The last time I came to this country to stay permanently was as a teenager. I had lost my English language fluency when I moved to Puerto Rico briefly, but when I returned, I had gained Spanish language fluency. For a long time I felt I was neither from here nor there, which constantly inspired me to seek meaning to my biracial identity and multicultural experience.
The past three and a half years I worked for a company where I spoke Spanish 95% of the time on a daily basis with people from Latin America. Very rarely did I have to engage with people from the United States or speak English. During this time, I learned a lot about culture, diversity and humanity. I was exposed to how others think, how they express themselves and what they cared about. I made many mistakes in the beginning, as I learned about our differences and explored how to work together. Some of the biggest lessons I learned was centered around the idea of starting from nothing. Here are three key insights about taking a road less traveled:
Lesson 1: Pay attention to your own biases.
There are a lot of things we do differently as North Americans compared to the rest of the world. One of the sentiments I got from working internationally is that there is a sense of superiority that we exude in relationship to people from other countries. As if we always know the best way to do something. I had to make a concerted effort to reverse this perception. What I wanted was synergistic relationships. The way I got this was by starting from zero. I empowered others, shared my knowledge and asked good questions to get to know the culture, society and ways of doing business. It was only through this process that I learned to identify my own biases, whether they were influenced by society or my upbringing. Once I was more conscious about what was getting in the way, I was able to adjust and adapt, ultimately leading teams with social responsibility.
Lesson 2: Take time to develop friendly relationships.
In many work environments, especially corporate ones, there are people who are very good at relationship building and others who are not. I witnessed many hardworking, intelligent and competent people get passed up for promotions, while those that didn’t work too hard but had friendly relationships across the company, received recognition and salary bumps. This is something people do not talk about much, but it happens all the time. If you are positioned for success, and are encouraged to be yourself in making contributions to your company, you should be able to thrive and reap well-deserved rewards. However, systems are not set up this way. Many companies unfortunately take a long time to change. The most important thing to note is that if you get to know your colleagues professionally, and muster the courage to use your individual power, you will be doing part of the work. The other part is about being in a place that will allow you to shine. If your current situation does not allow for that, look for another place, and keep your relationships intact.
Lesson 3. Exchange learnings and keep feedback loops constant.
I really can’t stand information hoarders. What is the point of sitting on valuable information or keeping it from others? If you know me, you know I like to be transparent, and am generous with what I know. Making assumptions is dangerous. To mitigate the risk of failing, share learnings, regroup and ask for feedback. We cannot build anything these days without considering other voices. So take a step back and invite more people to the table. To that end, I find that organizations are not doing enough to build an ecosystem that will allow for feedback loops to be constant. They could also really step up their diversity game. That way when feedback is received, it is coming from not only all areas of the business, but also from team members with different backgrounds, experiences and education. To me, the more we are willing to navigate the unknown together, the stronger we become, and the better we get at what we do.
Powerful & Empowering!