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After my stint in the multinational agency as managing director, it was clear to me that I had to reinvent myself especially given the massive pace of digital transformation happening. When an offer to be a consultant to lead in the development of Data Management Platform (DMP) for a local client with the participation of regional clients and regional resources, I took the job.

Here was a situation were I could learn more about digital marketing. Little did I know that this commitment would lead to a long journey of learning, reinventing and working with a very diverse set of team members.

The brief was to develop the DMP that would collect, segment, analyze and use customer data to improve the marketing of the client. I did not understand the terms and often the charts would be presented simple english as the original documents were in Japanese.

The regional team was composed of an elite business development team from Japan headed by a dynamic team leader, 2 data scientist, 2 digital marketing experts, 2 project managers. They were all from Japan. For the local team, we recruited a data scientist, a data manager and a program developed.

Together this new team set out to build something we did not fully understand, in a process that we had to feel our way through with team members we hardly knew.

At the end of this 8 month project, we developed the DMP that did get to do what it was intended to do. In the process, we had developed a working team that could work from several locations in an agile set-up.

Reflection

Having a vision of reinventing myself and striving to learn something new in an agile position where titles did not matter were key factors that made this project a success. Having mutual respect for team members was also a big factor for me and that made the long working hours of 3 to 4 hour video calls more bearable. This gave me the chance to reinvent not just my understanding for digital marketing, it also gave me the opportunity to understand how my role in teams better evolve when I don't define it according to a lofty title.

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What are my needs?

What are my strengths?

What are the things I want to explore?

What are my hindering behaviours?

What are my helpful behaviours?

What are the values I stand for?

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Team offsite at Cabildo St, Intramuros, Philippines

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Leading Teams - Good, bad & ugly: Nicholas Tan

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Leading Teams - Good, bad & ugly: Nicholas Tan

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Negative story
One of my most negative experiences leading a team was in my first people manager role. I had to manage a team who were all based in a completely different country, and even though I flew over often, it was difficult to properly build the team remotely.

Even though I was lucky enough to hire good people for my team, the main struggle with managing this team was to manage upwards; specifically telling the CEO that just because we had a team, it did not mean we could execute random work that was last-minute and out of scope, such as translating his weekly ad-hoc messages to the company within an hour.

The last straw was when my CEO instructed me to execute a "campaign" which I felt was downright unethical. I even escalated this to my manager, and told him and the CEO that if word ever got out that the company had done this, it would be a PR fire that we would not recover from. However, the CEO and my manager both told me to go ahead and tell my team to do it anyway. I even got them both on email confirming this action.

I had a real internal struggle as I was still a new people manager, and wondered if I should just close an eye and just go ahead and do as I was told. However, as I was typing up the email to send off, I realised that I could not in good faith do what I had been told to do. I resigned the next day and the incident shook me to my core, as I had no other job offer and even my family questioned why I was leaving a job and refusing to do what my CEO had asked me to do.

While I was unemployed, I listened to a lot of Adele: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWZUozJiHy44Y?si=TfQa_K_aQpuHpbBzR0Fsmw

Positive story
One of the best experiences was in a role where I had a team based in three countries - Singapore, Manila and Yangon. I learned many lessons on how to run marketing in emerging markets which I had not had the opportunity to do so before, and I even wrote a post on LinkedIn about my experience: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/marketing-101-emerging-markets-nicholas-tan/

Having to get to know a diverse bunch of people from such different cultural backgrounds and experiences really was a delight, understanding more about their own personal hopes and dreams, travelling to their countries and sharing their local food - it made me understand that if I looked at engaging my colleagues as human first, the work, morale and team spirit would naturally follow.

It made me realise that senior management really had a huge role to play in terms of how teams are managed. My boss was strongly supportive of me flying over to the markets where my teams were based, as he believed that there was no way we would be able to work together if we were all remote and had never met each other in real life.

This is a tenet which I have held strongly until today - that nothing beats face to face conversation, preferably over a steaming hot tea or coffee.

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Situation: In 2014 just 2 years into my first job my boss had to take a break for 3 weeks for personal reasons. He entrusted me with the task of managing the team for 7 individuals. Some of them were older than me also!

Behaviour: This was my first experience with leadership. It completely changed me as it showed me the possibility of my potential and also it was good to get validated by my boss. I started looking beyond myself and felt a sense of responsibility towards my team.

Impact: I was able to hold the fort for my team and effectively run the workflow on behalf of my team. It also gave me lot of confidence in my abilities and accelerated my growth in the organization.

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Situation: In my previous role I had value clashes with my reporting manager. It was very challenging to collaborate and express my creative potential.

Behaviour: After doing my best to work things out with no results I started going solo and just focussing on my work. Eventually I had to seek out a new job and find my way out.

Impact: I have realised that innovative and creative environment is key to my survival along with a strong moral compass within the organisation. This realisation was the biggest impact on my self and I am now more aware about the big picture before I work with a new organization or team.

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“Purl” is an eight-minute short film that addresses toxic workplace culture and the importance of embracing diversity. The film is light-hearted and hit straight to the point where many can relate to culture-fit struggles in today’s working environment.

Background

Reference to the film, I was new to the role and feeling excited about what is to come — meeting new people and performing to the best ability. Months into the role, my expectations turned out to be the total opposite; I was marked for being different and unable to fit in with the corporate culture. Thereafter, I went to do my investigation and realized I was “targeted” as the scapegoat for being a non-conformist. There were a series of team bullying events with the extra workload, emails abuse with the line manager’s approval and isolation from team activities in hope that I would leave the company.

Behaviour Exhibited

The lack of appreciation and respect for individual uniqueness and contribution did not stop me from doing my best while I was still there. The mindset behind is to remain a fighter despite the daily “internal storms” going to work. There is a saying: the difficult part is not about the work, but the politics within the company.

To combat that on a practical level, I learnt to be a proactive learner beyond my job scope and eventually open many doors of opportunities for me in my career. I am also grateful that I have colleagues who share the same passion to learn and thrive in the workplace.  Pressure can stop you or push you further to your potential.

Fortunately, I stick through to my values by proving through my performance resulted in the promotion the very same year.

Feelings During…

Throughout that year, I was very grateful for the strength to push through and the ability to keep calm while focusing on the end goal. There were of course days where I had trouble “surviving” and I would often go out for a walk as the last thing I would want to cause more drama. At that time, I did not know who to trust beyond work matters. It was definitely a strengthen season for me and a reminder to care for others like your own feelings. You matter, they matter too.

