The Quiet Warrior Podcast with Serena Low

56. How To Build Trust and Influence as an Introvert and a Minority in Corporate America with Anthony Kuo

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

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Episode Summary: 

How does an introvert stand their ground during conflict, earn the trust of senior executives, and become the go-to person in a corporate environment?

In this episode, Anthony Kuo shares his transition from a promising but unsatisfying career in corporate America to becoming a career satisfaction coach. He shares candidly about the challenges faced by introverts in the workplace and how they can leverage their unique strengths to succeed without compromising their true nature.

Key Points:

  1. How being in a minority group at school affects one’s identity and sense of belonging:

    • School can be hard when you’re not one of the majority.
    • When you realize that you’re different and not necessarily in a culturally acceptable way or a way that feels safe.
    • When your friends had a language to talk to each other and you weren’t a part of that, and didn’t know the cultural references they were making.

  2. Challenges of being an Introvert in corporate America:

    • Being technically proficient at the job, but realizing the need to be able to tell stories and persuade others to see your point of view.
    • Being used to deferring to authority due to the hierarchical nature of Asian culture, and learning to speak up and assert yourself and stand your ground when questioned or challenged by more senior executives.

  3. Leveraging Expertise and Building Trust:

    • Gaining trust and influence in the workplace through personal reputation, the ability to tell compelling stories with data, and the ability to hold space and demonstrate empathy for multiple points of view.

  4. Career Satisfaction:

    • Career satisfaction is about using your personality at work and having your personality and all of its quirks and wonderful uniqueness be engaged, appreciated, and valued at work.
    • Career satisfaction is about figuring out what it takes for you to thrive.
    • 30% of the time, what employees are looking for is accessible exactly where they are - they just have to reach for it.
    • Quitting is not always the solution - career change is stressful and expensive. 
    • Most of the time, career dissatisfaction is because a part of you is craving change, and another part of you really values something that is being provided through your current role. Identify what it is you value.

  5. Advice for someone who is not satisfied with their career right now:

    • Listen to your dissatisfaction. Pay attention. Get curious.
    • Ask yourself: what is it that you are not getting, what is keeping you here, what is it exactly that you enjoy.


How to Connect with Anthony Kuo:

Next Steps:

  • If you enjoyed this episode and found Anthony Kuo’s insights helpful, please take 30 seconds to scroll down to the “Write a review” section on your listening platform, rate it, and share one thing you learned. 

  • If you are an introverted professional or business owner who wants to get known, but something is holding you back from putting yourself out there, I am hosting a FREE online workshop on Thursday 5 September 7-8pm AEST (Melbourne) in collaboration with Wyndham Learning Festival:

    BOOST YOUR WORK VISIBILITY: 3 ESSENTIAL TIPS FOR INTROVERTS AND QUIET ACHIEVERS

Register at the link below, and a Zoom invite will be emailed to you before the workshop. 

https://www.wynlearnfestival.org.au/event/grow-your-visability-a

This episode was edited by Aura House Productions

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Serena Loh. 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, and today I've got career satisfaction coach Anthony Kuo all the way from New York City. Welcome, anthony, to the Quiet Warrior podcast.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

You're very welcome, Anthony. I've been looking at your LinkedIn profile and I see some similarities there, but also a lot of interesting differences. Tell me about your story of growing up in the US as an Asian person.

Speaker 2:

So I grew up in. My first several years of life were in Flushing, new York, which is very much a melting pot. There's a strong Asian population, lots of Chinese people, korean people yeah, like Queens, and Flushing especially is known for being a melting pot and I actually grew up without a real understanding of like that there are different races or different ethnic cultures, because they were just my friends, you know, as a, as a kid, I didn't really learn to apply labels to things. I came. That came later in life. It came and actually smacked me in the face.

Speaker 2:

When I was about seven or eight years old, my family moved to suburban New Jersey in a, you know it was a fairly well-to-do neighborhood. My parents were, you know, working very hard to move up the socioeconomic ladder and they specifically moved to this area for the school district, which is, of course, a very Asian American thing to do, and it was predominantly white. And when we moved I went from being one of many people who looked like me and didn't look like me and it was a it just that just felt normal to. All of a sudden I was the only Asian person in my entire grade. All of a sudden it was revealed to me that I was different somehow and and people treated me a little bit differently because of that, and that some of my what, what I now have the vocabulary for like cultural references were different.

