The 2013/2014 academic year has been a great one for me, I have achieved many things, and lost fewer things. I started to learn how to be a true leader, and I sure have a lot more to learn. I learnt the skill of coaching students on resumes, interviews and careers. I made plenty of friends who are driven and always willing to contribute to the community. Before, my mentality was always to learn from people who are much more experienced than me, that was all great and helpful. This year, I found that I can learn a lot from students who aspire to be leaders. I believe I have achieved most of my goals this year, some may still need some work, but one thing seems to persist which is, I can always challenge my limits more when it comes to all aspects of life.

I want to mention one final thing that highlighted my year. I have realized that providing help for someone in need without getting any reward, or expecting any reward is much more gratifying to myself than the biggest of personal achievements. People do not expect others do such things, heck, I do not expect of me to do that. There is no logical reason at all in doing something without getting a pay back, but somehow the logic does not matter because happiness is achieved. I guess this is what you call ” true leadership”

In the 2013/2014 school year, I have learnt many things about leadership. My communication skills have seen the biggest improvement so far. I have expanded my network by joining a peer program that deals with career development and student involvement. While reviewing what I have accomplished this year, and what I still have to work on, I realized that majority of my social interactions in the past 3 years have been with a specific demographic of the population. UBC is a big university with thousands of active students and staff present everyday, however, it is safe to say that majority of individuals on campus have acquired a certain level of education that may not necessarily represent the rest of the population in Vancouver. All the skills I have gained and learned so far have worked really well in a university setting, but I have never applied them with a population that spends majority of its time outside an academic atmosphere. I was recently wondering how effective would these skills be when working with a different age demographic, or different backgrounds. Would they work in an environment where is work is mostly physical (e.g. construction)? To be honest, I am not sure. I have not had the chance this year to test this out, but over this summer I am looking forward to see the results. I expect some differences and some similarities. I believe it is very important to develop the skills to communicate with different populations to achieve true appreciation of individuality.

What I want to discuss here could be just an incorrect view to how the world of careers work but that is why I want to discuss it. It seems to me that career development sometimes encourages one particular impression that people should give in an interview. This impression includes things like showing confidence in terms of posture, movement patterns, facial expressions and words. It is true that as someone who is about to be interviewed, you just have to be yourself….or let me say: the best version of yourself. Now these are all very important things and they seem to work well for many people. Recently however, I attended a talk in the Student Leadership Conference by John Horn titled: “Achieving Infinite Kindness”. This talk really made me rethink the timing the impressions I want to portray to the people around me. The presentation included ideas such as “The case for kindness, how to be nice, practicing infinite kindness”. These were all behaviors that seemed to work very well AFTER you are employed. As obvious as this is, I did not realize that not all the impressions you give in an interview should be carried on after, specially when dealing with co-workers who are at similar positions. It was also mentioned that one of the best way to show acts of kindness is to give complements whenever appropriate, and one of the things needed to be able to give genuine complements is to be able to take a complement. It has always been uncomfortable for me to accept a compliment, it either felt like I do not deserve it, or that I deserve it, but I do not like how I am credited for it. My immediate reaction has always been to down play the complement and change the subject. After the conference I made a decision to try to accept compliments genuinely, and see where that would take me. It worked well! A lot of social awkwardness has been avoided. It is much easier now to give people compliments to people, and that helped me a lot in all my involvements on and off campus.

Last week I attended my first day of training for becoming an orientation leader next year. It was a fantastic experience, going through the excitement that sparks up on imagine day to welcome all the new students in UBC. Many things were discussed that day including how to be a leader to individuals who are mostly nervous, confused, and sometimes lonely on an enormous campus. It seems that I forgot how exactly my freshman year went so first I had to acknowledge what a first year student really goes through. A point was brought up concerning what happens after imagine day is over. Many students feel lost after the pep rally is over, it is like they are back at square one where its a large campus with many many people, yet they are still alone and about to go through this scary thing called “being a university student”. Many Ideas were suggested to solve this problem like organizing outings, inviting students to many events and so on. One of the main things that drew my attention was the boundaries of offering help to first year students. I have heard many stories of orientation leaders checking up “too often”, and imposing help on the new students. Of course this is not a common thing, but it happens. This made me think about the boundaries that a leader should establish when it comes to communications with other individuals. Offering a hand is always important and it provides a friendly impression making the leader more approachable. Nonetheless,  there comes a time when its “too much”, and the friendliness becomes a reason for avoidance. As someone who is looking to improve as a leader, It is important for me to know the limits of my relationship with other individuals whether it is in my group of first year students, or in career peers.

