I just read slow&fast2007’s post in 职场生涯 and it has triggered some thoughts in me. The issue of being let go due to communication/language barrier is a common issue new immigrants sometimes encounter when they step into the workplace.
Being let go is no doubt a very painful experience for anyone, because for most of us, our self confidence takes a big blow from something like that. We start to have self doubts about ourselves and our abilities. It may take awhile before we have the courage and focus to pick up the pieces and brave the storm again.
Years ago when I first came to
I was looking for a job in order to support myself while going through school, so a family friend used his connection and got me a job working in the back kitchen of Wendy’s Restaurant. My job was to get the burgers ready when the order came through on the computer screen. After a couple of hours of on-the-job training with a co-worker, the boss called me on the phone and asked me how I was doing and so on, he sensed that my English was very limited after the conversation. He proceeded to ask me whether I was able to read and understand the orders on the computer screen. I had no problem with reading the orders, but for the life of me, I couldn’t understand what he was asking, that was how limited my English was. He had to let me go because I couldn’t communicate with him.
I can’t tell you how humiliated and sad I felt afterwards and it took me a few days to get over it. But I realized that there was no other choice but to keep going and learn the language. I lived in a small city at the time and this was in the early 90’s, so there really weren’t many Chinese people in town other than a few Cantonese speaking families who’d been there for a long time. Everywhere I went I had to speak English, there was none of the Asian malls, Chinese supermarkets or language schools, none of the perks new immigrants in large urban centres enjoy nowadays. It was very hard in the beginning, but the circumstances I was in forced me to learn, and the more I learned, the more confident I became, I even started making friends in school which helped to build my confidence even more. When I look back at that period of my life, all I can feel was gratitude, for because it was difficult, I was able to learn rapidly and reap the reward thereafter.
By the time I left that place 5 years later, English was no longer a barrier for me. I left it for a large city in
From my personal experience, I can not stress how important communication skills are. The technical part, be it accounting, IT or any other professional skills, in comparison, is the easy part. Especially for those who’d been let go because of communication skills. I have no doubt having gone through the Chinese education system, that for most of us, we are very proficient with the technical skills required to do our jobs, we also have the dedication and the focus needed to do a good job as well. That is our strong suit, that is our comfort zone.
At the same time, we must realize that our weak spot is our language and communication skills, that is one area we really need to do catch up work on. Don’t’ be misled into thinking that if only we had more technical skills, or if only we had this certificate, that designation or degree, we’d be able to find a job, or get that promotion or resolve interpersonal difficulties at work. It is not going to, because we’d be like taking the wrong medicine to cure an illness for which the medicine wasn’t meant to cure.
The time we spend in beefing up our comfort zone in the technical skill area isn’t going to make up for the shortcoming we have in our communication skills. This is not to say that we completely ignore our technical skills, rather it is more of a reminder that we set our priority straight and know where to spend our time and effort on. We can still take the time and upgrade our technical skills, but spend more time on improving our communication skills and interpersonal skills.
It is always about maintaining the balance, on the one hand there is the technical skills, on the other hand there is the communication skills, make sure that you are not lopsided on either one. Having strong technical skills but not the ability to communicate will not get us far, being able to communicate but not the knowledge to do the work will not get us the respect (even if we do go far to a certain point). Maintaining the balance is important; both sides need to be strong and thereby becoming complementary to each other.
Being let go or fired is a painful thing, but it can also become a turning point of our life when we learn something from it. We can choose to view this as an opportunity to grow and expand ourselves, we’ve already identified what our weak spot is, the next step is to go ahead and learn to strengthen that weakness.
We need to learn to be bold and be courageous, take chances and come out of our shells, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, applaud our mistakes, for it is through mistakes we learn. It is better making mistakes and learn from it than not doing anything while remain frozen in the fear of making mistakes. Be resilient and bounce back, there is not too many things worse than being fired in one’s career, so the road from this point on can only go up. Be positive and optimistic, learning comes from the process of getting to an end objective, not the end objective itself, so enjoy the learning process, and the only way to enjoy the process is to maintain a positive and optimistic attitude.
As people often say, this too shall pass. I hope one day when we look back on this day (the day of being fired), we can look at it as a blessing in disguise, we can look at it with an attitude of gratitude that because of this day, we’ve learned so much more about our life, because of this day, we’ve become someone we’re proud of, someone who is courageous, someone who perseveres in the face of adversity, someone who’s turned a negative event into a positive learning opportunity.
At the end of the day, this is not just about our language skills, or our communication skills, it is more about our attitude, how we deal with what comes our way, good or bad.
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