What does your trust look like ?

This is a picture of an ice-selling shop near where I live. The first time I went there to buy ice, nobody was in. I shouted a couple of times and waited a few minutes but it remained all quiet. The next time I tried the same, a little girl of about 5 years came out to help me put the ice in the bag and take the money. When our business transaction was nearly finished an adult showed up. So I told him that it was difficult to find someone around to buy ice from. He explained me the established operating procedure.

Anyone buying ice selects one of the plastic bags hanging behind the blue ice tank. There are three sizes. Filled with ice, they cost 3, 5 or 10 Thai baht. You can pick ice from the blue tank, with the big ice cubes, or the red tank, with the small tube-like ice cubes. Or you can mix both. Once you have filled your plastic bag to the rim with ice, you drop either 3 or 5 or 10 Thai baht in a rusty cup. There is no sign "put your money here" ! And that's how the ice shop works. So once I knew the ropes, I became one of their self-service customers.

"How can they trust strangers ? Don't people come and steal ice, or pay less than they should ?" I don't know the answers. But the shop has been operating for ages, and I guess they would have changed the system if it didn't work.

This is what trust looks like in this particular situation. Trust is a word with meaning, and is often used in a very general and conceptual way. We often say trust is important. So what does your trust look like ? With your team members ? Peers ? Clients ? Concretely. What do you do or say or don't do or refrain from saying, that established trust with those around you ?

The Power of Silence

We are so hooked on fighting for air-time, making sure we are heard and showing what we know that keeping silent is a challenge for many leaders. Asking a question, waiting for the answer, and then really listening and exploring is the core of real leadership.

When you ask a question and end up answering it yourself ... you are basically saying that you knew the answer and were just "testing" if your team knows or not. You are also saying that you do not really have the time or interest to listen to their ideas.

"But what should I do if they are quiet ? If they have no idea ?" leaders often ask me. My answer is invariably ... "Shut up and wait !". "But what should I do if they are quiet for 5 minutes ?" For one, it will probably never be 5 minutes, although it may feel like that. Second, if you are really interested in their answer, you should just wait.

Think carefully about the questions you are asking. Are you trying to find out if they know the answer ? That's a test, not a question. Do you have the answer to the question you are asking ? If so, why ask it ?  Too often, leaders ask questions to find a way to say what they know or think. A question that is really meant to find out what others are thinking is powerful. Rhetorical questions, gotcha-questions, multiple-choice or do-you-know questions are not how you build trust, innovation or your leadership.

An interesting article recently about the power of uncomfortable silences on the BBC website:

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20170718-the-subtle-power-of-uncomfortable-silences

I already told him but ...

Giving feedback in an effective way is not easy, for sure not for folks in many Asian countries. After a training and practice session, most at least will give it a try. What I often hear a week later is "I already told him but ...". The most important part of giving feedback is not the actual moment in which you give the feedback ... It is what happens after that. There are two possibilities. Either the person will improve (even if only somewhat, or temporarily) or won't. And what you do at that point is more important that the actual feedback.

If the behavior/issue/performance has improved ... let them know ! There is nothing worse (really) than someone taking feedback for real, working hard to get better and then start to wonder if anyone really noticed it the improvement.

If the behavior/issue/performance does not improve ... the same goes ! Way to often I see folks give up after just one feedback. They conclude that the other person doesn't want to change, is not capable of changing or just doesn't get it. I already told him but ... Expecting things to change right from the first feedback is not realistic. Lack of follow up can be interpreted in different ways. It can be seen as "it wasn't really important after all" or "my manager is not courageous" all the way to a break in the relationship with both avoiding the deal with the lagging issue.

If you have children, and they don't do what they are supposed to do despite you telling them, you don't simply give up ! Repeat repeat repeat.

Another meeting ... another opportunity lost ?

