Win at Work & Life: Being Your Best Self

Feel like you got hit by a truck this year?  Or multiple trucks?  Most people do.  LinHart losing one of its Key faculty inspired Huijin to reflect on the nature of being hit by a truck, share 5 principles of how we can best cope and respond, and point to previous podcast episodes where those principles were discussed in detail.   

In his last third of LinHart Group's 2020 LIFE retreat talk, Tsun-yan addresses the issue of  self-belief.    Participants asked:  “How to take a risk to focus on what I really want to do, overcoming self-doubts and other uncertainties?  Tsun-yan talks about 2 phrases that we all need to internalize and tell ourselves over and over again to be courageous and don't give excessive power to others / big companies:   “I am able”, “They need me more than I need them”.   “Your kitchen cabinet will help you do this - people you can share your fears and doubts without being judged.”  

Continuing with our series on Leading in Co-vid times, this episode follows on from episode 18, with Tsun-yan focusing on 2 questions from the participants of our LIFE retreat for the alumni of our executive programs. He shares how, in the moment, he pauses all the noises and negative energy of a situation to bring out the best in himself and others.  In covid times, when we have much fewer opportunities to engage with people in person, we all need to “high grade” our presence in those “rarefied moments”. 

Continuing our series on transitions, Wendy, another of our LIFe2 alumni shows tremendous courage to leave a comfortable safe job to explore new possibilities in a conservative Asian country.  Her grace and patience in engaging with her personal stakeholders to get their support is something we can all learn from.  Was it all worth it?  Absolutely!  Her prize:  sleeping better, feeling liberated to be herself, and taking up her power again.  This is particularly amazing in contrast to how sandwiched she felt before her LIFE2, with so much pressure on her.

This is the first episode of our Transition series.  With so much disruption due to covid and other longer lasting forces, transitions are happening whether we like it or not. One of our LIFE2 alumni, a high-flyer banker, shares her story of being retrenched and embracing her calling to help others in its full rawness.  Her hard work to embrace her calling and gain the necessary skills in the few years since her LIFE2 has paid off.  She and I both hope this sharing will encourage all of you, all of us to embrace the coming waves and transitions with courage, care, and self-compassion.  

Continuing with our series on Leading in Co-vid times, this episode consists of Tsun-yan sharing his thoughts on the leadership required in co-vid times from a panel discussion with apex Asian business leaders, and then answering questions on his talk from members of the LinHart LIFE community during last Sunday's annual LIFE retreat.  

For our double episode, we talk to Ron Kaufman, world's leading educator and motivator for uplifting customer service and building service cultures.  Tsun-yan, Ron, and Huijin have a wide ranging conversation about the “caring” crisis underlying more obvious crises like climate change, protectionism, and co-vid induced disruption, and how that could be overcomed if we let go our isolated sense of self, and instead embraced the human connection with others.  This calls for Presence, the topic of episode 16, to lean into each moment, with joy and heart.                  

Presence is vital to our struggle as a human being:  becoming aware of our whole self, being true to ourselves, and getting into a productive relationship with the world around us, seizing key moments for a larger purpose.  Tsun-yan brings this alive with examples as mundane as dinner with family, to acing the meeting of a life-time, based on multiple decades of consciously becoming more present.  

Studies suggest that more than 70% of people experience the impostor syndrome at some point in their career, especially affecting minorities and younger professionals.  I unpack this with Lei and Justin, and talk about the importance of seeing our own efforts, choices, and capabilities more objectively.   “The truth shall set you free.” 

Ego, “inconvenient truths”, and “big heartedness” are some of the key strands in this episode on confronting reality.  It sounds so basic, yet we can all remember a time when we ourselves or someone else didn't want, didn't care to, didn't have the capacity to confront reality.   Tsun-yan reminds us how important it is to confront reality, and how to cultivate the open mindedness, curiosity, and big heartedness to go beyond preconceived notions to see more possibilities, good and bad.

