A cross culture and communication specialist: Isabelle Min at TEDxItaewon

Good afternoon. This is who I am. It's an honor for me to be here today, among so many of you. We're all asking, what drives you? I almost hear your silent question, what drives you? Well, let's check out who I am first. My name is Isabel Min, and I'd like to introduce myself in terms of the numbers. That's pretty pathetic, isn't it? 13 schools and 25 years of career. So these are some of the things that I've done. I say some. And I, too, share my previous speaker's love for ocean, because most of the years that I grew up, I was near the ocean, Barbados, Brazil, Libya, Thailand. And today, this is what I call what I do. So, can you imagine what drives me? What's a confession to make, actually? Because many times when I introduce myself in these numeric things, people first notice the number of continents and the languages that I speak. And that sometimes intimidates people. And the principal reason why I am here today is to share with you that the world is not really just one-sided. That behind what you've just seen and the career that you've just seen is somebody else as well. Somebody who had to go through many challenges. Ambition? That'd be great. Direction or hope? How can you imagine somebody who went through a succession of 13 schools to have a direction? Hope? Dreams? I wish. I wish I had had a mentor. Or even parents who could guide me. But it must have been challenging for them to guide somebody. You know, when you're going through all these countries, how do you do that? Professors? Not really. And in my college days, we were so full of demonstrating that I don't even remember what I studied. So I graduated without hope, without dreams, without much of a motivation. And I think that's the story I want to share. But what I did have all through this were the questions. I had my questions in life. What are these questions? I'm going to share with you five of them. As I shared with you, I graduated in communication-related department. And I started my work in public relations and marketing. What that meant was that I was working as an agent, as an account executive for media, clients, clients like Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, helping them get them publicized. And I was interacting with hundreds of people. As a result, I became very, very affable, very friendly. I was one of those people who knew how to network. I had many friends. But then started coming up these questions, which is very typical, perhaps somebody who always searches for self-identity. I started asking, am I friendly to people because they are who they are? Or is it their position? In other words, in a more cross-cultural world, is it because they are the cup, that I like them, and I'm the ul? And once you have that question, it just wouldn't go away. So that took me away from public relations and marketing. Upfront, in a more obvious way, it must have seemed like, Isabel, this aggressive person is moving on to national television. No. But my question, internal question, was driving me. Do I like people for who they are or what they are? So when I moved on to this national television, I realized that out of, say, 100 people that I knew, I would at least have three people who are really my friends. And that sort of theory stayed on. So today, I can say that I have at least double dozens, two dozens, sorry, of friends who are really there with me, despite my thick and thin. That's one question I answered. Then, as I was working for this national television, it started with a radio program called Annyeong Seoul, for which I was doing basically the producer, the dancer, the singer, and the entertainer, telling what's going on in Seoul. And it was fun. That went on for four years. Another four years, I dedicated to working with television side doing the 9 o'clock news. And as a result, I became inadvertently a simultaneous interpreter. I wasn't trained at school, but what do you do? You are thrown into the water when no news comes in, and you still have to announce it. What do you do? You just have to interpret it. So as an English anchor for this national TV, I had to learn how to swim by becoming a simultaneous interpreter, and that became very handy as a second job. So whilst I was doing the broadcasting, I was also working as a simultaneous interpreter, as an emcee, and money came in. And it was fortunate because at that time, I was also raising a kid at home, and I was only working a portion of my time, maximum six hours. But I was making double the income that others were making while working full time. And it wasn't easy to give it up because it was just so easy. And so I started harboring this question, Do I work for money, or do I work because I like working? What's my drive? What do you think? What do you think I learned? What do you think I did? When it came time for the television to close the English news and move on to Arirang days, I saw that as an opportunity. So even though I had an opportunity to move on, I quit. And I jumped into the dirt road to a set of venture work, developing programs, selling, marketing for an American firm. And as a result, we started building cross-cultural programs, which comes as no surprise, no money, very little money. So suddenly, I was faced with having to bring in my own car, spending my own time, making very little, to build a program, to build a business. Moreover, for the first time, I was working without a big name behind me. Previously, I used to work in the 63 DLI building, the biggest buildings. And suddenly, here I was, no name, dirt road, kicking. So those 12 years really put me where