I am not one of those people who declare that meetings are all useless and that you as a leader should stop having meetings. That is great for a shock-effect blog or book title but stopping meetings is just not realistic. And actually counter-productive. I really think that meetings are a great way to lead an organization, develop individuals and build teams. But you need to ask yourself why you are having a meeting in the first place.

If people just show up knowing that each will take turn to flip through a set of Powerpoint slides ending with "Are there any questions ?" then of course you cannot expect much engagement or team development.

Source: Harvard Business Review

I recently came across this statistic in Harvard Business Review about how people evaluate their meetings in terms of "bringing the team closer together". 62% said that the meetings do not bring the team closer together. That is really worrisome. How do you expect a team to grow and get to work better together if you use the meetings for "other priorities" ? There are very few opportunities where a whole leadership team is together. That was the main feedback from a team I recently worked with. The entire  management team of a manufacturing plant was together only every 3 months to listen (!) to the quarterly update of the plant results ! At all other times, it was only sub-sets of managers that worked together on particular topics. The whole group of managers had NEVER worked together on a problem together. Yet they were seen by the organization - and expected to be seen as such - as the "leadership team".

Think about why you are having a meeting. Take at least 5 minutes at the end to reflect - as a team - on what you just did, what worked and what didn't, and what to do different next time. Maybe, just maybe, you will develop more meaningful meetings, and the beginnings of a real team.

When do you start building trust and respect ?

In the leadership program I am currently running in a global company, managers share their challenges through Action Learning sessions. Most of the management issues that participants discuss are about their direct reports. Very often it is about a particular person in the team with who things aren't going so well. Performance may be below par, or the "behaviors" are not as expected. Although the managers don't use the word, it is pretty much about som

eone very different from themselves and "difficult" to work with.

The process of asking open questions (as opposed to fact-finding investigative questions or "let me share what I think you should do" discussions) often leads to the insight on the part of the manager that there is a genuine gap between themselves and this particular person. The manager can give plenty of examples of behavioral or performance issues. But when the questions are about how they work together, how well the manager knows the person and his or her challenges, what other work related things they talk about ... the manager often gets quite silent. He realizes that all they do with this direct report is work, talk about work and complain about the work that doesn't go well. They realize there is not really a "foundation" to their working relationship. There is only work and that's all they talk about. And that's (maybe ...) OK as long as things are going well.

But when they don't, the lack of genuine relationship, the lack of trust or mutual respect makes it very difficult to get out of the negative spiral. Without a solid personal foundation based on other things than "work" (which can cover KPI, job role and responsibilities. payment, benefits), difficult situation often turn sour.

As someone in a recent session shared at the end, "I realize that I need to start working on trust and respect right from day one, not when something starts to go wrong."

Building trust ... where to start ?

A fellow facilitator recently contacted me to ask for ideas about an exercise around trust for a team session. And she specified that it shouldn't be childish or goofy (her words) like the famous "trust fall" exercise since this is a senior executive team.

Trust is a word we often use lightly. A key point to understand is that trust exists only at the level of two people. An easy way to think about this: if A trusts B and A trusts C, then this does not mean that there is trust in the team A, B, C. In fact, it is possible that B and C don't trust each other. So you cannot put 8 people in a circle and say "let's now build trust in this team". It starts at the level of the different pairs.

When I work around trust, I always start with the pairs. The trust between pairs will become the trust within the team as a whole.

My favorite exercise is the "hot seat". Each person takes turn sitting in the hot seat, and the others, one by one, give feedback about this person. Round one follows the "I appreciate that you do/say this or that and I suggest you continue doing it" structure. Round two is "I think it would be great for the team if you could start/stop doing/saying this or that". The person receiving the feedback can only say "Thank you" and not react in any other way. If done consciously, this can go quite fast and it is typically well received by all participants. There is sometimes laughter and sometimes genuine reflection and appreciation.

You won't build trust in a single session. But there is a way to get started.

Taking teams for granted ...

