Final Reflections in Learning - ES2007S

This course has definitely helped me become more aware and patient when communicating professionally or socially, especially in intercultural communication. Of the many lessons, the one on personal branding struck and stuck by me. I had always thought that personal branding was something done to bring benefit to yourself (as you get recognized and remembered). However, Dr Radhika's lesson on USPs and how we can use it to positively impact our bosses and colleagues with our USPs opened my mind to the impact on others. Part of personal branding, brand promise was also something that I did not consider beforehand. All along, I thought that personal branding stopped at the job interview. Once you get shortlisted and passed the interview, yadda, you're safe and you're done with "personal branding"! It's done! How wrong was I to think of it as something so simplistic!

        In addition, the personal feedbacks given to us for our application letter was extremely useful! Prior to this, I roughly knew the outline and necessary information that I had to include when writing one. However, none of those prepared me for the actual moment when I had to write one! Despite submitting a white paper and having a red one back, the multiple detailed corrections really helped me a lot in pin-pointing the things I often miss out; such as basic yet crucial skills like paragraphing and substantiation.

    Although most things in this course ran smoothly for me, I found intercultural communication the most challenging. Being one who is used to getting things done fast and efficiently, I found it most challenging when I had to work with someone from a different culture and background. All along, I preferred working with locals as having someone from a similar educational and cultural background greatly facilitated the development and progression of ideas. For ES2007S, when we had to work with foreign students, much time has to be spent on explaining things that we thought were common knowledge. Although the process was frustrating initially, it taught me to be more appreciate and aware of my own culture and nation. In particular, what Singapore has to offer in relation to other countries like China and Korea.

         Discussing about Singapore from a more macro aspect, such as its social and transport policies has also made me appreciate Singapore a lot more. Being small, having a good geographical location and a decisive government have really allowed us to enjoy rapid progress and a high standard of living as a whole. Other countries might not have this luxury that we enjoy. The many things that we take for granted, such as good infrastructure and transport, are actually considered a luxury to many others. Although these might seem like menial things, being aware of these little things that we commonly take for granted, allowed me to communicate better cross-culturally, as I am more patient and understanding of differences as a whole. Of course, the process of explaining everything from scratch to others had definitely groomed me in this aspect too.

     Besides one-to-one intercultural communication, my one-to-many communication was continually polished by the numerous presentations that we have. Together, these soft skills and awareness about others and myself have definitely made me a more grounded and confident communicator as my mind has opened up.

Reflections of our Group Project

During the course of my project work, it was my first time working with foreign students whose grasps of English were weak. It was definitely challenging because of the language barrier and we could not understand each other’s ideas and wants clearly. Our styles of communication were also different. I am used to being indirect and instead of directly challenging another person’s views or making an outright request for something to be changed, I would pose it in form of a question. Usually, one would realize what I was getting at and correct the problem at hand. This ranged from basic things like getting on the same page of things during a group discussion, to more tricky issues like trying to explain to someone how his work was not up to standard. However, I soon realized that the subtlety is lost if one’s language skills is weak, because they would only get the superficial meaning of what I asked. Soon, I found it more effective to pose direct requests and things speeded up from there, as we understood each other much better.

Patience is also key, especially when working with someone from a different cultural background. Often much easier said than done, it is unfair to one if s/he is disadvantaged because of his/her weak language skills. It is not one’s fault if English is not one’s native tongue (and it’s such a culturally imperialistic mindset to think otherwise). So as stronger speakers, we should always empathize, be more encouraging and always give positive recognition for every small effort or improvement. Doing so really went a long way in boosting my teammate’s confidence. This also proved to be the critical point, as productivity really spiked when I was more patient and I could see him putting in more effort to speak English too. Indeed, constant encouragement is key in motivating someone to speak regularly in a foreign tongue.

