This week a friend of mine had a job interview and wanted to grab lunch with me to practice for it.

We just sat down, she didn’t wait, ‘ask me questions, Jess.’ I obliged. I asked a few questions. But she was struggling to find anything to say about herself. She struggled to find the words. So I said, ‘try to speak to me, not thinking that you’re in an interview.’

When she stopped because she was looking for the perfect word (she could have said ‘goal’), she struggled to pick herself up and get back. I noticed that she might have been beating herself up, having an unconstructive internal monologue, maybe something like ‘I suck. My English is terrible.’

So I said, ‘Hey, look, you know what, there’s a common misconception that having a good English level means speaking very fast like Americans. Some people take longer to put their ideas together and it’s important to recognise that doesn’t mean your English is poor, that only means your style is different.’

That night, I texted her, ‘the word for you is “confidence”, not “English”.

I hadn’t joined the dots at that time but now I realised that she’s perhaps another slight introvert who just takes time to form her own ideas.

Sometimes we forget what the task is. If we focus on what we need to do instead of evaluating how well we’re doing at the same time, then we’ll be fine. The truth is, in a meeting, in real time, our brains are not designed to think what we need to do, how well we are doing, and how people think about us, all at the same time!!! What we need to do instead is be mindful. Do one thing at a time.

That’s just too much going on and no one human being would be able to juggle all that multi-tasking at the same time! It’s a mistake for most of us to speak and judge ourselves at the same time! If we can put aside the judging, even to delay it to post-event, that would stop us from feeling nervous! Our society has conditioned us to constantly evaluate our performance. That’s common among high achievers. And that’s ok, as long as we don’t do it at the same time as we are presenting!

I recently got a new client who broke down and started crying in our first coaching session. 😮 It was a nervous breakdown. Upon some digging it seems that her problem is not communication, but confidence. I heard paradigms (self-talk, beliefs) that don’t help her, e.g. ‘I need to look good in front of my boss.’ ‘My English is not good enough.’

It also became clear that she may be an introvert who is even less likely to be outspoken, even in her own language. But instead of being herself, she’s trying to play the role of a ‘successful leader’, e.g. articulate, vocal, speak fast, dominant, an extrovert.

After a few coaching sessions, she realised her strategy was to be herself and do the things that she’s comfortable with, e.g. prepare in advance for meetings, write things down, propose ideas to her manager, let the boss lead meetings and promote her ideas, so she can observe in meetings instead.

I’m so happy to see her smiling!

Instead of subscribing to behaviours that are socially perceived to be successful, what feels authentic to you? What roles can you play instead?

#authenticleadership

Last week, I needed to go to the doctor’s. Was running late for my appointment.

Left home. Called for the lift. It came. When the doors opened I found two dismantled doors inside.

Doors closed.

Lift opened one floor below. A construction worker wearing a tank top looks as if he planned to come in with another 3-meter high wooden plank. It’s a small lift. There’s no room for the two of us with all the wood. It looked dangerous.

I said impatiently, ‘can I go down first?’

He didn’t pay any attention to me. He barged in, muttering, ‘it’s gonna be fine! Don’t worry!’

Since I made eye contact with him, he seemed confident, and started talking to me, ‘Beautiful, where are you going?’

I didn’t want to tell him where, so I replied, ‘out and about.’

‘Oh, meeting up with your boyfriend?’

‘Yea.’

Lift arrived on the ground floor.

‘Can you hold the door for me?’ He asked.

What!? I was astonished that he’d even ask! I was late already! I certainly have no time for that! But at that time I didn’t feel like I could say no..

I held open the lift for him. He took his time to take the 3 planks of wood out, one by one. Unbelievable!!

Finally it was my turn to go out.

‘Wait! Can you hold the gate?’ Now he wants me to hold open the building’s gate!? Can’t believe he even asked!

Even though I simply wanted to run out, I did it for him anyway, didn’t really think I had a choice..

Then the unexpected happened. He turned around, looked at me, ‘Oh you are so kind. Your boyfriend must treat you very well. Thank you so much,’ he smiled happily.

Although I wasn’t planning to, I made someone’s day, and seeing him smile made my day.

It’s easy to spread joy. Easier than we think. The secret is in the every-day small acts. Just be kind.

Often we say ‘I feel happy’, ‘I don’t feel happy’, ‘you make me happy’ ‘you upset me’, as if we have no control over how we should feel, giving the ownership of our happiness to others. Giving others power to ‘make us happy’.

You can ‘create’ happiness instead waiting for the feeling to ‘come up’. You can be the owner of your happiness. 🙂

#CreateHappiness #OwnYourLife #CoachingIsGold

At a party this weekend, I found myself witnessing an Introvert and an Extrovert in a conversation. Introvert was waiting for her opportunity to speak. She was very polite and patient. She was waiting for that pause that’s long enough to denote that Extrovert has finished her point.

