In this age of globalization, it is smart to wonder if there is a way to get the best from people regardless of race or nationality. While doing the research for my book, Self-leadership (McGraw-Hill, available Sept 2012), I discovered an interesting dynamic between an organization’s business culture and leadership style and the level of personal autonomy of its employees.

People who work under a leader who is very direct or for a company with an authoritarian culture will have difficulty expressing their personal autonomy in terms of speaking up, making decisions, being creative and innovative. They may passively accept this command-control style, however, it is more likely that they will become dis-engaged or even resentful.
This scenario does not support Self-leaders, who thrive in an empowering culture.

What can be done to bridge the gap and build high performing individuals and teams in Asia?

1. Teach responsibility

Each person should be responsible for their own thoughts, feelings and actions. We need to send a clear message that we respect people as individuals and expect them to manage themselves. Reinforce this by constantly asking, “What do you think about this?” “What do you feel about this?” Initially you may be met with silence, but persevere, make the environment safe to speak up. When an employee points out a problem, gently push the responsibility back and ask, “What can you do about this?”

2. Be clear about accountability

Make sure you are crystal clear about what each individual (rather than the group) is accountable for. Let them know not only what their targets are, but also what behaviors you expect to observe on the way to achieving them. I appreciate that this may seem like a command and control style, but if people have not had autonomy they cannot initially make these judgments. Over time you can shift your style to work with people to set their own targets and behaviors and eventually they will do it themselves.

3. Never SHOUT

In Asia, if you shout or lose your temper you will likely lose the respect of your people and they will probably shut down and become quite unproductive.

4. Separate person from performance

Self-leaders not only take feedback, they seek it out; but when giving feedback in Asia with people who are not yet Self-leaders, you must be doubly careful to make the feedback about the action and NOT the person. If you say, “You wrote a lousy report,” it will be interpreted as “You are lousy.” Whilst it may seem cumbersome at first you will get much better results if you learn to say something like, “I know you to be highly competent and so I know you will want to rework this report to show more clearly how you analyzed the problem, what your conclusion is and what action you suggest we take.”

People in Asia on the whole are committed and hard working. While their education has often emphasized the acquiring of knowledge rather than independent thinking, this does not mean they are not capable of it. If the power differential between boss and sub-ordinate is reduced at a controlled rate and if they are encouraged and acknowledged for having an authentic voice then productivity and innovation will be unleashed.

Mark Liew, Trainer and Coach at Self Leadership International, will be conducting a Coaching and Mentoring for Talent Management program in Singapore on May 17, 2012.

When you have developed your people where they are motivated to increase the value of the team and organization by taking on additional delegated tasks, then they are ready for the next level of development. In retaining and developing your top performers, a manager must recognize when coaching and mentoring are the right tools for the next steps with their right people.

In knowing the strengths of your team members, their work behavior, and communication style, you can then engage your staff in creating an actionable plan for their performance goals, discover their approach to increase their effective results, and help them deliver on standards.

In this program, you’ll recognize the opportunities to put on the coaching or mentoring hats for your staff in order to serve the organizational needs. You’ll also discover the importance of serving these roles for your team members, and how they relate to keeping and growing  the right talent.

You’ll also be introduced to the tool of performance coaching for managers, where asking the right questions can facilitate co-creating a plan, finding the internal drive behind the plan, and reinforcing the approach in actualizing the outcome.

Learn how to set up a mentoring relationship by communicating the expectations of and value created for each party. Understand the process and context of the mentoring relationship, and how to effectively navigate from the beginning to the end of the process.

This program helps you take your leadership to the next level by a practical hands-on approach to helping your team members develop their professional skills and maintaining their talent within your organization.

Self Leadership International workshops help you specifically bridge the tools to apply to your particular scenarios, so you are empowered with the guided steps on how to increase your effectiveness as a leader and manager of your team.

Email or call us to enroll or enquire about more information on how you can retain and grow your talent with coaching and mentoring.

This conversation highlights the dangerous lack of preparedness that many leadership teams are in. If 2012 is going to be uncertain or tough, then shouldn’t we get ready for it? Shouldn’t we put the best leadership team in place and make sure they have the competencies required? Or is this a non-essential expense?

Consider that, post the Global Financial Crisis, many leadership teams were decimated by cut backs and organizations are talking about growth when they don’t have the bench strength of talent to achieve it. It is frightening that less than 10% of executives have a plan to develop their strengths and the more senior they get; the less likely they are to receive constructive performance and strategic feedback.

My friend’s organization has 20,000 plus employees and I happen to know that engagement is low and in certain sectors attrition is high. It costs, on average, 18 months’ salary for each manager or professional that leaves, creating a massive financial strain. The engagement or commitment levels of employees are critical to an organizations success and yet with an increased work-load and smaller work-force employees are feeling stressed and fragile.

You would think that now is the time to align the leadership, and engage people through focusing on developing the skills to face ‘The New Norm’ that will be 2012, but perhaps this is a non-essential expense?