Besides linguistic challenges, another huge obstacle was that our project was based on a local problem. Naturally, as a foreigner who has been in Singapore for only half a year, his would not have as much depth of the insight into things as what locals have. In light of this, I initially allocated him more tasks that were either simpler or at most design-related, as that was his forte. I had the wrong mindset that this project is language-intensive and would be out of his reach. However, this proved to be counter-intuitive because he felt that I did not trust enough and thus, did not put in much effort too. However, this changed 360 degrees when I delegated significant responsibilities to him, like report writing and data analyses. It was after that that I could really see his interest and drive to excel spike.

Therefore, when managing people, while it is natural for us to feel insecure delegating responsibilities to people, I leant how to rein in my insecurity and be more trusting. This includes listening to someone else’s ideas more, even if they were poorly expressed, and let someone take on greater responsibility right from the start. This trust is critical in forming good working relationships and this recognition and indirect affirmation of someone’s abilities is often what kick starts in one the drive to perform and excel.

However, whilst recognizing this, I also have to be realistic about the task’s demands and deadlines. We were lucky to be given six weeks to work on a project and this gave us ample time to figure out what we wanted, consultatively. It also gave us allowance and space to experiment with some ideas, even if it might not be the best ones. In the workplace, deadlines would be much tighter and if one’s language or communication skills are weak, people would have no patience for you nor would they trust you with responsibilities since you cannot even prove yourself linguistically. Therefore, it is important that we communicate well.

Thus, knowing that our workplace would be globalized in the future, this experience has definitely taught me how to empathize better and communicate in ways that respects and not undermine, regardless of one’s cultural background.

How Conflict Management differs across cultures

Brief background: This incident happened during my summer lab internship. As the majority of those in the lab are Mainland Chinese, their grasp of English is generally poor. Such language barriers are often a breeding ground for misunderstandings to occur. When these arise, conflicts happen and this is further compounded by how different cultures resolve conflict differently.

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Towards the end of my lab internship, my boss, Adam, organized a farewell lunch for the lab. As he was always busy, he assigned Guo, one of the postdocs, to make the restaurant booking. However, we only found out that a mistake was made upon reaching the restaurant. Instead of a 12pm lunch reservation, an evening reservation of 7pm was recorded. No one could ascertain what caused the mistake as Guo insisted that he clearly asked for a 12pm slot.

Being the boss and the host of the lunch, Adam risked losing his "face" should the lunch appointment flop. Having come from Mainland China, the concept of having "face"and being judged positively by others (especially one's subordinates) was even more important. Thus, with all these issues pressing down on him, Adam became visibly agitated and upset with the mix up. 

Adam then asked the staff to open a table for us as soon as they can, as everyone was already waiting there. As the staff serving us was Malay and could not speak Mandarin, he had trouble understanding Adam's strongly Mandarin-accented English. In a bid to placate Adam, the staff meekly offered some possible reasons for the mix-up while asking us to wait as the restaurant was fully packed with lunchtime crowd. This agitated Adam even more as the staff’s reasons were not strong. Adam, being straight forward and demanding as usual, simply asked him to stop giving excuses and set up a table for us as soon as he can. As this exchange went on, Adam started raising his voice and lambasted the restaurant staff for making such a careless mistake and thus, wasted the 'precious time' of our lab members. As he started raising his voice and was nearly yelling, I started edging away from the group as diners were looking on and I did not want to be associated with the din that he was creating.  

Of course, out of courtesy, the staff kept apologizing and assured that we would be seated soon. However, we could also see that he was trying hard to conceal his look of annoyance of being shouted at since he was not the one who handled our phone reservation. As he turned back to ask his Chinese staff to attend to us, he rolled his eyes discreetly. To roll his eyes, he must have thought that Adam was just another “difficult, loud and unreasonable Mainland Chinese who does not know how to behave appropriately in such cultured settings”. Luckily, we were seated soon and all became smooth again after the food arrived.

