REFLECTION PAPER NO. 2 by Leader VP Belina Katigbak

Reflection Paper 2:

By Belina S. Katigbak

1.   External - what are family, environment school and work experience that shaped you today?

 

            One's life is made up of inherited genes, developed traits, values and attitudes, and a fusion of influences and various experiences in the confines of family, environment, school, and work.  Let me share first my reflection on external factors that shaped me to be the kind of person that I am today.

FAMILY

It is a universal belief that every strong family is characterized by mutual love and respect fostered among members therein.   Thus a strong family produces loving and respectful members.  On the other hand, every weak family is defined by the atrocities sown and cultivated therein, thus produces fragile members.  The family is the first school where we acquire the skills we need to become responsible members of society. A family environment that failed to develop social skills runs the risk of bringing up disintegrated members who may contribute to social problems sooner or later.  Most success stories had their beginnings from well-founded and good family upbringing, albeit paradoxical, hardships experienced in the family served as inspiration and motivation to those who chose to make sense of such adversities.   As I reflect on my life, I realized that I am a product of both success and failures in the family setting.

The Genogram tells a lot about the strengths and weaknesses of my lineage.  I inherited varied traits from my ancestors.

I grew up with an authoritarian and strict father, a meek, submissive, and prayerful mother, loving siblings, and a disciplinarian eldest sister.  It is with fondness that I recall the special treatment that I got from my siblings.  I treasure the care of my sister Elda, who narrated to me that a few days before I was born, she prepared my infant clothes and some things that my mother needed to nurse me.  She also narrated to me that she stopped schooling for six years from the time she graduated from Grade Six just to take care of my sister Rose, me, and our youngest brother, Peng.  Until this day, my sister Elda would always find ways to help me.  Being the youngest among the girls, I felt privileged.  At least I did not bear as much sufferings as my other seven elder siblings did during their childhood years.  I experienced and continue to experience the love of my siblings. However, I do have sad memories fostered in a rigid home environment.  I lived by strict rules and scanty resources.  I vividly recall how the jitters of my father affected me especially during rainy days when the roof of our house leaked, when a member of the family got sick, and when we did not have enough food.  However strict my father was, He often reminded me about the virtue of honesty and a life focused on the end goal, which is salvation.  It is in the family that I first learned to be responsible and organized. As I was growing up, my eldest sister, Del introduced time management and division of labor to me.  It was her way to teach us, her younger siblings, about self-discipline, fairness, and justice.  She prepared a schedule for each one of us, and divided the work according to one's capability.  Prayer was very much a part of our daily routine. Our economic condition brought us always on our knees.  Faith is the core of our family's belief system. We believed in Divine Providence.  My kind of upbringing molded me to be a person of character, virtuous, prayerful, disciplined and stern. I turned out to be scrupulous, hard on myself as well as on others.

            My own family life which I started when I got married completed my "back subjects".  God gave me a great and loving husband who made up for all that I was deprived of during my childhood years.  I was also blessed with a generous, self-giving, and dignified mother-in-law who influenced me a lot about church service and care for those who have less in life.  God blessed me with two sons.  Fulfilling the role of a wife, mother, and daughter-in-law was not always a bed of roses.  Refinement of my personality and character had a great deal to do with how my mother–in-law role modeled certain characteristics during my stay with her.   We lived under one roof until the time she returned to our Creator in 1995.  I could say that my inspiration to servant leadership is largely influenced by my mother–in-law.  The seed of love sown by my husband and extended family members prepared me to face the challenges of motherhood. 

A significant turning point in my family happened in 2009 when my husband suffered life-threatening multiple strokes.  This stressor affirmed the goodness of family members who supported us all the way.

ENVIRONMENT

            There is a great interplay in the kind of environment where I grew up.  I lived in a house made of bamboo and nipa that stood on a lot owned by my mother's sister.  I lived in an environment where I my narrow optics and fragile emotional make-up looked at certain actions of my relatives on my maternal side as "discriminating".  I also remember the difficulty of having to fetch water from somewhere else because our neighbor was unhappy in extending help to us. These unpleasant experiences extended in the school environment where I felt rejected by some classmates, and a few teachers. In school I often felt that I was the poor, little girl who didn't have time to play with classmates after school hours because I needed to clean the classroom as a trade-off for free education.  I also felt ugly because of that one and only faded old uniform that I used to wear from Monday to Friday.