Currently I am employed at the UBC Body Woks Fitness centre. Part of my job description is to act as a “fitness centre supervisor” where I make sure that clients are exercising safely, and keep the area organized and clean. One morning, I was carrying on my usual duties, socializing with the clients, proving advice, putting equipment in the place. I notice in the far corner of the facility, two members talking and it seems to be a tense conversation. I did not want to interfere unless it was disrupting other members. Eventually, one of the 2 members approached me and said with an angry face ” this woman over there hit me with her hula hoop, I am an 82 years old woman, I have osteoporosis in my spine, and now my back is in pain”. At this point I panicked, I have had this position for close to 3 years, I have never encountered a conflict between the members, so I had no Idea what to do. After a couple of seconds of pausing, I realized I have to say something to the woman complaining in front me. I assured her that I will take care of it, and I got her seated and made sure that she is not in any serious pain. I walked over to the other woman. She approached me with a smile and said “any trouble Mina?” I replied saying ” well, that other member is complaining that you might have hit her with the hula hoop”. She replied saying ” I have been using the hula hoop continuously for 5 minutes before that woman came. She asked me to move, even though the rest of the facility is empty. I could not move because it would disrupt my pattern (using the hula hoop), and there was no necessity for me to move”. I started thinking, it seemed to me that all she said was fair, the area was quite empty, and more importantly, she was there first, that’s just basic gym etiquette. So I asked ” did your hula hoop hit her?”, She said “yes, but only because she moved in into my personal space when I did not move, so my hula hoop hit her”. I waited a bit to process what the 2 members said, and I walked back to the first member and asked “were you there first, or was she there first?”, she replied ” she was there first, but I had to use the agility ladder, which is beside her”. I looked back at the empty area and said “well, there are 2 other ladders that are not being used”. She did not like what I said and answered ” well regardless, she should have moved, I am an 82 years old woman”. I did not want to engage any further, it was almost clear to me what happened so I wanted to resolve the solution. I said “anyway, the area is clear now, you can use the agility ladder”. She replied by saying “NO! I will not move from here until she comes and apologizes”. I paused and smiled, then I said “well, its a small issue, it would be easier if we just forget the whole thing”. Of course what I said was not satisfactory to her, and she repeated what she said before. So I replied saying ” I can not take sides in a situation like this, I was not there so it is not my place to call who was wrong and who was right”. She paused a bit, and got up, and said ” I need to talk to the manager, this place needs better staff”. To be honest, I was offended when she said that, but I knew I must not take it personally, it would make things worse. So I gave her my manager’s card and quietly went back to my desk. As the other member was walking out, she said ” I am sorry Mina, I did not mean to put you in any trouble.” I nodded with a smile and said “no problem”.

Later My manager contacted me with the details and how the situation evolved. Apparently  she was not satisfied with the manager either, so she escalated the issue to the director of the school of Kinesiology, and further to the the dean of the faculty of Education.

After a couple of weeks when the situation was settled, I started reflecting on  the whole situation. I wondered what would have happened if I took sides. What would have happened If I took the elderly lady’s side to calm her down, or took the hula hoop lady’s side, because she sounded more right. The whole issue may have been my liability.

Lesson learned: stay neutral in a conflict that’s not yours.

Recently, I have listened to a guest speaker who gave a presentation in the career peers weekly meeting. The topic was “multicultural communications”. Many points were brought up such as, soft skills, following a mentor, the psychology in a work place, and many more. The one that drew my attention the most was the appreciation of cultural differences at the work place. As one of the speaker’s examples of cultural differences was that in Chinese culture, it is considered disrespectful to hand things using only one hand, and it is more appropriate to use two hands. When this example was given, I was reminded of an incident where me and other friends were being being served many plates at a Chinese restaurant. I recall multiple waiters passing each plate to me using their two hands each time which resulted in the service being too slow. At the time, I thought it was sort of inefficient and silly. ” Why cant they just pass the food faster to everyone so the service isnt too slow?”. When it was pointed out to my attention the cultural differences between many people by the guest speaker, I felt a bit ashamed because of me ignorance in the incident described above. On the other hand, I was also glad that I got to learn this at a young age, so I get to apply it with many more people, specially in resume and interview coaching with the career peers program.

