Allow me to be the first to say that yes, I was an autistic kid with very poor social skills when I was in primary school and not only did Erjie develop better social skills than me then (well, she had a head start, being four years older) she even had much better grades than me and thus at that stage in my life, she was superior in every way to me when it came to being a good student. By all means, you can call me a loser who sucked at my studies back then and had no friends - but I think it was more like I was quite an introvert as well and I attribute that mostly to my autism. Do I even recall that incident? No, not at all but it was a non-event, it sounds totally plausible that I would spend my break time wandering around the courtyard on my own instead of playing with the others. But here's the part that I start disagreeing with Erjie: she has made the assumption that this experience of 'loneliness' would have scarred me for life and I would need therapy or help because of it and I don't agree with that at all. Firstly, I don't blame or berate my sister for not being there for me when I was in primary school, this was never an issue - allow me to fast forward the clock to the time when I was in secondary school when I had a lot of trouble getting along with the others in my gymnastics club. I eventually became a three-time national champion gymnast so it was evident that not only was I brilliant at gymnastics, I also loved the sport so much. However, it was a very competitive environment and it was toxic as it wasn't friendly competition at all - it got very vicious and nasty. Did life get any easier after that? Hell no, it only got harder and harder. I had to do national service and that environment was so toxic. University was actually a fairly tame environment but the moment I started working, the amount of office politics I faced was scary- all of the social challenges I faced over the years dealing with such difficult, toxic environments made the loneliness that I experienced in primary school pale in comparison. Oh please - I can tell you that at least in primary school, the other kids left me alone and didn't pick on me. That was not the case in the more toxic environments I had survived since. The only difference was that Erjie wasn't there to witness how I had struggled to cope in the far more toxic environments later on in my life and our paths had diverged after primary school.
I was actually quite surprised that Erjie brought up that episode as I really never complained about my time at primary school. Sure I was the quiet kid who spent time in the garden as I really liked looking at the gorgeous tropical plants grown in the school garden. It's just a part of my life - recently when I was in Aarhus, I visited the massive greenhouse in the botanic gardens there and I literally went from plant to plant with me husband giving him a running commentary about so many of the tropical plants in the greenhouse. Erjie probably looked at me and wondered, my brother is on his own in the courtyard instead of playing football with the rest of the boys. Whereas that was not the way I saw it, being the introvert, I was happy enough to be left on my own in the school garden, studying the plants and wildlife there. In fact, one kind teacher even noticed what I did and invited me to help her do some gardening in the school - that teacher lived in an apartment so she didn't have a garden at home, so she unleashed her green fingers in the school yard with a few students including myself. If I saw a kid who found joy spending time in the school garden in the company of plants, I'd say, at least he is happy with the plants there even if he isn't living up to some kind of stereotype in your head of boys playing football with their mates. I have a garden today in my house in London and I actually do spend a lot of time in my garden with my plants there - I find quite a zen, blissful and therapeutic experience. I would leave my phone in the living room and go to my garden a few times a day, especially if I had just had another one of those long Zoom calls. Believe me when I tell you that I have a lot of shit to complain about when you talk about my childhood in Singapore but actually, I don't think I have ever complained about my experience at primary school and so when my sister tried to portray me as this loner with no friends desperately suffering from this extreme isolation and loneliness, it took me by surprise as I never saw it that way. It is not like I never spoke to the classmates around me, it's just that I happened to derive as much pleasure in the company of the plants in the school garden than with the other kids. After all, there was something very simple, peaceful and calming spending time with plants and after spending hours in the classroom with the other kids, I really enjoyed being on my own in the school garden. So that is my side of the story but then Erjie did not see it that way.
So why did Erjie focus on that one incident which I don't even remember instead of trying to talk to me about the far more difficult challenges that I had faced and overcame in my life then? Well, I think there are two explanations: firstly, Erjie was involved in this incident. She could have stepped in to help me out but she chose not to - maybe there's an element of personal guilt there as she is now a mother of an equally autistic son today and if that had been her son walking around aimlessly on his own in the courtyard, as a loving mother, she would be the first to dash down those stairs to be with him. Erjie's perspective is now that of how she would react as a loving mother and that didn't line up with her decision making process of an older sister back then, hence the guilt so many years later. The second reason I think is related to something else is happening now. My eldest sister Dajie (remember I have two sisters, Dajie is 8 years older than me) had several unpleasant incidents at work this year whereby her colleagues were nasty to her, she may be a civil servant but it doesn't mean the work environment is free from office politics. Erjie now finds herself in a similar situation - she is looking on at a sibling facing a bad situation and she is wondering when she needs to step in and help. Let me be clear: what Dajie is facing now is far worse because there are colleagues actively giving her grief in the work place whereas when I was in primary school, whilst I was the quiet introvert, nobody actually picked on me the way they are picking on Dajie right now - no, I was just left to my own devices. Now you know the saying, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Erjie has offered Dajie some help in dealing with those conflicts at work but Dajie is adamant not to accept that help; her attitude has been very much like, "no it's no big deal, I work with these people, I can handle them. Thank you for your concern, I appreciate it but I really don't need your help here." As to why Dajie won't accept any help, I think it's a toxic mix of pride and shame - she is too proud to admit how terrible her situation is and if she accepts help, then she cannot deal with it the way she has always done, by going into denial about the situation. Thus even if Erjie wants to help Dajie, Dajie had so adamantly refused any offers of help and just wants to be left alone.
Allow me to give you an insight into Dajie's approach to this situation - in fact, I faced a very similar situation two years ago when I was working in a company with a very heavy drinking culture, alcohol was a huge part of the way business was done and being teetotal, I felt like a fish out of water there as I simply didn't fit in. I actually spoke to both my sisters about the struggles I had in that company to see how they would react in such a situation and her responses did come across as bizarre at best - so for example, if the company was missing deadlines because half the team got drunk and didn't show up at work, my sister avoided the elephant in the room and asked if I could get the client to be more flexible with the deadline and I was like, why are you not talking about the drinking issue? And in any case, it was hopelessly naïve of her to even imagine that this would have been possible and even if I could do it once, who wants to use the services of a company who cannot even stick to a simple deadline? I can only shake my head at how utterly ridiculous her suggestions were. But it was clear what was going on, in both Dajie's current situation and the one I faced two years ago, the answer was pretty simple: can you get your colleagues to change their behaviour? If so, do you know what it would take to get them to change their behaviour? If not, then it is simple: you need to leave this company and thus you need to start looking for a new job now. Given that both Dajie and I were never in a position to change the behaviour of our colleagues, leaving was the obvious thing to do. In fact, I went one step further, I eventually set up my own company so I could choose my clients and set my own working conditions. Would Dajie be willing to leave her job? No, because for an introvert and an autistic person with poor social skills, the thought of leaving a familiar environment for a brand new one by changing jobs is so scary that she would rather stay where she is no matter how difficult the situation may be. However, she simply doesn't have the social skills to deal with the difficult people causing her grief at work and to be fair to her, that's a huge ask given I couldn't tell the people at that company that heavy drinking was not conducive for doing business. Thus I can see why introverts like Dajie need help sometimes when they make bad decisions and I don't want to put introverts on a pedestal, sometimes even introverts need to come out of their shells and tackle their own problems instead of just giving in to the urge to ignore the problem, hoping that it would somehow just go away by itself.
When I learnt about what Dajie is going through now, I also felt that similar sense of guilt - I know Ejie shares that same sense of guilt as well. Thus I think that guilt on Erjie's part is somewhat misplaced when she felt guilty about not having done more for me in primary school as I honestly didn't think it affected me. I am autistic, allow me to explain that to the rest of you who aren't autistic like me: my intelligent is normal but it takes me a lot longer than others to develop the kind of social skills that you may take for granted. So when I was 10 for example, I probably had the social skills of a 5 year old. I was always lagging behind my peers in school when it came to my social skills but that difference eventually goes away as an adult though I learnt an important lesson when I was in the army. I saw people with very poor social skills get beaten up, bullied and ostracized to the point where they were driven to suicide in some extreme cases. In short, if you want to get along with others, then you need good social skills - you need to be nice to others and get others to like you. There was a huge penalty in failing in that challenge given how extreme the bullying was in that environment. That was so many years ago but I also learnt a lot in the business world about just how incredibly important social skills are when it comes to building good relationships at work and how that is the basis of any business transaction. I have learnt so much over the years as I am now 47 years old, but the last time I really crossed paths properly with second sister was in primary school when I was this severely autistic dumb kid who had no friends. It does frustrate me a lot that this period at primary school is still her main frame of reference for me. Erjie visited me in France when I was a student in Paris and she has seen how I had grown in confidence when thrown in the deep end. She was also there when I went on holiday with her in Spain - she stood by me when we had an elderly AirBNB host in the city of Zaragoza who didn't speak a word of English, yet she insisted on trying to get to know my sister and I functioned as their interpreter to facilitate that whilst that elderly lady was very impressed with the standard of my Spanish. Thus Erjie has seen me at my worst as well as my best - but can we get the chronological order right please? Yes I was such a dumb autistic kid back then but look how I have grown over the years into this successful businessman, who is confident. intelligent also has excellent social skills.
Time for an analogy: I have a good friend at gymnastics called Sam and he started gymnastics as an adult, so many of the skills we take for granted are actually a lot more difficult for Sam. This is totally normal of course, so for example, when Sam first started gymnastics, he was terrified of the concept of turning upside down to do a somersault. So Sam had this irrational fear that things would go so terribly wrong that he would land on his head and break his neck whilst I was like, no you won't, not if you just do as you're told and follow through with the plan to complete the somersault. We have this drill to try to introduce the concept of the somersault to beginners, you simply sit on the bar and fall backwards, the body will pivot around the bar so with virtually no effort at all, your body would do the somersault. It is the easiest way to get a beginner to do their first somersault, but it also requires some courage to do it for the first time and Sam was terrified. He got on the bar, sat on it for about ten minutes paralyzed by fear whilst everyone was shouting to him, "just let go of the bar and fall backwards, it is very easy!" No amount of explanation or encouragement could get him to do it, eventually I had to say okay, just come down please, I don't want to scare or upset you. All the other students in the class did the drill with ease as it requires no technique, only courage to fall backwards and trust in the concept of pivoting around the bar. Sam then said to me, "I'm sorry, I know you're really disappointed in me." Imagine if Erjie was there at that class, she would have said, "oh yes, I do remember Sam, he is not good at gymnastics, everyone else did that drill with ease but he was the only one who couldn't dare to try it." Yeah that would have been a harsh but accurate reflection if we were to take a snapshot of Sam's progress on that day - but after the pandemic when the gym was shut for a very long time, Sam did come back and said he missed gymnastics. But much to my surprise, he began to respond well to my coaching and today, he is doing all manners of difficult somersaults, he got past his fear and mastered the technique. He is one of the success stories of our adult gymnastics programme - in fact when we have beginners in our class, I would get them to speak to Sam and get Sam to share his experiences with them to encourage them to continue working hard.
