The Quiet Warrior Podcast with Serena Low

77. Embrace Your Bilingual Superpower with Ella Zhang

• Serena Low, Introvert Coach for Quiet Achievers and Quiet Warriors

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In this episode, we’re joined by Ella Zhang, an organisational development consultant and executive coach who shares how she has navigated multiple cultures and languages and embraced her bilingual identity to build confidence and communicate effectively.

Ella takes us through her story of migrating from China to Australia, overcoming challenges as a non-native English speaker, and how she transformed her accent from a barrier into a strength. This conversation offers powerful insights for bilingual, non-native English speakers and introverts who want to improve their communication skills, take responsibility for their personal growth, and use their unique cultural perspectives as an advantage.

Key Takeaways:

  • Owning Your Bilingual Identity: How Ella embraced her accent as a unique superpower rather than something to hide, and how others can shift their mindset around language barriers.


  • Self-Acceptance and Growth: The importance of accepting all parts of ourselves, including the parts we find uncomfortable, as a pathway to personal and professional growth.


  • Feedback as a Tool for Growth: How asking for feedback, especially from those who are willing to give you constructive criticism, can accelerate your development and improve your communication skills.


  • Self-Responsibility in Career Development: Why taking responsibility for your own growth is crucial, and how to use resources around you—books, mentors, and feedback—to continue evolving.


  • Bicultural and Bilingual Advantage: Ella highlights how being bilingual and bicultural allows you to draw on the best from different cultural perspectives, giving you a unique advantage in communication and leadership.


Ella also shares insights from her upcoming book Upgrade, which explores the four internal operating systems that shape our personal and professional lives: mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical. This book is a guide to understanding how to keep these systems updated to maximize performance, especially for young professionals navigating cultural and language differences.

Resources Mentioned:

  • Check out Ella Zhang’s book Upgrade
  • Connect with Ella on LinkedIn to learn more about her work and leadership development strategies.


If you found this episode insightful, please rate and review The Quiet Warrior Podcast to help us reach more introverts and quiet achievers around the world.


This episode was edited by Aura House Productions

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Serena Lo. If you're used to hearing that introverts are shy, anxious, antisocial and lack good communication and leadership skills, then this podcast is for you. You're about to fall in love with the calm, introspective and profound person that you are. Discover what's fun, unique and powerful about being an introvert, and how to make the elegant transition from quiet achiever to quiet warrior in your life and work anytime you want, in more ways than you imagined possible. Welcome. Welcome to the Quiet Warrior podcast. Today's guest is a passionate strategic changemaker, organizational development consultant and executive coach who is dedicated to facilitating personal and professional growth. She blends her practical experience in Fortune 100 companies and startups with a genuine passion for leadership development and cultural transformation development and cultural transformation and over the years, she has supported teams and individuals in discovering their strengths and navigating challenges through a focus on capability development and strategic change. Welcome, ella Zhang, to the Quiet Warrior podcast.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me, Serena.

Speaker 1:

Ella, tell us more about your journey of migration and how did you learn to speak English as well as you do?

Speaker 2:

Okay, I came here to do my master's degree in my early 20s. So I finished my bachelor's degree in China and I studied law back then. So my dream in my early stage is to be a lawyer, that I always thought about my job or my future. My vocation is about speaking up for the women who cannot speak up for themselves. So that is the seeds growing bigger in myself since high school, growing bigger in myself since high school. But the reality probably has a different plan for me. So since I graduated from university and landed my legal job, I quickly realized I actually do not have the personality to become the lawyer that I wanted to be. So come overseas to study actually is one of the major reasons for that is I need to find another domain that I can feel I can wholeheartedly invest myself. So I came here to study finance. The original plan is only use one year to finish my master's degree and at least, if I finish, I can go back to China to practice law in financial industry. And the reason I chose finance is because even I'm Chinese, I'm Asian, but I'm terrible with math. So I thought that would take me longer to get bored, because I'm not good at numbers. That would take me longer to get bored because I'm not good at numbers, but you have to say, really the universe has its own plan. So since I landed in Sydney, I feel like Sydney plays a spell on me and I fall in love in these places, and also because I don't have any relatives in Sydney, which means this is a clean piece of land that I can make decisions for myself and on myself. So I guess there's a part of me who always have this desire for freedom. Now found a piece of land for fuel, my dream. So, um, one job after another.