Through out this school year, I have attended multiple workshops and conferences that are related to leadership. In many of these workshops, the speaker would start by pairing up students, and asking that each one mentions a strength that they have as a person. To me,  this was a very difficult task. How can you meet someone for the first time and start your conversation with: ” I think I am good at… or my best feature is…”. It sounded like social discomfort right off the bat. Others shared the same opinion, and found it very awkward to start a conversation with a stranger with a personal thing like personality strengths. The more and more I did this however, the more it became normal and it did not cause discomfort anymore. In fact, it felt sort of liberating. I realized that I never get to say what my strengths are as a person; at least in these workshops I got a chance to mention them. The most important benefit however was that it made it a lot easier to admit to my weaknesses along with my strengths. This helped me identify the sources of these weaknesses and  work on them effectively.  Add to that the fact that everyone mentions their strengths at the same time in those meetings, so my expectations of sounding arrogant or obnoxious were not met. Although it was still awkward every time, it helped with breaking the ice with new people I meet in every meeting. I guess the main point here is, it is not bad to mention your strength publicly, as long as you are brave enough to mention your weaknesses too. It definitely pays off to step out of your comfort zone.

Part of my student involvement activities on the UBC campus is resume & career advising to undergraduate students. When I first started, I was lucky enough to be paired with one of the most experienced advisers for shadowing. My training included sessions where my supervisor advises the incoming student while I observe and add pointers occasionally. Gradually, I would take over the entire session while my supervisor observes and adds his expertise if needed or if the student has a situation that is outside my parameters.

In my third training session, a student walked in for advising. Upon first impressions, he seemed very stressed and things aren’t going too well for him. He introduced himself to me and my supervisor: a graduate engineer who is looking for a job. His resume was quite impressive, it had great work experience and academic achievements. As the session went on, he expressed his frustration at the current job market multiple times, and how he has applied to many positions that he was perfectly qualified for but never received and interview. He was not an undergraduate student (not my specialty) so my supervisor guided the ship on that one. The session went by as expected, and the resume looked even better at the end. Finally, the student asked “if you were working in the x company, would you hire me based on this resume?”. I started listening carefully to my supervisor as he chose his words to answer the question while trying to remain neutral as much as possible. Although we help students by improving their chances with resume recognition, we can not infer if someone will get hired or not.

Upon wrapping up, without any warnings, the student started crying intensely. He packed his stuff up (with quite an impressive speed), and ran out of the door. My supervisor ran after him to take care of the situation and make sure that the student is well. After my supervisor and the student left, I started to reflect on the situation and why it happened. To me it seemed that my supervisor has said nothing degrading or offensive, he was very polite and careful with every word. I realized how much emotion people associate with exposing their life ( in a resume) to someone. Although our job is to give advice and help, some may view it as a form of evaluation, which is why we get the common question: “is my resume good enough?” and as a coach, I have to consider that every word I say. In the end of the day, people should leave feeling better about their resumes, not the other way around.

It’s a normal Monday with my weekly Posture and Back care class. My clients look exhausted, yet they’re happy with the results we have achieved together through out the fall season. Its 5:50 pm, I yell out: “Last round, Finish strong!” I can see the relief on their faces when I started the countdown: “5, 4,3,2,1…. Time!” Every one rushes to their water bottles, and I start the cool down. I spend extra time on the stretching portion to bring on that “good feeling” of stretched muscles and a relaxed back. Towards the end, I realize that one of the members is not able to stand up from the mat. I get her seated on a chair and asked “what’s wrong? Do you need a sugar pill?” She informs me that sometimes her throat closes up and its difficult for air to go into her lungs, she assures me that she will be well again within minutes. So, until she gets better I decided to start a conversation to ease the time, and get her mind off the problem. As we’re talking, she mentions that she is a physician which gave me extra reassurance. In the duration of 30 minutes, she mentions twice that she is “better now”, but once she gets up, she cannot hold her weight and she sits down again. Now, she starts complaining of symptoms like low blood pressure, and feeling cold. I knew from previous experiences that these almost always indicate hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) which I already asked about multiple times but she was certain that it’s her airways. After 45 minutes of no improvement of the situation, I insist that she should consider a sugar pill just in case. She responds by saying “maybe it is the sugar, I have not eaten since 8am!” At this point, I felt the frustration creeping in. This hour I spent with her was rather stressful. I questioned the difficulty of my class: “did I push them too hard?” I was also feeling guilty for her health deterioration, and I was losing confidence in my ability to do my job. I was also feeling some fear for my future, considering that I want to pursue a career in health care; so you can imagine that this situation is not exactly a good sign for my long term goals. Going back to the situation at hand, once I understood her status, I insisted that she takes a dextrose pill (sugar), and she took one and we finally saw some improvement and she went home.

I guess on most cases the most accurate description of a person’s status can come from a person himself. But sometimes, people’s judgement is clouded and the person responsible of the situation has to make a judgement call regardless of how qualified the client/patient/student at hand is. The experience I just described was not a pleasant one, yet I learned an important lesson: a person’s words are not always the best reference to rely on to make a decision.