Sam and I actually still joke about that session when he sat on the bar, too afraid to do the somersault, but I bring it up to remind him just how far he has come and how much progress he has made - let's not pretend for a moment that a somersault is easy to do! It would be unfair to judge Sam's abilities when it comes to gymnastics based on that one bad session he had - rather than focusing on how poorly he had performed in that one lesson when he just freaked out and couldn't perform, we need to look at the big picture and evaluate the progress he has made from where he started to where he is today and see just how much he has achieved. Allow me to introduce a further analogy to make my point: I tell this story to make fun of myself when I share my experience about teaching myself Spanish. Yes I am fluent in Spanish now but in the early days, I used to make loads of silly mistakes. Because my French is much better than my Spanish and the two languages are related, I used to simply use the French word instead of the Spanish word if I didn't know the word in Spanish - most of the time, I'd get away with it. The pattern is simple, you take the French word and add either an 'a' or 'o' at the end and it becomes Spanish like rose (as in the flower) becomes rosa, vin (wine) becomes vino, guerre (war) becomes guerra and framboise (raspberry) becomes frambuesa. But there are false friends and there was one occasion when it went so wrong it was hilarious - I was trying hard to think of the word for heads in Spanish which is cabezas, but for some reason, it just slipped my mind. So I defaulted to using the French word for head which is têtes and I changed the final two letters to 'as' and said 'tetas' - except of course, tetas in means something totally different in Spanish. It is the colloquial, somewhat crude word for breasts - it would be the equivalent of "boobs" or "tits" in English. Oh talk about making a mistake when trying to speak a foreign language; I can laugh about it today as I can look back at that incident and say, look how far I have come in my quest to master the Spanish language. I wasn't so embarrassed by that mistake that I swore never to try to speak Spanish again - I'm willing to forgive myself and learn from my mistakes in order to grow to become a better person. Did I let that mistake stop me from improving my Spanish? No, I used it as motivation to want to improve my Spanish, I look back at that incident and think, look how far I've come!
Allow me to talk about an important lesson that I have learnt and forgive me for stating the obvious: you need to have good social skills in order to make friends and get along with those around you who may be your classmates or colleagues. As a young, autistic child in primary school, I didn't have those social skills so I was a lonely boy with very few friends. However, the key question you have to ask is this: did I stay in that state - autistic, devoid of social skills, without friends and a loner? Or did I learn a lot, grow, mature and become a man who is depends on his excellent social skills to make a living these days in corporate finance? I hate to be arrogant but let me tell you what I have been busy with at work these days: I am brokering a deal between a Quebecois (French-Canadian) client and a French company thus obviously, all the negotiations have been done in French rather than English. I was the one who originated that deal and managed the entire process - in French. As explained in my previous post, I am not a translator given that both parties are native French speakers and are more than happy to speak to each other in French. I am not an accountant, I am the guy who has persuaded both parties to work with each other and it requires a whole lot of social skills to be this persuasive when it involves millions of dollars. It is a mix of my technical expertise, my experience with such investment projects and also my French language skills that has made all this possible. These two parties wouldn't even be speaking to each other if I didn't say to them, "trust me, we can do a deal, I know these people well and we can do business together." (I'd say that in French of course, not English.) Given the complex technical of conducting such a deal in French, this is something that very few people are capable of - it is the trust and confidence that both parties have in me that is cementing this deal and that's 100% pure social skills at work here. certainly this is not something Erjie can do. So that is why it bothers me that she is ignoring just how far I have come in terms of my social skills in the world of business but instead, she is focusing on "remember how you were this loner when you were in primary school who had no friends? I bet you're still traumatized by it. Oh it must have been a terrible time for you then." Yes, I remember that period, but that is not who I am anymore and I didn't let that bad experience hold me back from becoming the person I've become today.
One way I have come to terms with all the problems I've had in the past is actually blaming myself; or at least taking responsibility for the mistakes that I have made. Blaming myself does sound way too harsh actually. I feel that I have the right to be angry if someone has done something evil to me, but if I suffered the consequences of my own mistakes or bad choices (such as my poor social skills), then I am actually quite happy to take responsibility for that. So in this context, I can look back at my time in primary school and point out that the key reason why I didn't have many friends was because I kept to myself, my social skills were not developed and as a result, I often defaulted to activities which didn't involve others. I am fine with that outcome actually, there's no element of blame directed at anyone. It was also an aspect of my life that I managed to fix much later on as an adult when I realized that I had to take responsibility for this aspect of my social skills. I don't berate my sisters for not having done more to have helped me develop my social skills at that age, I'm not sure how much more they could have done to help me when I was that autistic. Instead, I would save my anger for instances when people have done me wrong, when bad people have deliberately done something awful to me out of malice and yes, there have been several instances of that in my life. I have plenty to get angry about and don't even get me started on those episodes. With my primary school, I categorize it as one of those instances where things weren't perfect but I don't have reason to complain. Yeah, I could have had more help from my sister or my teachers when it came to my social skills, but really, no major tragedy or disaster happened despite the fact that nobody helped me on that front and I'm pretty okay with the way things turned out. Recently I spoke to an old friend David who told me that he did a piece of work for a company he was contracted to, but as one of the pieces of the work that he had done for them wasn't strictly covered in his contract, they found a legal loophole to avoid paying him for it despite the fact that this piece of work he did proved to be very useful for that company. Now that's a great example of an incident where the person in question has the right to get very angry. My experiences in primary school simply cannot be compared to what David went through, therefore I don't complain about it and for the record, David definitely has the right to be very angry.
So here's the one part of this whole story that I found perplexing: I can't help but feel that Erjie felt that there was something wrong with the way I was in primary school given that I was very much that autistic kid who was quite happy being on his own instead of the typical boy playing football with his friends. If that's the way she felt about me, what must she think of her own autistic son who turned out to be just like me in that aspect? I think I was simply an introvert, leaving the autism aside, I was definitely an introvert who was so much more comfortable doing an activity like reading a book or magazine which stimulated my mind whilst not having to deal with other people, rather than a typical extrovert who would go out of their way to seek human company. By that token, my nephew is similar to me as well - now don't get me wrong, let me be the first to say that even introverts need to develop their social skills in order to function in our society, but what I take issue with is Erjie's assumption of seeing me on my own and declaring, "my poor brother is suffering from loneliness because he has no friends," without considering things from my point of view which is, "I really like spending some time on my own, doing activities that I enjoy without the stress of human interaction - it allows me to relax and clear my mind, before I am ready to go back to interacting with people again." That is something that introverts instantly can relate to whilst extroverts really don't have a need for that. So whilst I don't have anything to complain about that part of my childhood experience, I do take issue and offence with Erjie's assumption that somehow by not conforming to the stereotypical ideal of boys being extroverts playing football with others at the first opportunity, that us introverts are suffering and to be pitied for having to endure that loneliness - that's quite a gross misrepresentation of the situation. If she had made such an assumption about me, then I wonder what other assumptions she would have made of her own son who is as autistic as I am? Is she assuming that her own experience in primary should be the model answer, the perfect experience and that anyone else who may have had a different experience is doing something wrong? I'm still left baffled as to why she brought that up, but given how very busy her work schedule is, we have not spoken properly since.
That's it from me from now, what do you think? Do you feel my pain in how us introverts are always judged and misunderstood by extroverts just because we're different? Would you insist or demand that introverted children change their ways in order to fit in better with society or would you be quite happy to leave them alone? Do you think being a mother has changed Erjie's perspective on her actions all those years ago when she chose to ignore me in primary school? And if this was a matter that really bothered her all these years, why wait forty years to bring it up with me then, despite the fact that I had never once mentioned it, ever?! Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.
I am also introverted, like you, and am very happy when left to my own devices since I can entertain myself and don't need to feed off other people's energy. I think us introverts should be left to our own devices, stop trying to change us. It is like telling left-hander they are born weird and trying to force them to use their right-hand to write (never going to work).
ReplyDeleteI also have no idea why Erjie took issue with that imaginary incident almost 40 years ago. One anecdote of mine, which I would like to share, was that my elder brother used a penknife to cut my right ring finger when I was very young. He also forced me to hand over all my allowance during my Pri school days! But he was never apologetic about either incident and I doubt he even remembers them. I DO take offense with both of them, so much so that I still remember it more than 30 years later!
I also seriously doubt being a mother made your Erjie more sympathetic. One thing i got to understand about womens' psychology is that they lack the ability to empathise with men. I would assume she is not male, nor is she autistic so would not have any frame of reference for any of her son's nor your own childhood experiences. So, in this case, she is simply projecting her son's situation onto her imaginary narrative of your primary school experience. If I were you, I would simply ignore her (insane) narrative! No point losing sleep over it.
And I admire your ability to florish into a successful, high-EQ individual seeing as you were an autistic, self-absorbed kid in your younger years. As the adage goes, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger!
I am guessing it is a mix of a) my nephew being in the army now (where social skills are vital) and b) my Dajie having problems at work (again, it boils down to social skills to deal with office politics) that has brought up this story from approximately 40 years ago. But then, what I took issue with is her assumption that I must be so totally traumatized by what happened when really, my conclusion when I looked back at the facts is that I was an introvert and in fact, in many ways, I still am an introvert. And what's wrong with that?
DeleteTalking about autistic activities I used to do when young, back when YouTube wasn't a thing yet, I used to love standing outside video game rental stores. I then watched other gamers play all sorts of games. I was never interested in playing and could spend hours merely observing (which I did mind you more than 2-3 hours). I'm sure your Erjie would be horrified to hear of my autistic behavior. But young kids nowadays are happy to watch streamers game online in Twitch or YouTube. They even donate money to these people which I can never understand!?
DeleteAnd as for Dajie, I wouldn't even put myself in her situation in the first place. I would have jumped and have proceeded to do so several times within this year already. But I am comfortable with change. Not many people are.
DeleteIntroverts and autistic people have a lot alike - I have a physalis bush that I planted this year in my garden and I find it so therapeutic and satisfying everyday to go look at how it has grown every single day. It is really thriving and I'm really delighted with the progress it has made - I can follow other Youtubers who post gardening videos like that and it's great to know that there are other people like me. So this one woman who also plants physalis bushes is in Melbourne and it's just nice to know, hey, there are others just like me out there who are wired the same way and feel the same way, I'm not alone. But in the pre-internet age, we were judged a lot more harshly by those nearest and closest to us and it wasn't possible to search for like-minded people (who may be somewhere like Melbourne or equally far away). Introverts and autistic people have a much easier time today and it was a lot harder for me back in the 1980s, but somehow I coped. Speaking of Twitch, I even interviewed my friend David a while ago for an article here as he made a good living on Twitch but even he has stopped doing it now. Did you read that post? If Erjie would be horrified by our behaviour, then may I remind you that she has a very autistic son. Bear that in mind. As for Dajie. good grief, where do I even begin? You can't help someone who doesn't want to accept your help. She ignores the problems at work and hopes that they would somehow just disappear.