When a professional develops experience and successes over the years, he at one point often gets promoted to manager (or leader, or supervisor ... pick your preferred term). And most of the time does quite well. He will get some feedback or evaluation about which of the managerial skills he needs to develop. And again most of the time all this goes well. Until it no longer does. And then the peers or superiors get into analysis mode about how to deal with this manager (leader, supervisor ...) who is not performing as he should. At that point, we often realize that the person had kind of - accidentally ? - stumbled into a management role. He had not really been prepared, or mentored, or trained to take on the role of a manager.

We often assume that people know what management is about because of what they have seen around them. If you have been around it, can't be so difficult to do the same, the thinking goes.

In my experience, the same happens with teams in organizations. Second to leadership, teams are probably one of the most talked about/written about concepts of personal and organizational development. Everybody knows what a team is, often starting from a young age with sports teams. And when we start to work, we are part of teams. Or at least they tell us we are part of teams. Some teams are working well, others are not. So just as with the management itself, we assume that people know what teams are and what to do or not to do when working on a team. But often, and in my experience this happens even more frequently than the case of the individual managers, teams do not live up to the expectations or the potential. Open conflict is probably (hopefully !) rare, but what we call a team is most of the time a group of individuals coming together once in a while to share information.

A team can be so much more. But for that to happen, you cannot expect to get there without some effort. Teams require work. Where do you rate your team in 2016 on a scale from 1 to 10, and what is your plan to improve on that in 2017 ?

Why working in a team is the best leadership development ...

Bringing a diverse group of people together and asking them to find solutions for a complex company-wide problem will push participants slightly out of their comfort zone. How they deal with this challenge will demonstrate their capability to learn and survive in the VUCA world in the future.

A recent experience with a services firm confirmed this. I worked with 11 high potentials during a couple of months. The organization's focus was to validate who from them were really high-potentials, ready for further development or promotion. At the end of the series of sessions, the team presented their conclusions and recommendations on the challenge they had worked on, and each team member presented separately to the top management team what they had learned, the insights they had discovered and how they evaluated the experience over all.

And it was during the individual presentations that things got interesting. Some of the people who were thought of as high-potentials confirmed or even exceeded their potential. Others who had in fact been a bit under the radar jumped out from the crowd and positively surprised the management team. And a few who were considered as top guns strongly disappointed.

As the country manager said (at the end of the session): "We now know where people really stand ... and in some cases that is not where we thought they were standing !".

We could have decided on some leadership training. And I am sure the participants would have liked it. And learned a lot. But working in a team, not being in their area of expertise and having to progress together really highlighted the strengths some had, and brought to the fore the gaps others were struggling with.

It is tempting to identify HIPOs and future leaders by looking at each of your team members individually. But it is by having them work in a team that you really will see how they stack up !

When the cat's away ...

What happens to your team when you are not around ? My experience with different teams in Asia is not so much that people will start to play or muck around. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Rather than getting together and doing all the stuff you maybe do not allow when you are around, most of the time, when the cat is away, the mice will go in hibernation !

That "team" that you often think of as the group of your direct reports will more or less fall back to its components. The HR manager will go and focus on the HR stuff and the marketing person will quietly keep on working on the marketing assignment you handed out. The team ceases to exist.

When an issue comes up where collaboration or joint action is needed, and when you are not around, does your team huddle together, come up with solutions and decide on the best way forward ? Or do they get lost in arguments and turf wars ? Or - and I think this is what happens most often - is the issue put on the 'pending' list until your return. Whichever of these two extremes, it seems that anything but routine work gets done when you are not around.

What is the solution ? You cannot expect a team to grow by itself if you are involved in every decision. Step back ... even when you are around, and refrain from intervening while at the same time asking for progress to be made. In fact, if the mice start playing when you are not around, that would be a pretty good sign. If however they go into a comatose state, you need to reflect on how you can change the way you work to start building a real team !

Keeping employee engagement simple !

