A lot of this sub revolves around dating and social perception, and that's perfectly understandable. It's a big motivator for sure.

But I'm curious about what you folks see and have used in terms of improving your soft skills for the non-romantic parts of your life. The biggest gap I've seen between AM and others (going to include Indians here, even though you're Asian!) is the lack of confidence, communication skills, and pure ambition. There's an incredible amount of Indians in leadership (see tech CEOs), but other Asians seem to only hold those spots if they were an original founder. Going down some rungs of the ladder, this still holds true for C-suites, VP-levels, and even the middle managers.

My personal experience is that my family always pushed me to be a quiet hardworking 9-5 drone that would eventually succeed via the dint of their hardwork. That my quiet dedication would be recognized. Obviously, this was wrong and I learned that quickly in the professional world. Unfortunately, that's still decades of bad internalization to fix and I find my soft skills needing improvement.

What about the rest of you? What do you think holds you back? Have you & if so, what, have you done to improve it?