一个表达习惯：从「执行者」到「造局者」

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Transcript

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Welcome back to Day Day Up, the weekly podcast for Chinese professionals navigating the Western workplace. I'm Jonathan. Let's get into it. My manager should support me more. They should give me the offer. I should get the promotion. Last night, my wife asked me about some of the most common complaints I hear from my clients. This is it. Each carries a heavy feeling of being wronged. And every time a client says it to me, something tightens in my chest. Because I once sat in that exact chair. A few years into my time at the manager level, I sat across from my own manager and asked him one question. I'm ready for a promotion. When can we make it happen? I thought I already knew the answer. I had just saved the company from a thirty million dollar loss. I had led a twenty person team. For months I had been showing him I was already operating at the next level. So he should promote me. He looked at me and said, John, you're doing good work. But you're not there yet. Give it another couple of years. Ah, young John. Too young, too naive. The workplace is never the way it should be. Yes, you deserve more support from your manager, and a good one should give it. Yes, you were the perfect fit for the role, and they should have handed you the offer. Yes, you were ready for the next level and your manager should promote you. But what happens when they don't? Every time you say how things should be, you're robbing yourself of the power you needed to make a change. Should tricks your brain into believing you've already done everything you could. And it feels good because putting the weight on someone else is so much easier than carrying it yourself. So here's what I tell my clients instead. Anytime you reach for the word should, replace it with how can I? My manager should support me becomes how can I get more support? They should give me the offer becomes how can I get an offer. I should get me the promotion becomes how can I get a promotion. Just one small swap. And you remind your brain that you have agency. This is the magic of language. The way you think shapes the way you speak, but the way you speak also shapes the way you think. Now, when I ask my clients this question, often their minds go blank. So I make the question smaller. I tell them to answer just three things. What do you want to feel? What can make you feel that way? Where can you actually get it? Because I found most of the time people don't know what they want, but they certainly know how they want to feel. One of my recent clients got really specific. In our first session, she told me, John, I feel so stuck. I like my job. My manager is a kind person, but he always gives me harsh feedback and ignores my wins. I feel like I should be more appreciated. It took us one hour to find what she actually wanted. Yes, she wanted her manager to appreciate her. Why? Because she wanted to feel competent. How could she achieve that another way? Maybe a higher title could be the proof she'd been chasing all along. That was our unlock. She didn't need her manager to hand her the feeling that she was competent. She could earn it somewhere else. It took us another two hours to have a real game plan. One path for an internal transfer, one for external applications. The workplace is never going to be the way it should be. I'll go even further. The world is never going to be the way it should be. So what are you going to do about it? Alright, that's your growth tip for this week. Now let's take a melon break. You know one thing you can always expect at the World Cup? Team Japan plays a match. The final whistle blows, and while everyone else streams toward the exits, the Japanese fans stay behind, pull out little blue bags, and clean their entire section of the stadium. The internet sees it, gasps, and calls it a miracle of discipline and respect. This has happened, like clockwork, at every World Cup since 1998. Seeing posts across social media about this, I'm amazed that Western culture is still somehow still surprised by it every four years. But here's the part nobody talks about. The fans aren't doing anything special, at least not according to themselves. They're just doing what they always do. When I first traveled to Tokyo years ago, I finished my pokari sweat on the street and walked to the nearest intersection to drop my bottle in a trash can. And I just kept on walking for two more intersections. Because in Japan, public trash cans are rare. The whole country runs on a quiet agreement that you carry your garbage home with you and the streets stay spotless anyway. For the Japanese, cleaning a stadium isn't a performance. It's a visible habit which endears them to the world for good reason. It starts young. Japanese kids clean their own classrooms and hallways at school. There are no janitors, so by the time you're an adult with a blue bag in a Texas stadium, you're not being virtuous. You're just running a program installed into you since you were six. So I know we're just here to eat melons, but it makes me wonder, what cultural programming is native within us Chinese? And how does it show up in good or bad ways on the other side of the world? If at this point you want to spit your seeds at me, I completely understand. Here is how you can use this topic in Small Talk next week. With coworkers, did you see the Japanese fans cleaning the whole stadium at the World Cup? It's been happening for so many World Cups, and every time it makes headlines, would you stick around after the game to clean up other people's trash with your boss? The Japanese stadium cleaning that goes viral, every World Cup is interesting to me. They've done it every tournament since 1998, and that consistency is exactly why it's become part of how the world sees Japan. It's a good reminder that reputation isn't built on one big moment. It's built on doing the small thing the same way every single time.