The Loyalty Trap: What Your Best Leaders Aren’t Telling You
What you can’t see and why it IS hurting your business. There’s a CEO I worked with — runs a large insurance operation in Singapore, about 12,000 employees — and when I asked him what kept him up at night, he didn’t say competitors. He didn’t say regulation or market conditions. He said: I have […]
Why Your Team Stays Silent, And What to Do About It
What is Psychological Safety and why is it important? Picture this. The team meeting wraps up. You ask if there are any questions. Silence. Nobody raises a hand. You walk away thinking everyone’s aligned, everyone’s on board. Then three weeks later, a problem surfaces, one that two people on your team saw coming but said […]
Face or Fragility? Delivering Feedback in APAC
The Feedback Conversation Your Western Training Didn’t Prepare You For Most managers working across Asia have had some version of this experience. You deliver what feels like a clear, constructive piece of critical feedback. The person in front of you nods. They seem to understand. They may even agree. And then nothing changes, or worse, […]
The Person in the Room Has the Advantage. Here’s How to Fix That.
Proximity bias is a quick fix to improve fairness. Think about the last time you gave someone a stretch assignment. A chance to lead a project, represent the team, take on something that would stretch them. Now think about where that person sits. If they’re in the office with you most of the time, it […]
When Nobody Has the Map, Here’s How to Lead Anyway.
Being a leader during change can be a struggle. Last year, I was working with a group of senior leaders navigating one of the most disorienting situations any manager can face: their organisation was mid-change, the destination wasn’t clear yet, and their teams were looking to them for answers they simply didn’t have. Country heads. […]
How to Give Feedback That Actually Changes Behaviour: A Manager’s Guide
Most managers think they’re giving feedback. They’re not. What they’re giving is the occasional comment, the annual performance review, and — when things get serious — a performance improvement plan that everyone knows is really just paperwork before an exit. That’s not a feedback culture. That’s avoidance with a calendar attached. Here’s the reality: if […]
You Can’t Choose Your Team. Here’s How to Lead Them Anyway.
Leaders have to deal with What is… not just what they wish for. My mother used to say: you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. She wasn’t talking about management, but she could have been. When most people step into a leadership role for the first time, they don’t get to […]
Cross-Cultural Leadership in Asia: A Practical Guide for Global Managers
Let’s be honest: leading in Asia is one of the fastest ways to become a better global manager. You’ll develop pattern recognition that doesn’t come from leading a single-culture team in Dallas or Frankfurt. You’ll learn to read rooms differently, build trust through different mechanisms, and deliver results through influence structures that don’t show up […]
Why a Lot of Leadership Training Fails to Change Behaviour
Have you heard of the “Forgetting Curve”? You do training, the workshop gets good feedback, the facilitator is engaging, participants leave with energy and ideas. And for a while they try to put it into practice, but a few weeks later, it’s gone. Managers are behaving the same way they always have. The investment feels […]
The Hidden Cost of Avoiding Difficult Conversations
Imagine somebody you like comes to you and says, “Hey, I’m looking for a job right now, and I noticed there’s an opening in your organization. Should I apply? What do you think? I’m really qualified for it.” What would you say? If you hesitated just now—if you thought “Well, you know, it’s not bad” […]