Speaker 2:

You know, we, we had like, just even in food, what, what you ate for lunch? Uh, when I was in first and second grade, everyone kind of ate whatever you know, like I, you know I didn't grow up eating kimchi, but my green friends did, and like everyone, everyone just sort of ate what they brought. When I was in suburban New Jersey, I was weird for not having like mac and cheese and dino nuggets and I had the quote unquote, stinky food. And all of a sudden I was like, wait, I'm different somehow. This is weird.

Speaker 1:

And different, not in a good way.

Speaker 2:

It didn't feel good.

Speaker 1:

no, yeah, how did you deal with that? I mean, how old were you then when all this change happened?

Speaker 2:

I think I was eight years old, seven or eight years old. I dealt with it by surviving it. Did you ever talk to your parents about it.

Speaker 2:

Not really. No, I didn't really know that it was a thing to talk about. I didn't have very many like coping mechanisms, or at least not like the type of coping mechanisms that you might learn as an adult or if you went to therapy as a child, which I didn't. So the way I reacted, honestly, was just to become kind of secretive and become a little bit of a like to withdraw into myself, and so this is probably part of why we're talking um, because I became quite introverted and I, I, um, uh, I didn't have very many friends in elementary school for this reason, and it wasn't until middle school, when several school districts combined into one school where there was the next neighborhood over, had a much higher Asian population and all of a sudden I was like, and also just meeting different people who were not in my same school district, I got to start over a little bit and I made more friends in middle school.

Speaker 1:

School can be hard when you are not one of the majority. I think it's something we don't realize until we actually have to face it and we are on the minority side and then we suddenly realize we're different, but not necessarily different in a culturally accepted way or a way that feels safe for us. But then again, like you say, we didn't have the vocabulary for that and the coping mechanisms, and as Asians it's probably not something you go home and tell your parents about as well. It might be either brushed aside because it's not that critical, or focus on or you know, focus on your studies. Just show them what you can do, you know, just get the A grades, never mind what they say.

Speaker 2:

Well, the focusing on the studies, like, obviously it really benefited me in a ton of ways. I did very well in school. I went into you know I got into a good university and you know I learned how to learn, which is a fundamental skill that serves me to this day. But at the same time, all the time that I spent studying, I wasn't watching Nickelodeon, which is what all of my friends were watching and all of the kids in my school were watching, and they had a language to talk to each other that I was just not a part of. I didn't know what references they were making.

Speaker 1:

I know exactly what you mean, because when we moved to Australia as well, from Singapore, now that my kids are a lot older, my younger one tells me that that's something that she couldn't relate to her friends with as well, talking at school like what programs did you watch when you were a kid? And it's's completely different. So there isn't that common language. You're right, and it's those little things you know, seemingly irrelevant, trivial little things.

Speaker 1:

They do add up to someone's identity and sense of belonging they do for sure so now you are a career satisfaction coach as well as an NLP master practitioner, as well as an executive coach. Now I was very curious about the career satisfaction part, not just a career coach. So what is different about that? Besides helping someone find a job or explore their career options? What do you define as career satisfaction?

Speaker 2:

So career satisfaction is a very individual definition. I can tell you what the overarching frame is, but each individual is going to have their own definition of what that is. Because career satisfaction to me is when you can use your personality at work and your personality and all of its quirks and all of its wonderful uniqueness is engaged and appreciated and valued. And that is going to be very, very different depending on the person Right. Some people really really enjoy being around people and some people don't, or, at least you know, some people are fed by it and others are drained by it. Some people have a very concrete style where you have to be working with things with their hands that you can touch, and some people really thrive in the more abstract realms, with numbers or complex thoughts. So career satisfaction to me is all about figuring out what it takes for you to thrive. Based on that, asking the question where can I find that? And one of the things that differentiates the work that I do with more traditional career coaching is that, yes, resume, how do you find a job, et cetera. That is, of course, an important part of the process, but it is not a foregone conclusion, because we are optimizing for satisfaction as opposed to job change.

