EXPAT LEADERSHIP, LIFESTYLE, AND LEARNING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA (Challenge #2: Delegation)

(Latest in a series of excerpts from my new book.)

Challenge #2: DELEGATION (No, Don’t Do That Yourself)

If you want to feel like you are “earning your keep” as the big boss, employees in Southeast Asia will kindly facilitate that. Your inclination to make most/all key decisions, well beyond those you might have made “back home”, will usually not be questioned or challenged by your local team. Satisfying, right? Especially if you are a new leader here? You decide, you’re responsible, tasks are accomplished, everyone is happy.

Hang on, not so fast…

Unlike in the West, staff here will rarely put up their hands to take on additional tasks and responsibilities. While that may feed your short-term ego, it’s a disaster waiting to happen, especially when your own promotion hinges on your succession planning. Only then do you realise that nobody is remotely ready because you did and decided almost everything yourself.

And when you do delegate, you’ll rarely get much pushback. Subordinates will smile politely and say “okay” when given tasks, including when they have no idea what you as the boss want—but they’ll not embarrass either you or themselves by pointing out this lack of understanding. In fact, you’ll likely start off very pleased with how accepting they are of these assignments—until they are due.

Most expats play a dual role here—to do, yes, but more importantly, to teach. This means that delegation needs to be on your mind each and every day as an expat leader in Southeast Asia.

Chapter 8: Teach a (Wo)man to Fish

Wherever you may be right now, your assignment in Southeast Asia is often just one stop in your expat career; in time, you’ll move on. As a result, your team here, along with your company, will permanently benefit when you teach and delegate, not when you decide and do everything independently.

As the saying goes, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This is a good analogy for your time as a manager and team leader in Southeast Asia. To truly benefit from your time together, your team will need to learn from you—by doing. An effective way to promote this is through extensive delegation. Constantly asking, “What do you think?” and some form of “What should we do?” will make it clear to your subordinates that they can and should step up their own decision-making.

Let me begin with a story from when I first started working overseas, in Hong Kong. This is not a negative commentary on the team involved—they were very good at what they did—but rather a commentary on me, as the new leader, and how I misunderstood and subsequently mishandled the situation.

My team had organised and given to me a thorough and detailed overview of actions they had taken to address a serious customer problem with one of our products. This team included my head of sales, technical director, and service manager—all the key leaders needed to solve the problem. The good news was that I was really impressed at their efforts to inform me as to what they had done to begin to address it. The bad news was that I wasn’t even aware that what they actually wanted was for me to tell them what to do next!

This sounds crazy, right? In hindsight, it was an amazing oversight. But at that point in my career, my experience had been with Western teams, where I was used to subordinates who would directly tell me, or ask me to tell them, what to do next. This was a cultural difference further compounded by the team also feeling that it was awkward and inappropriate to directly ask for my direction, thus (in their view) making me look silly for not having known that they wanted me to provide this direction. So, after their update, nothing happened. No direction from me, no decisions from them, and no action was taken. The situation remained stagnant and unresolved.

Key takeaways from these experiences:

1.Your team in Southeast Asia will very likely expect/allow you, as their boss, to make many or most key decisions. And it’s satisfying to make decisions—that shows you’re the boss!

2.Further to that point, if you don’t tell them what to do, they may not ask you to do so. However, in your role as a leader who teaches your team how to manage their businesses, you need them to make these decisions or, at the very least, suggest suitable solutions. Phrases such as, “What do you want to do next?”, “What do you recommend we do now?”, “What do you think are the two best options going forward?” can be very effective—modified to fit your management style, of course.

3.When encouraging subordinates with empowering phrases like these, you may naturally feel some risk and possible loss of control over the decision or outcome. However, you must always ask yourself “What’s the worst that can happen?” if their decision differs from what yours would have been. More often than not, it’s not going to be too impactful.

4.Your job as an expat manager is to “do”, yes, but even more so, it is to teach. This is what your company expects of you. The reality is that many traditional expat roles are now being filled locally, and while it may seem illogical to further accelerate your own demise, while your company needs you to produce results, even more so it needs you to teach others how to produce these results. Remember, you will likely move on and most of your team members will likely stay. Good short-term results are not enough if the leadership foundation is lacking.

“Your team here, along with your company, will permanently benefit when you teach and delegate, not when you decide and do everything independently.”