“Today if anything is trying to hold you back, give no attention to it. Get your hopes up, get your faith up, look up, and get ready to rise up.”
― Germany Kent

After Engagement…

Over the years, I learnt to speak up when there is any sign of workplace bullying while also being more empathetic to others on a professional and personal basis.  Most importantly, I learnt about inclusivity not only in terms of a social level but also on a corporate level. Everyone has a voice to speak, give them their platform to shine. Micromanage management style may complete the race, but it will not build a trusted and inclusive team.

Impact

My early career crisis made me a better team member and later a leader through active listening to understand the situation before making any assumptions. Today, I strive to ensure workplace bullying is kept to the minimum by creating an open environment where employees are free to speak their minds. Opposing views does not equate to wrong views as each individual is unique in their own ways and everyone is a talent to the company.

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"My name is Captain Zach and welcome to Qatar Airways!"

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My most positive impact: Zach Affandi(MNAMYA)

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My most positive impact: Zach Affandi(MNAMYA)

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I personally believe that anything and everything will happen for a reason. No matter how bad or emotionally draining the situation might be, there will always be a lesson or two for us to learn from. Be it a personal tragedy or you experienced it as a team, it will sets you apart from the rest of the department in due time. Only time will tell if we live through the day to tell it to someone that you would like to share with.

As our organization is pretty new in Singapore, we are given the task to be the best in all our products and services, whether in our customers relations or the product and services that our company will offer. We want to hear good things from our guests, and we want them to have one of the best experiences for their children and themselves! Our Park must be children and family safe; fun and engaging at the same time; interactive and it stimulates a learning environment for the developing minds – we want to have an environment whereby the children and the adults can interact; experience learning in a totally immersive environment. For me to take a sabbatical from my real estate business and go into this new edutainment park to work for others might sound slightly maniacal for a layman to understand!

Our 1st and 2nd year after our grand opening was filled with anxiety and excitement at the same time. We are trying to make sure that all the protocols and service standards are met; and reports and updates are always on time so our management will have a good audit whether our system met the KPI or we need to alter or change things progressively. This were exciting times for my Guest Services Team as we have been winning the “Best Department Award” for 2 years straight! And just before the pandemic happened, we won 3rd year in a row. But there were some personal drawbacks that my team had to go through while we are trying our best to stabilized and maintain the standards that we have held over the past few years. My talented comrade was taking care of an aged father and passed away due to complication but the real blow to our team was when her mom passed on after 6 months. It has affected her emotional wellbeing tremendously, as she can’t concentrate at work. Apparently, she took her medical leave more often than usual and this is not a usual habit of hers. As I just got promoted to a Team Leader position quite recently, I was called into tasked, and I try to fill in her shoes as best as I can. With a bunch of millennials and an intern with another full timer who has medical issues, the show must go on!

We rocked the show and for the whole of the June school holidays in 2019, I was operating on a skeletal crew of millennials and there were good reviews and personal complimentary emails and feedback from guests for all my Guest Services Officers! The bottom line is, I gave them a freedom to express themselves when serving a child; a family and anyone that was trying to be difficult in the first place. We remain contactable and our walkie-talkie set is on during the park operations, when the park is full we will always be on ground to see if there are any distressed parents or children. To keep track and take small notes; keep all of us in the loop either via WhatsApp group chat or otherwise. Emails and social media queries were answered promptly; we do have our own CRM software to monitor anything outstanding that require extra care will be handled by the management team which can give us alternative solutions for our guests – this only happens 10% of the time and we do handle all the guests queries independently.

As the dust settled and after some false indications of resignation from my team leader; she finally recovered emotionally and mentally. I am extremely proud of my team achievements, and I do believe in the cohesiveness of a small team! We still can achieve great things together!

Sadly, the pandemic has closed the park for good but the friendship and the camaraderie that we have built together when the cards are down is something that I will hold close to my heart! An experience that I will never forget!Always put some faith in others, give them a clear guidance and keep a clear line of communications at all times.

This song is relatable to what I have experienced in the past...Lost in Space by Lighthouse Family
https://youtu.be/t4dbJ_em1-o

~Lyrics~

Sometimes I get tired of this me-first attitude
You are the one thing that keeps me smiling
That's why I'm always wishing hard for you

'Cause your light shines so bright
I don't feel no solitude
You are my first star at night
I'd be lost in space without you

And I'll never lose my faith in you
How will I ever get to heaven, if I do

Feels just so fine
When we touch the sky me and you
This is my idea of heaven
Why can't it always be so good?

But it's all right, I know you're out there
Doing what you've gotta do
You are my soul satellite
I'd be lost in space without you

And I'll never lose my faith in you
How will I ever get to heaven, if I do

And I'll never lose my faith in you
How will I ever get to heaven, if I do

And I'll never lose my faith in you
How will I ever get to heaven, if I do

And I'll never lose my faith in you
How will I ever get to heaven, if I do

And I'll never lose my faith in you
How will I ever get to heaven, if I do

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My failure (negative impact) - Alan Khoo

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My failure (negative impact) - Alan Khoo

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While I try to be as fair and I could be, taking pride in always doing the right thing, I am sorry that there have been incidents that I have failed and this failure though it has not resulted in any impact to my career, it has definitely cracked a few working relationships that I treasure.

There were a couple of incidents that I have not realised that I have not displayed my best behaviour and attitude towards a stakeholder who did not have the understanding or knowledge of a particular problem I believed that they should have. This resulted in a lot of frustration and it was an issue with client impact and hence the urgency. The person took longer than expected to grasp the problem which resulted in me conveying my emotions and thoughts in the heat of the moment.

I was subsequently made to realise that the person was very affected and down upon receiving my harsh email.

I pride myself in being a people's person and this certainly made me reflect a lot on how I could have managed the situation better or to better explain or clarify the issue.

This was an incident in the earlier part of my career and I have made it a point since then to always put myself in the shoes of another person who might not have the context or understanding I possess as there could be factors or situations there are transparent to me.

While the intent was to resolve the problem but it was done at the expense of dissolving a friendship.

I am sorry.