Speaker 2:

Satisfaction in many cases can be found just by having a difficult conversation with somebody at work. It could be found just by setting better boundaries, whether you are overt about it and telling somebody, no, I won't do that. Or just with yourself no, I won't sign on after five o'clock and answer emails late into the evening. About 30% of my clients that I see everyone comes in thinking they need a new job. It's, of course, a very natural reaction when you're fed up, but about 30% of the time it turns out that what they're actually looking for is accessible exactly where they are. They just need to reach for it. And something that is easily overlooked is the fact that career change is stressful. It's quite expensive energetically and emotionally, not to mention sometimes financially, and there are significant switching costs that come with a career change, and so if those can be avoided and you can get what you want without having to incur those costs, then you're going to be better off by making the adjustments closer to home.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a very, very important point you brought up, Anthony, that the switching costs can be considerable, Because sometimes we hear this very glib advice to, oh, just change your career, fire your boss, hire yourself, start your own business, as though it's really easy to do and you can just hop from one role to another. But it's actually also a significant identity switch because, whatever we may say, a lot of our identity is tied up in what we do and our job title, our status and all the things that come attached to that. And when you suddenly let go of all of that and there isn't a transition and you haven't processed the emotions and you're just going into that hustle mode and straight into something else that's completely new and you're not prepared for it, there's actually a lot of fallout.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, exactly. And an important thing to note is that when we experience that dynamic tension of I want to leave, but I want to stay, but I need to leave, but what about the paycheck? Every single person who comes through my office store virtually is usually dealing with a partial match. A partial match because if everything was good, it wouldn't be a conversation at all, you would just be happy, right. And if everything were bad, you would have already just left, you would have already made the change.

Speaker 2:

And so most of the time when somebody needs to talk to somebody like myself and to tangle through all of this, it's because there is some part of them that wants and is really craving change, and there's another part of them that really values something that is being provided through their current role. It could be the stability, but it could also, as you say, it could be the identity, it could be the prestige. It could be that they actually enjoy what they do, just don't enjoy the environment. It could be that they enjoy the environment, just don't enjoy what they do, right. And so a very important thing is to identify what it is that you value, so that you know what to preserve, so that you know how to, to to port it over into your next role or to with full consciousness.

Speaker 1:

And that always sounds very much more logical and linear when you're articulating it that way, but not so when you're actually deep in it, deep in the throes of going through that change and transition and you maybe are not quite in that cognitive headspace. More of an emotional tussle and an emotional rollercoaster roller coaster. So I imagine you would have your own career change or career satisfaction story, as well as in, you know, re-coaching days.

Speaker 2:

What were you doing work-wise? I was in corporate America. I was working for very large food manufacturing companies. My role was in strategic analytics and basically my job was to tell these mega corporations how to spend their millions and millions of dollars of advertising budget. I was basically charged with measuring the impact of their efforts and where it was successful, we say go, do that more, and where it was less than successful, cut back on those efforts.

Speaker 1:

And what was your experience like as being a quieter person in corporate America? How did you find a way to thrive?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I was actually quite good at my job. I started out being quite technically proficient with the modeling and the forecasting piece of it, but as it progressed in my career, it became apparent that talking to people was going to play a bigger role Because, ultimately, what I was doing was consulting. It was consultative in nature and that meant that there were clients that needed to be informed of my insights, and not only informed but be persuaded, because other. If they weren't persuaded and if they weren't going to take action upon what the data, what I was gleaning from the data, then there would actually be no value for my work. And I found that very challenging at first because in for some of the reasons that I mentioned before, I was on the quieter side of things, but also in Asian culture, on the quieter side of things, but also in Asian culture. You know we had a little bit of conversation about this beforehand that in Asian culture the way we show our respect is to defer to authority, to defer to our elders, our superiors, and you know Asian culture tends to be more hierarchical. And if I were working for an Asian company, that might've worked, but I was working for an American company based in Chicago. It was a very Midwestern style of culture and what that meant was that it was expected of me to speak up and I actually received feedback consistently for several years that they knew that I had something intelligent to say, but I wasn't saying it and they were kind of frustrated with me because they were like Anthony, the reason why we brought you here is so you can tell us what to do. So tell us what to do, please. And it took some encouragement, and especially in the rooms where I was speaking with, like, the business unit president and he would question me on what I was presenting. I was very nervous in those environments, but what I learned was not only the technical skill of telling stories with data, but also to stand my ground in those settings, to speak clearly and to not be afraid of advancing my own perspective, even when it's a little bit controversial.

Speaker 2:

There was one particular incident where there were conflicting viewpoints on how to treat, how to basically measure, a certain type of promotion, and I knew from the data that I had that you couldn't if the promotion netted $100, you couldn't count all of it, because some of it you would have gotten anyway.

Speaker 2:

So you maybe got $30 in net profit, and there were some people in the room who wanted to count all $100, in net profit, and there were some people in the room who wanted to count all $100 because they were incentivized to think that way.