Huijin has been looking forward to this opportunity to reconnect with her ex-colleague Joven Mak, former editor of Cosmo Girl magazine (Hong Kong).  While discussing the changing paradigms in fashion/luxury goods with Lei, our guest presenter, they also visit with Joven's courageous decision to quit the glamorous media industry to become a career coach, and the freedom and purpose she has gained as a result. 

We start our series on Young Professionals with an issue universal to all, fear.   Mastering fear is a life long journey, so it is no wonder young professionals are impacted by fear the most.  In this episode, Huijin and Lei talk with young professional Justin Chan how to deal with the fear of failure, how to change the perspective of fear from something bad to something that can be useful, and finish with actionable first steps to embracing fear.

Continuing our Wisdom on Development Series, today we talk about an area which hasn't come easy to many, creativity.  Is it the gift of a few lucky few or something all of us have?   Tsun-yan shares his fierce belief on how all of us can uncover the creativity inside of ourselves and channel it towards business and artistic endeavours.

Huijin shares who this podcast is for from my perspective and how her own journey makes her so passionate about the purpose and topics in this podcast.  In short, this podcast is for all the people who want something more from life than just have a good job and be successful.  It is for people who want to live purposefully, to express themselves more, to contribute more, to have more meaningful relationships, and who are willing to actively develop themselves to Be and Do more.

Today we continue our series on how co-vid is changing paradigms across the world and industries. Our guest presenter, Lei Chen, successful hedge fund investor and our LIFE2 alumni, chats with education entrepreneur Kor Le Yi. Le Yi is one of our REAL alumni and facilitator.  Her vulnerability and courage stood out the first time we met her, when she shared her passion for design thinking. We knew then there is something extraordinary in her. We are proud of her for charting her own path. Le-yi Co-founded her start-up right after college, Ottodot, to empower every kid to discover their full learning potential through her passion integrating design, technology and education.

Today, with inspiration from one of his 30 core books, we continue with our Wisdom on Development series with Tsun-yan, where he brings alive gumption using two difficult times in his life.  The risk of almost failing Harvard Business School helped him uncover lots of resourcefulness in himself, whereas the second story has no such happy ending but made him swear never to judge prematurely again.   He finishes by sharing how to overcome “gumption” traps so we can all uncover more of the spirited initiative and resourcefulness that is the fuel of being at our best and win at life and work.

This is the start of our series on New Graduates: Surviving and Thriving. My guest, Jonathan Kwan and I both graduated right after the dot.com bust in 2001. So we know first hand how hard it is to start work at the beginning of a significant economic downturn. And Co-vid is likely to be much worse. Though this episode focuses more on surviving – getting a quality job, competing with many others, this series will be about thriving too – how new grads can get ahead of the curve in developing the missing 3 - influence skills, judgment, and self-leadership while tapping into inner resources like courage, care, and compassion.

Our guest presenter Lei Chen talks to Joseph Mocanu, early stage health care investor and alumni of LinHart Group's LIFE2 program about how the co-vid crises are changing paradigms in healthcare and technology, advancing the adoption of innovations.  He looks forward to a more seamless, less costly, and less risky healthcare for all.

In a quarterly sharing with LinHart Group's high challenge high support groups, Tsun-yan talks about the 3 common tensions Early Executives face and the importance of leaning into both sides of tensions:  practically lucrative / good for your development, self / authority figures, persevering / cutting your losses.

Huijin and LIFE2 alum and hedge fund manager Lei Chen talk about how to recognize and deal with paradigmatic changes brought on by the coronavirus crisis.  This will be continued in a future episode covering three more industries undergoing such changes.

Huijin and LIFE2 faculty Anna Kiukas-Pedersen talk about two aspects of leading ourselves during this coronavirus crisis:  how we are going through grieving, and letting go of the need for control.

Resilence is more of a state we work towards rather than something we have or don't have. Tsun-yan digs deep into the different drivers that together result in resilience, and how we can cultivate these drivers in ourselves.

Win at Work and Life is NOT about getting to the top nor getting the gold medal.  This episodes explores what “Win at Work and Life” means to Tsun-yan and Huijin: uncovering your true self, tapping into your whole being, and channeling that to effectively and positively impact your context, in spite of irrational expectations and complex stakeholder dynamics.