DeleteI can't quite recall David's article, a quick summary please?
DeleteAs for Erjie, your story just demonstrated her lack of empathy to autistic people, enough said.
And finally if your Dajie ever wants advice, tell her ignoring a problem only makes it worse, not go away. My relationship problem is a very good example of that. But I have confronted it head-on to solve it. That is the only way for problems to ever be resolved!
Firstly, David's article https://limpehft.blogspot.com/2019/11/interview-making-living-from-computer.html
DeleteAs for Erjie, I'll sort it out with her at some point.
And as for Dajie, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, how stupid are you. That's such a fucking stupid thing to say. The person who is the closest person to her is Erjie, Dajie finds it hard to establish close friendships given that she is both autistic and an introvert. Thus her sister is her closest friend and confidant, if she has rejected help from Erjie, then why the fuck would she accept unsolicited advice from you for crying out aloud? We've already talked about this - this is social skills 101, NEVER EVER fucking give unsolicited advice. You're just as bad as Erjie, you're like "oh Dajie, look at me, I've done all these things, why can't you be more like me and I am so smart, I've solved all my problems but you're a loser who can't do what I do. What the fuck is wrong with you, why can't you be like me?" What you wrote is as fucking tone deaf as what Erjie did when she went, "oh in primary school I had all these friends, I was so popular in school bur you weren't, so what the fuck is wrong with you?" Seriously Choaniki, that was a fucking dumb thing to write here. Never fucking offer unsolicited advice.
The irony is that you condemned what Erjie did, then you went right ahead and made the exact, same fucking stupid mistake as her. SMH, like seriously dude. WTF.
DeleteLike what the actual fuck. Are you as bad as Erjie?
DeleteI did say if she wants I didn't say I am giving her advice, you are misunderstanding the context of my post. But since you mentioned she doesn't do advice, solicited or otherwise then leave Dajie be.
DeleteI am merely point out that her strategy of ignoring the problem is not going to work. But you already know that.
As for David, I guess his era is already over. Pro-gamers and online streamers have a very short lifespan. Even someone like PewDiePie has quit YouTube. Somemore younger and more trendy would always popup to replace you.
DeleteWell I did admit I was wrong in wasting time in my previous position towards the end. I was still trying to feel my way around things and wasted 2 months doing things I wasn't paid for nor was hired for (all the translation and marketing stuff).
DeleteAnd I don't want to put the blame on anyone else, just that in the beginning the CEO was appreciative of my efforts in doing translation work for him. But I felt that my treatment wasn't exactly fair as well. E.g. they were also paying another vendor to launch a "platform" kind of product. They were supposed to launch tomorrow (for 2 months while I was there). You can try ask Aymane about the Seasurf platform and how it is getting along.
Now I am not being defensive here, just attempting to do a post-mortem. I seriously wonder if things would have gone any different if I had wasted less time or have a bigger relevant network of contacts.
You did push the wrong buttons with me by stating stuff that was a) obvious and b) I already knew, which didn't further the conversation and at best, that was a bad choice of words, ie. blurting out the first thing that comes to mind with no filter and at worst, it was doing exactly what Erjie did to me. Dajie wouldn't even listen to Erjie, never mind to me or you, so in trying to suggest that she should be wiser like you when it comes to dealing with problems is just in very bad taste.
DeleteAs for your work situation, sure things went wrong and you had time to try to stand up for yourself to try to put your foot down and say, this isn't working. But no, you complained to me and I told you to go speak to your CEO instead of ignoring your problems. The problem was that you were treated unfairly but when I asked you to try to stand up for yourself, like Dajie, you failed to do so. Thus in my opinion, Dajie still has a job, you were forced out of yours. You both made the same dumb mistake but you faced far worse consequences than Dajie. That is why I am shaking my head and thinking, you're the last person on earth to lecture Dajie on what to do given how you handled this situation even worse than her. Her problem solving skills are bad, yours are worse and that's not just my opinion - that's the evidence talking. At least she is still employed.
There are areas in our lives where we handle our problems a lot more effectively than others, it's never that straight forward. Some problems are easier to solve than others. All I am saying is that before you start imagining that you're smarter than Dajie when it comes to solving problems, I wanted to point out that you did solve one problem that had an obvious solution (and good for you for resolving that) but you made a total mess of another which didn't have a simple solution. By that token, you're a lot more similar to Dajie than you'd care to admit.
DeleteWell there is one fundamental difference between me and Dajie. I recognised the problem (with some prodding on your part) but she either doesn't or is chosing not too (don't really know). By me jumping before I was pushed was also my way of solving the problem, albeit not the best option and also the only one open to me at that point. I seriously doubt Dajie would ever be pushed since she works for the government.
DeleteAnd although abit 马后炮 to say this, you are over-estimating my influence I had on my CEO. I tried setting up a call to talk to him multiple times that week and from much earlier on. 1) He will blow me off after partying late the previous night. 2) He will be interrupted by some call and we will reschedule but he never picks up at the new time.
Now I do not know what information he fed you in the last few days before ending my contract, one thing both of us can agree on is that he is not a reliable witness, hence take everything he told you with a huge truckload of salt.
Well I hate to sound harsh but I believe there was a point when you could have tried to fix the situation. Now in hindsight, that's a big ask of course, but there was a sense of "look you've come this far, you may as well try to make it work before you just give up." It's like when I was on holiday once in Northern Spain, I arrived at the city and got into the hotel and it was raining. It was 4 pm, what do I do? Have a shower, watch some Spanish TV and then try the hotel restaurant for dinner? Or do I get the umbrella out and go explore the city in the rain? I opted for the latter and got wet but at least I got to see some interesting and cool stuff (in the rain). Likewise, if we applied the same principle to your previous job, you gave up your previous job and joined this company, there was an element of sunk cost - you could have tried a lot harder to try to make it work IMHO. As for that CEO being a difficult person to deal with, yeah let me be the first to agree with you but then again, we're not kids in primary school (ironic that I talked about my time in primary school back in Singapore). I don't need the teacher to come and speak nicely to me and hold my hand, I deal with difficult people all the time in the world of business and that's an unpleasant part of the job that I don't enjoy but I just get on with it regardless. It comes with the territory and I just accept that sometimes, at work, I have to work with people I don't like personally but still have to deal with them and keep it professional regardless. So with that CEO, yes he was a pain to deal with but do you honestly believe that everyone I deal with at work is super nice? Nope, I merely keep it professional and deal with the crap that comes my way with a stiff upper lip. I had expected you to do the same and accept that this is just part of working life. I'm sorry if that comes across as unsympathetic but you're an adult, not a child.
DeleteWell I know now that the CEO or my direct superior is the first person I should build trust with. My biggest mistake was assuming he already trusted me when he didn't. That would be a mistake I won't make in the future.
DeleteBut both you and I knew I didn't have a future in that company. Another good friend who was a sales director of LSEG told me that as well. So whatever actions I could have taken was delaying the inevitable.
But I envy people like Dajie, she could accept being bullied at work for a stable pay (and I assume predictable work). I am not saying that I am better than her, just that I can't ignore a problem especially one so close to my heart like a toxic working environment.
I hate to be the one to have to point this out to you, but earning the trust of your employer and establishing rapport with them is something you have to do in any job, the onus is on you to do that. You're not in primary school, you cannot expect the boss to be like your teacher to come round to you and spend quality time with you, teaching you whilst making sure you're okay. Parents might expect a primary school teacher to treat the young kids like that, but when we're adults in the working world, we need to build trust with our employers and nurture that relationship instead of assuming that the trust is already there. At least you learnt an important lesson there but I need to point out that you left after 4 months and I would have delayed that for 6 months or even a year - you could have learnt a lot more in that time, built up more contacts, used company resources to develop your network and at the very least, the next time an employer looks at your CV, at least it wouldn't look so awkward - you tried finance and then flunked out of your first job in finance after just a short period of four months?! What went wrong? If it had been 6 or 12 months, then it would look a lot less sketchy to say the least, sorry for being blunt. Yes leaving was inevitable but we're now trying to make the best of a bad situation.
DeleteY'know, I just came back from a business trip in San Francisco. The thing is, my company spent a lot on this trip for me. I thought I was gonna get a cheap airbnb and a budget airline, but no I got a luxury hotel and a decent airline. Not only that, my boss took me out to a very expensive dinner too, the kind my dad would take big clients on even though I'm only an A.I engineer in my 20s. I only realized the purpose of them spending so much to make me feel valued after the dinner. I was told that one person in the team doesn't believe in what I'm doing, as in they think the research and development I do is not worth the cost compared to not innovating and just proceeding with low-cost existing solutions. They are not an engineer by the way. I immediately knew that this trip was to tell me "we are trying to be nice to you to show we believe in you, now do a good job in order to raise morale and win the trust of everyone on the team." I suspected from the start that one team member didn't believe in what I was doing, so I knew I had to stay humble and deliver a few wins to convince them. My boss just confirmed my suspicions during that expensive dinner. He also tried to sweeten the deal saying I will get a pay raise if I hit a certain milestone. But when I got back from the trip I was like "man, this is some high risk high reward job that I walked into. I can't just show up everyday and listen to instructions and expect to get paid. Even then, there is no boss above me with a technical background to show me what to do, it's all just me innovating a solution that doesn't exist yet." If I was an average engineer nobody would take me out to San Francisco and show me a good time to motivate me to work harder. I'd just be a replaceable worker which they'd try to minimize costs on as much as possible. But in this case, they're like "if you deliver and innovate more, we will give you a LOT more because you will make us more money for which trips like these are peanuts by comparison." But the downside is that if I don't deliver, and they have no idea if I will or not, I'll be fired. I actually really had to use all my soft skills to assure my boss that I understood the situation and that I'd manage resources carefully to show some progress. I couldn't say "I don't like that member of the team anyway, he is not technical so his opinion doesn't matter." Appearances, morale, and mutual respect between team members is too important when this much money is at stake. That person may disagree with RnD spending, but at bare minimum I never want him to think I'm an asshole so I'm always polite to him and try to see things from his perspective. And it's nothing personal if someone is hard to deal with, I'm pretty sure not everyone likes me either. I went to MIT recently to visit a friend, and I think 1 or 2 people I met at a dinner party just didn't vibe with me. No biggie, nobody's perfect, but at work we don't often always get to choose who we get to work with. And not getting to choose who you work with and having to deal with people you don't like affects every job level in a company, from janitors, CEOs, to everyone in between.
