I grew up as a scrawny and timid child 🧒🏻, who often got intimidated by younger & smaller kids on the playground 🏰. Throughout my childhood, my parents had to keep a close eye on me as I frequently day-dreamt 😴 and mindlessly wandered into trouble.
In school group projects 👩🏻🏫, I occasionally got taken advantage of and had to pick up extra work because someone else was slacking off. I would not call them out, but instead just kept my head low and soldiered on 💂. For the most part I wouldn’t even be aware of their inequitable behaviour.
I have never been someone who embraced attention or confrontations, nor have I been particularly brazen in making my demands. Whether it’s cultural, my upbringing, a gender stereotype, an innate desire to please, is debatable 🤔; but I’ve come to realise my preference to maintain a low profile and keep peace 🕊 was part of who I am.
We’ve all heard the sob story 😭 of ‘strong delivery but passed up for a promotion’. For years, that was me. Looking back, it was my mistake in assuming that people would notice my quiet efforts and hand me the prize 🏆 on a silver plate. Such naivety!
I should clarify I have been more fortunate than most 🍀 when it comes to managers who look after their staff, so this shouldn’t be taken as a jive at them. At large corporates, for good reasons, career progression is managed through proper structure and thoughtful processes. Performance reviews involve calibration 🗣, promotion recommendations go through panel scrutiny; all that is to say your manager’s opinion isn’t the only one that matters even when he/ she is your biggest advocate 🤩.
An early manager’s mantra ‘you don’t ask, you don’t get’ was inscribed ✒️ in my mind, but it took me time to put it into action. My younger self was always too polite, embarrassed 😳, apologetic 🥺. I recoiled before the conversations got uncomfortable. I pussy-footed 🐈 around topics such as pay rise 💰 & promotion 👩🏻💼; and avoided pushing the envelope too hard thinking I might ruffle feathers 🦚. As I matured and my skin thickened, I started to recognise how these traits were detrimental to my career advancement and the need to improve.
What I identified was a discomfort I felt when I needed to be assertive or talk about my achievements (or sometimes, just to take a compliment). What I also gradually realised was that feeling was acute and transient 💉, especially when compared to the inevitable disappointment 😞 I later faced. In essence, I averted short term pain with delayed but drawn out agony. The tradeoff didn’t always make sense 🧐.
It was then I started being intentional about increasing my pain tolerance, through repeated exposure. How? You may ask. If I only practised at semi-annual performance reviews, it would take years 🐢🐌 to make a difference. What I needed was persistent, daily exercises 🏋🏻♀️.
When in 2016 I pursued internal mobility, I applied to two roles and advanced through them. One was an incremental step up ↗️ to a Chief of Staff position for the APAC technology office; the other was what I would call a horizontal move ↔️ between regional product teams. For imminent advancement, the Chief of Staff role would be an obvious choice. However I withdrew from it and went with the other because 1) it was to product manage a suite of apps used by our Sales organisation, full of aggressive Type A personalities 🦁🐯🐊🐲🦈🐘🦖 (Most things you’ve heard about the trading floor contain some truth.); and 2) my boss would not be able to offer any immediate air cover, as he was 12 hours behind in New York 🇺🇸. I knew how to product manage, but never up close and personal with my users sitting across the row. It had the perfect learning conditions with the training wheels off 🚵🏻♂️.
I embarked on a 3-year voyage working with emotive & expressive Sales users, who were never shy with vocalising their feedback 🤬, typically not interested in the details and demanded for things to ‘just work already’ 😤. (These are not unreasonable user expectations, if you ask me. It is a shame enterprise software still suck 🤮 big time, for the most part.)
Not having my boss/ wider team in the same timezone ⏰ meant I really needed to be my own advocate (‘Out of sight, out of mind’ sadly is real). In addition to being independent & self sufficient, I needed to champion regional user needs, evangelise 📣 my scope of work & delivery. I was constantly competing for others’ attention 👀.
Sure I had a few blunders 🚧 here and there, but through steady exposure to these contentious, high octane 🥵 interactions, I slowly got hold of how to deal with Sales (as I must, by myself) while stating and defending my demands to my boss or teammates (as that was the only way to succeed).
👋🏼 I ought to reiterate the importance of setting up the conditions for this type of' ‘exposure therapy’ to occur.
Be intentional and committed. As I mentioned, your natural preference would be to run away 🏃♀️ from it. It takes courage to stay and endure the discomfort. To do that, you need to remember why ❓ you wanted to change in the first place.
Recognise you are capacity constrained in dealing with change (you’re only human!). Set it up so it’s a meaningful part of your work day, but not 100% of it. There has to be other parts of the job that you can do reasonably well with your eyes closed 😌. Those are your refuel ⛽️ stations. (How you define ‘meaningful’ is rather personal. The sweet spot 🍬 for me is somewhere between 20-35% time allocation. I also prefer short, spontaneous bursts of repeated practices over long sessions at regular cadences.)
Progress over perfection 👼🏻 and be kind to yourself! Set reasonable, measurable stretch goals 🥅 and reassess frequently. There will be days you are out of form. Maybe you had a poor night of sleep 😪. It happens. Spend time reflecting. (At the end of each week I do a mini retrospective and jot down 3 points: What went well 🎉; What didn’t go so well 🚧; What puzzled me 🧩.)
Lean on your support network. Everyone’s different. Some prefer peers 👥 who are on the same journey, some recuperate by talking out loud with a friend/ mentor/ coach. The key 🗝 here is not to carry the burden alone, whatever that means for you. Articulate how you’d like them to help.
One question I often ask interview candidates is ‘What are your superpower ✨ and area of development 🤕?’. I use the answers to assess their self awareness, as acknowledgement and ownership are the first steps in overcoming any weakness.
Everyone has flaws and room for improvement. What matters is what you do with them. As knowledge workers, most of our shortcomings are between our temples 💆🏻♀️. And the brain 🧠 is really just another muscle 💪🏼, trainable through commitment, rigour and patience. Nothing can happen overnight 🌜, but you’ve gotta start somewhere!
Tell me about how you overcame a personal shortcoming. I’d love ❤️ to hear everyone’s stories.
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