Speaker 2:

I stayed here for 25 years. So by listening to me you might notice I do have asian accent. That's because in china we only start to learn English in probably junior high, probably when we were 12 or 13 years old. So I do remember when I first came to Australia. Having an accent has a big barrier to really make myself, to see what the value, what the worth I can bring to the organization, to the people I interact. So when I'm saying this, I feel back then we were trained to be perfect, we were trained to not to make mistakes. So it feels like speaking perfect English without any accent is one of the goals.

Speaker 2:

So for the first few years that has been my struggle. Even I. For the first 10 years in Australia, I stopped speaking Chinese, reading Chinese, writing Chinese for the first 10 years, purely to make myself immersed in English. But still, every single time when we project certain words maybe because we speak another language, so how we project certain words is a little bit different, comparing to the locals. So I remember I consulted a coach and my teacher in the university how can I get rid of my accent?

Speaker 2:

And one of the teachers said why you need to get rid of that? Because no one can speak as you did. So that's your personality. Because when you speak people will naturally ask you oh, originally, where you come from. Because you have a different background, you have a different culture, you carry different sets of values and you have your own style. So make your accent to be your strengths. It never needs to be your weakness. So, starting from that point, I start to focus on what could be the message that I share with the world. People come to me not because I have accent. People come to me because we have substance, when we have conversations, so the conversation can add value to people and when we can continue to add value to people through the interactions, no one really cares how you pronounce some specific words. Of course there are people. They're going to pick up on you. So when they pick up, you think okay, whatever the comments and the feedback they provide to you is useful, we take it, we improve it, otherwise let it go, move on.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I think those are yes those are amazing communication insights, ella. Thank you for sharing them, because I can imagine there will be some listeners here who are non-native English speakers who also feel very sensitive about their accent being different. It makes them stand out, but not for the right reasons, they think. But what you're saying and your teacher is very wise too is that your accent, in a sense, is your superpower, as they like to say at the Professional Migrant Women Network, that I don't think there's anybody who speaks without an accent.

Speaker 2:

Exactly exactly. It's a way couldn't stop make a, make a judgment in our mind. We also think, oh, I love british accents because that sounds so noble, right, and we don't like all the accents. So we actually ourselves we carry lots of bias and judgment in ourselves. So, on one hand, because we have such bias and prejudice inside of us, we judge about every single person we encounter quickly, based on their look, their language skill, their accent, even judging about how they dress themselves up. So we make lots of judgment. And also, at the same time, because we're judging so much, there's something inside of us actually becomes extremely sensitive. So we're worried other people were judging us as well. So this is the game we play as a human, unconsciously.

Speaker 2:

So for me doing my work because my work involves me working with a variety of people, and I remember the first day when I had my very first coaching session with my clients the only thing I noticed is my futus, my judgment. The flex shows up in myself when I was in conversation with my client. At that time I thought, damn, I can never be a very good coach because I'm so judgmental. I quickly make a judgment and say, oh, this is a good, that is bad. This is not right. So I quickly doing that.

Speaker 2:

But the beauty of working in this industry is every single conversation we had with people we are healing some certain part of ourselves. So slowly we really start to accept everyone as who they are, but also, at the same time, we are accepting ourselves as who we are. The more acceptance we become, the less judgmental we become and the less sensitive we are to whoever others, whatever kind of comments others need to make. I always share with my clients that if we're so damn easily to be triggered by others' comments, be triggered by others' comments regardless of others' intention. But we get triggered, agitated or get hurt about others' random comments. It really has nothing to do with those people. Actually, those people hand over a very beautiful gift to us because in that moment means something inside of us requires some work. There's a trigger when we can be triggered. The only reason we can be triggered is because there's a trigger inside of us. So it's our job to go through those co-created experiences with others, to work and process our triggers until we can no longer be triggered by others.

Speaker 1:

I feel there is something deeply philosophical in there. That's also very true, because other people are a mirror of us, isn't it? And what they show to us sometimes are those parts of us that we really don't want to see, or that we don't like, or that we have rejected, or that we feel there's something wrong about me, something not good enough. So when somebody holds a mirror up to that it's, it's not a comfortable feeling we have to look at ourselves and then we have to decide.

Speaker 1:

If I don't like this part of me, what am I going to do about it? Do I accept it? Do I change it? Do I ignore it? Do I just let it be?