DeleteInteresting Amanda and many thanks for sharing that experience. Allow me to speak more generally about the issue of building relationships within a team in a work environment - I think there are two approaches to it and I usually recommend employing both in combination. Firstly, I believe respect has gotta be earned, not demanded. Sometimes it's easy, like "did you know that the new guy used to work in this (name of impressive company) where he headed up the (very important) department there?" OK if you have that kind of credentials, you walk in the first day and command respect. But if you're new to the industry or young, then you will have to pull a rabbit out of the hat and do something amazing in order to win the respect of your team mates and until then, you cannot expect to have their trust or confidence (which is where Choaniki went wrong), the basic principle is this: I may be polite to a new colleague, I might even go as far as to be friendly and nice - but if you want my respect, you have gotta earn it. Respect is next level, I'm nice to everyone but not many people have earned my respect. The other approach is to try your best to build bridges one way or another with others in your team, find something in common and be friendly. It facilitates this aspect of earning respect, so if there's a new guy in the company and if I am friendly, I can then start regular conversations with him and that is the foundation of him learning about me and what I do - then I can even begin to have the opportunity to earn his respect. But if I barely talk to him, we barely interact, how can I demand respect on any level when we haven't even had the opportunity to get to know each other? That's when people default to rank or job titles and I think that's bullshit. Respect has got to earned the organic way and that's why social skills are so important. This is one reason why the odds were totally stacked against Choaniki as he was remotely working in SG for a company where his team were in Colombia, Ecuador and the UK - it's not like he can ask a colleague out for lunch. But welcome to the future, this is 2023, I am dealing with people all over the world as well and we have got to find a way to connect with people digitally over the internet instead of over lunch.
DeleteY'know, I used to be like Dajie, where I really hate "rocking the boat" or "causing a fuss." Even now I really don't want to out of fear of public embarrassment. But I realize it's because I haven't had much wins in the past where I had to confront people and get a good outcome. So even if other people tell me "go confront X, your life will improve", I didn't
ReplyDeleteusually believe them because of past experience. The only time I thought to try something different was when I would watch my friends and wonder why they were free of toxic people while I wasn't. It's not like there was some magic "anti-toxic persons" spell on them and not me, we're both subject to the same risks, but they are willing to confront people or walk away, and face the same exact potential consequences that I didn't want to face. One issue with people with low esteem is they tend to assume they are special in a bad way, where they think people will respect others but just not them because they think there is something wrong with them. What helped for me was realizing I'm not special in any way, if other people can have a nice working environment and family and friends, then so can I. But I grew up with a mom who constantly told me I was the most selfish and naughty kid in my entire school, and only now did I realize that was a tactic to tell me that every other kid is good and deserves good treatment, but not me. It's fucking insidious. So for me it's not so much the advice or the situation at work that is the main issue, even if it's most pressing. It's more, does Dajie have good self esteem? Because the only way for people to work hard and take risks is if they believe their happiness is worth it. Fixing self esteem is very hard though, especially for a child abuse victim.
Hi Amanda, I am glad you've shown Dajie some empathy and thanks for that. Yes it's an awful situation and I really don't know what more we can do, given that she has refused to accept any help from Erjie and like you, she is the kind of person who would shy away from any kind of confrontation. However, it has not been a good strategy that works. So if say this person called Kim is giving Dajie problems at work, you could either confront Kim and show Kim that you're the wrong person to mess with or you could try to get along with Kim, win Kim over and become Kim's new friend so that Kim would stop giving you grief (and go pick on someone else instead). But simply doing neither is not an option, you cannot ignore Kim and hope that Kim would just go away - no you need to pick a strategy beyond 'ignore Kim'. Even leaving the company to get away from Kim (which is what Choaniki did) is a solution of sorts, though it is a last resort that I would only recommend after exhausting every single last option. on the issue of Kim. The problem with Dajie is that she is so afraid of saying something that would offend people that she would try to say something neutral but that often comes across wrong and misfires. Let me give you an example, in a previous job, when I had to deal with a demanding and difficult client from China, I explained to her that when the client (ie. the buyer/investor) is Chinese and I am the seller (ie. the product or service provider) then the language of commerce has got to be the language of the buyer, not the seller. You can buy in English, but you can only sell in the client's language and if you want Chinese business, you jolly well deal with them in Mandarin. She then said something like, "if you spoke to them in English, they wouldn't understand you." I was like, that's not the point - were you not paying attention about the power balance and the status of the buyer vs the seller? How should she have responded in this case? Well, I didn't expect her to know anything about doing business with people from China, but at the very least she could have asked questions to show interest in what I did. Even something as open ended like, so what kind of challenges did you face dealing with such Chinese clients and what was it like coping with these challenges? That's a valid response, but instead she said something so inane and vapid that I thought, Christ it's a waste of time talking to you, you don't know how to respond, your social skills that so poor. Thus at the risk of sounding cruel, I'm not surprised she is not getting along with her colleagues at the office given that's the state of her social skills.
DeleteI might not be Dajie, but I assume she had limited dealings with international clients. When I had to deal with PRC ex-colleagues in my previous MNC job I spoke to them in Mandarin. This was expected since they are technically my clients as I am supporting them. And the first few times when I went to China to talk to them, they didn't understand me. So I had to change my accent and localise my Mandarin terminology (@LIFT I'm sure you know that). For the purposes of other readers, just know that Singapore Mandarin uses lots of words which are non-standard, e.g. 巴仙 for percent, 巴士 for bus and 巴刹 for market (derived from Malay pasar), etc.
DeleteThen again when I was a customer of a Japanese software vendor I forced myself to learn the technical terms in Japanese. Could I have demanded he speak English to cater to me? Probably. But I lost nothing since I already knew basic Japanese and just needed to brush up my speaking skills. In that instance is was more practical for me to speak Japanese rather than insist on the vendor learning and speaking English.
And then again I don't fully agree with what Dajie assumed by saying PRCs don't understand English. In my previous company managed to contact a PRC guy based in Hainan China. Mr Hainan spoke very good English and was able to handle a 3 way Skype conversation without having me translate for him. I have also managed to connect and speak to several Tsinghua students over in SG for an exchange. Their English is better than most uneducated locals (our parents generation). Their Mandarin is so advanced that I don't dare use it with them since I would probably struggle to understand what they are speaking (financial terminology). I sometimes jump to false assumptions like her, but I force myself to be less lazy nowadays. It is better to treat everyone as a unique individual rather than stereotyping them.
I don't have much to add about avoiding confrontation being a bad solution, it's definitely not an effective solution, just like how being someone who always rushes to confrontation is also bad. In the latter category people will call you difficult and violent, while the former category is being too much of a pushover. But for me personally, I think the main issue is that Dajie doesn't stop to think "every day I do nothing and stay in this bad situation, is a day where I could've been happy instead of dealing with these crappy people." But it doesn't sound like she ever thinks of what could've been or how her life could be different if she made any changes. Her making neutral statements also sounds like she doesn't really want to have a huge effect or get anywhere, instead just trying to minimize her impact as much as possible to avoid getting hurt. I think trying to solve that self-esteem and self-belief problem is the first step. Because I believe you can't really help someone, you can only help them help themselves. And if they don't want to help themselves, then they will get nowhere, even if there is so much help available.
DeleteActually recently my friend Jonas said to me he doesn't feel like he gets enough praise at fencing class for putting in effort. I asked him why he cared about the praise, and he said he sees how I get praise for making progress and wonders why he doesn't get any, and can't be bothered to work hard as a result. Then I realized even when I'm not getting praise, I get given instructions suffixed with "I know you can do this, you have the reflexes and speed." That's not praise per se, but it's someone putting their belief in my potential. As a result I have enough confidence to work hard to progress, which makes the instructors believe in me and praise me even more. So Jonas said all his life he did mediocre in school, his dad abandoned him, and his mom works too much and doesn't pay attention. His parents and his teachers never believed in him or his future. To me, that explains a lot of why Jonas doesn't put effort into fixing problems in his life. He doesn't believe in himself, and when people try to offer him a solution, it doesn't really work because his lack of self-belief means he thinks whatever he tries will lead to failure. This has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with emotions, sadly. Humans are very emotional beings... If Jonas doesn't feel good about himself, no amount of logic can be used to overcome his problems.
@Choaniki - I somehow had the feeling you were going to hijack this and tell us all how amazing your Mandarin skills are. But I'm gonna brush that aside and tell you that what you said about Dajie is completely wrong. My point is that her social skills are so bad that she doesn't know how to react in a normal conversation and this is not a chance for you to show off and declare to the rest of us how good your Mandarin is (again, that's in very poor taste). You're displaying another form of very poor social skills - you see something in a discussion and you hijack it, making it all about you you you and that's freaking annoying to say the least. It makes you come across as a self-centred person who isn't trying to be helpful, that you're so desperate to talk about yourself - don't do that, that's social skills 101. As for Dajie, my point is simple - this woman has such terrible social skills, she thinks stating the obvious is an acceptable response. So for example, if I told her, "I want to go to the museum this weekend but the museum is closed on Sunday." Then she would say, "then you must go to the museum on Saturday as you won't be able to visit it on Sunday." And I'm like, seriously? Isn't that already obvious from the information that I have just given you? Why do you think stating the obvious is an acceptable response when you're really not adding any value to the conversation at all? I was the one who told you about the museum schedule this weekend, like did you not think I could work out the obvious conclusion to go there on Saturday?! I never expected her to add any value in this kind of situation, but if she wanted to show interest in what I was doing, she could have asked a question like, "what are you looking forward to seeing at the museum? How many hours do you intend to spend there? Have you visited this museum before? Is this a famous museum and popular with the tourists?" She could easily further the conversation by asking questions to show interest in what I was doing, but instead she finds the need to respond to the information I have given her which is extremely frustrating. Like I said before, I don't expect her to know anything about my job or my industry, but I certainly don't like it when she states the obvious because a) it adds no value to the conversation and b) it shows she's not really listening or making an effort to participate in the conversation. Let's take Amanda's responses for example - Amanda has got good social skills, she reads what I write, then takes her time to compose an interesting response often with further questions and it is a pleasure interacting with Amanda. Dajie doesn't have Amanda's kind of social skills and talking to her is frustrating as she repeats the obvious back at me and the conversation tends to go nowhere (ref: the museum schedule). Hence I am not surprised she annoys her colleagues if that's the way she talks to people - it's highly ineffective to build relationships. She annoys even her own siblings, imagine the effect she has on her co-workers.
