Expose Your Whole Self

What did you learn about yourself as a leader by sharing all the challenges that you had to overcome?

So I think the biggest thing that I learned about that which I hope I intuitively was doing in my leadership style... I'm very much a people person, so I've always been about like I think that really understanding your teammates, the people on your team, the people that you're working with, really helps to get the most out of everybody. But what I learned was that part of that as a leader is actually sharing of yourself. And actually being vulnerable or being authentic, bringing your whole self appropriately to work, not just a one dimensional side of you, is actually much more energizing as a team member and as a leader. And I think that kind of coming of age when I did, telling the prior story about where there were very few women and so therefore I was, you know, extra, extra you know, first generation Chinese immigrant parents, everything was like all this, you know, everything was follow the rules, follow the rules. Right. And that was kind of a light bulb for me. Because I came of age and entered the workforce at a time when, yes, it was very male dominated, but also so therefore, you didn't want to stand out as a woman. You wanted to be super professional, super prepared and not show too much of yourself, because showing yourself would be different than the nine other people in the room. So it was kind of counter. So it was a light bulb for me.

So now that you've made this realization that you need to bring your whole self and your authenticity to the job, what do you hope others will learn from it?

I hope that others will see that that by sharing, you know, challenges, failures, vulnerability, that they won't see that as a sign of weakness, but that that is potentially a sign of strength in the terms of strengthening the bonds with your team.