An Affection for Rejection

Jia Jiang, who specializes in “rejection therapy,” is the 2019 recipient of Toastmasters’ most prestigious award—the Golden Gavel. Presented annually since 1959, the award recognizes an individual distinguished in the fields of communication and leadership. Jiang will be honored at the 2019 Toastmasters International Convention in Denver, Colorado.

Through his company, Wuju (meaning “fearless” in ancient Chinese) Learning, and his website, Jiang teaches individuals and organizations that the fear of rejection is almost always more damaging than the actual experience. In fact, he believes that looking at rejection with open-minded curiosity can be an impressive catalyst for success.

That mindset of invincibility-through-adversity, applied in today’s personal and professional endeavors, can lead to break-through successes, Jiang notes. The payoff comes in the form of new-found confidence that fuels new ideas and strategies. “Fearless organizations and individuals are able to sell more, think bigger and achieve higher,” Jiang says.

Jiang’s training methodologies have potential appeal to a wide audience, since rejection may beone of the most common and unpleasant shared experiences in life. He has worked with small andmid-sized companies, as well as corporate giants such as Google, Hewlett Packard and Dell, and distinguished American universities like Yale and Stanford. The universality of his innovative ideas about rejection has also led to coverage in business and mainstream media outlets, such as Time magazine, Forbes and The Huffington Post.

Jiang is unabashed in sharing his own history of failure and dejection. Not many people would strike out on the road to success by consciously seeking a 100-day journey peppered with potential rejection. Unexpectedly, Jiang got his career start by doing just that. He set out on a quest to conquer a fear of humiliation that had followed him since childhood. He was inspired by a game—developed by a Canadian entrepreneur—that requires the winner to be, in essence, a regularly rejected loser.

For just over three months, Jiang tested the theory on himself, making daily, unusual, often absurd, requests of people: asking to borrow 100 from a stranger; convincing a bakery to happily create a custom doughnut, on the spot, in the shape of the five interlaced Olympic rings; recommending himself for a non-existent job as a Starbucks coffee shop greeter. Overall, he met extraordinary humans and found that calm conversation could often transform rejection into opportunity.

Jiang turned his funny, perceptive and heart-warming experiences into a book and a speech that garnered more than 3.5 million views when featured on the TED Talks website.

The Golden Gavel award turns 60 this year. The first honoree was Dr. Frank C. Baxter, a University of Southern California professor and a pioneer in program development during the early days of American television. Among previous awardees: actress Greer Garson; international author and speaker Dr. Deepak Chopra; Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus; and, of course, Dr. Ralph C. Smedley.

Visit the Toastmasters website for a complete list of previous honorees.

About the Golden Gavel

Jia Jiang will deliver his Golden Gavel presentation, “What You Can Learn from 100 Days of Rejection,” on Friday, August 23, during the 88th Toastmasters International Convention in Denver, Colorado.