26- Failure in China

This summer I was in China doing an internship for an education technology startup company called TCK EdTech. Since I was one of the first interns at the startup, did not show signs of stress when the boss assigned us to our first project, and did what I could on the work assigned, I assumed the unofficial position of manager in the eyes of the boss and the other interns. I was never given the title of manager and my role was never made directly made explicit by my boss which would have legitimized my authority, but I stepped into the role without question. The problem was that because of the lack of formal recognition, I was never completely confident when ordering someone to do something (who am I to tell you what to do).

I assigned tasks and roles to the other interns throughout the weeks at TCK EdTech and I was busy all day, but frequently felt frustrated that nothing had been accomplished at the end of the day. I would be stressed because I generally knew all the work that had to be done but did not take the time to lay out all the objectives and plan beforehand, and was thus inefficient in my work and in my duty of assigning tasks to the other interns. Because of my poor communication, at times I felt the need to do the work that I knew had to be done directly instead of assigning the tasks to the other interns. At the same time, I was frustrated with the other interns because I wanted them responsibility for their work and not allow all the pressure of the boss to fall on me as the accepted but not titled manager. 

Because of my stress at work, when I got home at the end of each day I tended to fall into escapism. I didn't want to think about work in the little free time I had and I would not focus on improvements that could be made at work while at home because I knew that the next day I would have to go in and contend with the same issues that I had the day before. It was a vicious cycle of not reflecting on the failures of the day before and then being highly stressed at work because I didn't plan or reflect on how to accomplish the tasks for the day and therefore felt not enough had been done.

What I learned from the experience was the importance of communication as manager, to act like a leader regardless of the title given, and the necessity of reflecting when contending with failure. If I had just taken around thirty minutes at the beginning of the day to reflect on what to improve from the previous day and to plan and set objectives for the present day, I may have been much more successful as a manager. I also found that no matter the position I am officially given, I have a responsibility to myself and others around me to act as a leader (especially when we are all facing the unknown together). I should not shy away from assigning tasks if I am the one who knows what needs to be done and the other people around me are not acting. Furthermore, instead of  giving into frustration and trying to do all the work myself, as the leader, I need to accept the idea that for optimally efficiency I will be spending less time personally doing work, instead spending more time communicating the objectives and tasks to the other workers so as to not waste their time and presence.

Failure is only valuable if you reflect on it and the more immediate the reflection (because we forget minute details over time), the more valuable the experience. I've noticed that failure can get me stuck in a cycle where I don't reflect because I'm stressed and I get stressed because I don’t reflect on the failure. The lectures haven't changed my perspective on failure, but having time to reflect on my past failures due to this assignment has helped me identify a pattern of my behavior to watch out for. Taking a close look at my failure and learning from it makes the unknown clear, and I am more willing to take on a managerial role now that I am more aware of what I did wrong in the past.