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The Situation

I had been in the managing director job for a leading multinational national agency. Business environment was already challenged as the head office was chasing for increased revenues as our fees were getting smaller, work was increasing and several employees were getting very sick with the heavy work load. We had one employee who passed due to complications from a lingering illness that he could not pay attention and we had two other employees who got strokes. Work life was extremely stressful.

An opportunity for a pitch for a big regional brand came in. It was to be a big shot in the arm in terms of finances and yet a bigger challenge to get the already overworked teams to work on it. A regional business head brought himself to lead the pitch. He enlisted a top regional creative director and the most brilliant senior strategic planner into the country for the pitch. My local country head was adamant that I take care of putting things together and treating the regional guys well but not letting them roll over and dominate the local team. The local creative director was in the meantime complaining about the workload and challenging the structure and process for the pitch. She expressed this to me only and not to the regional team or local management. She seemed like she was about to breakdown or walk away.

My state of mind

I found myself trying to control the situation but could not really place my role in the team. I had the title of Managing Director but also functioned as a one man project manager for the pitch. I had to divide my time trying to manage the regional team while also trying to make sure the rest of the local teams working on the other businesses would continue to work. In this situation, I tried to do all the work for the pitch myself.

After six weeks, we eventually won the pitch. as the business was awarded, our country CEO asked to get of the team and pass the business on to someone else.

Reflection

The combination of my pride of having a leading title of managing director, the worry about the health of the rest of the local teams and the pressure the biggest pitch for the country and the inability to recruit people to help in the pitch despite their current load was the recipe for my disaster. I isolated myself and did not get to manage the process. On hindsight, I should have analyzed the best role to play with the regional team, with the local team and with the management teams. Then I should have brought everyone together to establish a working relationship and process. Lessons learned .

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Background

As the company was undergoing digitalization transformation, I was elected to lead the regional system change project. At that time, SAMEA & North Asia region was the last region for rollout with headquarter based in the UK. We had the advantage from past learnings, however, the challenge with system change remains the same. Besides the ground level adoption challenge, the change and technical support team from the headquarter were disorganized due to changing hands from contract employees.

Behaviour Exhibited

From the commencement of the preparation to completion, I step up to understand and navigate the situation through constant feedback and proper change/project management to foster transparency and progress. The kick-off meeting provided the opportunity to align with ways of working as well as conflict resolutions protocol. In addition to that, I created a positive working culture through open feedback and words of affirmation. At the same time, I allowed subject matter experts (SME) to step in with clear goals and highlight upcoming challenges. During times of unclear directions from headquarter, I would step in to provide clarity leading by example to digest the challenge and recognize the required steps to move forward. Most importantly, we also recognized individuals’ efforts and value their uniqueness through tangible rewards and team bonding activities. Throughout the journey, the reinforcement message is that everyone on the team matters; it’s a learning journey and raise your hand when in doubt.

Feelings During…

It was intense! Each member steps up to their role despite conflicts along the way with different ways of working on the system set-up and how it will affect groundwork. It was also the time when I come in and allow each SME to demonstrate and explain their viewpoint without being judgmental. At the same time, learning to strike a balance with system improvement vs. applicability to daily work.

After Engagement…

Everyone was elated and relieved that ours is the first region that rolled out on time. I could not be more grateful for their tenacity and for working through their differences to make things work. It was also a time to recognize the immediate priorities, as well as, those that can be completed post-implementation. We all agree that communication and embracing differences were keys to a successful roll-out.

Impact

Every successful team has their own secret recipe — for us: Educate-> Train-> Empower-> Reward.

Educate Provide ERP education tools and platforms to understand, navigate and minimize resistance to change.

Train: Assessed learning outcomes and training on gap areas prepared.

Empower: Empower only when the team is properly equipped with the skills sets to understand, drive and adopt the change. Rush implementation often backfired despite all the initial groundwork.

Reward: Critical to announce the tangible and intangible rewards schemes at the beginning as a motivation factor to value people for their efforts.

Management often has the mentality for “people-fit” rather than “system-fit” to the existing operational processes. This in turn resulted in many failed or unsustainable change implementations. The key is bridging the gap with measurable and attainable KPI while meeting management expectations. No system change is one-size-fits-all, it’s a journey for the ecosystem to interact and improve with the end-users over time.  These skill-sets attained from past system rolled-out are valuable take-aways throughout my career.

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I was tasked to handle what I thought was a straightforward event – invite industry representatives to an intimate roundtable hosted by the President of the university on the occasion of the university’s anniversary celebrations.

I did not want to involve too many other people because I thought it a simple event, and everyone’s plate was already full. As a more senior member of the team, I should be able to handle this even with the somewhat tighter timeline, easily.

We already know how this would end – on the day of the event, I had only managed to confirm a handful of reps, and more had dropped out by the afternoon. I had completely underestimated the size of the seemingly small task and needed the team to pitch in at the last minute to chase down RSVPs. And I had to rely on a good friend/colleague to help with the set up of the venue because I was tied up panicking and being stressed out by the bosses. It was a terrible feeling, only made worse because I knew the result could have been a lot different if I had asked for help earlier, or if I had sounded a warning flag that things were not going according to plan and we may need a plan B – to cancel, or even to have an alternative university rep attend the event, not the president, on a day where she already had back to back to back engagements all day.

Just thinking about this incident is hard because I felt I had the power and responsibility at every juncture to make things better, but I didn’t think to do anything.

It’s a terribly painful lesson to learn and be reminded of – because I typically like to go at things myself. This is one painful reminder that I should not, not in all situations at least, even if I had the best intentions. And that I should not count on my lucky stars or smarts to save me all the time because luck runs out, and planning and realism tend to win the day.

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At one of my previous jobs, I was tasked to generate 3D buildings with particular settings. My boss wanted a change applied to all, and I knew that I needed a certain number of days to complete the task. At that point i wasn’t privy to automation, and our office didn't have internet access so I couldn’t research a faster way to do things easily. I just knew that the task could be done on a co-worker’s side or mine. My co-worker then nonchalantly said it could be done “very easily” on my side, without knowing how my job was done. Another similar incident was when my boss wanted a deliverable to be ready at the end of the day, and I knew that usually takes a few days to do well. The commonality between these two situation is my negative reaction when people undermine the effort it takes to do my job.

I reacted by telling them I could do it in the time stipulated, but it wouldn’t be good. They didn't like the sound of that. If a similar situation arose, I tried a different approach and just said “no, I can’t do it”, which was arguably worse. I was not grounded, and was flustered when met with such a situation and mainly didnt want to just blurt out ‘eh you think so easy ah?’

