Reframing

One of the career preparation opportunities offered by the @SFUMBA is a Mentorship Program. This program pairs individuals with strong business experience with students from the MBA program who are seeking to expand their networks and gain important guidance and counsel about their careers. Yesterday, I had my first mentorship meeting and have been pondering our discussion.

One of the pieces of feedback I received from my mentor was about the frequency of negative words that I use to describe myself. One of the things that I know about myself is that I have a strong "values radar." When I see something that violates my values, I feel an overwhelming urge to speak up. Unfortunately, this has been difficult in some of my past work experiences. The result of this is to turn what should be a positive attribute (strong values) and turned it into something that I am negative about. "I'm too outspoken, narrow-minded, harsh."

My mentor urged me to attend to this - to consider reframing this sense of values as a positive quality. In her experience, more companies want employees who can bring a strong value set to the work environment.

So, my task for the week (and beyond), is to work to minimize the internal voice that says "you're too x" and instead to view my sense of values as an asset and not a character flaw.