Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

You listen to what others say about you often enough that you start believing them. This is particularly true  when others point out your “limitations” and “shortcomings”. I have gone home feeling angry because a co-worker, intentionally or not, wronged me.  It really used to irritate me when some individuals infer that I am somehow in my position because of preferential treatment or that I’m not qualified. I have been asked jokingly “How many asses did I have to kiss to get my position” or that I’m a “neophyte”.

I convinced myself I was not qualified for a position because I don’t have the education, I don’t have the abilities to do the job, I don’t have the experience or I’m of the wrong color.  For years, I played the “victim” role.  At some point, I guess I got tired of feeling sorry for myself and I stopped apologizing for what others have pointed out as my shortcomings.  I also realized I needed to adjust how I view myself and proactively took actions to get me away from the victim mentality.

Below are some things I have come to believe and  try to practice. By no means am I always confident in my abilities but I think my self-doubts have certainly become less.

• Surround yourself with those that believe in you. From time to time, I spend time with my mentors to be reminded that I am okay. It helps that I have supervisors and some co-workers that believe in me. What helps me the most is that I have a partner, my wife, who provides me unconditional support.

• Be your biggest cheerleader. You are your biggest ally and sometimes, you may be your only ally.
  

• Don’t take it personal. I read a quote somewhere that went like this “hurt people hurt people.” Unfortunately, in our lives,  we will deal with folks who take out their anger, jealousies, insecurities on others.

• Focus on your strengths.  In my case, I like talking to people and I love being able to develop teams, getting people to work together, helping motivate others and so I’ve focused on learning more about how to be a better project manager, a better leader.

• Stop trying to get people’s respect. Aim to do the right things and respect will hopefully be the by-product. But, doing things just so you can get people’s respect is just a waste of time. There will always be those that no matter what you do, you will never be equal to them in their eyes.

• Keep “poisonous” thoughts out of your mind. I once read this good advice – “You wouldn’t want a poisonous snake to enter your home. Why would you allow poisonous thoughts enter your mind?”

• Stop apologizing. Your accomplishments did not come overnight so you do deserve your them. In addition, when you do make mistakes, just acknowledge them as mistakes, learn from them and move on. We’re our own harshest critic sometimes.

• Stop taking yourself too seriously. No one’s perfect, we won’t always accomplish our goals, but doesn’t mean we should consider ourselves as failures.

Any other advice you can add to the list above?

It’s 2 am and I’m sitting in front of my computer, working on random things, thinking about what life would be like 5, 10 years from now. I’m turning 39 in a week or so and I couldn’t help but to reflect on how blessed I’ve been. I have a wonderful relationship with my wife of 10 years, wonderful family, great job and seemingly a bright future ahead. It’s certainly been a journey to this point. There was once a time when I was young in the Philippines when my family and I, four of us, lived in a room no bigger than 15×15 square feet.  We had to cook outside on a gas stove burner and walked a couple of hundred yards to use the restroom.  I remember my mom and I walking from house to house selling some packaged meat products and plates. There was one time when she was doing a demo of supposedly hard-to-break plates and when she dropped one to show how durable they are, it broke in to pieces. Somehow, maybe because I was too young to know what being poor is all about, or maybe because my parent always had food on the table. I think I finally realized how much my parents sacrificed when I was about in 3rd grade and we were living with my aunt’s family. It was during Christmas and my cousins opened their gifts. They had candies, etc. When I opened mine, I found a half-torn paper money as a gift from my mother,  the same half-torn paper money I had seen in her wallet days before. I think that’s when I finally realized there really wasn’t a Santa Claus or rather my mom was Santa Claus. Looking back at that period of my life, I really appreciate what my parents did for my sister and I.

When we moved to the US, my parents took jobs they could get soon after we got here. My mother worked at a fast food pizza place and for a shopping store in the stock room for years. My dad worked multiple jobs for years, including as janitor for a local mall. I still can’t figure out how he had the energy to do what he did. He worked 2 jobs and on his days off, he took side jobs with my mom to clean stores and even mowed lawns.  He left the house at around 6 am and worked until 1pm or so, he’d come home, take a nap and leave again to work from 3 to 11 at night. One of the proudest moments for me was seeing those big posters you’d see at the mall with my dad’s picture and with a caption that read something like “Ask Jose (my dad’s name)  about his son about UCSB”.  In my entire life, I don’t remember my parents asking me for anything in return for what they did for me.  To me, graduating college was given. My parents never really forced me to study hard or to motivate me. I guess I was one of those “good kid” that really always wanted to please them.

I’m not the smartest but somehow throughout my life, either through luck or God-given will, I was always presented with opportunities much bigger than I anticipated or I thought I deserved.  I look at my career and I’m not even sure how I got to where I am now other than I feel like I was always at the right place at the right time. There were certainly those few individuals that really opened doors for me.

I’m not sure what the future holds but to this point in my life, I am thankful for what has been given to me and a big part of it is because of my parents. Whatever happens in the future, all I know is to this point, I’ve lived a blessed life.

Update: This article “Google adds enterprise social networking features to Google+” (Aug 29, 2012) is what I was expecting when I wrote this blog post below,  days after Google+ was released in July, 2011.

Some may consider me an avid social media user. I enjoy using social media and mobile devices for personal and professional use. When Google+ was introduced a couple of weeks ago, I was very intrigued by its features including the following:

• Circles provide a way of categorizing Google+ contacts into groups. This feature also borrows from twitter in that there’s no mutual approval needed to be connected.
• Huddle is a group messaging system via your mobile phone.
• Hang out is a group video chat up to 10 people.
• Sparks is a personalized content feed based on your interests
• Instant Upload provides users ability to upload images/videos to their private album from their mobile phones.
• Checkin which provides user ability to “checkin” like foursquare and facebook Places.

I was particularly impressed with the concepts of Circles because it seems to be so much more straightforward than facebook in managing lists and thereby easier to target the recipients of your posts.

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