Employee engagement is probably one of the greatest buzz words of the last few years. Consultants make great money with measuring and evaluating employee engagement, and often show leaders how terribly low the engagement of their employees is. And after having shamed these leaders, they then feel obliged to hire the aforementioned consultant to hopefully turn those disastrous numbers into something more presentable. Often, a multi-year "engagement project" is started ... with great costs.

So it is refreshing to once in a while come back to earth and see how simple engaging employees can be ! I had the chance to work with teams at a service firm in Bangkok a few times. Each time I discovered different knowledge sharing sessions being offered to employees, designed and delivered by peers and colleagues. Not by the training department or the HR function, but by the seniors in the different departments.

It is a great step forward if an organization can instill a mindset of sharing knowledge as opposed to hoarding it. Knowledge is the only thing that multiplies when shared amongst others. Yet in reality, people are often incentivized to sit on their knowledge for their own performance measures. Through this kind of sharing sessions, the company instills pride and empowerment when it gives the opportunity for employees to develop and deliver these sharing sessions.

Just think how different this kind of sharing sessions are received by the employees compared to the traditional email from HR about the list of training programs to sign up for ?

Employee engagement is a long term effort, for sure. But it doesn't need to be complicated. When you are embarking on an engagement effort, start by looking at and asking your ... employees !

When self-awareness hits home

I was positively surprised in a team Action Learning session some time ago. Two very high-potentials, extremely sharp and well-spoken, contributed heavily in the first half of the session. Not to say they pretty much monopolized the discussion. Their peers sat and nodded most of the time. But then again, their contributions were really top notch.

As the session progressed, and the Action Learning coach invited the team members to share their personal reflections and learning, both spoke out to say they "had to be more quiet" and "give more chance to others to participate". Now, that happens quite often. What happens more rarely though is that they actually changed their own habit without much prompting.

They were both more quiet but explicitly encouraged others to share. Even if they had some great ideas, they refrained from expressing them. They encouraged the entire team to contribute and share. The dynamic of the team changed from one with two dominant figures to that of a team working together.

During the reflections at the end of the session, one of the initially dominant ones shared a well-known quote, which was poignant because she had just demonstrated how to apply this wisdom, rather than just being able to rattle off the quote. "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

High-potentials are often those of who the organization thinks they are a level above the other, today and in the future. If this potential can be combined with a genuine self-awareness and actions to work on their own shortcomings, then you have in your hand a few gems. Rare but really valuable.

Changing others ...

In the team sessions I run, participants share management challenges and learn from each other through a questioning process. 100% of the challenges are about someone who is not in the room. The difficult colleague. The demanding boss. A team member who is not doing what is asked. Or another who is talking behind your back. The context and specifics are different, but it is always about them. And how to change them.

The presenter explains to the colleagues in the team session all he has tried, all the tricks in his management tool kit that have been tested. And how all these attempts were not successful and how the issue is still there. Once the explanations about the situation are complete, the presenter eagerly listens to what the colleagues will come up with, in the hope they will have a magic trick in the tool box that is brand new and untested and will be the secret to dealing with this management challenge. Alas, after a few minutes, the discussion often turns into "I have tried that too and it doesn't work" or "This solution is not possible in this case because ...".

The exchange quickly grows stale when the focus is solely on what other or innovative tricks exist to change the other person's (peer, boss, team member) behavior. The real insight comes when the presenter realizes that he or she can only change his or her own behavior ... and then see what impact that has on the other person. This seems pretty basic for some but it is only when this awareness has grown that the presenter can come up with real steps of what he can do himself to deal with the challenge.

Nipping ideas in the bud ..

I keep on coming across managers who tell me their team members have no ideas or inputs when asked for them. I wrote a blog sometime earlier about what you can do to create an environment where people are more comfortable to share their ideas. With a rote learning education and associated culture, many folks in organizations in Asia are not used to ask, challenge or propose.

Illustration by Saul Steinberg

So managers should put extra effort in inviting their team members to share their ideas. But I have come to think that the real problem is elsewhere. The real problem lies in the reaction the manager offers when someone brings up an idea. The courage to share the idea is often squashed but the very first things the manager does while the words are still floating in the air.