DeleteAccording to Erjie, Dajie tends to make bland, neutral, obvious statements like that because she is afraid of saying something wrong or offensive, so if she states the obvious, at least she is thinking, I am factually correct, the museum is open on Saturdays, so I can't be penalized for saying something that is wrong. However, the problem with that approach is that she is treating conversations like an exam when you get marks for saying something correct and penalized for saying something wrong - whereas imagine if Amanda said to me, "I went to Silicon Valley for a conference about XY21." I have no idea what XY21 is but I bet you I can easily come up with 20 questions to ask Amanda about her experiences at the conference and keep her very engaged in a conversation about a topic (XY21) that I know absolutely nothing about. Dajie wouldn't do that because in her mind she would be worried, "Amanda is so smart, what if she tries to explain XY21 and I don't understand, she will think I'm so stupid and look down on me, I'd better steer clear of that and stick to the obvious instead." That is a reflection on her own low self-esteem rather than the way Amanda would treat people. Certainly, I don't think Amanda would expect everyone to understand what she does for a living, but I'm sure she would appreciate it if I politely showed interest in what makes her excited, what inspires her and what she is looking forward to achieve next year. I may not know anything about XY21, but I have better social skills than Dajie.
DeleteI think the issue with Dajie is like you said poor social skills, but it also sounds like she might not have many friends to practice on. A core part of social skills is realizing you don't have to be right all the time to be liked, but you do have to show humility and a personal interest in other people, else why would they keep sharing information with you? Does Dajie have any adult friends her age? To me it doesn't sound like she has much opportunities to practice good conversation. Oh yeah the one person I didn't vibe with at MIT was surprised I was hired for a role when I didn't know anything about some technology yet, I said I was in the process of learning. But if that guy is gonna be snob and show a visibly bad reaction in public to someone who is acting humble and admitting they don't know something, then I don't want to associate with that type of person anyway, so I don't care if they don't like me. It's impossible to be liked by everyone, but also sometimes people are just rude assholes who you don't want to be around anyway. But it also sounds to me like Dajie hesitates to call people assholes in the first place. If she gets in trouble, she sounds like she always assumes she is at fault even when she isnt, hence her thinking not rocking the boat is best. Well the colleagues are rocking the boat anyway even if she's staying still, the only things she can do is rock it back to make them stop, or jump out of the boat and swim to another one.
DeleteAhh yes you make a good point about accountability. Children do not take accountability for their own actions at all, instead they default to the blame game and try to absolve themselves of as little blame as possible. For an adult, whether they have some blame or not, they take the default position that they have to do something to help themselves, and think of what they can do to make things better, like that manager. But then again children are helpless creatures, you can't expect too much from them anyway. They're playing with an education and experience disadvantage compared to an adult. The difficult thing is transitioning out of that stage when you're 17 or 18 and starting to enter university or the working world. But even then, it's completely optional. Many people go through university or work just being told what to do and never having to be accountable for their own actions and coming up with what actions to do. The kind of "executive level" creative thinking is not even present in most jobs, but it's necessary for a functioning personal life.
DeleteUgh my sister tends to do that too... my conclusion is that it's just very hard to talk to anyone who doesn't feel accountable for their own actions. One can't move forward in life if all they make are excuses rather than plans and actions.
Also I'd like to add, maybe the reason why Dajie can't ask you personal questions about your opinion or experiences is that she hasn't been asked for her opinion or experiences very often. So she might feel "if my experiences and opinions are not important, why would other people's be? Can't we just stick to the facts?" But this is a very unusual way of talking, and is far less personal and enjoyable. Let me ask you, does Dajie volunteer information about her experiences and opinions very often or not really? Do people ask her much about it? I remember asking Jonas what would make him feel happy and motivated in life, and he said to me "everyone else just tells me you gotta go to university or find a higher paying job, but nobody asked me why I don't want to or how I feel about that." Yeah it is presumptuous to make statements about facts, you have to find out what people's opinions are about it before stating facts. Facts only matter in context, it seems Dajie is not very good at asking the right questions to gain context, even to herself. But also some people can talk their head off about themselves without realizing other people may have differing opinions or experiences, and that second part is very important to social skills. My brother has that issue so he can come off as self-righteous always believing his opinion is right because "logic", and therefore assuming everyone should agree with him. Nope one can never take for granted everyone will agree with them. Personal experiences are too subjective.
Delete@LIFT, thanks for you referral of @advicewitherin. She gave a simply template for a self-intro. Would you have a similar template to help autistic people with poor social skills like myself? Like if we meet someone new and want to avoid offending them, is there a template of questions to follow?
DeleteHi Amanda, I think there's a fundamental problem with the culture in Chinese families that is not conducive for people like Dajie developing good social skills. This was something that my father declared to me and of course, I don't agree. He claimed that the whole point of having a family is having this close knit circle of people around you whom you can feel so familiar with, you can dispense with all kinds of formality like being polite to each other, he calls it being casual but I think that if you don't start teaching children social skills at home, if your home is a place where family members treat each other badly exercising little or no social skills in their interactions, then children who come from such households will find it very difficult to develop good social skills later on in life. I'll give you an example - when my sisters do something nice for my parents, they never say thank you as they dismiss that as something unnecessary if you're already from the same family. Likewise, little things like saying good morning or asking 'how are you' - nope, that's polite/formal stuff for strangers, not family. It's a bizarre way to view the world and the relationships we build because in my opinion, our family members should be the people we treat better than strangers and not the other way around. It's bizarre, they seem to have gotten it the wrong way round, I'd rather have a family who treat me especially well rather than have a group of people I can get away with nasty, abusive, bullying behaviour. So if Dajie is already facing this at home, can you imagine taking that mindset into the office where she has to get along with difficult people? Oh dear, you see why I had to leave home and get myself 8 time zones away from my parents?
DeleteAs for me asking personal questions about the other person such as in the example of what I would ask you if you had just attended a high tech conference in Silicon Valley, "Amanda are you excited about the launch of XY21?" I don't need people to have asked me questions about me before I try to show interest in others, it is just a social skill I use at work all the time in order to create rapport with people I may have little in common with. I have an Irish colleague I work with - him and I don't have much in common, today, we waited for a client on a conference call and the client was 15 minutes late, so I just chatted with my colleague in that 15 minutes instead of just ignoring him. I mostly just used questions to keep on contributing to the conversation and showing interest in him, what he is doing and even if it is something as simple as, "oh that's interesting, tell me more please." I then picked and chose what to respond to, like "yes that's so true, something similar happened to me last week with my client in Dubai." And then I can do that, "see? I went through that too with my client too, we share these experiences in common." There's an art to establishing rapport with people at work, I am good at that as I've been doing it for years and please, it is not rocket science. It's like the easiest part of my job and so this is why it is frustrating for me to see that this is the very aspect of Dajie's job that is causing her so much grief, it is the one thing she struggles with and I'm (modesty aside) really good at it - yet she won't accept help from myself or Erjie.
@LIFT, I will have to agree with you that Chinese families are not the best environment to learn social skills. Parents don't praise their kids or show any form of interest or affection. And since I come from a dysfunctional family where my parents are not around 90% of the time, I had to learn some social skills from strangers and my mother in-law. She basically told me that family members don't say thank you to each other since being nice is expected (warped logic). Doing favours for family like running errands or helping out is also expected so no gratitude required. You only get chastised when you don't help out! Basically, all stick no carrot.
DeleteFor a time, I lived with the family of one of my good friends. His elder sister commented on my lack of parental upbringing and manners the first time I had a meal together with them. She said we are supposed to ask the elders to eat first not just dig in. But I have never had a proper meal with my parents in my life, so no one thought me that until then! Schools don't teach those social skills since they expect your parents to do so (rightfully so). And for people without parental guidance like me we are basically SOL.
Based on the various anecdotes about how poor your parents' social skills are, I assume Dajie and Erjie learnt nothing from them. That could be why both of them have poor social skills. Why don't they pick it up at work or elsewhere then? Your guess is as good as mine. And before you point out the obvious, my social skills are equally bad. But I started out much, much worse and have frustrated so many people before. Some of my friends no longer associate with me before of it.
Ugh I hate that Chinese family attitude, it's just a way to justify being an asshole with no empathy or patience whatsoever. My brother actually makes the same excuse, and says that being polite is "fake" and "hiding yourself." But I think that's just him not wanting to expend extra effort to choose his words carefully, or misunderstanding it's not what you say but how you say it. But then again, he doesn't have to use social skills as much in his job. I have to do a lot more diplomatic work when it comes to talking to clients or sponsors of academic projects who don't understand science, but whose money and cooperation I need. With your sister, I asked if people frequently ask her questions about her personal experiences in her personal life because it doesn't look like she'd learn that skill out of necessity at work. Because if that skill was essential for work, she'd be fired by now. I can't imagine her talking with one of your clients with that Saturday/Sunday remark to your museum comment. My brother also doesn't really need to be witty in every social interaction, he just talks to coworkers about engineering but doesn't have to get personal with them. I mean, when I was in San Francisco I basically had to spend all day with my boss at the conference and keep him entertained. This is a person who I've only been on short 20 minute zoom calls or 1 hour phone calls specifically about work before then. Not someone I had to entertain and not annoy for hours. That is so different than working in an office where you only see coworkers for a specific thing to talk about. My dad frequently had to entertain big clients to ink deals, so he developed a knack for telling interesting stories to whoever he had to talk to, or took them to interesting places to eat lunch or dinner. It's kinda like being friends with someone while knowing you aren't really friends but just trying to gain their trust to do something for you. In that trip to San Francisco, my boss told me what his dad did for a living and the private school he attended(he is a rich kid, that's why he got away with going to a not very high ranked school, in fact he told me he mostly partied in university). So in response I told him what my dad did for a living and what private school I went to. At least I went to private school so I didn't have to think much about my reply. I dunno how someone who went to public school and had parents in working class jobs would've reacted to their boss telling them about his rich dad and fancy private school growing up. How would you have reacted to that Alex? In America I'm always shocked when rich people reveal how rich they are in a point blank manner, because in Singapore people are a lot more subtle. Maybe it's because of the income segregation at the university level, people just suspect I'm a rich kid because of which university I went to. Whilst in Singapore, NUS/NTU have both rich and poor kids so it's harder to tell who is rich/not rich.
Delete@Choaniki why didn't my sisters pick up social skills else where? I believe that the answers lies in the "you learn what you think you need". I was once asked by a British friend if I spoke Thai given Singapore's proximity to Thailand and yes I've been there before both as a child and for work as an adult, but I never really had an incentive to learn Thai. I don't visit regularly, I don't have Thai friends or clients, I don't see the point in investing hours to learn a language when the reward isn't immediately obvious. Whereas with other languages, if I have friends and clients who speak that language, then immediately I have far more of an incentive to wanna learn it as I can see how I would be rewarded for being able to speak that language well. By that principle, I don't think my sisters think that they feel the need to improve their social skills because a) they are surrounded by people with equally poor social skills, so they don't feel like there's a gap in their skill set by not improving social skills - the same way they don't feel like there's anything wrong if they don't speak Thai, given practically all Singaporeans can't speak more than a few words of Thai anyway. It's like yeah I can't do that, but it's not a problem, it doesn't bother me. Then b), there is the Dunning Kruger effect, if you are bad at something, you don't realize just how bad at it you are because of your lack of understanding of the issue. Hence they would probably assume that their social skills are 'average' or even 'above average' when I think that their social skills are at best 'below average'. When you combine those two factors, that's why they've reached their 50s with poor social skills.
