After 14 years as General Secretary of the Singapore Kindness Movement, I passed the baton to my much younger successor last September. I immediately jumped back into the business of law, managing a midsize law firm. In my first three months, I experienced some challenges which led me to feel that I had descended from an exhilarating mountain top to a deep valley experience.
It is a contrast between a thriving mode of fostering kinder society with the support of a very experienced team of passionate young people whose values are aligned to the corporate core values and a surviving mode of trying to build a team. That I have been away from law practice for almost 20 years is a huge challenge in itself. The changes in the legal profession have been far-reaching. I also inherited a team that worked in silos for many years, and I did not sense a common bond other than a convenient transactional relationship.
Within the first few weeks, I found myself doing what is necessary to survive. The firm itself was in a surviving mode, having no proper office to speak of, where all the professionals were mostly working from home. There was no clear operating and communication system as much of the communication was done in an ad hoc manner through multiple Whatsapp chat groups. Basic expectations and commitments were not exactly in place and dissatisfactions were quickly bubbling up and muddying the waters of working relationships. It was frustrating, to say the least.
I felt I was in the state of simply getting by, fighting fires of discontent and alleged unfulfilled promises. I knew that I needed to move quickly from just being able to meet the basic needs of the stakeholders to co-creating a common vision and mission for the firm to make real progress moving forward.
The most fundamental thing that needs to change to move from a surviving to a thriving mode is a change of mindset. Surviving is a scarcity mindset focusing on a grim struggle to just barely get by. Thriving is an abundance mindset – living and thinking abundantly. To do that I need to position myself to respond effectively to the challenges, assessing the possibilities and potentials, recognizing the inherent dangers and opportunities, adapting quickly including changing of plans to achieve the best possible outcome, and making hard-nosed and timely decisions.
Taking a hard look at the resources available to me, I promptly reframed my thoughts from merely surviving to positively thriving, thus changing the direction in which I wish to drive my energy.
Here are some steps I am taking to maintain a thriving mode in managing the firm.
- Reordering our vision and mission and co-creating corporate values to be embraced by all team members.
- Prioritizing finding an office space as a hub for our team building. This space is now found, and I am working on persuading all team members to embrace a hybrid approach to spend about half the time in the office for interaction, mutual support and team building.
- Choosing the right battle to fight to win the war of reconstructing the firm. There have been some false and defamatory allegations about my leadership after I let a member of the team go. I decided not to waste my energy responding to them for I need not fight all battles to win the war.
- Intentionally spending time with team members to motivate and encourage their professional and interpersonal relationships within the firm.
- Looking out for potential recruits who resonate with our core values to join our team.
On the personal front, I seek to thrive with the following action plan.
- Maintaining a routine of nurturing my spiritual, mental, professional, physical, social and emotional health. I do exercises in all those areas to cultivate a balanced development of my being.
- Taking time to keep connections and relationships with significant others – family, friends, mentors, mentees and others with common interests and passions.
- Making myself accountable to a small circle of longtime friends whom I trust to act as my accountability board. They will speak truth to me in love and will have no fear in chastising or correcting me when I stray from my declared personal values.
- Empowering myself by acknowledging that I have no control over many things, but I can always control the way I react to any given situation. What I cannot control I leave it to God. What I can control I deal with appropriate justice and love. The Serenity Prayer is very helpful to me: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
- Be the best version of myself by being true to my personal values – practice faith, hope and love courageously. I strive to be fervent in all I do with good will to all and malice to none.
In writing this piece, I found that believing in my own self-worth and feeling good about myself is the starting point to achieving the thriving mode.
The current “bailan” (摆烂) subculture in China (literally “let it rot”) is a mindset of giving up on trying to improve a situation. It is used by young people to express their frustration with social expectations and their powerlessness to change them. It is more pessimistic than the earlier “tang ping” (躺平) culture (literally “lying flat”), which describes a lifestyle of minimal effort after rejecting societal pressures. These are examples of loss of self-worth among Chinese youths leading to a defeatist mindset of living in a surviving mode.
In this regard, my faith is a great booster to me as I believe that I am created and endowed with intrinsic self-worth by my Creator, and I am purposed to thrive and not just to survive.
This article was contributed by Dr William Wan, 77, an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow with the Yeo Boon Khim Mind Science Centre. He is a Senior Fellow of the School of Positive Psychology and was the previous General Secretary of the Singapore Kindness Movement. Passionate about making a difference to Singapore, Dr Wan contributes to several non-profit organisations and is also an advocate of active ageing. He sums up his journey thus far as such:
“A life lived in multiple chapters – from adversarial litigation to mediating kindness. Now breaking the silver ceiling with spring in the autumn of my life.”