Speaker 2:

I remember early days when I was so passionate about personal development and professional development even though now this is my work, combine those two together but in my early days to embark on the journey of a personal development and a professional development. Honestly, I feel there are many moments that somehow we were put in the position to see the ugly self. When we learn all the skills and the theories to be a better human being, when we know the theory, somehow we have this illusion as if we know how to be a better self. We just immediately become that better self. So there are situations. The universe has its own way of work. There are situations when we interact with others or when we encounter certain situations we suddenly notice damn, I'm not as good as I thought I am. So those moments at the beginning can be very disappointing. But I do hope whoever may experience those moments just be self-assured, because only when we see the ugly self, we have the opportunity to face it, to work on it, then we can truly become the better version of self. If we saw that and we feel very disappointed and disgust and we put it aside, cover it up, ignore that In my work I see lots of senior executives does that. But honestly, whatever we covered, they will show up in different places unexpected. So if we see the ugly self that we need to work on, my advice is always work on it when you saw it for the first time, because that's the smallest issue for you to resolve. If we put it aside, it will grow. It will grow. It will find a way to get our attention that we can no longer avoid looking at it and working on it.

Speaker 2:

But when you're passing that stage, you know that a certain part of us are not as perfect as we want it, and we can also be very okay with that. So we understand it. So when we accept, or at least when we know, all parts of ourself human is very complex. So when we understand all parts of self and accept every single parts of ourselves and also have this clear understanding and insights in variety of situations, which part of us have the tendency to come out to play, so we can have a self observing ourselves, when we observe all this and accept all this. Actually, I think that is where confidence comes from, because we know exactly why we behave a certain way in certain situation and then we also know why we do not behave certain ways in certain situation. And then we also know why we do not behave certain ways in certain in certain situation, because why and why not? It's all the conscious choices that we made for ourselves. So we know why and we also know the consequences of that. So that's the confidence comes from.

Speaker 1:

I think this confidence you speak about is much more powerful than the kind of confidence we get from reading a book, trying to implement the strategies there from a cognitive perspective, but without addressing all those deeper reasons, the root causes as to why we act in a certain way.

Speaker 1:

And I think a lot of us are not conscious of these patterns that play out. And I think a lot of us are not conscious of these patterns that play out. Every time they pop up again, we get upset in a new way, we get triggered in a new way. But, as you say, when we accept all parts of ourselves and notice, I think the noticing is important because that's like taking a step away, putting some distance, some emotional distance between me and the thing that is happening that's reflecting back to me, and it's like a conscious pause. I'm giving myself some breathing space to notice what's happening and then to ask some questions, to get curious, to get compassionate, to understand myself better. I think, ultimately, the whole point of all this, this exercise, is to know ourselves, as you say because, when we know ourselves, so we can know others.

Speaker 1:

If we can accept ourselves, we can accept others, because this is that part of me that shows up like this, maybe in somebody else. That's why my client shows up this way too, exactly I totally agree with you, serena.

Speaker 2:

You spot on, because I always think ourselves is the best object for us to study. If we cannot build a positive relationship with ourselves, it's guaranteed we will have trouble to build a growth-inspiring relationship with others relationship with others. So, but I guess this is the process of growing up as well. I trust a lot of people, probably just like me, we came here in our early 20s. We actually spent our young adulthood in this new environment and because it's a new environment, we meet people who does not speak our language, who does not understand our ritual and culture and value, who has whole different sets of the ways to grow up. So there's a lot of I won't use the words of conflict, but I will say difference, because those are different. So, comparing to what we did, what we think, what we feel in the past, then we can naturally get the result we want. When we came here, usually we say, oh, it doesn't work how I think in the past if I use the same way of thinking, it doesn't work here, because the people here doesn't think as what we did back home. So those mini conflict or difference, in my view that's the best opportunity for us to know, oh, why I think this way, what drives me to think this way and what is the process for me to make decisions? Because unless we have clarity about that, we will always feel like, oh, we're rejected, we cannot integrate, we are excluded. It is not Because, for me, working working this meant 25 years now here, working with the people in the learning, development, organizational development, leadership development side of the business. In my eyes.

Speaker 2:

Actually, I think the difference made by race, by your original country, on human behaviors is minimal. We're just a human. No matter what kind of language you experience, we all go through similar paths. As a human being, we need to have the challenge and the difficulties, adversities. We're probably going to experience some struggles in the early stage of our career or life. In my view, that's very blessing, because we're probably going to experience some struggles in the early stage of our career or life. In my view, that's very blessing because we're young, we can starting from zero again and we can adopt and learn and quickly grab all different kind of theory and the tools to help us to stand up again. So that's a blessing if you're, if the listeners are in their early stage 20, 30, even 40, I think whatever kind of challenge we face, they are truly blessed.

