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Leavey School of Business Santa Clara University

Community Fellows Blog Posts

Michael Liu: Engagement and Fulfillment

Michael gives his two cents of advice for anybody looking or struggling to enter a new position.

It’s currently the month of May, which means that my time working at the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits (SVCN) is a month away from coming to an end. When I was accepted to be a Community Fellow, I knew little what to expect going forward. After interning at SVCN for a little over seven months, I can confidently say that I will be leaving with two major takeaways from my experience.

The first point that I want everyone to take away from this blog post is that you should make an effort to know your coworkers. When joining a new workplace, it is very important to establish professional boundaries between you and your supervisors/peers. Because of this, it becomes really easy for us to maintain a certain distance by minding our own business and burying ourselves in our work, because we obviously all want to improve our skillsets for the purpose of future advancement, right? Well, in case you did not know, developing relationships is just as important of a skill as time management or search engine optimization. Case in point, due to the coronavirus, I am working from home back in Honolulu, Hawaii, and the transition has been difficult for me as much as the rest of us. These period of extreme isolation has proven to be a challenge for me, as I consider myself to be a very sociable person that feeds off the energy of others. Although, something that has surprised me is that I have found solace in my connection to my supervisor, Peter. Due to the nature of his job, Peter reaches out to me with guidance on my upcoming tasks every week. However, one thing I appreciate is that he never fails to check up on me, asking me how I am doing and always offering his support. This may seem miniscule on the surface, but I find myself really appreciating when somebody asks me how I am doing. I think it’s safe to say that everybody values the feeling of somebody caring about them, and this is a feeling that I will be hopefully instilling in others as I continue in my future leadership roles.

Another piece of advice that I truly cannot stress enough is to be flexible and open to learning new things, even if you know you are not ready to take these tasks on immediately when they are assigned to you. I would argue that most people, including myself, draw maximum learning value from hands-on experiences. In other words, we learn most efficiently by working, failing, adjusting, and completing our tasks, as opposed to merely reading about them. Prior to my fellowship, I had a little experience dabbling in graphic design. Upon entering my position, I was introduced to Canva, a web-based graphic design platform that I would be using to promote SVCN’s various accomplishments. I did not know how to use Canva right away. Instead, it took me many hours to familiarize myself with the software through processes of trial and error. Eventually, I reached a point where I can say I am confident in my ability to produce digital content such as this from scratch, and I am really proud of my work. I believe it goes without saying that I never would have overcome this challenge had I simply chosen from an easy, pre-selected templates and called it a day. In addition to learning a new skill, I was able to learn something new about myself. Of course, there will be instances in the future where I doubt my abilities to work a project. However, this is nothing that a little trial and error cannot fix. All it takes is a little flexibility.

 

NPI, NPI Fellows