The Brands Vietnam Journey #2 - Declining Faith

I became the Content Leader at Brands Vietnam for a short period of 5 months. Here's the summary of my journey, from what I have to do to prepare myself to my stumbles along the way to the end of the journey. 

You should read this if: 

- You are an average guy (university degree, no big background) who want to become a team leader within 3 years of working. Stick around, you maybe able to learn something. 

- You are a new team leader. Congratulation. Now let's see some of my novice leading mistake so you can avoid it. 

- You are an HR personnel who's looking for a management level candidate (Or you read my CV and came here). This blog should give you a lot of information for your consideration. 

My lovely team.

April 

This is it! April 1st 2019, I joined Brands Vietnam... as a Content Editor? The idea is my boss doesn't fully trust me yet and he has every reasons to. My title is Editor but my job is Leader. I don't just translate and write my articles, I have to also revise my teammates articles. 

First weeks at work was easy. I studied about Brands Vietnam, the services that we provide, the columns that we are writing, the resources that we have. Beside that, I get to fix some of the articles that my team has translated. I spent 4 hours fixing 1 single translated article. Choices of words, faithfulness to the original piece, repeated mistakes... I noted all of them down. Since my team has 2 people, that's my whole day gone. That's super inefficient but it works. Couple with lunch and coffee, I got to know them within the first week. This I think is my greatest achievement in April. 

My April tarot's theme card was the "Knight of Swords". Sharp minded, direct and idealistic, I'm rational yet impatient. My communication is direct but often piercing. To sum it up, I have many many great ideas for Brands Vietnam during my very first month of joining. I changed how we use Trello. I suggest new interesting columns. I brought in indirect but effective training methods. I wanted to change the whole way that we write but that's for another month. Overall, April was cool. Until the end of it...

One of my team member unexpectedly left, leaving the team with only me and one other girl. This causes some issues. 

May

May was literally a month of growth. My team was getting better fast with my training regime of 1 coffee talk per week. My time of revising articles went down significantly and everything was fine. My card for May was Queen of Swords, which is an evolution of the knight. While the knights may have some weaknesses in his way, the queen is much more experience. The problem of this month stem from the leave of the teammate(s). 

I took on my teammate works without preparation. I did not do a shit job, but it is not something I would do willingly. But that's not the worst part. Upon reaching the end of May, a very senior Chief Editor announced his leave... This means that everything he does will very soon be transferred to my team, aka I have to start learning it now. The jobs started to pile up. 

June

If you have read my June 2019 article, this section should sound familiar. My personal relationship ended in June, which has been foreseen by my tarot card: Eight of Cups. When this card shows up, it usually means a person is becoming hopeless and voluntarily walk away from something. This personal issue affect my mentality which caused a huge decrease in my productivity. But it got worse. 

With the leaves of 2 team members within 2 months of joining, we decided to hire more people. We added 2 young interns into the Content Team, basically doubled the members and tripled the number of people that I have to train. On top of that was a bunch of new tasks leftover from the Chief Editor. Everything that was once easy became challenging. The 2 new interns were too fresh, training them took out a chunk of my time. The Chief Editor job is something that I'm very much dislike, another chunk of my energy. Revising turned into a nightmare. And I left with a handful of time to spare for my own content. 

July

Seven of Wands is my card for July, and it really really show. This card represents some major forces that are working against me. The pile of works has proven to be a tough challenge. Mistakes were made and disagreement started to happen. I had multiple fights with both my teammates and my boss. It's easy to point fingers at who did what wrong, but I'm not going to because that does not matter. The long story short is: the different in ideal and expectation are starting to take a tow on me. 

I'm an emotional worker. While my discipline level is among the lowest, I made it up by being crazily innovative in my problem solving. Events happened and I lost my rational head along with my burning heart. I just can't find a reason to work in an environment that's so vastly different from myself. And that's the thing about Seven of Wands. One of the possible major forces was the faith in one's self. And then, the final nail in the coffin appears.  

August

My boss think it is a great idea to hire a professional journalist in as a part-time cooperator who would help train MY TEAM. He basically demotes me without saying it. That's when I decided to stop my journey at Brands Vietnam. It was clear that I have not reached a mutual understanding with my boss but that level of disrespectful is just too much. The guy came in and started to say exactly the SAME THINGS that I have been saying for 4 months and somehow get all the trusts: something that I haven't had since the very beginning. 

Luckily for me, August is the month of healing. The Star was my August card. Optimism started to return to me. I have accepted the emotional ending of June and the stressful July, which open up a healthy beginning. The faith in myself started to come back when another company had agreed to put me on the leader position. They heard my failure stories and still decided that I'm the perfect candidate. Also, my faith in love might be coming back. All and all, the future looks damn bright now. 

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(*) Hey guys, just a quick note: It was my teammate that actually introduce me to tarot. She is also my favorite Brands Vietnam employee in general and probably the best teammate I have ever had since my office career. This is why I structure this article in the form of months and tarot cards rather than something boring like "top 3 things that I learned". Thank you for giving me a great 8 hours/day, 5 days a week for 5 continuous months. 

Quanny Nguyen