This resulted in added hostility in the group. I was reprimanded for having a poor attitude by my boss, and I initially felt upset and frustrated. The approach was made from my POV, and I soon realized it would’ve been better to empathize with the other party.

In hindsight, I could’ve taken more of an initiative to find a solution, either by looking it up  online after hours, adjust my workflow to a more agile framework, instead of telling them what they didn’t want to hear. I could have assured them that i didn’t know how to do it currently, but show them that I’m willing to find a way, instead of saying a hard “it can’t be done in this time” or worse, “it can’t be done”. Alternatively, I could’ve just tell them only what they needed to know. So I could spend the extra time doing things the “right” way, or doing what is reasonable in the time allocated.

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The pandemic brought about new challenges, one of which included directing remotely. Prior to this, I would film videos in real life, on location, and things could go smoothly as I was in my element and knew what to take note of instinctively.

To make up for real life direction. I created clear and concise instructional pdfs which allowed my team to carry out their tasks as smoothly as possible. Examples of instructions included:

3 seconds pauses after each take

include lighting tips, place cam between person and light source

how to frame themselves

showing good and bad examples

I used tables to keep them organized, and utilized my drawing skills to give my colleagues an idea of how to stand/what actions to take, and even created animatics to show the flow of the video and overall vision. I made sure to use simple clear vocabulary to effectively communicate with participants across different regions. At times, I would do the action myself to make them feel less awkward/ashamed.

Although nothing (as of yet) beats direction in person, I felt good that 90% of my intended results were achieved. Furthermore, I got to combine my passion/hobby of drawing with my work, and this allowed me to enjoy it more. I’m also glad to practice empathy by making sure to thank them for their enthusiasm and participation, and seeing things from their perspective. I also hoped that I’d made them feel important in that sense.

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Imagine launching a new product in a bank in 2 months when it has traditionally taken other product managers 6 months to do so!

The team has recently moved into working a relatively new way of working, which is through Agile methodologies and like every new process or way of working, there will be bound to be people who are resistant as it is out of their comfort zone or it may just simply be not their preference. The expectation is for the tribe to have this launched in 2 months with Agile and it is certainly been the most challenging part in my 7 years with the bank!

Not only do I have to convince my stakeholders to prioritise my work in an Agile environment, they were also not onboarded with the methodology and saw no need to change.

I reached out to every individual stakeholder on the expectation and timeline and provided concrete plans on how we would be able to meet the timeline which everyone initially thought was not possible and likely to be delayed, which was usually the case for a product launch.

I made it a point to celebrate small wins, highlight every key milestones and to ensure that no one was behind as we needed everyone to work in tandem to meet the timeline.

While we knew what was needed to be done to have it delivered, this was partially hindered by the fact that research for the client value proposition for the product was concurrent and thus resulted in frequent changes and rework that caused even more frustration to the team in view of the timeline.

This is the moment where team would matter more than any individual as any change could potentially be collective or a moving part that could impact other members, and aligning the intention of the change to them became critical as I have always believed that the key to ensure that everyone is motivated would be for them to know the impact and intent of their work. The big picture always consists of multiple elements and having these elements made known and clear to your artists would only enable the team to function.

As a product manager, one of the key skillsets would be to manage your stakeholders and to achieve this outcome, I have personally made it a point to ensure that I provide clarification promptly even if it means responding during the bedtime of many others and people would usually gravitate towards you and your goals for the team when the commitment and professionalism are not in doubt.

Eventually, we managed to launch the product with the timeline we first set for ourselves and the biggest win for us all is actually knowing that we have a team that we could depend on.

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I’m not an experienced people manager, having taken on the role only some years ago. This was something new, and perhaps even uncomfortable for me. Because of that, I had consciously spent a lot of time trying to understand my team. I wanted to understand what makes them tick, and hoped to stand with them and in front of them when something untoward happens and support them when I feel they are ready to lead the show.

Over the last year, I’ve worked closely with one team member. While she has many years of work experience and was a wonderful team player, she had little experience in the sector and was thus always somewhat overly cautious in her approach, either with the bosses, or when managing partners and/or situations. My role was to reinforce/guide/suggest how she could manage different people and situations, and give her a push when there was hesitation or fear.

I was so pleasantly surprised to observe that over the last two months, this team member had come into her own. She gained confidence in managing upwards, became more respected by her peers and junior officers, and developed a keen sense in reading different situations and responding accurately. Perhaps most of all, she had felt a difference in herself and her new ways – which was the most satisfying and rewarding for me to see. It made me realise that leadership was not a fluffy concept, but something you had to live and breathe every day so that you may encourage/give someone the opportunity to come into their own, and it is incredibly exciting/humbling/fulfilling when they see that change in themselves.

It meant investing a great amount of time and effort into really understanding this team member, within and outside the work context, and most of all, giving her space to experiment and fail. I'm so grateful it worked.

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Why good leaders make you feel safe | Simon Sinek

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Biting someone's head off... because I thought it was my job...

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The story begins...
With a promotion to creative director – I was given the responsibility of managing teams after cutting my teeth and winning a few big accounts. Technically I was supposed be happy - but I think deep down I have abhorred titles all my life, as I equated them with a false sense of power. I did not desire to dominate over anyone.  My ECD had hired a pair of young creatives from San Francisco and made it my task to settle them in.

3 months in, they were deemed to be 'not hardworking' and pushing back on some of the work. My colleague in Traffic reported to me they were not up to scratch, and told me to talk to them. Still reluctant and hesitant in my new role, I thought to just act quickly – and I called them both in to my room. During that 20-30 mins, I basically acted like a complete Idiot Boss, and said a variety of hurtful things to 'put them in their place'. What was incredible now in retrospect was that I was acting totally out of character, essentially I was being mean because I thought I had to as a creative director.

Even though this happened more than 15 years ago, the memory still stings. Because I became the one thing that I hated in my bosses - a power tripper.

What I would change
I would have definitely not reacted to what others think I should do, but listened first to understand what it was happening. Being a leader takes empathy, and I should have first given them a chance to share how they were feeling about adjusting to the company environment and the workload. At that time, I was too immature to understand that my words (in my position) could really break or make someone. And my naïveté on how a boss should be, well, bossy, ended up ruining their first job straight out of school.

