知 · Self & Others Workshops - Leading and Living with an Uncompromised Self

Series Introduction

Western workplace culture is a game — with rules around performance, optimization, and self-presentation. Eastern workplace culture has the opposite problem: boundaries are blurred, hierarchy is everything, and the self is subsumed into the group. Both systems, in different ways, ask you to lose yourself.

This two-workshop series asks a different question: in the space between these two cultures, how do you stay true to who you actually are? How do you perform without losing yourself? How do you lead others without abandoning your own voice?

Eastern philosophy has always been deeply concerned with this. The Confucian tradition begins with 修身 xiū shēn — cultivate yourself first. The Daoist tradition asks: what is your original nature, before the world shaped you into something else? Most Eastern classics were written for leaders — people with power and responsibility, navigating complex relationships and competing demands. These workshops bring that wisdom into the modern workplace.

The two workshops can be taken separately or together as a half-day or full-day program.

Workshop 1 · Banana Game™

Who Are You at Work — Really?

Tagline

You're always performing. The question is whether you know it.

Description

The Workplace Banana Game™ is Yuan's original role-playing workshop on workplace identity, cultural code-switching, and self-awareness. It is playful, surprising, and for most participants unexpectedly revealing.

In the game, participants take on workplace roles and navigate a series of scenarios drawn from real organizational life: the performance review, the team conflict, the meeting where nobody says what they actually think. Through the game, patterns emerge. Who do you become under pressure? Which parts of yourself do you hide, and which do you amplify? When does adaptation become performance, and when does performance become a cage?

The debrief moves from the personal to the philosophical. Eastern wisdom, particularly the Confucian concept of ritual propriety and the Daoist ideal of authenticity, offers a framework for understanding why we perform, and what it costs us when we perform too much. The goal is not to stop adapting. It is to adapt with awareness, and to know the difference between strategic flexibility and self-abandonment.

The Eastern Wisdom Connection

Confucius understood that we all play roles — and that playing them well is a form of social intelligence, not deception. But he also insisted that role and self must not be confused. Ritual propriety is the art of appropriate behavior in context. Benevolence is the authentic inner quality that gives those behaviors meaning. When Ritual propriety exists without benevolence, it is empty performance. The Banana Game™ is a live experiment in finding the line between the two.

What You'll Walk Away With

• Heightened awareness of your own workplace persona and its origins

• A clearer sense of where your authentic self ends and performance begins

• Language for discussing identity and code-switching with your team

• A new lens — rooted in Eastern philosophy — for understanding organizational behavior

• For leaders: insight into how your team performs around you, and what that costs them

Format

• In-person (strongly preferred — the game requires physical presence and group energy)

• Virtual (adapted format available)

• Hybrid (not recommended)

Group Size

• Minimum: 8 (needs at least 2 groups of 3–4)

• Maximum: 50

• Ideal: 12–20

• Structure: small groups of 3–4, with full-group debrief

Duration

• 2.5–3 hours · Standard session including debrief

• Half-day · Extended version with deeper philosophical discussion and personal reflection

• Can be paired with Personal Boundaries workshop for a full-day program

Best For

• Multicultural teams navigating identity and communication

• ERGs — especially Asian, immigrant, and first-generation professional groups

• Leadership development programs focused on authenticity

• Organizations going through culture change or integration

• MBA and executive education programs

• Any team where "people don't speak up" is a real problem

Trademark pending.

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Workshop 2 · Personal Boundaries

Where Do You End and Others Begin?

Tagline

A boundary is not a wall. It is the shape of your self.

Description

Boundaries are one of the most discussed — and least understood — concepts in modern workplace culture. In the Western framework, boundaries are primarily about self-protection: what you will and won't accept, what is yours and what is not. This is useful. It is also incomplete.

This workshop uses role-play scenarios drawn from both workplace and personal life — the colleague who always needs more than you can give, the manager whose feedback feels like an attack, the family dynamic that follows you into the office — to help participants locate their actual boundaries, understand where they came from, and practice holding them with both clarity and compassion.

The result is not a set of scripts for saying no. It is a deeper understanding of what you are protecting, and why — and how Eastern relational wisdom can help you hold your boundaries without aggression, and without guilt.

The Eastern Wisdom Connection

The Daoist concept of 無為 wú wéi — often translated as non-action, but better understood as non-interference — is one of the most sophisticated boundary philosophies ever articulated. It is not about doing nothing. It is about not over-reaching, not forcing, not taking up more space than is yours. At the same time, Confucian ethics insists on the dignity of each role in a relationship: a leader who asks too much of a subordinate violates the ethics of that relationship. A friend who gives until they have nothing left is not virtuous, instead, they are poorly boundaried. These ideas are not soft. They are precise. And they are urgently needed in modern organizations where burnout, resentment, and blurred roles are endemic.

What You'll Walk Away With

• Clarity on where your actual boundaries are — not where you think they should be

• Understanding of the cultural and personal origins of your boundary patterns

• Practice holding boundaries with directness and without guilt

• A new framework — drawing on Eastern relational ethics — for thinking about obligation, care, and limits

• For leaders: awareness of how boundary dynamics play out in teams, and how to create cultures where healthy limits are respected

Format

• In-person (preferred — the role-play requires presence and psychological safety)

• Virtual (adapted format with breakout rooms)

• Hybrid (not recommended)

Group Size

• Minimum: 8 (needs at least 2 groups of 3–4)

• Maximum: 50

• Ideal: 12–24

• Structure: small groups of 3–4 for role-play, full-group debrief

Duration

• 2 hours · Core session — boundary identification, role-play, debrief

• Half-day · Extended version with deeper personal reflection and Eastern philosophy discussion

• Can be paired with Banana Game™ for a full-day program

Best For

• Teams with burnout, overwork, or resentment patterns

• Managers and leaders building healthier team cultures

• Women's leadership and ERG programs

• HR and people operations teams

• Any organization where "work-life balance" is a stated value but not a lived reality

• Individuals navigating between high-obligation cultures (family, East Asian workplace) and Western professional norms

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The Full-Day Program · 知

Leading and Living with an Uncompromised Self

For organizations that want to go deep, the two workshops can be combined into a full-day experience:

Morning · Banana Game™ — Who are you at work, and what does that cost you? Lunch · Reflection and conversation — informal, Yuan-facilitated Afternoon · Personal Boundaries — What are you protecting, and how? Close · Eastern wisdom for leaders — A 30-minute guided discussion on what Eastern philosophy says about leading with integrity, authenticity, and care

This is Yuan's most ambitious offering — and the one she finds most meaningful to facilitate.