Those first things can be ...

1. the body language ... What does your FACE say when someone shares an idea ? Does it show genuine interest or does it show that this idea is not what you expected ?

2. the dreaded "but" ... as in "Great idea, but ....". But is then followed by "let me explain you why this won't work", "I have tried this in my years of experience and ..." or "this is not compatible with the main plan" ... or a combination thereof !

3. the follow up ... If you do not act upon the ideas your team proposes, or better still, give them the green light to act upon their own ideas, you are sending the message that you had the better answers anyway.

Next you find yourself frustrated with your team members' lack of ideas, input or creativity, think about how you react when they do propose something.

What Google's research DID NOT say about high-performance teams

Amy Edmondson's concept of team psychological safety has been around for 15 years. But it takes a company like Google mentioning it to bring the topic in the mainstream ! Google spent a lot of time to analyze what differentiates high-performance teams from mediocre ones. Although many interesting characteristics were looked at, none of them was really the differentiating factor. What really set high-performance teams apart from others was "a shared belief by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking".

Unfortunately this complex team dynamic is already being reduced to one-liners and simplifications. One of the articles I came across discussed Google's finding with the eye-catching title

"Google spends years figuring out that the secret to a good working environment is just to be nice."

Well, no ... First of all Google didn't try to find out what a good working environment looks like, but what high-performance teams look like and behave like. Secondly, the title leads to a serious misunderstanding. Being nice is not what makes a team excellent. If that were the case, I would know of numerous high-performance teams. Especially in Asia, being nice is very important and doing the opposite creates tensions. But being nice in itself does not result in excellence. When being nice means not challenging one another (for fear of losing face), not speaking up when you really should (for fear of standing out) or faking agreement (for fear of creating tensions), you have a team with lots of niceness but little excellence.

Nothing wrong with being nice. But do not equate that with a high-performance team !

Meetings that work !

I was lucky to be able to deliver the first public workshop on Action Learning in Vietnam last week. At the end of the session, all participants confirmed they really saw the value of the approach and they would apply it in their organizations. As a facilitator, it feels good to get this kind of feedback but I am also aware that very often, reality (with deadlines, emails, presentations to do ...) sucks us up very quickly.

So I was really excited to receive an email from one of the participants of the Vietnam branch of a global FMCG company sharing his very first - and innovative - application of the principles of Action Learning !

His sales team had scheduled the annual Joint Business Meeting with a key customer the day after the workshop. In the past, this Business Meeting was a full day of Powerpoints where each team shared their views, their objectives, results and challenges. And the hours were spent in discussing, explaining, debating, resulting in some agreements and some disagreements. Pretty much a long day for everybody involved, with hours of time spent up front to create the Powerpoint slides.

So my participant, in charge of the sales team for the global FMCG in Vietnam, decided to try and apply the principles of Action Learning in this annual Joint Business Meeting. Out with the laptops, and out with the Powerpoints. The sales manager adapted the standard WIAL Action Learning script to fit his need for this meeting, maintaining the core ground rule of "Statements are only made in response to questions". Participants asked questions to one another to dive into the challenges their respective businesses were facing. Quite a difference from stating your point and trying to convince the other side yours is the right view. Both teams followed the Action Learning approach and achieved a high level of consensus on the key challenges they faced. At the end of the meeting, next steps were jointly identified to work towards and solve the challenges. Participants rated the session 8.5 out of 10 !

Next step: do the same with 2 other major customer teams.

Now that's what I call Action Learning ... in action !

Building the wrong kind of trust

A lot has been written about developing trust with your team members. Trust takes time to build and can be destroyed in a minute with a careless remark. In Asia, trust is maybe even more critical when leading a team. We know all that. Nothing new here. But I have seen senior leaders attempting to build trust with their team yet at the same time destroying the very foundation of that team.