But Extrovert doesn’t pause! She went blah blah blah the whole time. Any silence in the conversation that’s longer than 1/2 a second seems to her that no one wants to speak, and then she just starts speaking again. Extrovert’s thinking time, patience and pauses are much shorter, and any silences longer than 1/2 a second is deemed to be awkward, while Introvert is much more comfortable with silence so only when you stop speaking for 3 seconds, she thinks it’s her turn to jump in.

Then at the end of it we all wanted to grab food when Introvert said to me, ‘Hum. I need to catch you later, I’m making a mental note about all the things you said: about coffee, art, culture..’ That hit me – she’s paying attention the whole time and waiting for her chance!

What does this mean?

For extroverts: Try pausing for 5 seconds after sharing your idea and force yourself to live with the silence even when you’re not comfortable with it! Ask the other people questions to invite them to share their ideas!

For introverts: recognise that you don’t need to wait till the other person stops talking before you talk, otherwise you will never be able to talk!

Today when working with a super introvert, I remember one of my Airbnb guests from the States, who was very, very strange, compared to anyone I’ve ever hosted. He spent the whole week in his room. He might have gone out twice a day to the bathroom, and once a day out for food.. Very unlike others.

I love my Airbnb guests. You can learn so much about human behaviours. I love learning about how every individual is so different.

On the last day, he finally came out, all packed, ready to go. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ He replied formally and quietly, ‘yeah, that’d be nice.’

We started chatting. It was soon obvious that he painstakingly takes utmost care to choose the right word, so much so that there would be awkward silences in the conversation, although he wasn’t uncomfortable with it, whereas I was a little uncomfortable that there should be silences for more than 5 seconds. A few times I caught myself cutting him off half way. As an extrovert, I was learning to give him more time, to be aware that the silences feel much longer to me that they to them.

I learnt to use the silence for my own thinking time. I thought of all my clients in the past who have grumbled at their lack of ‘fluency’, i.e. not speaking quickly. Then I saw this guy, who’s a native speaker, who was speaking so slowly with long pauses. He shows that pausing is not an implication of lack of fluency! It’s alright to pause, and make others wait if you have something important to say!

Went to the supermarket for lunch yesterday. Decided to go for French roast chicken.

Girl in front of me ordered, ‘I want this quinoa. Can you heat up the quinoa for me?’ She didn’t seem particularly happy to be there. Perhaps she was hoping to get back to eat at her desk asap.. Maybe catching up with emails.

Lady at counter said ‘no we don’t heat up salads.’

A little grumpy, didn’t even look at the attendant, she replied, ‘ok it’s fine I’ll take it anyway.’

So I told myself, ‘I will be nice to this counter lady, since it seems that her day must be not that easy!

I’m naturally jolly, so it wasn’t hard to show her my good vibe. I went up, looked at her, made eye contact, smiled, pointed at the menu, ‘this salad option – how big is it? Which ones can I have?’

‘You can choose 3.’

Pleasantly surprised at the number of options, I smiled again, ‘Oh nice!’

I already had my eye on the quinoa and couscous. I couldn’t decide between the red rice and potato salad, so I asked, ‘these 2- which one is better? I can’t decide..’

To my surprise, she whispered, ‘I’ll give you both. Don’t tell anyone.’ I even detected a little upturn in the corner of her lips!

I was really surprised!!! 😀

This shows all we need is common courtesy in our daily interactions with people we come across, even though they may be the bus driver, the cleaner, or the barista. It’s not about manipulating people. I about just being ourselves. We would smile at people we are close to, wouldn’t we?

It shows if we go to people with a good attitude, people will go out of their way to do things for us! The girl before me might have been able to go her quinoa heated up if she’d just smiled!

Today, in a job interview coaching session, client started saying ‘we brought in someone professional to do the pictures, we created templates for the app, we created prototype for the different interface…’

I couldn’t help, but honestly didn’t understand, who else are we talking about here? I asked, ‘who are “we”?’

‘Oh, “we”…! Eh.. I think.. I meant.. “I”‘.

‘Oh right! So please just say I! Coz it’s hard to understand when we start speaking like the Queen..!’

Then after one or two sentences, since she’s no longer allowed to use ‘we’, she turned to third person speech! ‘There’s an app for the client, there are hard-printed materials, there is a new Facebook page’. Well, where did these designs, websites, Facebook pages come from? She did them, of course!

‘What goes on in your head when you are telling these stories about what you’ve done in the past?’

‘It’s a bit boring isn’t it, to talk about myself? I’m bored just listening to myself talking about all these things that I’ve done!’

