She Speaks: My Hyper Island Industry Research Project Journey
Part I — how “speaking up” led to a project
“She speaks:
O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art
As glorious to this night, being o’er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven” — Romeo & Juliet
People are surprised when I tell them I use to hate public speaking. The truth is, not only did I hate public speaking, speaking in general was often a Shakespearean tragedy. As a kid growing up in China, my mantra was “not to be.” The best example of my devastating shyness came during class elections in the second grade. In a first brush with democracy, I was voted the “language arts rep” by my classmates (other reps include “math,” “gym,” “labor,” and “all-around” in the Communist youth pioneer system). Having become the de facto “best” language arts student, I would also have the honor of collecting homework in said subject. Authoritarianism then dealt my next hand when my teacher told me that I was simply too quiet to be a rep, and gave the role to another classmate.
With a budding career in leadership snatched from me, I turned even more inward. Moving to America at the age of nine, alien syllables reduced me to even more of a “mute.” But by all accounts my childhood was normal. Falling head first into the stereotype of “the quiet Asian girl” might have even been a survival mechanism. After armfuls of The Babysitters’ Club I’d eventually come to comprehend English. The characters in my diary gave way to the curves of alphabets. As for shyness, by high school I found a group of friends and managed to cobble enough leadership roles to limp onto the model minority bandwagon.
Talking in front of people, however, that was a mystery I never solved, and by college, it had become a colossal source of anxiety. The American classroom celebrates participation, discussion, and the seminar as a cornerstone of education. For me they felt like entering into a sarcophagus, and I the mummy, unable to speak or raise my hand beyond my chest. Others were always more brilliant. Their words bloomed in my ear and their confidence shuttered mine. I began to hate the bright ones who spoke with ease and encyclopedic knowledge. Speak up! Haunted an inner voice. This became such a problem that during university, I began to intentionally avoid seminar classes.
The phenomenon continued at the workplace, where I perfected an exhausting practice of writing out presentations word for word, and would either half-read or memorize a presentation. When I moved from New York to Beijing to work for a creative agency, a strange thing happened. Consulting with clients and leading teams forced me to speak more. I still felt awkward, but more words were tumbling out. While I was posing eloquence, however, I noticed that it wasn’t just me having trouble with this. My entire office, full of introverted creatives was in some ways even more handicapped. Our company-wide team meetings were dominated by directors and managers, and extracting ideas during brainstorming sessions was often like pulling teeth. Yet when you sit down with each creative one on one, they had so much to say. What gives? I thought. They reminded me of myself in college, never speaking in class, but handing over a five page reflection on a reading when the teacher asked for two paragraphs. At the agency, we’d experimented with various new structures, policy transparency, design thinking tools, company bonding time, but nothing tipped the scale.
I went to Hyper Island at that juncture of my life. Immediately, I was astounded by an intentional practice of “speaking up” on a daily level. Instead of the traditional classroom where the professor tosses a question, or when group projects become a minefield of unresolved personal conflict, the school emphasized how to better team, collaborate and learn together. This manifested not by hand-raising from the loudest people in the room, but speaking in turn one by one, often answering reflective questions rooted in experiential learning. The establishment of a safe space and rigorous daily practice would often lead someone go deeper in their reflection. Instead of the surface discourse that dominate workplace conversations, conflicts and insecurities are confronted more frequently. Their vulnerability opened more space for the group. “Speaking up” became “showing up,” the idea that you were not only saying something, but embodying a deeper honesty with your very presence.
Somewhere along this practice, I noticed that not only was I working with people in a more productive and meaningful way, my own allergy to “speaking up” fell away little by little. The more I heard myself, the more deeply I shared, the more I “got over” myself. It wasn’t just me. It was also hearing more from other “quiet” people, and this sudden surge of diversity in opinion and experience nurtured immense creativity. While some leaned in, others leaned out, learning that listening is often as valuable as speaking. Optimized for learning, Hyper created the environment for speaking up and active listening with group reflection and feedback. In a post-Brexit, post-Trump election world, safe space might sound like a politically loaded term, but it was exactly this safe container for often difficult, fractious, honest conversations that moved the whole team forward, while building individual confidences. This safe space wasn’t about avoiding differences, but meeting them fully and bringing people together. It took bravado and deep vulnerability.
One of the most memorable moments during the program for me was a self-initiated skillshare lunch for public speaking. What was a chat between three women grew to more than eight. Maybe it was the nature of the topic, but the women who came were kindred spirits. We shared a discomfort with not just public speaking, but speaking up in general. Instead of sharing tips and tricks, we spent the entire lunch identifying where we thought this fear came from. One by one, personal histories revealed one or two critical events in our life made us shut down, and grow inward. A year later when the entire class came back together for graduation, many of the women remarked how deeply the school had unblocked and transformed them as people.
It was this development that led to my Industry Research Project [IRP], Better Teamwork in China. My personal growth at Hyper was so vast, I wanted to explore if this was possible in the context of creative industries in China where I’d worked and met so many great people. I wanted to find out for a country known for hierarchy and collectivism, was team productivity and creativity approached with learning in mind, and what philosophies were managers adhering to? Finally, I would conduct workshops where I could test out methods of ‘speaking in turns” with group reflection and feedback, and see if these methods would be received with great ease, or great fear.
Stay tuned for Part 2 where I’ll talk about my learnings from the IRP.
Bio for some context: I’m a writer based in Beijing and co-founder of Northern Quarter. We design and build digital products for team self-improvement. I’m a graduate of Hyper Island Digital Media Crew 6 and have spoken at forums like The Future of Work London and SheSays. Before that, I used to manage a creative agency in Beijing.