Here is what I have observed more than once. The leader sits down with Tom, one of his direct reports, to review an important project. "Great job Tom, I am really happy I asked you to be in charge of this project. We are on track and the client is really satisfied. You have definitely confirmed your capabilities". So far so good ... great expression of trust in what Tom has done so far. And then the conversation continues ... "Now, for the next step, you will need to work with the marketing manager Susan. You know she can sometimes be a bit reluctant about launching under the circumstances we are in. You may want to spend some extra time to convince her. But at the same time, I trust Susan that she will lead the marketing campaign successfully."

What has happened here ? The leader has created great trust between him or herself and Tom. Tom probably walks out of this meeting really pumped and motivated. But what about Tom and Susan ? The leader gave some advice about how to approach Susan, and also added that he or she trusted Susan with her part of the project. So all should be set and done between Tom and Susan, right ? Unfortunately, trust does not work that way. Trust is dyadic, a difficult word to indicate it can only exist between two people. I can trust A and I can trust B, but that does not mean that A trusts B or that B trusts A.

Developing a team requires not just trust between the leader and the direct reports. There is much more potential for value - as well as downside - in the trust relations between the team members. If the leader talks to Tom about Susan, when Susan is not there (and doesn't this happen all the time ?), then what does this do to the relationship of trust between Tom and Susan ?

Trust between your team members is as important as trust between you and each of them. As a leader, you cannot "manage" this trust, but what you say - and what you don't say - to each of your team members influences these trust relationships to a large extent. Something to think about for your next one-on-one.

So what really happens when you're not around ?

The real test of a team is to observe what happens when the boss is not around. At worst, bickering and territory-defending starts. Sub-cliques get together to gossip and point out whose fault this or that latest issue is.


But let's be positive. Let's assume yours is not a dysfunctional team. When I ask leaders what happens when they are not around, they tell me that things are just working fine, that work moves along and gets done as it should be. Thank God (or rather, thank you !) for that. But is that really where our expectations for our team should end ? That the usual stuff gets done ? That managers stay in their comfort zone and stick to the established routines ? What happens when something important (not routine) comes up ? How does your team deal with that ?

Team Psychological Safety is a concept that describes how team members feel and interact when the boss is not there. Originally developed by Professor Edmondson from Harvard University, it refers to “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking".

What does this mean ? Let's say an important challenge arises, where people have conflicting opinions and the boss is not around to decide. What do your team members do ? Do they get together and look for the best solution for the organization ? Or do they wait it out for you to come back ? Do they develop work-arounds (duplicate work) to deal with the issue without addressing the root cause ? Do they stay in their comfort zone (comfort zone = job title, department or small circle of buddies) or do they take the risk to step out of the comfort zone and find a solution, even if this is maybe "not their job" ?

We all know what we think should happen. But the question is what really happens ?

You can measure the Team Psychological Safety that exists in your team. Team Psychological Safety does not emerge after a beach-side team building or after the annual retreat. It takes effort, and time, to build it up. But the rewards are very significant: a team that grows and takes responsibility, also when you are not there !

What if they have no idea ... ?

A key principle in coaching is to let the coachee - quite often the subordinate - come up with ideas for making progress on a particular issue him or herself. This goes a long way towards ownership and accountability: acting on one's own ideas and suggestions is more meaningful than doing what the coach or boss suggests. In workshops where young managers are practicing their coaching or feedback giving skills, they often share "Well, I tried to ask them for their ideas, but they said they don't have any."

Well, thinking and developing ideas is one thing that separates humans from animals, so when someone says they "cannot think" or they "don't have any idea", they are looking for a quick way out of what is for them an uncomfortable situation ! In some countries in Asia, in Thailand in particular, many people have not been brought up in family or educational circles with a focus on developing their own ideas. You will need to help them learn again ... or rather learn for the first time. Here are three tips I have found to work rather well.

1. Give them some time. Don't stare them down or have them sit in front of you "until an idea comes out". Give them anything from five minutes ("I am going for a break and will be back in five minutes to give you some time to think") to one day ("Let's talk about your ideas again tomorrow at 9 AM"). This releases the pressure of having to come up with something right now or else ....