I am today. And what do you think I got as an answer? Passion? Sorry? Work for love. Work for love. I know it's love because I can be there without having eaten anything. And I could be going on and on, talking about culture. Recently, I was interviewed, and they said, what do you do when you are developing a program? And I said, what do you mean? I develop my program all the time. There's not a moment that I'm not breathing culture, thinking about culture, observing culture, or giving advices on culture. So I don't know where my work ends or where my work starts. So that's another answer that I got by actually throwing my career away and starting something totally new. And this is a question that I got for a long time because I was very fortunate to have had leaders who were very prominent in each industry as I was spending all those years in Korea. And along the way, I used to wonder, because, you know, inadvertently, you learn so many of the good things that they have, the strength, but you also have a lot of behind the talk. They're saying, oh, this person is so biased. This person will only hire men. This is what. So I used to observe and wonder, does a person change because of the position, or is it the inmate inclination that comes up when you no longer have to hide it? I wondered. And I wondered through my 20s, 30s, and 40s. My answers changed. Initially, in my 20s, I used to criticize. I used to say, you know, people are not supposed to change. They ought to know better. And it is so flimsy to be one way when you are the ul, the low, the underdog, and then to change and have an attitude when you are above. I used to witness these leaders who, in public, were so nice, but in the sauna, for example, they would actually un-disrobe and let their assistants pick up their clothes. So I wondered. And so my criticism in my 20s, in 30s, as I started observing more leaders, I realized perhaps that's not it. Perhaps the environment changes you. It's not your fault. When you are surrounded by people who are so busy, brown-nosing, trying to appease you, how would you know the difference? And you cannot help, but because you're human, you have to change. That was my thought. And then in my 40s, I concluded that, yes, your positions, your environments can change you, but ultimately the responsibility lies on us. How? By surrounding ourselves with people who can tell us things. By surrounding ourselves with people who care and who will tell the truth. It is the responsibility of the leaders to continue to listen and to communicate. So I'm back to the position one. You have to surround yourself with the right people. It's your responsibility. And this was another question that came in the last 12 years. As I developed cross-cultural programs explaining about Korean culture, about the generation gap that existed, and also in my own private ways with my friends, I heard more and more people say there's such a huge generation gap between the Koreans in their 40s and the young Koreans. And I started questioning, is that true? Is it really right? Yes, generation gap does exist, but is it possible for somebody who's older to catch it up? So when the opportunity came for me to mentor, I took it up, and I was very successful. For two consecutive terms, I started mentoring, but that wasn't enough because it's inofficial, informal. So when an opportunity came for me to teach, I took it. Upfront, again, the motivation must have seemed like, oh, Isabel Min is expanding to yet another field. But I was driven by my internal drive of question. Can I or can I not bridge the gap? And today, for sure, I know that, yes, there is a generation gap, but ultimately, people still feel the same thing. We still harbor the similar experiences that can be shared. Times have changed, but we still can communicate. So there's a saying in Korean, must you actually go and put your finger in the bean curd, doenjang, to actually know the difference? I was one of them. I had to actually go in, stick it out, taste it to know that it's a bean curd paste. And finally, the question that I have today is, is there a way for people to communicate effectively across cultures? And it's a question that I have still, so I'd rather share with you a nugget of what I have learned along the way. I learned that culture, at the essence, is survival, that it filters our perspective, dictating the way we see the world. It's a filtering. I learned that the most important thing that we can do in cross-cultural situations is to pause and to reflect, because the more crossing culture happens, the more reflective you become. You gain insights. And that we wear different cultural hats or glasses. I've learned that it is important for us to grow cross-cultural muscles, above all, that with repetition of pausing and looking at, we are able to grow the muscle. And this is why, because we are edge of a new world. Things are happening now today, and our children will grow in it. And this world is called the cross-cultural world. So though I do not have yet an answer to whether the two cultures can communicate or not, I have some nuggets at this point. And the most important lesson that I learned, that I would like to share with you today, are not my questions, but that even for somebody who didn't start motivated, who didn't start with ambition or dreams, hold on to your questions, because in this world of too much information, TMI, there are answers everywhere. And if you pose the questions, answers will come. That I can guarantee you. In all my years, keep observing, keep looking, keep looking out, and you will have the answers. So my question is, what's your question? Thank you.