"I am a working mom."
That's how Hoai introduced herself to me for the first time we met. Despite countless achievements and qualifications, and the fact that she is now the Head of Human Resources Management in a leading non-profit organization on child rights in Vietnam, she only wanted to address herself as a mom. How humble and down-to-earth she is! Throughout the whole conversation, she made it crystal clear that family is the top priority of her life. Every time she mentioned something related to her sons or husband, her face literally lit up with sparkling eyes and a joyous voice tone. I felt so comfortable and relatable to her, since I'm a family-oriented person, too. And even though we only knew each other online and never met in person before, I felt like I was talking to a close friend of mine. I guess she would probably feel the same, as I sent more than 50 cold emails to many people I admired on LinkedIn, she was the only one who replied and agreed to be a part of my project. Thanks to her, I've had a pleasant time enjoying warm cinnamon honey tea on a lovely day in October.
She came to my life at the right time when I've been tired and overloaded by lots of wrongly implemented, extreme feminist campaigns, and helped me gain back my confidence. Those campaigns I've mentioned have been continuously telling women to go against the norm: being tough, doing things that men usually do, prioritizing career over the family, etc. According to them, to support women's empowerment and gender equality, I have to be a role model, be a leader. I'm supposed to be continually giving opinions here and there or studying science and machine, etc. However, the truth is, I am not into none of that stuff at all! So, am I against feminism?
Of course not! I do consider myself a feminist; my definition of feminism is just different from those extreme campaigns have been trying to promote. I think there is no typical role model for a feminist. I could be a feminist when I am soft, not rigid; when I enjoy knitting and embroidering, not machines and numbers; when my top priority is my family, not my career. And it's also totally fine with other women who are strong, who prefer researching quantum physics, who run a country, or who work as breadwinners of the family. No way is better than the other, and a woman doesn't have to be like a man to be equal to a man. For me, feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities to do what they want and be who they are.
As the conversation went on, Hoai told me about how she became who she is now. Graduated with a bachelor's degree in the English language; everyone, Hoai included, thought she was supposed to be a teacher as it's clear that she has a gift for teaching and communicating with people. However, for some unknown reasons, she didn't choose that path. In her value system, family ranks first, the following are the ability to help other people and fulfilling spiritual life. That's why she opted to work in the HR field, which allows her to work with humans and give them the necessary support. Besides, the nature of HR's job with diverse tasks requires staff to actively update their knowledge, hard and soft skills to perform the job satisfactorily, which fits Hoai perfectly since she is truly a life-long learner. So far, she has been working in this field for more than ten years and has achieved the highest level of all required HR practitioners' qualifications. She is a Senior Certified Professional by the Society for Human Resource with working experience for different international organizations, NGOs, and Embassies. Yet she still keeps on expanding her skillsets by taking MBA classes, for that she wanted to go further, out of her comfort zone, and have a broader view about the general working environment.
Her impressive resume was not something she built overnight, though; it was a process and a long journey. In less than an hour, she made me realize that who I am today would be vastly different from the person I would be in 30 years—but the change would be the result of small steps. In terms of working, she was so kind for giving me very sound advice. She said that "coach" and "mentor" are the two buzzwords recently since people are talking about them an awful lot. Yeah, the benefits of having a mentor are undeniable, but it doesn't mean you couldn't succeed if not finding one. In her experience, the critical success factor lies within yourself. Having someone tell you what to do is an easy way to achieve something, but you forget that you are the only one who knows what you want and what suits your value system. Your definition of success will be likely to differentiate from your mentor's, so in that case, follow your mentor's guide would lead you to the wrong place.
Listening to her stories, I've found a new and gentler perspective on how to get what you want in life. As long as you keep learning new things, updating your skills to adapt to the changing world, stay true to yourself and strive to be better than yourself yesterday (not than everyone else), you would be well on the way to your success. Instead of desperately trying to build a relationship with someone you think would be helpful for your career path, what you should focus on is developing yourself. When you're really competent and passionate about what you're doing, people will be drawn to you and be happy to work with you. And when it comes to "networking" (another buzzword these days), please, get rid of all the cliché tricks and shortcuts, and go back to the core: honesty, shared interests, and aligned value systems. They are the base of all the long-lasting and healthy relationships in both business and social life. Transactional relationships would be faster and easier to build and also to break and leave you nothing but an empty soul by the end.
I don't expect to find a mentor for my career, but I could say I just found a role model for my life.
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