A PWC survey showed that 66% of CEO’s say that talent gaps are their biggest fear, whilst 52% are worried about the competition poaching their top talent. And in Asia, where 90% of CEO’s think growth will come from, there exists an alarming shortage of highly competent people leaders.

If this is not a compelling argument to make a strategic commitment at developing and retaining top talent then I don’t know what is. Unfortunately companies are highly sensitive to cost and see this activity as an expense rather than an investment. To an extent, I can actually sympathize with this view. Many so called leadership training programs are either outdated ‘cookie cutter’ approaches or they are just too academic. Such programs suck up time and money and don’t often deliver a tangible or measurable result.

If you are going to develop your leadership talent you are going to have to go beyond the generic leadership competency list that HR has kindly put on a Power Point slide. You are going to have to identify what specific behaviors do you want your leaders to role model. These can be as fundamental as that ability to give constructive feedback or have a crucial conversation without it degenerating into conflict. More advanced behaviors might include the ability to re-frame a challenging business situation and be able to identify opportunities or to communicate strategy in a way that middle management can delegate and execute.

To achieve measurable result requires seeing developing and retaining talent as a core business function and putting some metrics around the results. It requires an attitude of preparing people for the challenge ahead and not just making do. The approach of just doing the odd training here or there when the budget allows probably is an ‘unnecessary expense’, because if the business doesn’t fail, it will fail to capture the growth that it so desperately desires.

What stories are you telling your people? Do you know what stories are you telling yourself?

The finance and banking industry has long used the analogies of Bull or Bear to describe the market and its leaders have been known to use military metaphors to ‘inspire the troops’. Perhaps it is time to come up with some more creative metaphors, particularly in Asia where there is a strong tradition of passing on wisdom through story?

From a Self-leadership perspective, personal metaphors are extremely important in terms of motivation and achieving objectives. I remember coaching one senior manager who described his situation as, “It feels like I am clearing snow from my driveway whilst my neighbour is shovelling it back on!” Contrast this with another leader who had become frustrated with the status quo and indecision around an important issue for his global function; he told me, “I am throwing red paint balls at the wall, so now the discussion is no longer what colour to paint the wall, but how do we finish painting it red?”

Personally I am fond of using sailing for a metaphor and if you have ever sailed you will know that it requires knowledge and skill to harness the natural elements which are constantly shifting. You must ‘set your sails’ and then work the rudder and sheets (ropes connected to the sails) to achieve the optimum speed and direction. If you pull on the sheets too hard you can capsize the boat, if you let them go slack you will flap around and go nowhere. I was talking to a senior leader recently who had achieved quite a substantial goal and was now just ‘going through the motions’; we chatted about what, on the horizon, he would need to focus on to cause him to tighten the sheets and really set sail again. After some reflection this senior leader realised that he could now focus on transforming the culture of his organisation from a ‘dog-eat-dog’ experience to one where objectives could be met through collaboration.

After the global financial crisis has anything changed? The story certainly has. Just keep kicking the debt down the road expecting growth to take care of things has gone from a fairytale to a nightmare. There’s a new game afoot, a game with tighter rules, a game where we are rewarded by adding value and we do this by thinking strategically but by being flexible in the present. This is not a game for amateurs but a game for professionals who can learn and unlearn to suit the changing circumstances. So the game is on, will you lead or will you follow?

Most people I speak to have a negative perspective of politics, they associate it with backstabbing and pushing your own agenda at a cost to others. I have a different perspective; my experience is that business politics is about human nature and to ignore it is to ignore reality. In a perfect world the best workers would be promoted on merit alone and the best ideas would be adopted regardless of personal interest – but we do not live in Utopia we live in the real world. If you want to survive and prosper in the real world you need to combine good work with smart politics.

The term ‘Machiavellian’ is often used to negatively label those who have mastered the Art of Politics in Businesss but this may be paying a disservice to Nicolo Machievelli ( 1469 -1527) who wrote a handbook for politics and human nature called “The Prince”. I read The Prince as a young man but I recommend that my coaching clients read “The New Machievelli” by Alistair McAlpine. McAlpine’s book is a practical and readable guide to mastering the Art of Politics in which he explains why:

• Loyalty is not a reliable factor in the workplace
• Great power is held by the “little people” in a business
• It is better to spread power than to centralise it
• You should never believe your own publicity

I have just picked up the book again and was impressed by how Machievelli’s description of an ideal leader is as relevant today as it was in the fifteenth century. He suggest a natural leaders will:

• Be guided by as sense of morality, he/she has a philosophy for life and business
• Be able to assess the loyalty of his followers as well as demonstrate loyalty to them
• Be trustworthy and be known to be trustworthy
• Be fair; even if the leader has to make an unpopular decision, if it is fair he/she will be respected
• Be able to accurately judge a follower’s ability
• Always act in a way that commands respect and beyond that, respect others
• Resist trading old friends for new
• Never shirk responsibility or fail to express gratitude to others
• Look after their own health, have a balance of mind body and spirit

Finally a leader must have a sense of their own place in history, for that will ensure wellbeing.

