Explain a situation where you have had an ethical decision to make. Discuss how you weighed up the values involved in that decision, the decision you made, and the consequences of your action.
“Before you judge someone, walk a mile in their shoes.” A value I hold dearly is empathy – the ability to walk in others’ shoes and think from others’ perspectives. I believe important values and concepts like respect and understanding all stem from empathy.
Recently, I acted as the property manager of my relative’s house in East Auckland. My job was to find the most suitable tenants for the house. Ideally, I’d find reliable people who will look after the house like their own and pay the rent on time. It came down to two final candidates: one is a young couple, both with good jobs. They’re thinking about having kids, so they’re looking for something a bit more spacious than their current 2 bedroom dwelling. The other candidate is a young family with two young children and a third on the way. The husband has a well-paying although difficult job, and the wife only works part-time while she spends the rest of her time looking after the kids. Because she’s fairly late into her pregnancy, she’ll soon be taking time off work completely. Despite having a perfectly fine track record and references, this family has had their tenancy application turned down 8 times already. In a letter detailing their desperation, the husband tells me that after moving out of their last rental because the landlord needed to renovate, they’ve been crammed into a single bedroom at his parents’ house since last year.
If I was to make the decision purely for my and my relative’s benefit, I would go with the first candidate. They’re more financially sound with fewer responsibilities, and they don’t have toddlers who are likely to cause damage to the property. But after making sure that their references checked out, I decided to offer the tenancy to the latter family, because I knew it meant much more to them than to the first couple. While it’s still too early to say whether or not they will turn out to be good tenants, hearing that the family embraced and cried after hearing my good news made me feel like I had made the right decision. And the optimist in me believes that because the house didn’t come to them easily, they would try even harder than other tenants to look after the place and pay their rent on time.
Describe how your culture has influenced your values and identity.
I am a product of multiculturalism. I was born in China and spent the first 10 years of my life there. Then my family immigrated to Aotearoa where I’ve lived for around 20 years. Sprinkled in between these 20 years were another 3 years spent living in Japan, almost 2 years in Canada, and more than a whole year of travelling around the world experiencing different cultures. Thanks to my experiences, I am bilingual with the ability to converse in a third language and a basic understanding of a fourth language. Perhaps empathy, respect, and understanding are so important to me because I have been at the forefront of cultural differences, clashes, exchange, and sometimes, perfect harmony. I’ve learnt that the world is a much more interesting place when we can accept and celebrate our differences as humans. Something that seems very strange and wrong to one group of people can make total sense to another, and having the ability to think like others and accept their differences can resolve so much of the anger and conflict in this world.
Evaluate your strengths and limitations in terms of your learning and career development.
My strengths are that I am patient and adventurous, I have lots of interests, and I cope well under pressure. My limitations are that I don’t always manage my time well.
Identify which of your strengths might help you in your learning journey and how they intersect with learning obstacles.
Having patience and coping well under pressure means that I won’t likely give up in the face of challenges and adversity. However, those strengths can turn into obstacles that slow down my progress and growth when I am unable to manage my time well. Likewise, being adventurous and having lots of interests means I can become engrossed in lots of areas of learning and development, but poor time management will lead to spreading myself too thin across too many things and not really being skilled enough in one area.
Share an example from your experience of where you were trying to work productively with others, but there was resistance or tension. Discuss the strategies you used at that time, how effective they were, and your reflections on what other strategies you would try now and why.
I’ve been lucky enough to be the director on a few short film sets. Film sets are places of extraordinary excitement and high stress, time is very valuable and things can only be achieved when everyone on the team is performing at their peak. Every time I direct a film, it’s a huge learning experience.
On the set of my last film, we were cramming a 5-day shoot into 4 days, so there was a lot of pressure to get things done on time. On a few occasions, actors would forget their lines and ruin valuable takes that would take a long time to set up again. When this happened, I would let the actors know that they were not doing a good job in front of the crew. Not in a mean way, but in a demanding way. I don’t know what this strategy was, but thinking back, it made no sense. The actors themselves are under more pressure than anyone else because they’re the ones that actually get seen on camera. Obviously, they don’t want to forget their lines either, and embarrassing them in front of the crew would only increase their nervousness and make it even harder for them to perform well. Reflecting on it now, I think it would make much more sense to take the actors aside and talk to them in private. Give them encouragement, go over the lines with them, and take the stress off their shoulders so they can perform with more ease and confidence. I think this strategy would translate well into other teamwork situations too.