Thinking back about this incident, I felt as if I were trapped in two worlds when this happened. Which side should I side with? Should I just be like most Singaporeans and view my boss as being another “difficult, loud and unreasonable Chinese who reacts inappropriately in such cultured settings”; thus distance myself from him? Or should I be tolerant of his behaviour, because I understood why he acted this way? (Knowing how important “face” is to Chinese, intensified by his status as the “Boss”, not “losing face” is even more important in such events where he was the host)

This is thus a clear instance of how different cultures react so differently to conflicts. Despite being of the same ethnicity, our lifestyle, habits and response to situations (such as this), are distinctly different. Singaporean Chinese tend to be subtler and toned down, and would most  likely simmer with rage inside, but do not have anger outbursts like Adam. Conversely, Mainland Chinese tend to speak louder and are more brusque in their actions and words. Thus, locals often view them as being “uncultured”, when in fact, they are just acting like how they are brought up to be.

So having read this, if it were you (the reader), how would you have reacted in this same situation? Would you step up to explain things between Adam and the staff to placate everyone (and risk being judged by locals)? Or would you just edge away like me and do nothing about it?

Lab Work: The Commonly Misconstrued Epitome of Solitary Work

Lab Work -- Commonly misconstrued to be one-man's work

Sherry is a final-year Life Sciences student who is doing her Final Year Project (FYP) in Molecular Biology. She is hardworking, meticulous and possesses strong analytical and investigative skills, making her a perfect research candidate. As she has been in the same lab for her undergraduate research stints and performed well, the Principal Investigator (PI) of the lab assigned her to be a mentor to Ryna, an incoming Year 3 undergraduate who is working on her UROPS, a semester-long research project designed to let students try out research. Such arrangements are rare and coveted as only students who have performed well enough are let on such additional responsibilities.

Ryna is an enthusiastic learner who learns fast but tends to be careless as she finds all short cuts possible to solve a problem, since results rather than the process mattered for her. Also, being an active member in many extra-curricular activities, she often had to leave the lab early, leaving Sherry to tie up loose strings for her. When such things happened, Sherry would be angry that she has to take on this additional work that wasn’t meant for her to take on. Also, the PI has structured their projects in such a way that Sherry’s progression in her project would be dependent on Ryna’s project findings, since they are working on a novel protein.

Their partnership soon turned sour as problems came up one after another. For one, Ryna has no intention to put in her best for her UROPS because results do not really matter. As long as she understands the rationale of what she’s doing (thus she was able to take many shortcuts as she knows which steps are redundant), she would get a good grade. Unlike her, Sherry’s FYP is heavily dependent on generating substantial good results for her thesis. From her previous lab experience, she understands fully the consequences of cutting steps, even trivial ones, as those would affect the quality of results. This made her very careful but in Ryna’s eyes, Sherry is just overly careful, and unnecessarily so, since all of Ryna’s shortcuts worked.

As a result of Ryna’s shortcuts, her work is fraught with inaccuracies though she claims she has done her best and has checked for all possible errors. On a few occasions, Sherry found out that Ryna takes shortcuts when no one is looking, yet would afterwards claim that she did everything properly. Despite knowing this, Sherry didn’t confront Ryna on this, as she didn’t want to seem like she doubts Ryna’s words. As this cycle repeated itself, Sherry ended up doing double work as she does not trust the quality of results generated by Ryna for her own project use.

To improve the situation, Sherry tried talking to and guiding Ryna step-by-step in experiments. She also used this chance to point out to Ryna (subtly), the importance of some steps that cannot be skipped. Sherry knows that she cannot be there to constantly oversee Ryna. As such, whenever Ryna has to rush off for yet another appointment, and cannot learn the proper way of doing experiments from her, she gets upset. This further compounded the stress and tension between them, as Sherry is increasingly doubtful of Ryna’s abilities to commit and produce.

To Ryna, she is really putting in her best to what her tight schedule and abilities allow her. She perceives Sherry to be overly careful and uptight. In addition, UROPS to her is just a project she needs to take so that her days in FYP would be easier. It is not something that she enjoys or finds important, thus she prioritizes her tuition assignments and sports training sessions to be of equal importance with it.

In light of their vastly different importance placed on their own scientific project, further compounded by their negative perceptions of each other and different work ethics, what would you suggest they do so that Ryna would produce higher-quality work of more stringent quality such that Sherry need not do double-work?