Much of what Machievelli is advocating here has been validated by modern research, Kouzes and Posner imediately spring to mind. What is refreshing is that Machievelli accepts that these are ideals that we should look for in those that we follow and aspire to develop in ourselves. How did you do with the list?

Self-leaders have a drive for autonomy, are more creative and persist, even in the face of adversity. Shared-leadership allows team members to influence peers, superiors and sub-ordinates with the objective to lead one another to innovation and the achievement of high performance objectives.

In this video, inspirational speaker, Andrew Bryant shares a contingent model for developing leaders with self-leadership.

You know the symptoms; you are sitting in a slightly darkened room and the speaker drones on in a montone whilst showing you slide after slide, dot point after dot point, spreadsheets you can’t read and before you know it your eyelids feel heavy and your consciousness floats away.

Power Point is a powerful tool that is often misused and yet with a little preparation can bring your presentation to life and free you to inform and inspire your audience.

I trust you enjoyed the short YouTube video above. For more information about presentation skill training and coaching, visit www.selfleadership.com.sg

As a leadership consultant and executive coach living in Singapore and working across Asia, I am often asked; “is there is a difference between Western and Asian Leaders?”

The answer is “yes” and “no”. Leaders worldwide need to ask the same questions:

• Where are we going?
• What is our strategy? (how do we get there?)
• How do we execute?
• Is our team ready? (learning and development)
• Do we have enough bench strength for growth and sustainability (succession planning)

In addition leaders must be able to engender trust and effectively communicate their messages.

The difference between East and West is a matter of focus and style. In the Asian managers and companies tend to focus on execution, whereas in the West, creativity and innovation are more valued. In the East there is emphasis internally on command/control, the ‘how’ the do things, whereas Western companies tend to look externally at their customers and clients.

Asian employees are more likely to do what is asked whereas western employees are more likely to be free agents and independent thinkers .

Of course these observations are all generalisations but I think the key take-away is that both styles have merit and if we can appreciate and take the best of both we can be better leaders.

A lot of my work in the last couple of years has been equipping leaders with an understanding of different cultures. Western managers in Asia have needed to learn how to get the best from their employees and up and coming Asian leaders have needed to learn how to communicate in a style that is valued in Western companies.

There is currently an imbalance, more Westerners are heading up operations in Asia than there are Asian heading up operations in the West; it will be interesting to see if this tips in the next few years. What do you think?

Leadership Development in Singapore
Executive Coaching in Singapore

As with all things, Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

In this YouTube video I share a few tips on remembering a speech.

Feel free to share your tips by adding a comment.

 Mastery involves focus, concentration, passion, intention, commitment, and discipline.  We can’t achieve mastery in everything in fact most people are unlikely to achieve mastery in anything as they dabble in this and hack about at that.

 I know I have gotten all excited about something bought all the equipment only to have it gather dust some month later.

George Leonard identified four types of people that he experienced over the years: Dabblers, Hackers, Compulsives, and Masters.  As you read these descriptions perhaps you will recognise some elements of yourself, your friends or your colleagues?

Dabblers get into one thing, develop a certain level of skill, get bored, drop it, and move on to something else. Or they have one business idea try it for a few months and then want to do something else.

You can identify dabblers because they are always “trying” – “I will try this”.

Hackers develop a certain level of basic skill and then are content to sit on the plateau and never rise in skill or ability.  Hackers can evolve to new levels of skill, but usually do so only in response to some immediate need or crisis.

For example a social tennis player gets beaten and then takes lessons so that s/he can maintain face or an employee threatened by a new employee’s abilities and lifts their game so as not to be shown up.

You can identify hackers because they are always “Shoulding” – “I should get better at this.”

Compulsives reach the first plateau and become uncomfortable with their level of performance and so push harder and harder to get better faster.  They may reach another plateau or two, but ultimately they burn out.

Compulsives are always struggling and you can identify them by them always saying, “I have to do this.”

Masters understand that the plateau is part and parcel of the mastery process.  They recognise that there are a never-ending series of plateaus on the path toward mastery.  They recognise that being on the plateau and practicing is every bit as exciting as spurts of growth.  So they are undaunted by plateaus; they view them as an expected part of the ebb and flow of life.

The path of the master involves getting instruction, practicing, surrendering to the practice, keeping a clear intention to be the best, periodically pushing the “edge of the envelop.”

Howard Gardner (Creating Minds) wrote extensive descriptions of 7 Geniuses of the 20th century, one as a representative of his Seven Intelligences.  In that work, he describes his research about the pattern that it typically takes a person Ten Years to Master a Field of study.

As a speaker, trainer and coach I know that I am always learning and I know why I am learning; each time I engage with a client I feel that same passion and excitement as when I first started many, many years ago.

Are you on the path of mastery? Have you committed to continual improvement? Let’s hear your stories.