Frame superpowers, not qualifications

In my 25 years of an international career in Hong Kong, Canada, China, and the UK. I have never had problems finding a job. Read this blog to see what helps me transition between jobs, professions, and countries.

Selana lives in North Wales, close to the England border. She previously lived and worked in Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, and China. Her career spans from music, education, and coaching, to cross-border dispute resolution.

My first strategy is reframing my superpower. Qualification is just the beginning, what I need when I transition between borders is strategies and a mindset that help me make sense of everything I do and adapt to new conditions.

My great grandfather was a businessman in China, and he came to Hong Kong after the war and rented a big piece of land to grow rice because he predicted that the price of rice will be inflated during the war. Fortunately, the price of rice remained stable, and he decided to reframe his situation and used his land to welcome friends and family from our hometown in the western part of China to Hong Kong. Gradually, a village was formed by my relatives and allies. So I grew up in a village of cousins, uncles, aunties, and family friends. Everyone was connected to everyone else. I was a fertile playground that nurtured my communication skills.

At home, lived with my great grandparents, grandparents, parents, uncles, and 3 siblings in two houses that were right next to each other. When I lived with eleven people in the same house, communication and negotiation was survival skill. I also became a natural leader when my grandparents, mom, dad, and myself are the eldest of our generations.

My love of languages came from my dad. He was fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English. He had two master’s degrees in foreign languages and linguistics. We often had visitors from America, UK, and Canada in our home and dad also took us to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, and the US during our summer holidays.

I was always a top student in music and one of my dad’s colleagues gave me private voice lessons. By age 17, I was a champion of the under 18 solo singing competition at the Hong Kong School Music Festival and I became a founding member of the Opera Society of Hong Kong before moving to Canada.

“Dad, I wanted to study music instead of business,” I asked for my dad’s permission through a long-distance phone call from Canada to Hong Kong.

“Sure!”. My dad is economical with words. He answered without out missing a beat. I never imagined my dad would support my dream so quickly.

During my first year of music studies, I decided to audition for studying as a professional singer. However, my audition did not go well and I felt really sad.

“No one will stop you from performing, but when you have a teaching license, you can have a stable income!” My voice professor, Elizabeth Peter, started me thinking about keeping performing as a side hustle, and it was the start of my journey of a portfolio career years later as I am still an active performer today.

My music education degree was very successful. I conducted the University of Western Ontario (UWO) Singers, and I was on the Dean’s Honour List when I graduated. Out of my whole music course, the most important subject was “Music Communication” which became the bedrock of my next 20 years of international music education career.

“Why is it called music communication?” I honestly had no clue about the course when I chose it. I enrolled out of curiosity because I had always been interested in communication. When the course started, I realized it was about the music theory I have been learning since childhood. What was different was being on the other side as a teacher of music.

Music is truly an international language. It was a passport to tap into any culture, any language, and at any time.

My first job was teaching music from Grade 1 to Grade 12 in an international school in Hong Kong. Since then, I taught in 4 different international schools in Hong Kong and Beijing. Working with colleagues and students from over 50 nationalities was challenging at first and I learned that people are all the same, no matter what their backgrounds are. They all want to be treated with appreciation, respect, fairness, and autonomy. My education experience laid a good foundation for my international coaching and mediation career later.

My Superpower is Communication. It is my core competence since my very beginning in early childhood and it has been reinforced during the first half of my career. It still shows up in the whole of my portfolio career as a coach, mediator, researcher, conductor, and business owner.

If you'd like to learn more strategies and mindset about how the way I recalibrated myself over and over in the past 25 years in different countries, professions, or situations. Follow my blog for the rest of this week.

What is your superpower and how do you frame it when you face a new situation or in a new environment? Please share with me in the comment below and I look forward to hearing from you.