Final Blog Topic - Christine

This semester, my favorite topics in this class were Social Perceptions and Mind Bugs, Culture, and Being Perceived.  Having just traveled to a different country, it is interesting how social perceptions and mind bugs come into play.  Apparently, a young Asian American female traveling into the Netherlands is suspicious to security at the airport. I was stopped by airport security as well as customs and asked several questions that led me to believe that they thought I was bringing drugs back into the United States.  Mindbugs under these circumstances meant a young Asian female cannot be doing something legitimate in a foreign country. 

The passport control person in the Netherlands kept saying something bizarre to me.  He was actually saying "ni hao" or how are you in Chinese, but I had no clue what he was trying to say to me.  When I asked him what he was trying to say, he said, "Aren't you from China?"  I answered, "I'm American" and he seemed so perplexed.  The passport control person insisted I was from China and I replied back that I have never been there and my passport was issued in the United States.  I guess I didn't win any friends that day and probably perpetuated the belief that Americans are rude.

Being in a foreign country is always an interesting experience.  As a visitor to the Netherlands, I really tried my best to be aware of the perceptions people had about Americans and tried to respect their local culture.  When I was working at my company site in Breda, I made a point to be careful of criticizing their processes or appear that I was passing judgments.  I made a point to ensure that I didn't offend anyone there.

Being perceived was a topic I really relate to because I am aware of how others perceive me.  On Saturday, my flight home from Amsterdam was canceled and I had the pleasure of hanging out with an Executive Director from my company.  The two of us had been in the same room all week and barely talked, but when my flight was canceled I decided to email him and the two of us met up for dinner in Amsterdam.  The whole week I wondered why he even came to the Netherlands because he barely contributed during the meetings and always seemed bored while we were there.  After getting to know him over dinner, he admitted to me that he knew people thought he wasn't fully engaged during the meeting.  He wanted people to be able to express their ideas and didn't want to be another person projecting their opinion about how things should be done at our Netherlands facility.  We were the two youngest people attending the meeting last week and he told me that he understood how I felt at my age in the company.  Our 360 reviews are due at the end of this week and we both joked about what they were going to say.  I know mine will say that I'm bubbly and I need to be aware of how I am perceived by managers.  My dining partner admitted that he thought I was bubbly but was surprised on how much I knew at my young age and how much influence I've had on the company.  He told me to continue to be myself, and that if being bubbly is the only negative thing they have to say about my performance, than that isn't so bad at all.  He also said that he noticed when I had to be serious, people respected me and the balance of bubbly and authority was a good combination.

Of all the books we've discussed this semester, I would read Blink and The Geography of Thought.  Both of these books relate to topics that interest me most in this class.

Overall, I enjoyed this class.  Many of the topics we covered are things that I can relate to in my current position and hopefully will help make me a better leader in the future.  Most of all, it was interesting to hear about people's experiences in their workplaces and being able to engage in dialogue with my classmates.