2. Ask them for three. If you ask for one idea, this is often interpreted as if there is somewhere one correct answer, that you expect them to come up with. This increases the pressure and often blocks people from sharing anything. Asking for three or five sends the message that there is no single perfect answer. 

3. Approve right then and there. Experienced managers often have the tendency to take someone's idea or suggestion and modify/improve/complete it. This sends the message that the manager anyway knows better or more. Refrain from this temptation. Approve their idea, or part of their idea, and encourage them to implement it and get back to you in x days to discuss the result. The ownership and learning will be far more powerful.

We all know how to think but sometimes, a bit of help is needed !

Where's your heart at ?

I am very luck that I speak Thai rather well. When I deliver a workshop with a team in Thailand, I make sure that some English jargon or particular expressions that are used in the slides, are well understood by the audience.

Just last week, I had an interesting experience. I

wanted to make sure that the group thoroughly understood the expressions "Putting yourself in their shoes" and "Coming from your gut", two idioms we use in English and easily understand the figurative meaning. When I asked the group for the Thai equivalent, they translated as something that translates back into English as "Putting their heart in our heart" and "Coming from the heart". Very interesting how these expressions - with shoes and guts in English - both come back to the heart.

And I again came to realize that this is one of the keys of working with teams in Thailand. There is no secret formula, but too often I see foreigners struggling with finding a connection with their team. They say all the right things, try to motivate, do fun stuff, communicate, communicate, communicate, and learn a bit of Thai language. Yet despite all this, many still say that they are not getting the performance or engagement that they want out of their team.

So maybe the secret is in adding a bit of "heart" to things. Sharing your feelings. Asking others about theirs. These things are often looked upon in the West as personal, private and not really belonging in the workplace (or at least, they are not things for the manager/boss to bring into the workplace context or conversations). Yet, in Thailand, with so many things going to and coming from the "heart", getting comfortable and adapting your style by adding in a bit more "heart" will definitely go a long way.

Getting feedback ... 2 tales ...

There is no doubt that feedback helps organizations progress. But your approach to how you obtain feedback can in itself send a powerful message. In the same day in Singapore, I had 2 very different experiences, on the subject of getting feedback.

In Changi airport, I walked through check-in, immigration and got to the gate in 6 minutes. But that's kind of standard there. In these 6 minutes, I got 2 times the chance to give feedback: on the service of the immigration officer, and on the guy who keeps the restrooms clean (see one of the touch-screen images). One tap of the finger, each time. While I was sitting at the gate using the free WIFI that is everywhere available, an elderly lady approached me and asked if she could ask a few things about my satisfaction with the airport. In about 8 minutes, we cruised through probably 60 questions. Using her iPad, sweeping through different screens, she very deftly noted my answers with her iPad notetaker. I discovered questions about things I didn't know existed at the airport. When we were all done, she gave me a free pen.

A global organization I worked with that same day told me about the mega-employee-satisfaction-project that was going on. It looked like this was the single and only priority for the HR folks I met. It also seemed to be seen as a pain for everyone else. The previous satisfaction survey had been done 4 years ago. There seemed a lot of stress, hour-long phone calls with global teams, tight schedules and deadlines. Each country seemed to say that they needed something different than the global team was imposing. Strangely, nobody expressed interest or anticipation for the actual result, either from 4 years ago, or for the same for this survey. In fact, the focus and energy all turned towards the only KPI the management has fixed to the project team: a 100% employee participation. There was a sense of dread for those country managers who would not be able to get feedback from each employee, and therefore not show a 100% score !

When I finished with the old lady at Changi airport, I jokingly told her: "Don't change anything, everything is perfect already !" She replied: "That's why keep on asking you ...". Changi airport is ranked #1 in the world. I have a suspicion that their approach to getting feedback ... constant, simple, friendly, smooth ... is part of the reason.