Speaker 2:

But use that challenge as the opportunity for us to know about ourselves and to adjust ourselves, because who we are sometimes I think who we are keeps changing. There are certain part of us will stick. There are certain of us can be very flexible because we need to acquire different skills, a different mindset and the different patterns and different habits to make sure whatever the way we think and do and feel works for us can get us to where we want it to be. So if we want it to be somewhere, we have to change our path sometime. We probably also need to change the gills sometimes, but that's way in control of that.

Speaker 2:

But how do we know which part of the path we need to change the gill? Maybe because when we're wearing different shoes on that path and we feel the pain in our feet. So that's the reminder we need to change our gears. So it's all different. Using those feedback from outside as the reminder Okay, something needs to change, something needs to adjust, something I need to review and somewhere, something I need to let go, something I need to review and somewhere, something I need to let go, something I need to acquire. So I see human, if they can really grow with the flow. They just like the river, constantly have new information coming, but also leave something behind. So we're constantly updating ourselves.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I I really um resonate with the idea of constantly updating ourselves, but I want to take a step back for the benefit of those listeners who are maybe new in australia, in their first years here. Maybe they are still studying in the university, maybe they've just started in the workforce. What do you notice as differences in, maybe, the work culture between someone from an Eastern background and someone who's grown up in a Western background? What are the differences you've seen?

Speaker 2:

I would say because I'm Chinese. So the way we were raised up is to be humble. My first challenge when I came to australia is gosh, very. The people are so damn confident. If they only know 50 of the topic they will speak up as if they know 100. But for asian, the way we were raised up is, unless we know 150% of the topic, you should shut up, let other people talk right, because you don't know everything. So that's how we raised.

Speaker 2:

I'm not saying one way is better than the other. I always say we need to find what is the sweet spot in between that we feel extremely authentic to do, to present ourselves so in the workplace. Because I used to be the learning development for different kind of organizations. So I was the person who organized the new employee induction, this induction. On the induction, I always emphasize two points. One is you need to take initiative. The majority of the organization, they have variety of initiatives and the resources are provided to employee learning resources particularly. So you are because, just imagine, all those resources was put in the basket by the company and you, as the individual employee, you take the responsibility to grow yourself. What does that mean? You need to reach out, raise your hand, reach out the basket, take the resources that you think is available for you or can be useful for you. For example, your boss does not take responsibility of your learning and growth and you need to let your boss know what I want to learn, what's the next project I love to do. I need your help for me to get there. So you're responsible for your personal growth and the professional growth. And take your manager, your peers, whoever in the company that you think they have more knowledge, more skill, more experience than you. Use them as your tools to get there. But if you shut up, be silent and hoping and wishing other people can see your desire to grow, that is not responsible for yourself. So that's the very first thing Be responsible for your growth in the workplace. If you speak about it, other people know what you want, but if you do not, you keep silent. No one has the responsibility or obligation to guess what you want. But if you do not, you keep silent. No one has the responsibility or obligation to guess what you want.

Speaker 2:

The other thing is find the talking to the smart people. These smart people can be someone in your circle or in the society community that you're part of, or this is some smart people can be, someone written a book that just give you the answer that you are part of, or there's some smart people can be someone written a book that just give you the answer that you are searching for. So that actually is for me. That's my default pattern to search for answer back then Read a book.

Speaker 2:

I still have been a vivid reader these days like one book a week minimum. So most of the time when I have questions and problems, worries or frustrations, I feel like even in my closest circle I couldn't find the right people to have a conversation. Then read a book written by those people who have the solution for this just almost equals to have a direct conversation with that person. So your growth is your responsibility and we need to learn how to be resourceful, to use our surroundings, the resources, the people, the resources, the book, podcast, anything that is relevant or that we can reach out to use for our own benefit, because all this information is available over there. But don't ever wait for other people to hand over the resources to you ask you to use. No, we need to take the responsibility to reach out and use them.