What I would keep
This memory so that I know to never repeat it again. However my reflection is that it has also created an unintended consequence of me being too sensitive to others' feelings and thus not stepping in to give honest feedback when someone is not performing at work.

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Feeling the flow of the team's collective knowledge

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The story begins…

In a stunning Airbnb villa in Rome. We were a team of 8 working on developing the new brand strategy for an iced tea beverage client. As a team member, I had travelled to 3 out of 8 markets in the study, Bangkok, Istanbul and Paris, so I felt super invigorated by the project journey so far. Our task was to land the final strategic recommendations to present to the client, and many of my waaay more senior colleagues were all adding their expert verse to the argument.  Because the stakes were high, it was fuelling an air of 'this is right' and 'I know I'm right' tonality of discussions.  I remained silent, but I was highly observant of what everyone was thinking and saying.

In retrospect, because I was a team member and not a team leader, I felt perfectly at ease to listen more than talk. I was very clear on the purpose of why we were there - to land a clear positioning strategy. Having a lot of respect for my colleagues' years' of experience, I wore my Curiosity hat and synthesised in my head how I personally thought the narrative for the strategy should play out.

Then came the Crisis...
After most of the team left to return to their home countries, the report was emailed to the client. In what felt like a second, the email came back to contain a rant about how nothing made sense, this was not useful and how could this be. There was a palpable chill in the room, and with just 3 of us left in the team, we knew we had to act fast.

How I behaved
Possibly because I was the only one intently listening, as opposed to expressing my views, I had already weaved together an alternate narrative in my head. With confidence, I stepped up and said, "let me try tell it a second time." And I buckled down and wrote it down – essentially my synthesis of the best bits of what everyone was trying to express. An hour later, we resent the document and presented it via a phone call – and the mood lifted. The client achieved clarity and resonated with what we found.

What I would keep
It's fascinating for me why this memory came up, as I've been in a leadership position for many years after that moment. My reflection is that it shaped me to be the leader I strive to be, one who recognises that there is collective talent in a team. Radical listening is a trait that I have retained, as I a corporate environment tends to breed egos that feel like talking louder makes one sound smarter.

What I would change
Simply put, I shouldn't have to wait for a crisis to contribute the way I did. A large part of me was hoping that everything would work out great but at the same time there was a nagging feeling that the presentation that was being shaped was more of a Frankenstein-stitching of opinions.

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I took a picture of this graffitti near one of the segregated wall in Jerusalem, so much negative vibes...BB Yoda is cute though ❤️😭

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My most negative impact : Zach Affandi (MNAMYA)

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My most negative impact : Zach Affandi (MNAMYA)

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At certain juncture of our career, there will be times when we feel like the earth should swallow us in full or some cosmic alien being would just zap us into proton-like particles! I was happy working for my previous organisation even before they gave me the designation of a "Team Leader", I was contented to work with the full time staffs and make loads of friends from different departments. I felt light like a butterfly, floating from one department to the next without the prying eyes of the management staffs and all their "little birds" (Game of Thrones👑-GOT). The "Guests Services Department" was one of the most important department in the organisation, as we will handle a lot of feedbacks and complaints from anyone who have visited the park! At times we will be thrown into the deep end, without much ammunition of basic information and we were told to calm a ferocious dragon, especially if they are unhappy mom and dad!😡🤬🤯👹

It is not a joke to run an edutainment park, filled with parents/children/schoolchildren/corporate functions/birthday parties/social media influencers/VVIPs and all other subjects of faraway and nearby kingdoms! No matter how tight the coffers from "His Majesty-The Boss"; the show has to go on! As we are running low of manpower, I need my best knight-in-shining-armour to run the castle like a well-oiled machine! Lo and behold, even your knights' need some pep talk or simply a pat in the back for a job well done. At times your knight has a dent in their armour; or their horses 🐎 simply refuse to gallop at a normal rate; or simply they have some issues with their fair maiden at the home front.

With emails, social media enquiries and feedbacks; phone calls to answer; surveys to be done daily; first aider duties and many other hats the organisation wanted us to wear; our direct superior will always say "YES!" to the management - they always forget that we are running thin in terms of operations. As a challenge I will try my best to work under pressure by giving my team the a daily dosage of my sarcastic and at certain times dark humour if I may called it. It totally backfired a million times....

When this was happening the school holidays was just beginning to kicked in - the maddening crowd keep on increasing by the day, and my only full time team member was moody and temperamental. It doesn't help that there were feedback that he was falling asleep at the Guest Services counter whereby guests and the management team are going in and out from the same route!

My team member actually has a minor achondroplasia , and he has minor medical attributes which is not normal; but I still view him as the same as any abled bodied team of mine.  In fact I view him as a vital part of our 3 years old team!

It turns out that I was being too insensitive towards his physical attributes and my so called dark humour or jokes was too personal for him to take! He started to feel withdrawn and avoid any form of physical meeting or face to face encounter with me. Another team leader informed me that he has cancelled all of our WhatsApp group chat that was specially done up by him just for his "makan" session occasionally.

I felt that I have let him down and was being a bit too harsh on my approach towards his bruised ego.Everyone has a pride, and if we cross that threshold, I believe even the toughest knight cannot carry the heaviest task at hand.

Due to this quagmire of a situation that I put myself in, I quickly set a meeting so we can iron out everything that he felt I was being insensitive towards him. I gave him time to express himself, but first and foremost I started with an apology. I told him that he was a very important person in my small team of Guest Services Officers, and we need to work like a close knit team because we can only depend on each other if situation get escalated.

I set some boundaries and told him if my jokes are getting too personal; then he has every right to tell me off! Honestly, I have not met a guy who was sensitive towards my jokes but has a lot of heart in his work no matter how people view his abnormalities.

I drew a lot from this experience; never to assume that people are always ok when they laugh or smile. Sometimes they do carry a lot on their shoulders and due to their personal insecurities it might affect their work and their well being. It is normal for us humans to falter in our daily relationships; be it with our colleagues, family or friends. We need to show them the amount of respect and kindness that we always look for and be genuine in our communications with them.