Speaker 2:

Of course, in the context of this, we were trying to plan our supply chain to match with the demand, the consumer demand and they have to match up, because you can't over inventory and you can't under inventory either, for different reasons. It's very costly to mismatch the demand, and so I knew that I had to prevail in this argument, and it was very uncomfortable because it got heated, because what I was suggesting is that the efforts that these people were trying to take credit for it meant I was taking away 70% of their credit. Ultimately, through a combination of a little bit of fist pounding and a lot of trying to appeal to the person and like employing what I now learned, as it's called emotional intelligence, the process I learned after I left this company. It was dubbed the Anthony Quo process, and they persisted to use it at least for another couple of years, and it actually worked.

Speaker 1:

It sounds like you left quite a legacy.

Speaker 2:

That's a big word, but I left an impact.

Speaker 1:

You certainly did for a quieter person and a person from a minority group as well. It sounds to me with the fist pounding and all that. It's a combination of hard and soft power, like we talked about before this interview. So how did you, as a quieter person, stand your ground, hold on to your own power, your own boundaries, without being intimidated in an environment like that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a very useful framework that I learned is called French and Raven's Five Powers. These are like organizational psychologists and, very briefly, there are different sources of power. There are some that come from your position, if you're just like a senior person. There are some that come from your position, if you're just like a senior person. There are some that come from the power of, uh, punishment and reward, um, and then there are. Those are the hard powers, right. And then there are the softer powers uh, that are uh.

Speaker 2:

There's one called referent power, which is like how well liked are you, uh, and there's another one, referent power, which is like how well liked are you? And there's another one called expert power and there's another one that's like gatekeeping power, access, and so I was in a position where I did not possess any of the harder powers I so that meant I had to lean hard into my soft power. I was pretty well liked, which is part of why anybody gave me the time of day, but I also had developed a reputation as an expert, as somebody who could be relied on to tell the truth, no matter how unpleasant it was. And so, and also through the storytelling piece, like learning to tell compelling stories with the data to back it up. It gave me a lot of expert power that I could lean on. So, through the combination of being well-liked and developing a very workable rapport with people and, uh, being confident in my expertise, um, helped me stand up to the um the other forms of power that were present in the room.

Speaker 1:

That's a brilliant summary. So you're talking about emotional intelligence, but also about the non-negotiable, which is your own expertise, which you can develop. You have full autonomy over that, and I think introverts and quiet achievers particularly, who are very expertise heavy, always very focused on their own craft, that's already a strength that they have and that they can lean into even more. But to also remember to cultivate that, the soft skills you talked about, the soft power, the ability to get along with people, is not to be underestimated, and it doesn't mean that you know one has to be loud or chatty or outgoing, isn't it? It's really about you know the depth and the quality of your interactions with people, how well you listen, how well you observe, how you're making room for different points of view and finding that middle path or a way to meet people halfway so that you know both of you are accomplishing your goals.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there were, and this is part of why I excelled in my role, because I could I hold space for multiple points of view. Some of my colleagues struggled in that respect. Actually, this is actually getting into the beginning of how I started to make the transition into coaching, because they came more from the data science end of things. They were like pure statisticians and academics, and they struggled in the business environment where sometimes the math had to be a little bit fuzzy and sometimes business considerations caused business or even political considerations caused the course of action to differ from the purely hard, logical answer. And especially when we came to giving our advice on the results of marketing campaigns, one side of the room the highly analytical people looked purely at the numbers. But then the business side, especially the more um creative brand leaders, uh, were very emotionally attached to their work, and so I at least had the wherewithal to to have the empathy that um uh, not only would they be defensive from a, a professional standpoint, but they would also be in a, in a position where they might feel the emotional blow of having their baby be called ugly, for lack of a better term, and so that helped me to actually really temper my interactions with them and to really understand well.

Speaker 2:

There are multiple forms of return for a brand, not just the hard dollars and cents. So what else were you looking for? Oh well, can we measure that? And it became a collaboration. My job was particularly like. The role I occupied can be very difficult and adversarial if marketing, or whoever you're trying to measure, views you as a threat. And what I was able to do was to position myself in a way where I was collaborating with them and helping them to perform even better, rather than give them a report card.