Delete@Amanda, I equally hate that Chinese family attitude, it makes no sense. But people just accept it in our culture because they shove all the inconsistencies and faults of their own culture into a blind spot. And take someone like Dajie, if she turns her back of her own family, who is she left with? Hardly anyone. I haven't spoken to Dajie or my parents since January and we're nearly at October now, I don't miss them, I don't need them but that's because I've built up my own social network of people I trust and can rely on based on merit, ie. "Sean's a nice guy, I'll be his friend. Gemma is a psycho bitch from hell, I'll avoid her." Do Chinese people apply those principles to their own families? Nope, it's supposed to be unconditional acceptance, so you can be a psycho bitch from hell and still expect your family to be around you. I think that's wrong.
Part 2 for Amanda: as for your question what if a rich client starts telling me how rich his family is, I have two responses depending on how well I know the client and I'll pick the one that would be most appropriate. The first answer is I'll focus on the recent past, ie. the last ten years where I have made a lot of money and can afford to do all the nice things that rich people do like go on fancy holidays. After all, you don't start talking about your distant past (eg. your childhood) with people you've only just met, it's just not the done thing. It would feel unusual, I would focus on the more impressive aspects of my achievements and experiences, such as having worked in different countries rather than talk about how poor my parents were and how I had a working class upbringing. Then the second approach would be to bare it all: share and tell them, I came from nothing, I'm the son of poor working class parents, there are poor families in rich countries too you know (I actually said that just this week to someone I just met who assumed that all Singaporeans are rich because Singapore is a rich country). But based on that, I then explain that I got no help from my parents, I was blessed with a freakishly high IQ and so many talents that I couldn't stop winning awards and medals from gymnastics to the creative arts. I then shift the focus on my rags to riches transformation based on this unfair advantage I got, I would say that some people get that advantage from rich parents, I got my advantage from my unusually high IQ, my talents and my brain and that's something money cannot buy - I am Einstein, I am Newton, I am Mozart, fuck me I am in the top 0.00001% of the human race. (OK I am exaggerating for dramatic effect here but I love drama.) Now isn't that more impressive than simply being born into the right family with rich parents? I use that story with people I am trying to convince to do business with me because ultimately, they wanna work with a genius who can make them money, not some rich kid who is at best average but has had so much help from his parents he managed to get a good job in the company. Who would you rather trust with your investments? The working class genius who is top 0.00001% of the human race or the rich kid who is at best average at what he does? I'm like, I don't need to sip champagne on your yacht and pretend to be posh like your friends, but you have to admit I'm a lot more intelligent than all of them, so hand me the portfolio of investments, let me get on with what I do best whilst you get back to your posh friends.
Delete*Disclaimer: let me be the first to admit that with the second approach. I exaggerate for dramatic purposes but it is a means to an end - I'm not truthful about how poor my family was (I make it sound like I was so poor I couldn't afford new shoes and went to school with holes in my shoes, no we weren't thaaat poor) and I exaggerate just how smart I am, but if you wanna go down that route, it is for dramatic/shock purposes and it's either the first approach where I try to politely blend in, or the second approach where I use all that drama to make a point about why I am superior to these rich people.
Delete@LIFT, wouldn't tooting you own horn be seen as crass and tasteless? I'm meeting some very rich and influential people tomorrow and I still don't really know how to pitch my life story to them. Do I bring up my working class background and dysfunctional family? And unlike you I have zero achievements to speak of. So how do I sell myself to them?
DeleteIt depends on how you deliver the message. Everyone likes a good story, one with interesting twists and a plot that is anything but predictable - poor working class kid discovers he is a genius and what he does next is a good story to tell. I think the definition of crass and tasteless would be super rich kid spends his parents' money on a long list of luxury items and then proceed to boast about all the expensive items he owns - now that would be crass because our reaction would be, "yeah you have a lot of expensive items but you contributed nothing to the wealth of your family, you only know how to spend the money. You didn't earn that money, that is the money your parents gave you." But in my case, if I merely told the story by focusing on WHAT I have achieved, that could come across as crass if I merely listed one accolade after another - however, if I sold the story based on the HOW I achieved all that, then it is very different because the process of me getting to A to B, from a very working class family in Ang Mo Kio to the world of finance in London, now that's a fascinating story and I am a really good story teller, that's why it wouldn't come across as crass. In gymnastics, we have two components to the score: difficulty and execution. Carrying off the second approach is a high difficulty approach, but if your execution is flawless, it will work incredibly well. But if you handle it clumsily, then of course it wouldn't come across well. I actually have a good story to tell and have the social skills to carry it off = a winning formula. As for you, I don't know to be honest. Let me think about it. You can't do what I do given that I have only told Amanda what works for me, you can't cut & paste that formula.
Delete@LIFT, which is why I asked you previously if you have a good template. I'm borrowing @advicewitherin template of past, present, future. But as for the contents, still don't know what works...
DeleteI know I am stating the obvious here, but what may work for Erin, Amanda and myself will not work for you because we're all different people. I recommended you look at Erin's channel because I like her problem solving approach and the way she handles difficult situations - I like her style, method and ideas but it is still by no means a simple "cut and paste, memorize and repeat exactly what Erin said" solution for you. The purpose of sending you to her channel was to open your eyes to her methodology, then you would be inspired to create your own solutions based on what you've learnt from her.
DeleteActually I have seen many instances of finding out a very competent coworker actually came from a working class background and feeling even more impressed by them. If you're subtle about it it can be executed very well and immediately gain the respect of any rich kids around. But I've also seen it executed poorly, where even if someone is competent they sound like an entitled asshole complaining they grew up homeless or that rich kids have so many advantages they didn't have. The idea is to shift the focus to your own troubles and how you overcame them, rather than bitching about your lot in life relative to other people.
DeleteAlso, I notice that both me and my boss had to prove to each other that we weren't spoiled rich kids. My boss told me he started in a 3 person law firm in his mid 20s and grew it to a 50 person law firm after 10 years. If he looks young for such a senior position, it's because he was literally one of the founders who grew it from nothing. Maybe he had some startup funds from his dad, but growing a firm larger takes some talent.For me, I had to talk about how I was tasked with talking to sponsors in my early 20s to make sure they were clear with their project requirements, and that I did a good job carrying them out. And also that I had to prove I was competent in undergrad for professors to hand me that kind of executive responsibility that young. We may have both been given lots of advantages in life, but we had to show each other we took full advantage of them rather than merely being average but with lots of help.
I also would like to share a case of bad social skills I saw at the conference. Me and my boss were talking to a sales guy of a potential vendor at a booth. And this vendor said that they don't make any of their own A.I, but make an interface to interact with ChatGPT. My boss said we were developing our own A I models, and the vendor said "you shouldnt do that, just use our product to use ChatGPT better." Then my boss asked how much their product cost, and the sales guy said $60k USD/year. And my boss said "that's a lot for software that isn't even it's own original A.I model but just an interface for ChatGPT, which means no added intellectual property. Why does it cost so much then?" And the sales guy said "because 2/3rds of our engineers have PhDs. We make really good software, you should try us out." Later at lunch my boss was like "I don't care if 2/3rds of their team have PhDs, they have no intellectual property! I almost wanted to say you had a PhD too to see how they'd react. Instead of telling me how their software was unique, they thought to use credentials on me just cuz I'm a lawyer? So crass..."
Thank you Amanda, you've hit the nail on the head. Nobody wants to listen to me whine and complain about 'life is not fair' (duh) but if I focus on the interesting parts of the story like how I overcame the problems I encountered, people will be interested if they think, okay I can learn something from this guy about how he overcame his challenges and obstacles, this is useful information. Like I said, it is execution and delivery which is key. Allow me to use an analogy to make my point, there's a famous British play called Top Girls by Caryl Churchill. I saw two versions of it in the theatre: one was an amateur production in Singapore and one was a professional West End production in London. The Singapore version was a car crash as the director's wife became very ill during the rehearsals so the cast were left to direct themselves, they were set up to fail under those circumstances and I don't blame them, yeah but the production was a total disaster of course. The London West End version was amazing, but it was done by a professional cast and crew with a big budget, I'd expect nothing less. But wait, both productions worked with the exact same script as written by Caryl Churchill, so how can one be excellent whilst the other one a complete catastrophe then? Answer: execution and delivery. So it's not a question of what story I tell, but how I tell it that matters.
DeleteYeah exactly Alex, instead of talking about the difficult problems you faced and how life is unfair blah blah blah, talk about your solution to the difficult problem to showcase just how brilliant you are. Saying life is unfair is not adding anything to the discussion at all. Anyone can claim life is unfair or difficult, not everyone has a solution to overcome that extra difficulty. That's what separates people who are born poor and stay poor compared to people who achieve social mobility, the lack/presence of solutions. And yes, many Hollywood or other types of productions can have an amazing script and some very unique premise, but just utterly fail in execution. I'm kinda thinking of how only Christopher Nolan managed to create a great Batman movie with Christian Bale, while the recent Justice League movies have a boring Batman in Ben Affleck.
DeleteThanks Amanda. I think the key point here is whether or not you have anything to offer the other party - if all you have to offer is a 'life is not fair' rant, then that is really not offering the other party anything of value at all, nobody wants to hear that, even if what you're saying is true of course. (We all know life isn't fair.) But if you phrase it in a way whereby you're like a stand up comedian, you tell a story and you promise the audience there will be a really good punchline at the end, that it would be worth paying attention to every detail because this is going to build up to a fantastic conclusion, then that's all in the delivery. That's why some stand up comedians can hold their audience's attention for a 2 hour set whilst others lose their audience within a few minutes and they tend to get heckled off stage at that point, "boo you're not funny, get lost." So really, it does depend entirely on the delivery of the story as well as the content.
