What would you do if you couldn't fail?

House of Hong Restaurant, Seattle -  This was the question I asked at a recently held Women of Power Luncheon hosted by Assunta Ng, Publisher of the NW Asian Weekly and Seattle Chinese Post newspapers.  Before I get to the answer of that question, though, let me first tell you that this luncheon, now in its third year, benefits one of NAAAP Seattle's partners, the Executive Development Institute (EDI). Twelve lucky auction winners from EDI's Inclusion Fusion held earlier this year got to lunch with some very powerful women. In fact, I had the privilege and pleasure of being seated at one of the tables. I'll introduce them one by one as I go through their stories.

Women of Power Luncheon (l to r) Martha Choe, Donna Giordano, Grace Chien, and Amelia Ransom Letcher (Not pictured: Sandra Madrid)

As the food arrived, Donna Giordano, President of the Quality Food Centers (QFC), shared what she thought were her keys to success(es); that was:

• to listen and learn from others;
• to take any job offered as it would lead people to know that you're the obvious choice when opportunities arose;
• to know you are in the driver's seat of your career;
• to know and articulate your value; and most of all,
• to have a positive attitude as this will assist you in achieving results, both at home and at work. 

Next, the top Girl Scout or CEO, Grace Chien, made a point to stand firm with your commitments and define successes and failures in relation to these.

Martha Choe, Chief Administrative Officer for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and also a 2010 NAAAP100 recipient, talked not only about change, but about having it be sustained and lasting. She talked about how important it is to building lasting and effective relationships and used the term, "total leadership", when addressing one's well-being: mind, body and soul. Said another way, "When you're health isn't well, neither is your leadership."

When addressing work life-balance, "there is no perfect balance and it's a matter of balancing daily or weekly based on what is important to you. Put another way, if you are on your death bed, would you regret having gone to one more meeting?"

(l to r) Sandra Madrid, Carol Butterfield and Sandi Heddington

Now, Amelia Ransom Letcher, VP Corp Diversity Affairs at Nordstrom, rallied around people first and effective communication. Can you imagine the power in having people believe flowers grow in concrete? Getting to this level of effectiveness can help you become very influential.

Sandra Madrid, Sr. Advisor to the Dean, UW, shared a story about her own career transition. She was let go from the UW after 20 years of service. Her main point was to be part of a community because no one can do it by themselves. It was with the community's support that she got her job back at the UW.

As by now, I'm guessing you want to know what they said when asked, "what would you do if you couldn't fail?" I asked this question because throughout our careers we face fear and indecision and having gone through this themselves, they would give really good insight. Well, in short, the answer was not surprising. To paraphrase what each one of them said, "I would do anything".

Given that we're already on the topic of powerful women, I would like now to take a moment to let you know about the Women in NAAAP! program, which is our own program created and developed to build competent and confident women leaders within NAAAP and within the Asian Pacific community. If you don't already know about it, you can visit our website.

Special thanks to Char Grinolds of EDI and Assunta Ng, Publisher of NW Asian Weekly and the Chinese Seattle Post newspapers for creating a great meeting.

Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle

President

Your values

I happened to be at ACRS at the EDI Leadership Conference where Chee Chew, an engineering director at Google gave the opening keynote. At Google, Chee leads a team of 300+ engineers. I never met Chee, but he came out in a blue sweater and jeans and gym shoes. "So what," you say? Well read on as what he wears says something about his values.

He started off with showing us pictures and asking us which we related to most.

Picture series A

Blue sky bridge vs a Sunset (Blue)

Timex vs Rolex (Functionality)

Hooded sweatshirt vs Tuxedo (Functionality)

Grand Piano vs Electronic Piano (Maintenance)

Washington DC vs Rome (New adventurous places)

Key: Chee's picks (Chee's Values)

I picked the sunset, rolex, hooded sweatshirt, grand piano, and Washington dc. I am sure other folks picked something else. As it relates to Chee, he chose the Blue sky, the timex , the hooded sweatshirt , the Electric piano , and then Rome .

He later described why he picked the pictures he chose, an indication of his values. He chose the Blue sky picture for blue; the timex for functionality; the hooded sweatshirt for functionality; the Electric piano for its easy maintenance, and then Rome for his love of adventurous places.

He then showed us another picture series and asked us to pick the pictures he would choose based on his given values. Which ones do you think he picked?

Picture series B

Red Acura vs Blue Honda (Blue)

ChoiceDek Recycled vs Wood Deck (Maintenance)

Knife vs utility knife (Functionality)

Gym Shoe vs Dress Shoe (Functionality)

Africa vs Seattle (New adventurous places)

Key: Chee's picks (Chee's Values)

I admit, I struggled a bit as some of my values got in the way. Knowing his values, it was a bit easier for me to pick the pictures that would he would pick.

Chee then dialogued about meetings he attended for his group and watched the decision making process. In the earlier part of his career as he grew into management roles, he admitted that he was more hands on yet the bigger his team got, this management style didn't work for his worklife balance as he spent a lot of time fixing issues and he had to be in the room to make decisions.  He realized that this process didn't scale as his team globally grew. He had to state his values to his team so that they could speak to what Chee would decide if he wasn't there.  (The exercise above demonstrates this.)

The lesson to be learned with Chee is to be open about your values and to be self aware of your management style meaning are you hands on or are you consistently sharing your values to help your team make decisions?

Regards,

Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle
President

Additional Links:

○ Google, Inc.: http://www.google.com/

○ Executive Development Institute: http://www.ediorg.org/

○ Asian Counseling and Referral Service: http://www.acrs.org/

○ Authentic Leadership by Bill George: http://bit.ly/ddNOmG