by Samantha White
Northwest Asia Weekly
Dr. Julie Fan
In her community building work, Julie Pham sees her friction between people.
One scenario that came to mind for a Seattle-area resident was when she was working with an engineer and labor organizer. The engineer asked a lot of questions to the organizer, which made the organizer feel disrespectful. In fact, Fan said they just didn’t communicate.
Poor communication can be due to cultural differences and functional differences – people in different job roles and industries have different ways of working and communicating. It’s this situation between engineers and organizers that led Pham to write “7 Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Communication and Relationships at Work,” which will be published in April.The book focuses on how people “articulate how [they] want to be respected and decide how others want to be respected,” according to its website.
While researching for her book, Fan held focus groups asking how people would like to be treated at work. A word that is often used is “respect”. When she started asking what respect looked like, she expanded her research. In the end, Pham and her team spoke with about 400 people through workshops and interviews.
Most are from the Seattle area and cover a range of cultures and job industries. It’s not simple research either – some of this book is also based on Pham’s observations.
The story behind the “why”
While the “7 Forms of Respect” can help people gain self-awareness about the types of respect that are important to them and the types of respect that are important to colleagues, Pham says that’s only scratching the surface. The real point of her book is to start a conversation. Why would someone prioritize one respect over another? What is the story behind these reasons? People might think someone has good intentions, but Pham says they rarely ask what those intentions are.
“A lot of times, people don’t ask questions,” she said, adding that she often sees this in her community-building work.
For example, Pham said, someone might view receiving clear and detailed instructions as trivial, but for the person giving the instructions, it could be that they were translated for their parents from a young age, and it always had to be clear and detailed. Learning their story makes it easier to understand another person’s intentions – and the story is easier to remember.
Even the rubber band broke
Additionally, Pham says her book can help people see if a company’s culture is appropriate. For people who don’t like that, companies that value candor and proactive feedback won’t be the best place. They will constantly “bend” or “code-switch” to adjust. Being flexible like a rubber band and being able to adapt might help in some cases, but it’s not sustainable.
“If we overstretch, the rubber band will break,” Pham said, adding that if you’re constantly trying to fit in your workplace, “you’re going to feel exhausted all the time.”
She emphasizes that poor cultural fit doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the company. Just not for individuals.
That being said, Pham’s book cannot help toxic workplaces. She says she can’t help people who think other people are the problem and that they themselves don’t need to learn anything new.
support from her community
Pham’s name may be on the books, but her community makes it possible.
She self-published The 7 Forms of Respect and raised funds through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Her goal was $10,500, which she achieved within 18 hours. In the end, she raised more than $23,000 with the support of more than 300 backers — for a nonfiction professional development book, she noted.
“This is my community, and they believe in my book,” she said, adding that she felt the community gave her progress.
To thank them, Pham used some of her Indiegogo backers’ names as a fun surprise in the book. She uses their names in a workplace scenario example to illustrate her point.
Pham acknowledges some previously held insider elite views that self-published books are not “real books.” But that changed after she self-published her first book, “Their Wars: Perspectives from the South Vietnamese Army in the Words of Veterans,” and her father held a reception in honor of her and the book.
About 300 people attended the event, 75% of whom were Vietnamese. Pham saw the impact the book had and it pushed her to rethink traditional publishing, where she could decide what was commercially viable, and how she didn’t need validation from traditional publishers. She credits her parents for her ability to adapt and take unconventional routes.
“As an immigrant, I saw my parents go their own way,” Fan said.
For more information on the 7 Forms of Respect, visit formsofrespect.com/book.
Samantha is available at info@nwasianweekly.com.