This song resonates the incident and the feelings that were expressed during the meeting. Culture Club - Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?
https://youtu.be/Give me time to realize my crime

Lyrics : -
Let me love and steal
I have danced inside your eyes
How can I be real
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Precious kisses words that burn me
Lovers never ask you why
In my heart the fire is burning
Choose my color find a star
Precious people always tell me
That's a step a step too far
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Words are few
I have spoken
I could waste a thousand years
Wrapped in sorrow, words are token
Come inside and catch my tears
You've been talking but believe me
If it's true you do not know
This boy loves without a reason
I'm prepared to let you go
If it's love you want from me
Then take it away
Everything's not what you see it's over again
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry
Do you really want to hurt me
Do you really want to make me cry

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As a mobile application developer, I was appointed to lead a team that consisted of 7 mobile application developers (3 on-site developers and 4 remote-based developers) to continuously deliver services for 4 applications in a parallel manner.

The crucial reason why this real-life story impresses me a lot is that our team doesn’t follow any framework or methodology; however, we still managed to continuously deliver services for these 4 applications. After we manage to deliver a new product within a short timeframe (6 months) with continuously delivering services for another 3 applications, I strongly believe the way we work and team engagement is fundamental to leading a team.

Besides that, I take the initial step to document those technical specs and user flow elements for future use. I strongly believe those documents may help in reducing the response time and decrease reliance on a specific person from the team. There is a circumstance incurred as our associate director requests troubleshooting when the service goes down. At that moment, I and my team members felt super grateful as we did document those user flow and technical spec previously and those documents became our lifesaver and were put in place right on the spot to solve the issue.

Some of my teammates also took the initiative to lead one of application development while I was traveling to the client-side for business requirement gathering or sign-off the project phrase.

Last but not least, team morale, trustworthy and open-minded mindset are playing significant factors in our team. As a leader, we should empower and appropriate our teammates to share their opinion and it helps us to notice the blind spot which we may miss out. Any framework/methodology such as the Waterfall model, Agile Software Development, etc is used to transform team and product management into the next level.

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Compared with the positive impact of my real-life story, I am disappointed with my current team working style. Currently, I am a developer in a cross-functional team that mainly delivers customer-centric products.

Basically, we are using Agile Methodology to manage our product cycle since Agile Methodology is considered industry best practices right now. The reason why I am having the feeling of disappointment with my current team working style is that there is a lot of improvement required after comparing with the team that I have positively impacted. For example, none of my teammates and I also did not take initiative to lead the team before the new technical lead onboard.

Once the technical lead was onboarded, I realised that her working style does not really fit in our team. Most of the time there is miscommunication between our discussions and meetings, and some of her judgement and decision was solely made based on her personal perspective and her own point of view which is very subjective.

Additionally, we do share our opinion to make our team great during the Sprint Retrospective. Even though there is an open discussion session among our team, there is no strong team engagement and connection being built in the team. And, our Scrum Master didn’t follow up on the impediment or opinion we shared. Therefore, me and my team members are confused and curious about the intention of having Sprint Retrospective if our Scrum Master didn’t follow up and remove the impediment.

Based on my perspective, our current team did not meet our Associate Director’s expectations and one of the significant factors could be the way of our Technical Lead leading style. In my point of view, a leader is an important role to provide clear direction and ensure team members understand, embrace and work toward the direction. And not only that, they also need to be motivated, open-minded and able to unleash the potential of each team member to improve performance and solve any issues they face. While leadership can be challenging, it can also be extremely rewarding when leaders know how to be effective. Ultimately, leadership is not just a position but an action that strives for success.

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Sequel to The Incident (aka “My Most Negative Impact”)

Soundtrack

It was a Zoom meeting with a Brand client, held by the usual brand manager and marketing executive on the project that my colleague was liaising with. I was recently brought into the project as a campaign strategist and had never had face-time with the Client brand, relying on my colleague to relay their brief and wants. The brand’s director decided to sit in on this Zoom meeting, which was strange as she had little visibility of the project.

The project was going nowhere, and we haven’t had a lot of success on achieving the milestones set by the client, who we thought was providing a confusing brief that changed frequently and provided conflicting instructions at every turn

So the meeting began, and we went over our work-in-progress and the campaign plan. Both the brand manager and executive would step in occasionally to remark on the plan. They commented that the direction still wasn’t what they wanted, and we explained what we thought to be the best plan forward, and also shared how we were following their latest directions, dated XYZ, after it got changed on UVW. This went back and forth. Then it got strange. The Brand director spoke up and proceeded to question the direction that the manager and executive were headed. She questioned their judgement and knowledge of the project, to which the Brand manager and executive responded in kind, alternating between terse silences and defensively.

My team and I were sitting silently on the sidelines, watching the volley of take-downs in this internal department battle that was getting tense and embarrassing. At which point, I decided to bite the bullet and spoke up. I laid out all the points that I had gathered from both sides, and shared which points would make sense per the campaign goals that everybody wanted, and made suggestions how this could be done. I also defended the brand manager and executive’s decisions on certain points, and shared with the Director that they were right on those accounts and we could work with that moving forward. I had diffused the bomb in the room, pulling both red and blue wires, and steered the situation towards its end to move things forward.

This was huge for me, following the awful experience of the Carrie Incident, as I had lost a lot of confidence and was always so fearful of becoming that asshole in the rage zone again. Seeing it from the other side, mirrored in the actions of this Director’s poor leadership that I thought was wrong and unnecessary, illustrated the importance of self-checks and reflection. My colleagues later shared that they were grateful for my intervention and it was probably my experience in the field that gave me the daring, knowledge, and also the leadership to diffuse a difficult moment. I was genuinely surprise as I thought I had lost all of that, but I guess it’s still there, and this is why this experience was a positive impact for me. It’s opened up another door to possibilities on this transitional journey I’m still on.

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Post with 19 votes and 6461 views. Shared by WakeUp2Yourself. How to disarm a bomb.

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“The Life Changing Magic of Rage-Quitting” 

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How I slept in my car during working hours due to anxiety.
Every leader has their teaching methods and guidance. And not every leader you can adapt and learn from. This is a story where I was utterly lost myself for six months on the job and felt like quitting advertising entirely.

I started in a new agency back in my 20s, and I wanted to try direct marketing, and it was property-centric account based clients. This was a capability and category that I was entirely not familiar with but eager to learn. I was an account manager, and we were a small group of 5 people. The team was brilliant, and we were pretty close together especially when late nights working together created bigger bonds between us. The team had high respect for the managing director that led the direct marketing team. He was astute, visionary, and well-versed with his words and presentation especially to the clients.

