In the past few years, MSI teams mostly consisted of Chinese members, which led to fewer cultural differences between coworkers. Our Yunnan team has been a fully Chinese team for almost ten years, until last year, when a non-Chinese member joined. However, the team also had the shared experience of having individually lived in cross cultural contexts, so the new cultural adaptation was minimal. Professionally, that team has always consisted of people from different professions, with everyone knowing their own professional abilities and respecting each other’s expertise, so they were also able to work well together in this aspect.

From my perspective, I believe the difference that brings about the most tension within a team is personality. Perhaps our MSI President Cedric can relate. I had the privilege of being the vice representative of the Sichuan team when he was in office as the Sichuan chief representative, and I witnessed how hard he worked on this aspect. This inspired me so that when I took on the role as the Sichuan chief representative, I immediately arranged for coworkers to get to know one another. My hope was that when everyone became familiar with each other’s different personalities, we would be able to view each other objectively.

Team relationships are like the relationships between each star in the universe. Stars are interconnected and regulate one another so as to achieve balance and protection. When one star experiences change, the whole star system needs to readjust in order to achieve equilibrium once again. So it is with personnel changes in a team. When I was also remotely dropped into the Yunnan team as chief representative, the whole team needed to rediscover their balance. Reminiscing on the past dynamics of a team is not that helpful; the current team just needs to move forward as one. And now, I am about to retire at the end of this year, so the team will once again face changes. May God help us as we navigate the new road ahead.