Nov 4, 2022 | Weekly Round-up
The yin-yang of compassion; Affirmative Action; Stanford Instructor!
Things I (will) launch:
I’m excited to share that I’m officially teaching a course for Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program in January! Course registration starts Nov 7th! I’ll send out more details in next week’s newsletter, but the course is titled “The Mindful Manager: An interdisciplinary approach to conflict at work”.
It’s the highlight reel of the best concepts, frameworks and tools for conflict and management that I’ve accumulated over 2 degrees, 1 certification in conflict mediation, 15 years of executive leadership and countless books on communication.
Spots are limited, so register early if you’d like to take it!
if you’re interested in bringing me into your organization as a speaker, hit reply!
I’ll also be doing dry-runs on the content in December and will send invites out to this list too.
Things I’m thinking about:
The Yin & Yang of Compassion
I’ve been thinking a lot this year about how to integrate “business Tiffany” and “personal Tiffany”. There are ways I show up at work and in the business world (with agency, direct communication, clarity) that I’d like to bring into the realm of family/personal relationships; and vice versa (patience, compassion, acceptance).
One of the most insightful frameworks for leadership I’ve encountered this year is from Kristin Neff & Christopher Germer’s The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook which talks about the yin & yang of compassion, which helped me identify what traits I wanted to bring to each realm.
“At first glance, compassion may seem like a soft quality, associated only with comforting or soothing. Because compassion for others is a part of nurturing, especially children, we may also instinctively link it to more traditional feminine gender norms.”
Neff & Germer compare the “yin” (traditionally feminine) attributes of compassion with the “yang” (traditionally masculine) attributes of compassion:
Yin: Comforting, soothing, validating
Yang: Protecting, providing, motivating
This was insightful to me because in the business world, which is traditionally masculine, I DO the Yang things (e.g. motivating speeches, protecting (ie:advocating for my direct reports & running interference for them) and providing (ie: either making sure the team is resourced and/or making sure each person has growth opportunities) AND I do the Yin things, which my direct reports and peers find refreshing: I validate when things are hard, I find ways to make their work lives better (soothing), and as a manager, in 1:1s, I do spend time listening and attuning which is the core of comforting.
I realized that in my family/personal relationships, I primarily show up with the Yin qualities, which are valuable, especially in an East Asian culture that dismisses emotions, but I could also show up with more Yang qualities: For instance, when one family member is bullying another on a text thread, I normally focus on the person being bullied and validate/comfort/soothe, or I could also step in (as I did recently) to say “Let’s speak to each other respectfully”, which is motivating/protecting.
Or, when a friend has vented about the same toxic person for the nth time (and I’ve done this, so no shame), instead of solely comforting/soothing/validating and stopping after “I’m so sorry you’re going through this”, I can go a step further and say, “It makes me so mad that X treats you this way. When this happens again, what can you do to protect yourself or extricate yourself from this situation?” (Motivating/protecting).
This framework also helped me realize when men ARE showing compassion, even if I didn’t understand it at the time, reading it through the lens of a Yin definition of compassion. Like when I wanted a partner to validate my frustration with a coworker/work situation but instead he started to attack the character & intelligence of that coworker (protecting me) and suggest things I should do instead (providing solutions), neither of which was helpful or what I wanted. In time, he and I learned to ask each other: “Do you want an empathetic ear to vent? Or do you want my help with brainstorming solutions.”
Unforgettably, I remember a separate time I expressed concern about my health/weight to a partner and they helpfully said, “You could work out more.” which has to be the epitome of masculine “I’m being helpful by motivating & providing solutions!” when what I really wanted was a soothing, “You’re in good shape!” or a validating “I see you eating healthy foods and working out as often as you can” or comforting “I worry about my health too!”
In your work life, do you lean more towards yang? or yin? In your home or personal life? What would it look like to show up with more of the yin (or yang) qualities of compassion to balance your normal approach?
I’ll make a note here that the goal is not to do all things at all times, but to be intentional about your choices and actions. Which approach may get you a better outcome? Which approach is needed by the person (or team or situation) in front of you? If there’s a child in physical and immediate danger, protect first - and then soothe, comfort, validate.
We tend to default to one or the other depending on our context, upbringing, societal expectations, professional training and personality. The harder but important thing to do is to practice stepping back and asking, “What is needed?” so that you aren’t being thoughtlessly reactive but proactive, taking action thoughtfully. And to try different communication tools, uncomfortable as they may be at first, so that you can have better relationships.
Things I’m reading/listening/doing:
Book Rec | Hallelujah Anyway by Anne Lamott If we’ve caught up recently, you’ll know that I’m pretty disenchanted with the American Christian church (which has a lot to do with the alignment of evangelical Christianity and nationalism in the US), and so I’ve been looking for writers & books that still cultivate the values I want to have in my life: hope, mercy, grace - especially when I’m feeling mad about humanity. Anne Lamott is the perfect companion: she’s a curmudgeonly and honest observer of human nature; a former addict, familiar with grace, and unapologetically direct in cataloging the best and worst in ourselves and others.
Articles on Affirmative Action | To be balanced, I’m including links to a pro-AA and anti-AA op-eds at the bottom.
I’m a product of affirmative action and I support it. I didn’t get into Harvard (waitlisted twice) despite being valedictorian, having a perfect SAT score, multiple extracurricular leadership roles and the same (or better) resume than my sister who did get in Harvard. (and the athletes who had worse resumes). BUT I AM FINE. I chose between Princeton and Stanford (tough choice #sarcasm), went to Stanford, I made my first set of close friends who weren’t white/asian, and learned to respect the physical intelligence/work ethic/drive that goes into being a world-class athlete.
I question the fixed mindset and overfixation on school brand as a determinant of success: I worked at JPMorgan Chase with hundreds of other people who didn’t go to a top-tier university; they had the same job, similar compensation. In my experience, what distinguishes top talent is internal character like ambition, resilience, patience, curiosity, calculated risk-taking - not what school they went to. (I also think what graduate school you go to has a bigger impact than what undergraduate school, but that’s a separate essay.)
Finally, you could say, “You turned out fine - but what about Asian-Americans as a group?” I value the community of Asian-Americans (which is vast diaspora) AND I’m going to question the tribalism inherent in that question and say, “What about us as a society? And as a human species? What helps us move forward?”
Links
ScotusBlog: Summary of the first day of discussion
Anti-AA:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/race-college-fair-admissions-harvard-unc-title-vi-civil-rights-act-affirmative-action-grutter-supreme-court-asian-discrimination-racism-11667140146
Substack article: