shorter antenna, speak-up at the wrong time..

For most of my career of 10+ years, I was a non-manager. I witnessed various managers around me exhibiting various signs of minor incompetence and occasional misjudgements (in Chinese, "pan4duan4li4" issues). These observations slowly accumulate into a subconscious realization -- "Admittedly I'm not a talented manager ... But I have my relative strengths as a leader".

At some junctures (including some meetings) I'd step out of my nerd role and speak momentarily like a statesman or observer. I don't have a habit of thinking about the consequences. I just go with the flow of the moment -- the subconscious realization surfaces and I feel I too have something to offer like a leader without power, a king without a throne.

I think half of those junctures I underestimate the negative consequences including insecurity, threat, overshadow,  jealousy, belittlement, credit-stealing, stereotyping, ...

As a friend (Rhandeev) pointed out, "some individual's antennas are shorter than average", so we had better Keep in mind our insensitivity and blind spots".

I now realize I'm mellowing up and becoming less "outspoken" at those same junctures. I know my weakness better. I now realize there are always quite a lot of negative consequences I couldn't identify, so it's safer to be quiet. I now feel that I have rather limited empathy (EQ), if any, with just about every audience.

However, if the audience is from a very different culture, I often fare better, be them Indians, Latinos, Africans, East Europeans... Reason is simple to me -- No one among my Chinese peers know how to read these individuals, so I tend to loosen up and just be myself. Result is often fairly pleasant. However, that was mostly my experience in younger years.