Speaker 1:

I think that's a huge difference there, because in one, you are judging them and calling their baby ugly, and the other one, you are on their side, you're helping them, you're collaborating with them, you're helping them find more ways to succeed. So, of course, they're going to see you as one of the team and you are their cheerleader and champion. Now that's a wonderful reframe. It's a very positive and empowering way, very healthy way, of connecting with our different units in the same organization and realizing that actually we're working towards ultimately the same goal. We're just coming from different angles. So I love that you use the word empathy. I think that's a very important trait to develop as well. So what would your advice be for someone who thinks that they're not very satisfied in their career right now? What would you advise them to do first?

Speaker 2:

So the first thing is to listen to your dissatisfaction, because it's an important signal. A lot of the time we are tempted to uh, oh, just be grateful. Right, just be grateful. You have a job, uh, and yes, you can be grateful, but also you can pay attention to what is true, which is that you're not happy, and, more importantly, get curious about it.

Speaker 2:

I remember being quite unhappy in my role. So I was good at it, I enjoyed segments of it and I was well respected. So on the outside, I had nothing to complain about, but on the inside I was spiraling deeper and deeper into a depression and I would come home more and more drained and exhausted every single day. And for a long time I thought the problem was me, that I just couldn't be happy with a good situation. What I wish I knew then, that I teach now, is that a very important thing to do is to characterize what is it that you're not getting and what is it that you are getting that is keeping you here, and go beyond the sort of low-hanging fruit of like, well, I value my pay and my security and I want to be more excited. Sure, that is all true, but I would challenge anyone to go a little bit deeper into what exactly is it that you enjoy about how I was successful with my counterparts was because I actually got to work with the person and I actually really enjoy collaborating, developing warm, collaborative and helpful relationships where I get to be an expert, I get to help somebody shine better.

Speaker 2:

What I wasn't getting was a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning and importance, because I was working for, you know, companies that sold cookies and candy and things like that, and they are great products.

Speaker 2:

You know, I have them in my pantry but ultimately I didn't feel like it mattered to me and it was increasingly hard to make these companies millions of more dollars. You know, I really didn't feel like I was making any difference, and one of the things that I learned is important to me is feeling like what I do matters, and so you could see how putting that puzzle together helps to inform why I enjoy so much what I do now, because I do get that warm, collaborative interaction where somebody the person I'm working with gets to shine. But also, to me at least, I'm working on something of profound importance Like career satisfaction or dissatisfaction makes or breaks your experience of life, or at least it has the potential to, and with how prevalent the career dissatisfaction is like. There's just so much stress and anger and loneliness and sadness that if even just in one person I can help you have a better quality of life because you're spending the place where you spend the vast majority of your prime hours and your prime years is better, I feel like that's important.

Speaker 1:

I have just one last question as one Asian to another, with careers and career choices what was your parents' reaction when you explained that you were not happy with your career and you wanted to go out and do your own thing?

Speaker 2:

Um, they were understanding but also understandably concerned. Um, because I I didn't really say very much about it, I didn't really share my, like, ongoing experience with them. Experience with them, um and, and so the context of when I told them that I was changing was that I just told them I was quitting my safe, prestigious corporate job. Um and and uh, you know, to their credit, they were actually very supportive, but they were also concerned because, of course, as a parent, they wanted me to be okay, they wanted me to be doing well and to them, at least to their initial understanding of these things, a safe job was doing well. But what I believe they have come to understand about me that they had a sense of when I told them and I think they have had a developing sense of as the years have gone by what I consider doing well is different from that, and so I do think I'm lucky that my parents could appreciate that and supported me from the get-go. I think they just were, they were apprehensive that I was leaping into the unknown.

Speaker 1:

And you certainly have leaped into the unknown, but with a purpose and with a very clear idea of what you are actually here to do, and that is to help other people perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls that you have faced yourself, and I think you're doing wonderfully helping people navigate because, like you say, career is. You know, it takes up so much of our prime years and our energy and our mental space. It's a source of joy and satisfaction, but it can also be a source of conflict and a lot of sleepless nights. So it's wonderful that you do what you do. Now, what is the best way for people to reach out to?

Speaker 2:

you. So my website is untamedcareercom, if you want to. If anyone wants to learn more about what I do, I have some resources on there and there's a there's a forum to reach out. Untamed career is also my handle on all the socials Facebook, linkedin, instagram.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic Anthony. Thank you so much for joining me on the Quiet Warrior podcast today. Thank you for your wisdom.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much for your interesting questions. It was a really fun conversation.

Speaker 1:

All right, and that was another episode of the Quiet Warrior podcast. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please reach out to Anthony on his socials in the show notes, and also rate and review this episode and share it with your friends. Thank you and see you 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.