Ah, right. Sounds like we needed a bit of paradigm shift here!

We worked to give her a new internal dialogue, one that says ‘I tell stories to show my skills for the new job’, rather than ‘I am boring, my stories are not worth mentioning, and I don’t want to talk about myself’.

It seems easy to impress the interviewer – if you want to get the job, the minimum you’ve got to do is start speaking in first person (singular), rather than first person collective!

Got called up this week – new client seems to present a tricky case: ‘I have been doing lots of interviews. I get to the final stage, the last interview, but don’t seem to get pass that.’

‘What do you think happened?’

‘I don’t know..! They don’t tell you what’s wrong about you. I have tried asking for feedback but never got a response. The thing is, I never like job interviews.’

‘How do you feel when you have the interviews?’

‘I get very nervous. I hyperventilate. I even stutter. Sometimes I can’t say the words. My mind scatters. I read my notes. I get lost in them. I forget what I want to say.’ (That sounds super serious!)

It turned out to be true. He was the most panicky client I’ve ever had!

We worked on breathing, changing paradigms, identifying the story so it’s easy for him to remember.

I learnt a lot from this client.

It turned out that because he is super prepared, and writes down all his answers, completely scripted, I learnt that he would do his video interviews with her notes opened on the screen! He would look over and look for the answers during the interview! That obviously didn’t bode well! The disconnected eye contact might have suggested to the interviewer that he was lying, or that he was reading something else, quite obviously his pre-written answers, which might have been interpreted as planned, fabricated answers!

‘Please close all your notes and put away your notebook in the interview! Don’t assume that it’s a phone / video interview, that you can get away with your cheat sheet, as that would distract you, and take away your focus from the interaction!’

‘But I will forget..!’

‘We are telling our life story in the interviews. No one knows our lives better than we do. And no one will know we left out details and forgot, except us!’

‘But there are so many examples to remember!’

Then I realised that it’s good practice to just boil down each of our job interview stories into 3 key sentences: problem – action – result. So it’s easy to remember!

‘OK. Rather than remembering the 100 different points you’ve written down, just remember 3 things about what you want to say about yourself, the key messages, and have 1 story for each of these qualities; and when you go in and forget everything else, you would hopefully remember just one thing that’s special about you. And every one of us has our own special super power that is often enough as the unique selling point for getting the job. It’s quality, not quantity!’

P.S. I am glad to tell you that this client got the job! He also got much more calmer! I’m very happy to have helped!

On Saturday, a customer of mine called me.

I was a little surprised! I thought, ‘I must be in trouble! I haven’t been able to get hold of her for 4 months and now she’s calling on a Saturday 7pm?!’

I used to see her every 1-2 months.

I gave her a quotation to respond to a massive request five months ago, after she went away for a business trip. Heard nothing from her ever since.

Came mid autumn festival. I said texted on Whatsapp. She replied!

I asked her whether she’s tried durian moon cake.

She sent me a picture of a Malaysian durian mooncake.

Good sign right? But nothing else after..

I consistently sent her emails of interesting news and updates. Still, nothing back.

After 2 months I decided to up my game.

I started calling her. Can’t get hold of her.

After the first few times, she picked up. She’d say, ‘I have an urgent call on the other end’. This happened 3 times for 3 weeks. Every time I called, I’d get ‘I’m in an urgent meeting, I will call you back.’ Of course, she never would.

What do we usually say to ourselves after rejections?

‘She’s not interested.’ Or worse, ‘she’s avoiding me’.

But my rational mind thought ‘if she wanted to avoid me, she wouldn’t have picked up, right? She would have blocked my Whatsapp, right?’

I let it die for a a month.

Then, I upped my game again. I apologised without knowing what for. Just in case. I might have

offended her somehow.

Nothing.

Then, I saw a post on Facebook about something that’d be interesting for her son.

I sent it to her.

3 hours later, she called! On a Saturday!

‘So sorry I’ve been snowed under!…’. She started babbling on about her other projects. She told me more than she needed to. She explained how she had to evaluate the prices of suppliers. I got a lot of intel from her without even needing to ask.

This experience shows me that we shouldn’t give up, even after we think we have tried enough.

Don’t give up after 3 times.

Don’t give up based on some imaginary reasons.

It also shows that we need to celebrate every success.

The ultimate goal may be to ‘cut a deal’.

But before any deal can be cut, a series of actions need to be carried out!

We need to build a good relationship, make the proposal, handle objections, maintain the relationship.

I saw this was a success, a client calling me on a Saturday! I was very happy to hear from her!

Celebrate every success.

Break down your goal into small bite-size actionable steps to track progress and keep motivation high!