DeleteI'd also like to add that, one thing I admire about you Alex is that you expect people to take responsibility for their successes/failures despite horrible things that happened to them. Even rich people have horrible things happen to them, despite other advantages. Like I tend to say that my friend Jonas is at a huge disadvantage in life because he grew up poor to a single mom, and you're just like "I also grew up poor, that doesn't mean I was completely helpless and there was nothing I could do to further my situation." Although I feel sorry for Jonas and his circumstances, me feeling sorry for him doesn't help him. It's like giving him a free pass to do nothing when the solution is for him to do a lot of things to make up for his disadvantages. Also like we talked about, the point is not to obsess over your disadvantages, but to find your strengths which you can use to overcome your disadvantages. In your case you're very smart and have amazing grades, despite not having parental money or connections. So you find ways to use those smarts(and hunger) to do better than the average rich kid who got their foot in the door using connections. In fencing class, I notice Jonas is blessed with amazing physique, he can also eat whatever he wants, not exercise, and still be 6-pack lean and fit. Meanwhile, I have to eat a special diet and do cardio 3x a week just to be average. But I still beat Jonas in a fencing match because I use tactics to make up for my shitty physique, while he doesn't use tactics at all. Then he likes to bitch the instructors like me more because I went to university and sound posh, and that that's really unfair and affecting his performance. Well it's super unfair he has more strength, speed, stamina and height than me, but he is conveniently ignoring that because all his life he's complained he's the minority kid from the ghetto who nobody believes in, and that his lack of success is not his fault. Everyone has disadvantages, nobody is perfect, even the rich kid. But taking zero responsibility for one's lack of success gets one nowhere because it means that person will take zero actions to further themselves. I think you said once "if complaining did anything, I'd be the first to cry you a bucket of tears" hahaha.
DeleteOh yeah Amanda, I think there's a massive difference between what people tell themselves and how it sounds like from a 3rd party perspective. Let me give you an example: as a gymnastics coach, I would tell my gymnasts what they are doing wrong and the right response would be, "okay, I will keep my legs together for that skill, thank you for the feedback." The wrong response is, "but I have no been well, I have not been training as I was sick, I am so tired after school/work today etc etc." And that's when I'm like, do you even hear yourself speak? Are you more interested in fixing the mistake or making excuses for the mistake? Thus I believe a lot of people actually go through life with this internal monologue of making excuses for themselves whilst feeling sorry for themselves and wearing this 'life is not fair, I'm a victim of this injustice' badge all the time. But as you've quoted me correctly, if complaining like that every solved any of our problems, I'll be the first to cry you a bucket of tears. So I always advocate the opposite - taking responsibility instead of making excuses.
DeleteYes, "are you more interested in fixing the mistake or making excuses for the mistake?" As if making excuses would fix the mistake. Despite disadvantages, there are no free lunches. You gotta give something to get anything back.
Delete@Amanda, making excuses fixes nothing. It makes you come off as defensive and pisses your listeners off.
Delete@LIFT has been all about personal accountability. Go back all the way to 10 years ago and his blog his posts have always been about not whinging but rolling up your sleeves to fix the problems.
As for @choaniki trying to impress people without achievements, at the very least you can try to be charming and humble so these people at least like you and think you're a joy to work with. If they like you, then they will want to see you succeed and help you if they can. Jonas is my friend so even though he's been losing a lot at fencing lately, I expend effort to try to teach him my (limited) tactics to fence better. And the easiest way to get people to like you is to be a good listener and find out what they like or what problems have been on their mind lately.
Delete@Amanda and @LIFT, both of you raised very good points! It is just like before you ask people for something, show them how you are of value to them first. I guess the same thing applies in social interactions, don't be so quick to start telling people about yourself, but start asking others more about themselves first!
DeleteI am reminded of the subconscious lessons I was taught in my previous JP MNC position. The MD of the Singapore and Shenzhen branch office often liked to invite the Japanese speaking locals out to a karaoke or drinking session after a company dinner. This is more for their benefit than the local staff. These MD tend to be Japanese expats and usually are sent overseas and might have limited social support in the country they are sent to. The local staff invited to these KTV or drinking event are usually just there to entertain the MD (your boss). So usually we have not try to outclass the MD in singing or drinking. The aim is to boost his ego and keep him happy and entertained. The unfortunate thing is that all JP companies have a very hierarchical promotion system. So regardless or how good, bad or how much the MD liked you, you have to clock time in the company to get promoted.
But I guess the social skills would still be applicable in any setting.
So imagine if you've only just met Amanda and I - you have two pieces of information. We know that Amanda likes fencing. And you find out that I'm going to a concert later on this month to see the band Go_A play live in O2 London. Do you know how to apply what I said above into constructing sentences to show interest in a) the sport of fencing and b) a band that you have never heard of?
Delete@Amanda, fencing sounds like a very interesting sport, what attracted you to it?
Delete@LIFT, Go_A doesn't sound like any UK band I've heard of. Which country are they from and what genre of music do they play?
If I am raising the bar, I'd say that your questions are not good enough. In the case of Amanda, it sounds like a rather general question. I'd say that it sounds like you're trying to make conversation with her, but it is evident that you're asking the question for the sake of asking the question rather than because you're interested in a) why Amanda is doing fencing and b) fencing itself. So for example, I'd try a more specific question like the relationship that she has with her instructor(s) and what role that relationship plays in her development as a fencer. Specific, not general but not to the point where you're asking something so specific like you sound like a stalker. "What time do you finish your Saturday lesson" sounds like you're gonna wait outside the sports center for her. And as for Go_A, yeah I never expected you to know anything about Go_A but here's the key thing about using these kinds of questions - you're treating like a typical Singaporean student, ie. I don't know the answer but I can't cheat. In life, of course you can Google the answers! So you were on the right track when it came to the genre of the music, but you made a terrible mistake (and I can't stress this enough) when you said it doesn't sound like any band I've heard of. That screams out, "
DeleteSorry my finger brushed by the publish button before I had completed the reply.
DeleteYour reply screams out, "YOU AND I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING IN COMMON, WE DON'T LIKE THE SAME THINGS, WE'RE ON DIFFERENT WAVELENGTHS AND WE'LL NEVER BE FRIENDS." Whilst I don't expect anyone to have heard of Go_A (they're not like Taylor Swift or One Direction which are very mainstream), I would totally avoid making any statements that may send the wrong message of "I don't like what you like". Huge mistake. How I'd handle it? Imagine if the band was called XY21 (just making it up, they don't exist). I'd Google them before asking a question and pretend, "oh I've stumbled upon it once upon a time whilst surfing the internet." There's nothing to be gained and everything to be lost when you make a statement like, "I've never heard of this band before" even if it is 100% true that you've never heard of it. At least Google some info, then use the info you've found to formulate a question (whilst not claiming to be a fan of the band), "some people put them in the category of dance, others electronic, others even classify them as world music, is it possible for a band like that to belong to more than one genre of music?"
You'll be amazed how many times I've used Google to 'cheat' in social interactions to achieve the desired results - face it, there's nothing to be gained by admitting you don't know the answer and you may as well roll the dice, Google the answer and then go into the social interaction armed with new information gleamed off Google. It works. Everything to gain, nothing to lose.
DeleteSo one general rule of thumb I use when talking to people is "get personal." Ask questions where the answers are very specific to a person to make them feel important. So I would ask how often someone goes to fencing because level of commitment to sports is very personal, some people attend every available class in a month(like Alex for gymnastics), while others attend rarely. And I'd ask if it's a tight-knit community and whether the instructors are very talkative or is the lesson more practice based. Then, I would ask which would be the ideal teaching style someone wants. In my fencing place the instructors love asking students for observations, so I do really well because I treat it like a math university lecture where I'm supposed to ask about the strengths/weaknesses of a particular way of solving an equation. But instead I ask about the strengths/weaknesses of a particular strike/guard/footwork. But when I was fencing in Singapore, the beginner instructors couldn't really answer my technical questions so I didn't progress very far because it wasn't the ideal teaching style to make me learn. Also, there's body language to consider. Saying something with a smile and an upbeat but not overly enthusiastic tone helps too. If you're not smiling when asking, it sounds fake. All these things come with practice though. Networking events are great for practicing getting to know strangers and asking the right questions.
DeleteOk let me retry that:
Delete@Amanda, you sound like you have a toxic relationship with you fencing coach, why don't you change the training location instead? Is something keeping you there?
@LIFT, Go_A sounds like another Ukrainian band I heard of called YUKO who performed in a recent edition of Eurovision. What attracted you to their music?
Also I'd like to add, the answers are not really important by themselves. The point of this conversation is to get someone to talk about something they're passionate about, because people really really enjoy sharing their passions with someone else, but can hardly find people who like the same things that even sound interested to hear them talk about this passion. It's like how Alex got really happy when I told him I was starting gymnastics lessons a couple years ago. So you need to sound like you like the thing too, and saying you never heard of a band doesn't help. If you asked for the genre, at least you can say you like music of that genre and give examples of bands you listen to in that genre. Then the person could say "oh yeah Go_A is very similar sounding to that artist you mentioned." There is an element of "read between the lines" in social interactions. The point is not to be right like scoring marks on an exam, it's to let someone else feel better by expressing themselves through things they feel passionate about. Like I don't need to be an expert gymnast for Alex to want to discuss gymnastics with me, I just have to show some interest and being a beginner is fine. I don't have to wow him with advanced gymnastics knowledge or skills for him to like me.
DeleteYou see, that's a much better answer and who cares if you've cheated? I am frustrated with older Singaporeans who didn't grow up with Google. When people ask me a question I don't know the answer to, I'll always answer, "let me ask my friend Google!" That's better than just living in ignorance, not knowing the answer. Allow me to use my mother's faux pas for an example and this happened years ago when the case of Otto Warmbier was in the news in 2017 - he was the American guy who went to North Korea, broke the law by stealing a poster from the hotel, then got arrested, sent to prison before being released seriously ill in a vegetative state, he was eventually returned to the USA but died days after returnin home. Warmbier broke the laws in North Korea and he should not have done that - but this was what my mother said and I criticized her for it. She said, "nobody knows what the laws are in North Korea", I corrected her, "the North Korean people know exactly what the laws are, the people who have studied about North Korea know what the laws are there, even I know what Warmbier did was totally stupid and he was asking for trouble. What you meant to say was that you're ignorant and you didn't know anything about North Korea, but just because you're an imbecile who knows nothing about North Korea doesn't mean that it is impossible to know anything about North Korea when there are loads of people out there who are more intelligent than you and know a lot more about topics such as North Korea." If my mother wanted to engage me on the topic of North Korea, she failed miserably and she went one step further, she assumed that just because she didn't know about the laws of North Korea, that it was a mystery that nobody knew when of course, that's not the case at all. She's just an ignorant idiot, that's all. I don't expect most people to know that much about North Korea, the same way I don't expect people to know anything about Go_A. That's fine if you don't know anything, you don't need that piece of knowledge for your everyday life and work. But if you wish to establish rapport with me (which was the purpose of the exercise), then feel free to get a bit of help from your friend Google to gain an advantage in that interaction. Don't be like my mother who doesn't understand the concept of being able to find out what the right answer is using the power of Google.
Delete@LIFT, I think you mother is an idiot and I hope it is not offensive to you. I don't know much about North Korean legislation, however I took great interest in the Otto Warmbier case so happen to know a thing or two about it. In fact i remember you even posted about it on your blog in the past.
