XM Knowledge Base
MosaiQ & Qualtrics wrapped up Asian and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month with a conversation with six leaders across the firm - leaders from Engineering, Product, and Sales Strategy - on ‘what leadership means.’ Our Qualtrics leaders showed up with their #transparent and authentic perspectives on what leadership means to them. Personally, I’ve worked with a few of these leaders and continue to see how their representation matters to me.
Today, I am going to share 6 lessons I learned about from our AAPI leaders Abhi, Jay, Vernon, Claire, Eddie, and Anderson.
- When we can come together and speak openly about the challenges we face as a community it makes us stronger and better. We are all raised differently. We are all taught different values, speak different languages, and even grow up in geographically different places; however, when we share parts of ourselves we learn to empathize and help others.
- There are a million ways to accomplish your goals, but there’s no one strategy that is the best. Everyone has a different learning experience early in their career, some folks are learning to say ‘no’ more and some folks are learning to say ‘yes’ more.
- Write your goals with pencil, not pen. Some of us succeed by writing a 1, 5, and 10-year plan, and some of us don’t. We need to be able to be flexible with how we achieve our goals and when we get there.
- Visibility=/= who speaks the loudest. Results should speak for themselves, but sometimes they don’t. Make sure that you structure your goals in a way that shows authentic introspection and highlights the good, the bad, and the work of everyone involved. What goes around comes around!
- Be true to yourself. Our leaders have been told that they’re “too nice” or that they needed to “lean back more” and have more gravitas. However, when you are authentic to yourself you will always accomplish more. If the organization doesn’t value your authentic self, it might not be the right role for you. (A good reminder to check in with yourself and your personal goals)
- Be an ally. Being Asian means being part of a community of underrepresented people. We need to be constantly learning about each other and other marginalized groups because when we understand and elevate others, we elevate ourselves.
So what does it mean to be an Asian Qualtrician? It means (and I know we say it all the time) having the ability to bring your authentic self to work. We work to recognize hard work no matter how it looks, and value voices no matter who it comes from.
Qualtrics works to view kindness with the same respect we have for relentlessness. We work to listen as intently to the introverts as much as we do the extroverts. Being an Asian Qualtrician means recognizing that we may be “different”, but we thrive on working differently.