Speaker 1:

Those are very good points. Number one would be self-responsibility, Number two about being resourceful. But I can imagine that somebody who is listening to this, who is introverted, who is that quiet achiever, who, like you say, is wishing someone would notice and recognize their competencies already, they might be thinking yes, that's very good, Ella, but I'm too nervous, I'm too afraid to voice, you know, to say that I need help, or to say this is what I need for my professional development. How do I go about speaking?

Speaker 2:

Okay, let me clarify here. In a society we use a lot of labels to separate people introvert from extrovert. I'm in the middle, I'm also introvert, I'm also extrovert. I'm in the middle, I'm also introvert. I'm also extrovert Whenever the situation calls. I don't think I need to clarify that.

Speaker 2:

Introvert doesn't mean we don't have the skills to speak. We don't have the skills to build a relationship, we don't have the skills to develop ourselves. When we call someone is introvert purely because this person needs lots of me time to recover. So that's how they gain energy. When they have lots of energy, they can go out to dealing with whatever the world, the society require them to do. So introvert can also be super skillful in terms of a building relationship, in terms of advocating for themselves.

Speaker 2:

Introvert is not a nickname name for people who haven't built all those competencies. So when we don't know how to reach out, asking for help, not because we are introvert, it's because we haven't built competencies to articulate our needs in the way inviting others to help us. So when I coach younger generations, I always say make yourself coachable. What does that mean? In the early stage of the career? As an OD, usually we create this framework to develop people or identify high potential employees. There's a certain kind of behavior we blended into the capability framework to allow individual employees and also the business manager to understand what kind of behavior we need to see that we can help this person to develop. So there's one skill if you are at an early stage of a career and you're really intimidated to reach out or build a fancy network that makes you to be the center of the attention to support you and help you be the center of the attention to support you and help you the only skills I think we need to learn and feel very comfortable to learn and this can be extremely beneficial for the early careers is asking for feedback, always asking for feedback. When I say this is very beneficial, because this is beneficial in multiple ways and can provide people compound effect afterwards if we really master the skills.

Speaker 2:

Because first of all, you're asking for feedback means first of all, you accept you probably only focus on certain perspective of the task or the situations. You would love to hear other people's perspective and this indicates you are regulating and managing your ego very well, because usually the biggest problem we observe in the workplace for the younger generation or the early careers when they first graduate from university when they have a lot of academic education but haven't had much of a real-life application yet. They usually think they know everything. So in English there's words to describe that situation we call blissful ignorance. When we are blissful ignorance, we are afraid to asking for feedback because we anticipate what could be the negative feedback for us. So our ego cannot handle that right. We might feel hurt. So we trust, tell yourself, we trust everyone do their work to the best of their knowledge. But the best to the best of our knowledge doesn't mean that's the best solution for the situation that we are facing. So when we simply ask feedback shows we are humble, we are open to learn and through that process we can also field out whose feedback is useful for me. So I need to keep this person close to us, close to me, so in the future we can always use them as the sounding board for the work we do Right or whose feedback I probably feel doesn't land very well with me. Then why and how? Is it because we have a different value system? Is it because we have different perspectives? Is that because we have a different style? So we don't connect very well when we're not asking for the feedback. So other people also have skills need to grow. But for us, when we can identify all those, we understand which part of us that we need to focus on to grow, which part of us we need to maintain right. So when we can really grasp these skills in the early three years in the career, I think this will help us to build a very useful and valuable network, professionally and personally, because that is the only way other people would winning to give you the feedback.

Speaker 2:

In my younger days, early days, I always believe whoever have the guts and the courage come to me, give me constructive feedback or criticism into my face. Those are the people. I want to keep them very close to me. I want to keep them very close to me Because by human nature, we all know telling ugly truths probably not going to end very well. So people trained to say something beautiful, complimentary and praise you in your face, but they may share the ugly truth behind you. So in the very early stage of my career, I want to change this. I don't want this. I want people to have the courage and the guts to tell me the ugly truth into my face, and they are the people I like to keep very close to me, so that's the skill that's a very interesting strategy yeah, that's a very simple way to do that.

Speaker 2:

So I usually, even sometime when I do report in the early days, even sometime now, I always ask what do you think you can add? Is it anything I need to pay attention to or what do you think about this? Um, can you tell me one thing that this can be better? So very simple, just as that. Because at that time you shift your mind to focus on the task. You want to make your task, the outcome of the task you're doing, to be as best, as better as possible. It's not about you, it's about your work.

