Boys

There is this boy. He thinks I’m such awesome non-typical open minded fabulous girl and showers me a lot of attention. It is all so flattering but he pays too much attention to me that I find it overwhelming. I hinted to him that it’s not working out, because as much as he wants me to be part of his life, I want nothing of his. We have different mindsets, different personalities; he see our similarities, I see our differences. He didn’t give up, everyday he would either ask me to hang out, write for his newspaper, this, that. I had to be blunt and tell him to give me some space. Yet today, he sent me an email wishing me a happy valentine’s day.

There is this boy. He thinks I’m the oddest mix of a cool kid and a geek. We share the same pursuit to jump out of our educational backgrounds into the business world. Career-wisely he offers great advice, and is mild mannered in his delivery that it adds a touch of wisdom in his explanations. But beyond that there is not much passion – mind you he is a well rounded guy, but maybe I’m just a bit wilder that he seems plain in comparison. This week he asked me for a valentine’s wine-tasting date.

This is this boy. I really don’t know what he thinks of me, even after knowing him for several years. Or maybe because I care so much more about what he thinks of me that there isn’t a conclusive description. We grew together in the last few years, through break ups and make ups, from music to art to sports to board games – we shared our hobbies. He challenges me and pushes me to brave on things I thought I couldn’t do. This is the one I love, but he doesn’t believed in holidays. We didn’t celebrate valentine’s days, nor christmas, nor anything, ever. I cried to him today because as much as I understand his views, and like to think I am less superficial than most, there’s such a social pressure to do something special with your loved one on this day, and I felt silly turning down the first two boys. He said why does valentine’s day have to be on February 14th? We could have a special day of doing all the fun stuff we want, and make our own valentine’s day. Well that’s his promise to me, we’ll see about that

A juicy two cents on Social Interactions

As management styles evolved from an authoritative method to a team-oriented approach, having effective interpersonal skills has almost become a bare-minimum requirement to most types of work. Similarly, how we interact and understand other people can have quite an impact on life, from daily interactions with your coffee shop barrister, to sustaining a friendship or relationship.

Effective communications does not always have to involve words and speech; we learned to communicate non-verbally almost from the cradle. For example, we are extremely sensitive to the signals people make when they are in conversation with one another. There are precise rules about when we make eye contacts, how we time our responses to one another, how much distance we keep between each other, the signals which show that one person has finished speaking and it is now the other person’s turn to speak…and so on. These are completely unconscious rules and we hardly notice them, but we certainly find it disturbing if we are talking with someone who doesn’t conform to them. There are people who do not comply with these rules for one reason or another and they tend to be rather socially isolated because of their lack of social contact, which naturally resulted because most people would tend to avoid conversations that make them feel uncomfortable.

Equally important are listening skills and interpreting body language. As I mentioned in a previous post, as much as we think listening is an obvious and straightforward process, most of us are pretty poor listeners. We tend to hear what we expect others to say instead of what they actually said, which is rather different sometimes. Likewise, our body language unconsciously give away a lot of information about ourselves that cannot be disguised in words which indicate our emotional state or how we feel about something. For example,

• Crossing of the arms across the chest generally indicate putting up an unconscious barrier between oneself and others. If the situation is confrontational, it shows the the person is expressing opposition, especially if the person is leaning away from the speaker. On the other hand if the scenario is amicable, it can mean that the person is really pondering the issues being discussed.
• Though often a misleading gesture because we were taught from an early age to make eye contact when speaking, consistent eye contact can show positivity in the conversation. So vice versa, lack of eye contact generally signifies negativity, or if eye contact is made but mixed with crossing the arms, it demonstrates something is bothering the person.
• Similarly, averted gaze, touching the ear or scratching the chin can indicate disbelief. The attention of the person wanders when the eyes stare away from the speaker.
• Tilting the head to one side, or the eyes aimed towards the speaker but unfocused are signs of boredom.

These are some examples that are generally followed in the Western world, since body language varies between different cultures. Invariably, there is an equation derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e. like-dislike) called the Mehrabian’s Rule. Mehrabian found in his studies that there are 3 main elements in any face-to-face communication, the 3 V’s,

1. words (Verbal)
2. tone of voice (Vocal)
3. body language (Visual)

These 3 elements account differently towards how much we like the person we’re conversing with, 7% for words, 38% for tone of voice, and 55% for body language, thus the 7%-38%-55% Rule in which Total Liking = 7% Verbal Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking. These 3 parts work to support each other in a message, and in the case where there is discrepancy between two of the elements, the receiver of the message might become irritated because he is receiving different cues that is pointing at different directions. For instance,

• Verbal: I am comfortable with you.
• Non-verbal: crossing of the arms, fiddling in the seat, averted gaze etc.

In cases as such, the listener will probably trust the more dominant forms of communication, which are non verbal. Note that this percentage rule applies only when there is ambiguity in the situation where there is an disproportionate influence of tone of voice and body language. This rule is specific to face-to-face communication of feelings and attitudes, because after all if words are only worth 7% of communication, it would take away the purpose of learning languages and everybody would just make sounds and gestures to “talk”.

This rambling about the subliminal ways we communicate can be tied be tied in with how we interact in the dating scene as well. People are innately curious, and although it is encouraged to be honest and sharing in relationships, oftentimes it can be a bad idea to reveal everything about yourself. Firstly it takes away the mysteriousness and excitement to find out more about the other person, secondly as the idiom goes when one talks too much it is more likely to make a mountain out of a molehill (exaggerating a problem). This description of the interaction between the sexes is just the tip of the iceberg; it certainly is another art form in itself to understand what attracts our attention and what repulses it. Although some may argue that such analysis of the interaction make attractions and relationship superficial, insincere and like a game, ultimately the purpose of such is to create opportunities so that we can learn to interact better to increase our chances at understanding each other.