His leadership method was to providing high-level visions and pass on all works to the working team. My scope was to bring in new business, and we would need to find potential new clients, the cold call methods. We would also need to do our proposals in a short time as we were a small team.

That was still alright, but things get worse when we are not hitting our numbers, and he would eventually be quite harsh to me and finally put much more stress on my work. He would indirectly put further pressure on me for not winning or couldn't get a conversation on the cold calls we made. He would ask us what we needed to do every other day, giving a motivating speech that was entirely provocatively negative in tone and language. His leadership style is to push you down so that you would climb up eventually. Also, because he was loud and we are a small team, some team members started looking down on me because I was not performing in their eyes of the leader.

My other colleague was able to thrive with his teaching method, but he completely ruined my confidence. I was lost, unsure who to ask for him, afraid to even be in the office, and eventually had to hide in my car on some days. It was one of my darkest times in advertising. It felt like having a bully as your superior.

If I could turn back time, I should have believed in myself more to know when I should have moved on. I don't think standing up to him more would have helped or even tried to improve his relationship. Knowing when to step away was critical for this situation.

Thankfully stars somehow aligned, and I got to move to another team. From there, I make history by turning around an account that was in bad shape to be the most vital technology account the client trusts in us.

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“Anyone can steer the ship, but it takes a leader to chart the course.”

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One of the positive impacts that I had contributed as a leader was winning a million-dollar healthcare pitch of the year. It was early this year where the agency was on pitch mode due to the pandemic stress. One of the biggest pitches was this, and they needed a project manager to manage scheduling and pitch schedule. I gladly gave my support but didn't anticipate that I was eventually driving the pitch and negotiating with the client because they felt comfortable with me.

The casting team for this pitch was intense as we had capabilities leads for the task we needed, but they needed an orchestrator to divide the job, be provided guidance, and make some hard decisions as we progress. One of the key strengths I have was to control the room and lead the conversation, which was what the team needed. Eventually, the client and team preferred that I continue the negotiation, and we ultimately won, and I was asked to continue working on this program till today.

I was confident with myself, so I felt that I could lead the conversation, mainly because the campaign we were pitching was something I had whole experience on. Also, I had full support from the team, and the way I lead, I would usually delegate tasks and ask if there were any issues with it. Most times, I would already know what each team member's strengths are. I believe that people work better if they are proud of their strengths and what they are doing.

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Perhaps the most positive impact I have leading teams was with my 4-year-old dejavu business venture.

Being someone who had up to then always preferred to work solo or at least with a group of carefully curated independent and motivated professionals, this must be one of the most out of the comfort zone things I have done.

Why was leading this team different?
Perhaps it is because of the way the idea was birthed or maybe it was the right place right time in a season of my life when I felt a need to express myself through having a family of sorts through having another business adventure.

Fast forward to 2017, after spending 3 months cooped up in a power lifting gym, making weight loss the main mission of my daily life, I decided to help my then trainer now business partner to revamp his unprofitable business by entering into a business partnership with him.

Overnight I inherited a group of employees or “family members” from all walks of life. On hindsight, I must say my life was instantaneously enriched by their talents, baggage and resistance.

Yet in spite of the differences, they were generally a good bunch who helped to make the impossible possible. They were not driven by money but rather whether they buy into the goal or if they are happy doing what they are doing even if it leads to futility. Lol. The hubris of youth.

During the teething periods, there was much anguish and heated discussions on how things should be run. To me it was parenting full time. It consumed my time and energy more than my other businesses. Perhaps the most hands on endeavour ever. The energy was engaging and challenging.

3 years of daily checkins, weekly cheat days together, celebrating one another’s milestones achieved and being constantly stretched to upgrade or learn new things because the business or “family” needs is refreshingly different.

It was a season of growth, bonding and learning. It's akin to getting your health, wealth and social needs all settled in one place. Best 3 in one ever.

As a result of this great synergy, many personal and business achievements were met and broken. The business broke even in the 5th month and has been profitable henceforth. It’s amazing what can be achieved when a team is aligned even though they might be so different.

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A house that is divided cannot stand

Year 4 has been a challenging year. The earlier success and synergy were marred by 1.  The conflict between the  2 minority partners whose other business interests caused friction amongst themselves and spilled over to the actual business. 2. Though I  tried to act as a mediator I guess there were too many misunderstandings between them to facilitate that 3. Covid did not help since the regular check-ins and alignments were not in place 4. different life stages and demands and lastly it seemed that we were together but disconnected fighting different battles.

With the covid 19 regulations, it was more difficult to stay banded in person. Perhaps this might be an excuse. But in retrospection, I do think I could have been more proactive in maintaining contact. I think it is one thing to tell someone the door is always open and think the onus is on them to touch base. In a way, the covid situation encouraged the team to work in silos and their own interests. This is the phase I think people forgot to see the good that got us here and instead focus on the negatives regardless of what might be the catalyst. The reasons are aplenty.

Timing plays a part too. All expansion plans for the business were pushed backward and instead of playing aggressively building on the momentum of our previous successes, the covid situation strengthened my resolve to play defensive. Don't force a trade when there is no trade has been my guiding mantra and that permeates in the things I do. Even though the team agreed with me that it is the right thing for them but to them being profitable even during covid times was uninspiring. They wanted action. A common line they used, "Fortune favors the bold playing defensive is for wimps."

What did this result in?
Without going into details, the team broke into 2 camps. One which was thankful that they were well remunerated through this inconvenience and another group which was sick and tired of playing Defence. Just last month, the second team dropped the bomb on me saying that they are going to venture out on their own unless I sell them a portion of my holdings at cost.
Due to the way it was asked, I refused.
I said, "There are no justifiable reasons for me to do so. Is there? Can u tell me why I should think otherwise?"
Is the business unprofitable?
Are u not remunerated well?
Is the business not well run?
Are there no clear paths of progression for you and the business?
Their reply is " We would like to have more shares so it feels that we are working for ourselves." You have so many businesses that u can fall back on. This will be pocket change to u but it means a world to us because we don't have any backups other than what we have currently.

To cut a long story short, I rejected their demands, bought over their remaining shares, and wished them well in their future endeavors.

Did I lead well? Maybe from a human viewpoint, I didn't. I could have been more creative and spent more time catching up but I truly believe that they are able to mend the fort by now. Rightfully so, after 4 years.

