All posts filed under: Career

Impress Your Boss: 3 Things to Do When Starting a New Role

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Whether you are moving to a new role within the same company, or taking on a new job somewhere else, try the three things outlined below.  Following this advice, you will surely make a positive first impression on your new boss and will achieve a more organized and efficient transition. No. 1 WHEN: Two Weeks before Your Start Date WHAT: Send your new boss an email (you should have already obtained his or her email address during your interview, for sending a thank-you note after the interview), tell him or her that: 1) You are very excited about starting in two weeks; 2) You would like to get a head-start if possible – ask him or her if there’s any material he or she could send along in the meantime for you to read or work on, or anyone he or she would recommend you to meet and talk to. Say that you want to get yourself familiarized with the projects that you will be working on to make the transition as efficient as possible. …

Find The Leader in You

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In the summer of 2014, I arrived in the US from China for an MBA education with a top 20 university in the US. One of the core courses in the first semester was titled “Leadership”. At the beginning of the semester, the professor conducted a class-wide survey, which was composed of a “self-assessment” and a “peer-assessment”, in which the students rated each classmate on how they perceived that classmate: Do you consider he/she a leader? Do you think he/she is a valuable contributor in the classroom? Do you think he/she is difficult? And so on. The same survey was then re-run a few more times throughout the semester, as the students got to know each other more through various activities (and, of course, as the learning from the Leadership class progressed). I never cared for the class, as I believe “leadership” is a mindset you grow in yourself through real life events and mature self-reflection, rather than something dryly taught in a classroom by watching mediocre documentaries and participating in half-hearted discussions. I didn’t …