DeleteOtto was alleged to have tried to steal some "sacred" North Korean poster from the hotel he was staying in. I say alleged because he always denied any wrongdoing and the state mouthpiece also refused to disclose the reason for his detention for over a month. My guess it that the Supreme Leader wanted to use him to set a scapgoat due to the deteriorating relations at that point of time. I think his only crime is being stupid enough to step inside North Korea while knowing or not knowing that all Americans are automatically viewed as hostile imperialists.
Another way to cheat is to go to Spotify and listen to that band's top 5 hits and ask the person which song they like best. At the very least it sounds like you're a music fan in general who is on the hunt for new bands/songs. Actually sometimes people like talking to people who aren't experts because then they can sound like they're bringing you something new and interesting. Like Alex said, give someone else the spotlight and the glory.
DeleteYeah my mother is an idiot but I wanted to compare her mistake to yours you see, my mother didn't know anything about North Korea as it is not information that is useful or relevant to her everyday life in Singapore. You don't need to know anything about Go_A if you're not a fan at all and you don't need that information for your every life and work in Singapore either. However, if the task is "please use Google to cheat and look up the answers", it was evident that it wasn't difficult at all for you to look up Go_A and then make a comparison to Yuko which is actually really interesting. You see, I have to do that all the time at work - for example, recently I had a meeting with a Kenyan client. I spent some time reading up on what is going on in Kenya in order to understand what issues would be important to Kenyan investors and so I was able to instantly make connections and even excused myself to go to the toilet when I had to Google something in the toilet cubicle. Do I have time to become a Kenyan expert prior to the meeting? Nope, I knew the basics and then the rest is dependent on Google. But what would be the alternative? To go in like my mother and declare, "I know Kenya is in Africa, I don't know anything else about Kenya." Good grief, there's no reward for that kind of honesty. That statement would've been as bad as you saying, "nope, I've never heard of Go_A before. I know nothing about them." I bet you it took you like five seconds to do a Google search to find out a little bit more about them and within like ten minutes, you could've watched a Youtube video of two to get a good idea of okay, that's what Ukrainian techno-folk sounds like, weird but wonderful. So when you go meet a client or business prospect, you need to learn how to take short cuts to establish rapport, cheat using Google if you must and never be totally blunt/honest if you can Google the answers instead.
DeleteBTW Amanda's answers here have been spot on as well, please listen to her kind advice as her social skills on this aspect are excellent. Thanks Amanda.
DeleteY'know I'd just like to add that all these little tricks don't come naturally in a social setting because you don't want to be so fake when interacting with people who you want to be your real friends. But in a white collar business environment the concept of being professional also includes getting to know other people whether you like them or not. The point is to show that you can at least be pleasant to be around and tolerate other opinions while focusing on common ground. It's a way of signalling social intelligence more so than actually being friends, because sometimes you have to spend hours and hours with each other at a random conference or golf tournament, so you can't let your personal opinions piss a business partner off. At the executive level, nobody wants to work with someone who is brilliant but runs the risk of scaring away clients by not smiling enough or voicing controversial opinions. But why you ask do we even have to get to know each other? Why not just only talk about business like how a grocery cashier knows nothing about their customer and doesn't need to? Well at the highest level when lots of money is at stake, people want to know who they're dealing with so they can trust them, and also to check impulse control. They want to see you're an adult who can avoid temptation while also being able to take initiative instead of needing instructions all the time. Seeing how someone reacts when making conversation with a complete stranger is a way to test that out.
DeleteBringing up my toxic fencing instructor, while true, is not upbeat enough for chatter between strangers. And also telling me to switch training places is unsolicited advice. Again it's not the topics per se, but giving someone else the spotlight and attention. Even if I did let slip my fencing instructor can be difficult, unless I explicitly asked for advice it's not really welcome. In fact my instructor's problem was that he gave unsolicited advice, and you repeating that if we were strangers would be a terrible coincidence. What I would say to me is "you seem to like fencing a lot, is the instructor really knowledgeable to make up for his less than stellar social skills?" Try to shift things to positive sides and asking for a person's opinion while also acknowledging when something bad occurred, but in a polite way without using strong language, and don't give advice that wasn't asked for. Giving someone unsolicited advice is an implicit statement they can't think for themselves and desperately need your help. I've heard it used as a passive aggressive insult in white collar environments. I mean I've also accidentally pissed off Alex before using unsolicited advice.
Hi Amanda, that's great advice, this skill is more important for some people than others. So for example, if I am trying to make a sale, then establishing rapport with the client in order to gain their trust and get them to work with me is a vital step of the process - hence everything you've described above is very important to me. But say you are working at a hospital and the patient shows up, you are in the X-ray department and you need to take an X-ray of the patient's leg (that's Choaniki's other job), then the X-ray technician doesn't really need to make small talk with the patient and I've been in the hospital loads for my knee injury. Most staff there are too busy to bother with the small talk as they just wanna do what they have to do and then rush onto the next patient (which is fair enough, of course, I'd rather they go to the next patient than spend more time doing small talk with me). Same thing with dentists, no small talk as they're working on my teeth and my mouth is open wiiiiide, like I literally can't talk. I just want them to finish doing what they have to do ASAP and so I can get the hell out of there. So this kind of social interactions matter more to some people than others and context is everything.
DeleteOh and as for the whole Go_A, I would always say, if you're going to pretend to show interest, do it in moderation. So if you're going to claim that you've seen a couple of Go_A music videos on Youtube in the past, I'd be like, oh great, good for you, we clearly share something in common because Youtube would suggest music that you like and so based on the other kind of music videos you've watched, the Youtube algorithm has made that suggestion. But don't go in there all guns blazing and claim you're very interested in Go_A. Then I'd expect you to actually have some knowledge about Go_A (which you don't), remember the aim of this exercise is to fake it just enough to establish rapport rather than simply respond by blinding agreeing with whatever the person is saying and claiming that you're interested in it. Pitch it just right.
DeleteYeah people say this is why the child of working class parents has a harder time adjusting to white collar norms compared to a rich kid. My dad used to take me to meet his clients so some of this was taught to me before my working life. But it's not essential to every job, just jobs that require a lot of independent thinking and negotiating or convincing others. A politician may find it very useful to have good social skills, but a bus driver wouldn't, so the child of a politician might get taught social skills earlier than the bus driver's kid.
DeleteVery good points about not overdoing it with interest Alex. But another thing I'd like to add is that showing you like Go_A is not the point, it's showing you like the person and want to make them happy by letting them talk about Go_A. Think of it like a parent who doesn't like soccer but has a child who loves soccer and is the star player on their primary school soccer team. That parent will probably buy Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi jerseys for their kid, to show the kid they love them, even if they have no idea who Ronaldo or Messi are. The point is to show "I care about and respect you, so I'm acknowledging the things you like and saying nice things about it, even if I don't like it myself." Respecting differences is just as important as having things in common.
@Amanda, thank you for your sharing. My point of the question is more towards why you are choosing to stay in that training centre rather than giving unsolicited advice to get you to leave. But I guess the problem is my question wasn't phrased correctly.
DeleteAnyway I would be attending some accounting/finance event next week and would be able to practice some social interactions. I still have some important people I need to talk to but better to leave it till last so I give a good first impression.
Hi Amanda, some very good points as always. I think there are two ways to look at this: some people are lucky enough to have parents or mentors who will show them how this should be done. Whereas for people like me, I simply have to open my eyes and observe, learn from others (like you) who are leading my example. In life, we can never have the luxury of having someone teach us everything we need to know, sometimes we just have to get on with it and teach ourselves whatever we lack in our knowledge or skillset in order to achieve our objectives - there's no point is complaining about how life is not fair and there wasn't anyone to teach us this. I like what you said about I care and respect you, so I am acknowledging the things you like (and matter to you). That's why for example, I'd talk to my Kenyan client about local Kenyan politics (say if there is an election there for example); I don't pretend to care much about who wins that election in Kenya as in I know it doesn't affect me so I don't have to pick one candidate over another, but I do care how it affects my client and I am approaching it from that point of view. Therein lies the difference, it is not a test about "how much I know about Kenyan politics" but rather, the objective is merely to demonstrate how much I care about my client.
DeleteYeah there's so many layers to social skills it's pretty much a life skill to be mastered. Not all aspects are needed of course depending on the job type. About Kenyan politics, exactly! The client cannot expect you to know much about or have lots of stake in Kenyan politics, even then that's not the point. They just want to feel their concerns are validated and you're willing to hear them out about something they've been interested in lately.
DeleteI just had a very weird fencing class last night. I have not been yelled at for weeks, but that night the instructor said he had migraines so if he does say something mean, he didn't mean it. He developed a very advanced drill for our small class of regulars, and I was clearly messing it up since I have a lot of underdeveloped/missing skills. Well, he was starting to raise his voice to me, then he caught himself and walked to the 2nd instructor and I overheard him say "I need you to tell her instead of me because *whisper whisper whisper*" so the other instructor came up to me to teach me something and she was super calm and nice, and more importantly smiling. Then at the end of class the lead instructor said to us "if you master this drill, then I'll actually have to fight seriously to beat you guys in a duel. Hopefully by the end of the year." Uh, he basically got angry I sucked earlier, but later said if I can do this I'd be able to take on a fencer with 30 years of experience after only 4 months of lessons. I don't need him to praise me, and I didn't say anything or make up excuses when I got his advice aside from "okay thanks", but I'd prefer if realistic expectations were set instead of simultaneously being yelled at for not getting everything right away, but also being highly praised at the end of class for moving so fast. But I'm glad he caught himself not filtering himself enough and let the other instructor take over, cuz then I feel like at least he does take my concerns about unrealistic expectations and yelling seriously, even if the execution is not perfect.
@Amanda, as long as you are learning something from the class it is worth the "tough love". I have experienced very hostile coaching before while learning driving. I basically fired two instructors since I felt their unnecessary scolding was adding on undue pressure to me.
DeleteAnd yeah @choaniki, it's not what you say but how you say it. Because something may sound clear in your mind what your intentions are, but human language can be so vague it's up to interpretation what it means, and humans have to expect the worst to protect themselves around complete strangers. I deal with A.I for natural language processing and even the mathematical models can frequently get confused when people use sarcasm, which is why we have math notation and programming languages to remove vagueness from natural human languages. With the fencing instructor I get he didn't mean to be mean, but it just came out that way. So he had to borrow the 2nd instructor's social skills to get the message through because due to migraines he couldn't smile that day or keep his voice down. And also I get it brings him joy when I master a drill very quickly, because he has a tendency to clap very loud when I do, but yesterday of all days I just didn't have it in me. I didn't make excuses, I still tried my best, but if I'm trying my best and it's not happening, yelling wouldn't change anything. This example just shows how humans and their default settings are just a total mess that we have to pause and have a little self control or everyone's gonna hate us. That's why social skills are a skill to be practiced and mastered, because humans have to train self control since we're not born with it.
Delete