            A rigorous home setup and an unwelcoming school environment gave me a very low self-esteem at first, but eventually the honors that I received compensated for what I lacked, but they hardly gave me self-confidence. I became a "people pleaser" only to feel a sense of self worth with my accomplishments.  Thus the seed of motivation to work harder in order to prove my worth was planted.  My saving grace though is the love of the Benedictine nuns who helped my siblings and me finish our education.

WORK EXPERIENCE

           

While still in college, I already explored the world of employment.  I applied for a part-time job and was accepted in Pilar Development Corporation.  Upon graduation in 1979, I applied at the San Fernando branch of China Banking Corporation.  In around 7 ½ months of being exposed to a variety of tasks such as new accounts servicing, loans processing, and tellering, I was looking for something more challenging.  And so upon release of the results of the 1980 CPA board exams which included my name among the passers, I applied to San Miguel Corporation, San Fernando Brewery as a budget and financial analyst.  I embraced work with ease, no matter how tremendous or challenging assigned tasks were because of the discipline instilled during my earlier formation in childhood years.  Punctuality was not an issue to me.  I was very meticulous, and ranked with the most organized staffers.  I had a list of "To Do" things at the start of my day; afterwards I will evaluate each and every planned activity if they were accomplished at the end of the day.  I rose from the ranks. I had a great career. My boss developed me from analyst to internal auditor, to unit head, team leader, QC leader, and ISO assessor. When year-end evaluation time came, I was one of those with highest merit increase in salary for excellent performance.  I was also honored "Model Supervisor".  My 17 ½ years with SMC exposed me to the different disciplines of Finance – from Budgets and Financial Analysis to Brewery Accounting to Physical Distribution Accounting until I handled the Profit and Loss Consolidation of the entire North and Central Luzon Operations of the Beer Division.  I was sent to varied seminars to prepare me for a higher management post at an opportune time.  One of the seminars that honed me is Stephen Covey's Seven Basic Habits of Highly Effective People.

Close to my 40^th birthday in 1998, I retired from SMC to pursue an unfulfilled desire and what I believed is my primary vocation.  My early retirement brought me to a one semester teaching assignment at the University of the Assumption.  In 2001, I volunteered in the propagation of Basic Ecclesial Communities spearheaded by the Archdiocesan Pastoral Secretariat (APS).  The evangelization mission brought me to different communities fulfilling pastoral task of different sorts, including among others teaching Theology.  Working for the alleviation of poverty gave me a deeper understanding of the poor.  In 2002, I became financial consultant of the service arm of the archdiocese, the Social Action Center of Pampanga (SACOP) that caters to the integral social development of the people of Pampanga.  SACOP incorporated at the time of Mt. Pinatubo's eruption in 1991.  A lot of towns in Pampanga submerged in lahar.  SACOP, in partnership with Caritas International and various foreign partners started rebuilding lives through resettlement program, community building and livelihood programs.  It soon expanded its Alay Kapwa mandate to endeavor in medical and dental missions, educational scholarships, and lending capital to finance the needs of small entrepreneurs.  My work with the poor took a facet different from my preference to be hands-on.  I was led to the administrative side of the mission.

In 2007, I volunteered to help then Among Ed who used to be the director of SACOP.  I just wanted to make sense of political involvement.  Little did I know that Among Ed would become governor!  Before he was sworn to office, together with other members of his team, I had the privilege of being guided by leaders of the Ateneo School of Government to prepare us for the office.  As the financial consultant of the governor, I tried to introduce a treasury systems improvement, and only to find out soon that I did not find my right place in government service.  At the crossroad of political adventure, I was summoned by Bishop Mallari, the then newly appointed president of the University of the Assumption (UA), the archdiocesan university.  I was first a pro-bono financial consultant of Bishop Mallari.  Later, UA employed me as Internal Auditor, and after a year, I was appointed University Accountant. 

In 2010, I went back to SACOP to render my services as internal auditor.  Alongside, I did other professional services with my friend in her accounting firm.  It was a response to an emergency situation.  Her dad, the founding partner, died.  By virtue of law, the partnership would be dissolved.  I could not say "No" then, albeit with great reservation to be in public practice.  I was appointed head of the firm's quality assurance, training and development, and consulting services divisions.  It is here where I developed expertise in systems review and audit. I felt some kind of fulfillment when I greatly influenced my friend in certain advocacies while upholding ethical standards of our profession.