When you successfully develop your team through empowerment, it really is a “win-win-win” scenario: for you as an expat manager, for members of your team, and for your company. And while there may be an expectation from your team and quite possibly a temptation from you to make more of the key decisions (or most of them), fight that urge.

Consistently ask for their decisions. Make it clear you will repeatedly do so. You can and should challenge the decisions and may, in some cases, depending on the gravity and implications, modify or override the decisions, but let them generally be their decisions. The independence and confidence that will develop as a result are a lasting legacy you can leave behind when you move on.

RAPID RECAP

1. Empower decision-making from Day 1.

2. “What should we do?” = go to phrase.

3. Delegation rewards > risks.

4. Teaching > doing/deciding yourself.

Chapter 9: A New Season for Coach Expat

Each January, when we flip the calendar over to a new year, many expats find themselves with new assignments, new teams, and new challenges. With this in mind, it is timely to contemplate what can be expected and what should be avoided when facing these changes.

Whether you follow the NBA, the Premier League, La Liga, or nearly any other sporting league, you’ll see a pronounced difference between the quality and execution in season-opening matches vs those in the playoffs, league cups or championship series. This difference is the result of practise and effort during the season, as well as the “gelling” that every coach looks for in their team members working effectively as a group. Companies are a lot like sports teams.

I have had the good fortune to work for many years in Hong Kong and Singapore. These are two business-minded, fast-paced, world-class locations in which to hire and rapidly develop teams. Many countries in Southeast Asia, on the other hand, lack this profile. As such, while I find Southeast Asian teams genuinely wanting to learn and improve themselves, they can quickly—and understandably—get turned off when an immediate, quantum improvement in their performance is what you demand. I have seen local teams quickly throw in the towel when a new boss arrives, saying something to the effect of “If you are so smart, do it yourself.” So by all means, strive to raise standards, teamwork, and performance, but remember where you started and how far you have to go to reach your goal. The teams that win championships frequently get hot towards the end of the season, often after a painfully slow start.

One of the worst examples I am aware of was when an expat GM came to Malaysia and asked each of his managers to present a brief overview of their departments’ personnel and results—a seemingly good start! However, after watching just a couple of his managers present their information, he angrily stopped the meeting and asked for all presentations to be sent to him. The very next day, the expat manager reconvened the meeting and had each bewildered manager present, once again roughly the same information, but this time redone and reformatted by him. So rather than teach them what he wanted, show them how to achieve it, accept a bit of trial and error before his team got to where he wanted them, and achieve some group learning and camaraderie along the way, he showed his temper (always a mistake) and did the work himself (usually a mistake). The competence within the team hadn’t changed one iota, but they became very leery of their new boss.

Key takeaways from these experiences:

1.In the companies I have led throughout Southeast Asia, a regular visit from global HQ and/or Asian HQ leadership was the norm. That was always a time to showcase the challenges I faced in developing the local team, as well as the progress that we’d made since the prior visit. Each visit went a bit better, got a bit easier, and, most importantly, increased my teams’ confidence significantly—that they could present, answer tough questions, and articulate their issues, while relying less and less on me.

2.At first, whatever the project, I learnt to accept getting about 50–60 per cent of what I actually wanted, but then tried to specifically and systematically point out the deficiencies. The next round still wasn’t what I wanted, but progress was evident. By encouraging staff, the satisfaction that came from their improvements was something we both could share.

3.While this does not mean you accept mediocrity, it does mean you should be very specific with shortcomings and realistic with the pace of improvements. It’s fair to say that employees in any country appreciate when you can help make them better at what they do.

4.Look at it this way: would your company really need you here, with the complexity and cost of relocating you (and presumably paying you well), if the local team could already operate at a sufficiently high level? As mentioned in various chapters, your teaching—and their learning—is what you’ll leave behind.

“By all means, strive to raise standards, teamwork, and performance, but remember where you started and how far you have to go to reach your goal.”

The saying “you begin with the end in sight” definitely applies here. Step by step, work your way via your team up to championship performance levels. It feels great when your team is performing at a very high level and subsequently delivering the desired results. Having played competitive sports (many years ago), this is the closest feeling to “coaching a championship team” that I have experienced professionally, and it feels great!

RAPID RECAP

1. Decrease reliance on yourself.

2. Favour progress > perfection.

3. Be specific and realistic.

4. Your teaching = your legacy.

For all of the Chapters in CHALLENGE #2, and to purchase the paperback or e-book, go to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DG98V1MZ