “Samon”. I learned the correct pronunciation from my kids. salm·on (săm′ən)
✏️ Receipt - after you check out at the self checkout stations at the store, you will be asked “please take your receipt”. You noticed that is a “p” in the spelling? I have been very busy practicing saying the “p” and “t” skillfully. Until one day, my coworker and a good friend told me “you know it’s ‘recei(p)t’ right?” No! I had no idea! I heard about the pronunciation hundreds of times, but I already “knew” how it’s pronounced - at least I thought I knew, why would I ever need to pay attention to its pronunciation? re·ceipt (rĭ-sēt′)
✏️the list goes on and on.

The moral of the story:
📌mastering another language requires time, patience, intention and work.
📌just because you think you know doesn’t mean you really know: challenge your assumptions.
📌have empathy to the people surrounding you who speak your language as a second language because they are trying really hard.

#englishasasecondlanguage #continuouslearning #nevertoolate #empathy