In 2013, the newly appointed president of UA summoned me.  With the overwhelming trust of the Chairman of the Board, I was appointed Vice-President for Finance.

My work experiences brought me to an integral development of my professional life.  Rarely would a CPA be accorded the opportunity to fulfill the four pillars of the Accounting profession, namely: 1) Commerce and Industry, 2) Education, 3) Government Service, and 4) Public Practice.  I managed to be harnessed in all these disciplines.  And more importantly, I had the opportunity to balance the four disciplines with my involvement in church service.  Only because of God's enlightenment and guidance had this become possible!

2.  Internal - your values, strength, weakness and how do they affect on how you decide/act

The seed of values were sown in the family and nurtured in the workplace.  I have mentioned about honesty being instilled in me early on in childhood.  Discipline, self-organization and regulation, study, hard work, perseverance, piety, continuous learning, obedience, and service have all contributed to the development of my personhood.  The strength of my character was built on these; and paradoxically, my weaknesses became my strength.  Basically I used to be timid and withdrawn because of personal experiences of discrimination.  But later on, varied exposures challenged my optics on what a person is really worth. During my volunteer work in church starting 2001, I came to a deeper understanding of personhood – that what matters most is not my sense of "doing" but my sense of "being"; that the externals are only peripherals and are "consumable or exhaustible".  On the other hand, my true personhood lies at the core of my being – that is being a child of God, the dignity that makes me co-equal with my fellowmen.  I then made a paradigm shift.  This affected my way of deciding and acting.  It means that I need to appreciate the core of a person that I must lead, and understand his/her external and internal factors in order to lead effectively.

My values taught me that in a crossroad, when confronted with a decision to be made, I go through the process of discernment.  St. Ignatius of Loyola, the father of discernment left this legacy.  He wrote the rules in discernment in his book, The Spiritual Exercises.  He gives the formula on how to make the best decision to bring a person to an almost certainty of doing God's will.  Discernment is a prayerful process of finding what would please God the most.  This reflection write-up will only tackle the beginnings of my application of St. Ignatius' rules.   What I need to share now is, in all courses of my decisions, I pray to God, employ rational analysis, and use the framework of St. Ignatius by weighing all pros and cons against criteria, which are my core values.

I came across some readings on leadership decision making. By employing the technical framework, coming to a greater understanding of the people that will influence and/or would be affected by the decision, and engaging this people, would lead to the positive outcome of the decision.  Knowing what I am good at (strengths) and what I am poor at (weaknesses) would now enlarge my optics.   For me what is important in decision making is the humility to accept that I cannot do it alone.  Here lies the call to leadership.  It is the ability to lead people by discovering who the followers are, what they can do, what their strengths and limitations are, and then to engage them in a spirit of complementing one another, and finally to have them committed to the decision.  I believe that each person has his/her own giftedness.  Leadership is about discovering these gifts and putting them together to make things happen.

            As a VP for Finance, I engage my people in decision making through participative discussions, brainstorming, and consensus. 

3.   How do they prepare you for your future challenges...?

Chris Lowney, in his book Heroic Leadership posed challenges to me as a leader.  Lowney outlines the four pillars or leadership principles that Jesuits embrace.  By reflecting on what I went through so far, while experiences have shaped my character, and built competence, I still have a long way to go.  I believe that leadership, just like education is a lifelong learning process.  And so, my leadership style and way of relating with others will uphold these principles:

1. Continue reflecting and "understanding my strengths, weaknesses, values, and world view ";
2. Strive to better my best and equip myself so that I can "confidently innovate and adapt to embrace a changing world";
3. By understanding as well the strengths, weaknesses, values and views of others, and by sharing with them mine as well, I can "engage others with a positive, loving attitude". I will "seek first to understand, then be understood" (Stephen Covey, Seven Basic Habits of Highly Effective People";
4. "Energize myself and others through heroic ambitions".

The future challenges that I face as VP for Finance of UA, and as consultant of the bishop of another diocese, that of San Jose, Nueva Ecija, are beyond me.  At age 57, one of my greatest challenges is to empower my followers such that they will emerge as leaders, too.  And when the time for me to go comes, I would have left only good examples worthy of emulation.  Knowing that my vocation is to do something greater than myself, I brace for these challenges.  My experiences and conversion have prepared me for these.  Knowing and accepting my strengths and weaknesses as well those of my co-workers keep my feet on the ground.  With my values of "witnessing and loving" the people that God sent me to lead, we can make a difference in this world.  4