Enjoy Overcoming Challenges

Familiarity does not foster quality achievement. Being an international student for a long period, I have experienced various cultures and people from diverse backgrounds. I am open-minded and adaptive as well. I developed cross-cultural communication skills and cultural awareness.  I augmented my resilience by living outside my home country. Living in countries where that have different cultures has bolstered my independence in addition to enhancing my independent skills, critical thinking skills, planning and organizational skills. I am glad that I have experienced putting myself into whole new places. There were sometimes that I was afraid to put myself out of my comfort zone or but I was always brave to overcome the fear and managed to go above the beyond.

Empathy

It is essential to understand what others are feeling and to imagine what they may be going through. It helps us to understand and relate to people from diverse backgrounds of life. Empathy allows people to connect with others, whether they are a colleague, a friend, or complete strangers. It enhances the ability to communicate with others, work as a team, and be a better leader. Most importantly, it is critical for developing positive relationships in both personal and professional life.

Team player, Diversity & Inclusion

I was assigned to work on a project challenge as a team for six weeks in New Product Development and Project Development module. Throughout this group project, I learned the value of collaborating with other people. Even though working as a team may result in some conflicts, the outcome may be enhanced because of the synergistic effect (Wienclaw, 2021). A person cannot accomplish everything on his or her own. Everyone has different talents, and if each member contributes their talents to the team, the team can produce a better outcome.

However, during the group project, the key was how to collaborate well with new people. According to the team effectiveness framework assessing team performance (Cohen & Bailey, 1997; Mathieu et al., 2008), elements including diversity, experience, and talent affect the efficacy of the team. We were a group of six from Denmark, the United Kingdom, Thailand, and South Korea. Our team members came from different backgrounds, cultures, languages, and experiences which impacted our interpersonal conflict management and communications. The diversity of our group could enable us to be more innovative, creative, and efficient. When the team is diverse, it is critical to understand how to work with diverse resources. A diverse environment with many different genders, races, nationalities, sexual orientations and identities, but only the perspectives of certain groups are valued or have any authority or influence, is not inclusive. Inclusion refers to how well different groups of people's contributions, presence, and perspectives are respected and integrated into an environment.

Therefore, I would like to work in an inclusive workplace that has a diversity of people involved, developed, empowered and trusted by the business.