Speaker 2:

So when you separate yourself and your work, your work is not your identity. So when people comment on the work you do, they are not commenting on you, right? So we want to make our work as good as possible. So we need to collaborate and tap into a variety of brilliant minds to make sure the outcome of the work we do is as good as possible. And this has nothing to do with who I am. No, it's not me, it's my work.

Speaker 2:

If we can separate this most of the time, we probably don't feel very hurt and, plus, the best feedback usually people have the guts to give us is sit in our blind spot and lots of people, when they were pointed to their blind spot, they feel ashamed because they think so high of themselves. They think they have already considered all the angles, all the points, all the little, big or small elements that they need to put into their work. But everyone we have blind spots. So the first time when people pointing out your blind spot we might feel gosh, does that mean all the hard work I did is useless? No, it's not.

Speaker 2:

So I learned to ask for blind spots. Did I miss anything? I did my best of thinking this apart, but it's just the one brain. Did I miss anything? So I will appreciate if you can let me know if I missed anything, not because I haven't made effort, I'm just acknowledged I could have a blind spot, just like you could also have a blind spot. But whether you're going to ask people to pointing out your blind spot, your responsibility, not mine, but I responsible for myself. I wanted to connect with all the people who have the expertise and the competencies to see my blind spot. So if I can connect with all those people which help me to minimize my blind spot, I think I can do my work even better.

Speaker 1:

Isn't it? That's very empowering, because I think what you said there about separating my identity from what I do professionally is very important. A lot of us get the lines blurred and we think, you know, when someone criticizes my performance or my the way I delivered or my communication, it becomes a criticism of me personally, and so it's really important what you said there, that the two things are separate. Let's not confuse who we are, the essence of who we are, with what we do, because what we do can always improve.

Speaker 2:

Exactly Because who we are is our character, our values. Right, that's who we are. It's not the outcome of one piece of work. One piece of work comes from knowledge, comes from skills, comes from style, comes from approach, comes from connections, comes from resources. All those things have nothing to do with who you are. Those are the things we're constantly building up and constantly changing. So those are two separate things. When we can separate these two things, we can use whoever in our circle extended circle even to help us to build the second part of this task More resourceful, more perspective, more skill, more experience, more knowledge, so we can make our task have the best outcome, deliver the best outcome of that.

Speaker 2:

But that has nothing to do with who I am, what is my character, what is my principle, what is my belief? Right, because sometimes I feel we are so fearful to receive different, to hear different voices, so fearful because we feel like our ego is going to be hurt, so we avoid all those opportunities to challenge our egos. Sometimes, in my book I didn't mention, ego is the thing that we need to learn to manage when we grow up, because we do need to have ego, just like we do need to wear clothes every day when we go out to see people. But if we only focus on comparing with others about how I look in my clothes, that is not going to be useful and helpful for others to remember us. Because if you don't want people to remember, you just, like a person, carry all the big brands on your body but they don't know who you are, don't know what you stand for, don't know what is your quality. They only remember oh, you're a whole bag of big brands, right?

Speaker 2:

So that's the ego. We have to manage that. It has its function, but don't let it over function. So every single time when you hear someone say something about you or your work, you feel offended. I always feel it's because our ego needs a lot of protection, needs a lot of attention and our ego has this natural job to compare us with others and we need to feel we are better than others. That's how ego makes us feel. But if we don't manage, if we don't tame our ego in this way, very soon the biggest ego we get, the biggest illusion we become and the biggest distance we create between ourselves with the reality. But that's too deep the conversation, serena.

Speaker 1:

There will have to be a conversation for another time. Yes, Talk to us about your book Upgrade. What is it about and who is it for?

Speaker 2:

Okay Upgrade, because I have been coaching many business owners, funders, with teams in the last five years, six years, and I noticed lots of patterns in them. So that got me to thinking also back then when I was in-house consultant for learning development. We bring so many programs, learning resources, to the business. Some employee can really internalize the learning, but others I feel they just learn the theory and cognitively that's all. So you won't see much of application. They probably can share with you lots of buzz buzzword, but you won't see lots of application in their daily life, daily practice, so you also won't be able to see the benefits they can get through their work. So that got me to thinking how, why certain people? At a certain stage they can really continue to take the challenges and difficulties and grow out of it more positively.

