I really felt the positive effects on the last day of the Hansik Tour for Foreign Food Bloggers. That day all the competing teams had to give a presentation which the judges would score, add the scores from the other categories all together, and then announce the winners.
The presentation I gave, was primarily made by Mike who had done a lot of work to make it pretty and organized. Only we could attend, as the other Happy Bears had commited to a previously agreed day for the presentation until it was moved back to a day they couldn't attend. I think they would have felt proud to see the presentation of our work.
When I had finished I felt the projects completion. Happy Bear left a really positive effect on the room of bloggers and Hansik judges by showing good people food tourism from an ecological and sustainable perspective.
Happy Bear Eats didn't win that day, but we did accomplish our goal to present food tourism from an ecological and sustainable perspective. Everyone else on the team did their best. We couldn't have dumbed down our message and maintained our integrity. Integrity meant something to us and changing our angle to a more advantageous one, would have diluted our message.
After such an experience I have had to assess how well I did as a blogger and as a leader.
As positives:
1. I had kept our message focused.
2. The plans for the tour I made with Mike were good.
3. I made and designed the layout for Happy Bear Eats blog.
4. I gave a good and enthusiasitc presentation to Hansik and the blog.
5. I promoted the blogs on twitter
6. I was constantly on the phone to get questions answered.
7. I made a facebook page.
I wasn't all positives of course. It hasn't been easy to assess myself particularly when I had had only enough time to just do things. When I finished the contest so much time had elapse from the beginning that it was hard for me to remember all the details. However, people around me who care about me have properly criticized my mistakes. My closest friend in Korea has helped to focus my own criticism of myself. Being on the team, he was present for my worst moments and endured more then the others. He sent me an email to express my behavior of late.
He told me of negative actions that have formed a perception of me as a person by others. I can say with certainty that as a leader these character flaws came out when under stress. I was under the pressure to get the job done. However, I am lucky to have a friend who cares enough about me to give such an honest criticism from which I can change negative behaviors.
But right now I wish to explain more specifically the problems my friend so rightly criticized.
I read the email and after summarizing his points, I formed this picture in my head:
As a leader my vision was strong but communicating it could be laborious and long-winded for my team mates. People listened to lectures on phone or read them by email that were sometimes confusing because my language could be ambiguous. The vision was agreed to by Mike and I, however, in the details and implementation, I was adamant about editing and focusing the message. This perhaps is necessary as a leader. However, this is where there were problems. I would retract articles and re-wrote certain sections. I editorialized writing when my own writing often had spelling mistakes, repetitions, and grammatical errors. Regardless of it being possible to judge good writing as a poor speller, its just not up to the standard of many people of my education to want a person who shows weak writing to edit other peoples writing. I often argued my ideas very strongly. Sometimes, during the contest I was short tempered with others.
So in summation, I was sometimes:
1. confusing others with ambigious explanations of my vision and instructions.
2. insensitive to others people's feelings.
3. arguing against other peoples ideas very stubbornly while presenting my ideas loudly
4. sloppy with my own writing.
5. impatient and short tempered with others in some situations.
So sometimes it seems that I wasn't clear and I was difficult to please, impatient and sloppy. I was inconsistent.
On the other hand Mike has pointed out that I often made clear how much I appreciated the hard work of others.
So I was difficult, but I was also appreciative.
I appreciated others whose work I couldn't have as well without a team a capable writers with different strengths: from Tanya's beautiful celebrations of food, Mike's insight into ethics and organics, and Andy's and Anina's food reviews which gave the food the attention it deserved.
So my grade for my leadership is maybe a B-. There was good work but there is room for improvement. And I can do better.
The future of Happy Bear is unknown. I see potential of it as an ECO Seoul Eats meets EcoTourism. I see other eco-options as well. I can't decide myself however since Happy Bear Eats was a group and could still be a group. Continuing it or transforming it would need to be a group decision or at least have everyone's blessing.
Why continue it you may ask? Well, Happy Bear Eats had a mix of different personalities and interests with a common interest for eco and natural style living. I mentioned before that the writing had a richness. What I meant by that comment was that there was a richness of perspectives. Visitors to the blog had or will have source for reading about ecotourism options in Korea with different personalities who offered something different for each eater. It also gave us a bigger audience. Our personal blogs have never received so much attention individually then we have as a group.
Whatever happens, I see a lot of potential for good projects that will link together the good and positive people for environmental change.
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