Christmas isn’t Christmas

The title is copied from a Christmas song I “learned” a long time ago. The learned are in quotations because I sang the song when I was in the choir in grade 5, and since that was before I came to Canada I never paid attention to the lyrics then. I just somehow managed to remember the title and vaguely the melody. A google search for the lyrics of the song:

Christmas isn’t Christmas
Till it happens in your heart
Somewhere deep inside you
Is where Christmas really starts

So give your heart to people
You’ll discover when you do
That it’s Christmas, really Christmas for you!

And that brings me back to the title. The argument that Christmas has become an excuse for excessive consumerism is as flooded as the pack of people in the malls and the variety of ads I see throughout the city. That’s right, I’m saying too many people are complaining that Christmas shouldn’t be just about gifts and the material goods. Not that I disagree, but it seems like a fad just to say things like that and then submerge right back into the sea of shoppers.

Christmas time these days stir up a lot of emotions for me. Brought up in a Catholic family, I’ve always loved the season because it just oozes such warm fuzzy feeling, with the obvious perks of gifts and amazing food. Since my change of thoughts about institutionalized religion (which is just this past year really), I still harbour a lot of these similar feelings, but now I feel I can objectively observe how people behave during this season. It occurred to me that even the people who criticized about the consumerist tendencies fall in the trap of thinking about this only during the seasons. Shouldn’t we be giving to others at all times of the year? Maybe it is our human nature that we get too caught up in our lives and always forget about the bigger picture. And all this begs the question then, is the purpose of holidays to remind everybody what we should be doing always – if not then what are we celebrating? Look at Valentine’s day, Mother’s/Father’s day, Family day (will be in Ontario in 2008!)…they all seem to act as a reminder of what truly matters in life, but we often let it slip as soon as the 24hour occasion is over. What does that tell us? I have no idea but I understand that our civilizations created special occasions to bring people together, either as a distraction from other issues or to create bonds. I’m not sure which category Christmas fall into, but the big winners of the seasons are always and probably will be the companies that remind us that this is the season to give.

Listen to be Listened

This should not come as a surprise, but merely a reminder – if we want to command the respect we feel we deserve from others, we have to show the same amount of respect to them.

I am writing this because too often we hear but do not listen. Not that I felt disrespected recently in any way, but just a bit of observations from things around my life. My mom made a long distance phone call to relay a message from my dad (which doesn’t really make sense already since my dad could just tell me that himself, but whatever) but forgot what the message was. It turned out she had to call my dad again to ask what the message was, and then called me again afterwards just to pass the word (again, my dad could’ve just called me himself…). That was what sparked my observations. It got me to think how often we talk for the sake of talking, and hardly listen to what we’re saying to each other. It seems like we have a natural desire to express how we feel whenever the chance to communicate arises. This is something I learned in sociology, that we have a tendency to pull a conversation towards something that relates to us personally. It is a constant conversation power struggle, and it happens quite innocently, unbeknownst to the parties involved:

How do you define Leadership?

Whenever you read any job description, it always requires the applicants to have Leadership and Management skills in the Qualification and Skills section. It is not very often you get to see the kind of heroes in movies who risk it all to save the planet in our everyday lives, but then again, it would be unfair to say we lack influential leaders in our world today. So surely leadership is an important trait to have, but what exactly does it mean? That is the theme of the first ever Toronto Leadership Forum (TLF) – to shed some light in this almost overused term by inviting seasoned professionals from various industries to share some of their practices and stories in their careers.

Six speakers with different job titles brought in their ideas that are crucial to leadership in this conference , from comparing management styles, discussing how to adapt to change in work environment, identifying positive/negative traits in admired leaders, to planning your role as a leader etc. Through their presentations and discussions, the idea of what qualities a leader should possess started to mold, and it was learned that many characteristics are two-fold, as any quality pushed to the extreme would yield a negative effect, to which knowing when to draw the line becomes the challenge. However it was evident that although everybody had a different definition of the term leadership, the need of passion and perseverance for their cause are undeniable. Because there are no clear-cut formula to become a successful leader, not all the opinions expressed by the speakers were agreed. There were moments in the conference when delegates challenged the speakers’ viewpoints, or questioned the validity of their opinions – to which were welcomed by the speakers because it showed interest and thought on the topics, and non-conformity to anything thrown to the delegates.

Despite the various backgrounds of these speakers, they all shared a common history of changing their career paths in pursuit of a field they enjoyed and played to their strengths. The transition to their new found career paths were often difficult, and it was unfortunate that it was the chatting during the breaks between presentations that you learned of their struggles and decisions they made that led to their success. These to me, were greater lessons than knowing the difference between “breaking” and “whispering” because sharing the experiences created an engagement in the conversation, and it was in the hardships you understood the lessons learned.

This was the first TLF ever conducted, and the team behind this conference was five engineering students who juggled between school studies, interviewing for jobs, participating other clubs, and coordinating this event. From arranging the venue to inviting speakers, these students truly exemplified their leadership skills by taking on the responsibility of organizing this forum, in hopes of making the concept of leadership an easier term to grasp. Oftentimes in the engineering studies, the technical knowledge has become such a focus that other skills are overlooked. The TLF provided an excellent opportunity to bridge these gaps and remind students that a wholesome development is one of the keys to success.