Speaker 2:

So that's when I thought, okay, we as a human being actually we operate simultaneously on this full internal operating system. I call them internal operating system because no one see it, but they do exist. One is your mental operating system comes from how we process information and then make decisions, and the second is emotional operating system. This is very important if you're in the workforce and you would love to be the leader one day, because eventually being a leader really count on your skills to build relationships with others. Because as a leader, we have to have these skills to work with and work through people to get things done with minimal friction. And the third operating system is spiritual operating system in my view, and this is how we carry out understand what could be our co-values and also use creative way to translate our co-values into our daily work. Honestly, this part, if we do very well, give us lots of joy and happiness, because that's the moment we feel we are in our elements.

Speaker 2:

And a false operating system. I call that a physical operating system because majority of the people I work with, we are knowledge worker. We tend to believe our smartness comes from our brain and in our younger days we often forget our brain is a part of the body and our body is the factory. It's the factory to pump up all the smartness in our brain. So in younger days we tend to think as long as we don't get sick, we're fine. But I guess I experienced the burnout in my 30s, so that's the time I started to understand how human body and mind works.

Speaker 2:

So physical operating system. Actually, I put a lot of information over there to let people to do some practice and exercise. So for me, I'm a driven person, driven professionals I want to maintain my high performance. So when you're facing different or complex situations, I always ask myself what could be the foundational habits that allow me to maintain, or at least continuously to access to the high performance I decide to have, rather than just to have a high performance and drop down to the depression and go up again. That kind of roller coaster is not sustainable for us to do our work. So those are four operating system. In my view, simultaneously, every human being will operate on that. So that book is purely helping people to understand what is their current default settings of this operating systems and what they can do to keep growing and upgrade their operating systems.

Speaker 1:

Perfectly titled and thank you for sharing about the mental, the emotional, the spiritual and physical operating systems that all of us have and how to upgrade, how to acknowledge and how to upgrade them.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'm going to have two actually public speaking next month, may and July in Sydney, and it's facing all young professionals because currently this book is already evolved to inner edge capability framework that we work with organizations to make it a part of the talent development. So in May and July I was also booked to do some public speaking with a bunch of professionals to help them to understand from individual perspective how can they start to build all those habits to enable them keep this fall in the operating system updated all the time, because when it's updated we really run at our best. So we are not going to be the enemy of ourselves and we cannot block ourselves most of the time. In my view, the older we get or the mature we get, the senior we get, the only enemy is ourselves. No one else outside ourselves would block us, it's ourselves.

Speaker 1:

On that note, I think we've spoken a lot today about self-responsibility, self-leadership.

Speaker 1:

We've also talked about the strengths and the benefits of being bicultural, bilingual, of starting from a place of a different culture, a different background, a different language, and then making that transition into an English-speaking culture with also different cultural values, and how to bring those two together and keep acknowledging, accepting, working on being open to feedback, but also to keep upgrading and updating what we have so that we can stay current and relevant, able to respond, I think, and to adapt to whatever is in front of us, but always remembering that our identity, the essence of who we are, our character, our principles and our values those things are a separate thing from who we are, who we show up as professionally and what we do in the world.

Speaker 1:

So thank you so much, ella, for this wonderful perspective of what it's like to be in the middle of two cultures. You know, navigating the two, not feeling that I have to be one thing or the other thing, or that was me and who am I now, and then getting all confused, but actually actually to beautifully integrate all parts of the environment that we are in.

Speaker 2:

You're right, because I think the beauty to be bilingual, bicultural people here is we have the opportunity to pick the best from each, then blend them together to be who we are.

Speaker 1:

That's the best opportunity we can have. Right, it is. It is such a gift and such a blessing and I'm very glad we spoke today because what you said will be so encouraging, not just for people in the early stages of career, but, I think, anyone who is navigating this. You know, uh, the tension, maybe the the dance of cultures and languages and different values to thrive wherever we are planted. Yes, so I will post in the show notes as well the link to your book so that more people can look, you know, check it out and learn from you, and also connect with you on LinkedIn professionally to understand more about your work and work with you.

Speaker 1:

So, to all listeners, thank you so much for joining us on the Quiet Warrior podcast. If you have enjoyed this episode with Ella Chang, please rate and review wherever you're listening from, and we will see you on the next episode. I'm so grateful that you're here today. If you found this content valuable, please share it on your social media channels and subscribe to the show on your favorite listening platform. Together, we can help more introverts thrive. To receive more uplifting content like this, connect with me on Instagram at Serena Lo Quiet Warrior Coach. Thank you for sharing your time and your energy with me. See you on the next episode.