What saddens me is that where did all the time go? A house divided will not stand, and with no alignment and trust, it would go nowhere. Does persuading people to stay and changing their minds to see your point of view work when their values are no longer aligned with yours or the business even right?

I deliberated long and hard on this.
Personally, I don't like to waste time especially when it is a case of misalignment and the other party has already decided on their action plan. You can't fight everyone's battles. Everybody is either a hero or a victim in their story.

I can respect the different points of view and preferences but I don't subscribe to compromise as the default policy especially when all efforts have been taken to align.
Neither can one turn back time but only glean the lessons applicable in that season for a better iteration in the next.
Leadership to me is recognizing and accepting that people will stay on and hop off the bus at different stations. There isn't a need to focus on the negatives and cling to the past but to let go and turn the page. Somehow the lessons will all fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle in due season.

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Back at my previous organisation, the company would organise one of the biggest industry event at the end of the year. 2020 was the 5th year the event was taking place and there were expectations from stakeholders that the event had to exceed the visitorship from previous years. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event had to be conducted in a hybrid digital-physical format. While there were numerous challenges and uncertainty because of the pandemic, the hybrid format meant an opportunity for an event that runs round the clock.

The preparation for the event usually starts 3 months in advance and would get more hectic closer to the event date. Furthermore, we were operating as a lean team. Looking back, it was a marathon that ended with a sprint but what really got the team through was truly team work and the leadership of my manager. My manager was direct, straightforward and created a safe space for the team to take risks, give feedback and raise suggestions. There was also a culture of dependability – where we each trusted each other to reliably complete quality work on time and being open to asking for help from one another.

While I felt stretched during that period of time, it was also the period which I learnt the most and felt that I had contributed greatly to the success of the event. Even though I was the youngest on the team, my manager trusted me to handle the social media accounts as well as some of the bigger media partners. She was also receptive to the ideas I brought to the table. What came next was a steep learning curve, and we managed to exceed previous years KPIs despite the uncertainty that the pandemic brought.

Today, when I look back and as I reflect on my positive and negative impact, I realised that the most important element in leading teams is creating and ensuring psychological safety – a culture characterised by trust and mutual respect for one another and a sense of confidence that no one within the team will be punished, embarrassed or rejected for speaking up. We learn from the leaders that we know. Some of the behaviours that I want to emulate from my former manager is to give everyone on the team an opportunity to speak, create a safe space for ideas establish norms for learning from failure. As said by Robin Sharma, a top leadership expert and writer, “There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self mastery.”

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A change in the working flow of my department when somebody from accounts was transferred to my (creative) department. As the creative lead, I now have a new boss to answer to.

Work flow for our team is pretty simple intially. There are a couple of designers, each with their own task. During pitching, the 2 designers (including me) will come out with 1 work with their own style. Making the pitch deck looking unique with  different style of work for client to choose.

New director (lets call him John) got transferred in, took initiative to pitch for his client latest project, we both contributed design for his deck. Unhappy with my style of work as he felt that the client are too traditional and old school and is not ready for modern looks. He requested me to change my design to look more generic.

A short email to explain why its still good to submit works that are not of the client old style as these shows innovation for their company is ultimately dismissed by "don't argue with me, it is not productive"

Design was revised to look generic a day later and John complained "why your team designs look similar". Other colleagues was telling me "John finds you difficult to work with."

Talked to my designer and we both give up in producing anything good for the company after multiple cases like this. we resigned a few months later, the jobless me is sitting here typing this pointing middle finger to my computer.

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Creative Director came in Monday morning and requested pitching ideas for a Japanese FMCG company. The company is introducing a product for Singapore market and require 2 short commercial and key visuals.

Being the latest additional to the agency, he said "Bin, you are in charge as they want something with humour, and you are the office clown. Win the pitch or you are fired (I don't know if he is joking or serious)."

Being new to the industry (advertising), I have no idea how to kick start this. The seniors are occupied with multiple tasks. I have multiple tasks on hand as well, leaving the ideation to burning multiple nights and weekend. Money very hard to earn sia

Due to my hard work and alcohol induced brain, I did eventually come out with 4 ideas within the deadline. Ranging from generic to the most outrageous concept.

Here is where I make use gather my team
Idea and concept is there, but these is nothing without excellent presentation.

Looking at my agency's deck template, I realised its hard to convey the emotion and story that I want to portray with just text and image. I want the client to feel, to laugh and have emotions that reminded them of the first time they watch Scary Movie.

I gathered the video editors to take a video of me with their mobile phone, acting out the commercial. With their expertise on storyboarding and timeline, I am able to create a short 15 seconds video that convey the message.

The motion graphic designer was ordered requested to apply special effect to enhanced the video, this also helps us to know what lighting and make up to use for production stage.

During the pitch, the short and ridiculously bad video that I've edited was presented. That low quality and short 15 seconds video that my team has help to produce for the pitch won.

Very low budget though.

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I was with one of the largest indoor activity park in Asia as a Sales & Marketing Manager. There was a period where ticket sales were not doing so well. At the same time, we were also preparing to launch a new campaign – Super Camp – which was an educational day camp held during the school holidays.  I ran this by my regional director and park manager that I was going to seek Food & Beverage sponsorships for the camp to defray operational costs and additional advertising channels. I went out for the first sponsorship meeting which happened to clash with a last-minute sales meeting called by the regional director. My team then informed her that I was out for an external meeting, to which she crudely remarked about me getting my priorities right. This remark about getting my priorities right led to many unhappy and unnecessary work-related incidences, involving many other team members.

Morale within the team was low as the local team was onboard with the sponsorship idea, knowing how it would benefit the business. With the regional team stepping in with their disapproval, the local team felt a lack of empowerment and autonomy in making astute business decisions for the organisation.

The learning point and takeaway from this incident taught me that even the best intentions go unappreciated if you work for the wrong boss. Every so often, when I recall or think back about this brief but impactful experience, the song, “Thank You, Next” by Ariana Grande comes to mind.
There will always be learnings to be grateful for despite the setbacks.

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The Ballroom
The incident happened in a WhatsApp chat thread that involved Government representatives (the client – 6 of them), Event project managers, a couple suits representing three different brands, my colleague and myself representing the agency. It was also an odd platform to be conducting rapid fire “meetings” and fielding incessant Q&A from the government reps at all hours; whenever someone had a brain fart.

I probably wasn’t in the best place and was already stretch thin from juggling other freelance projects – with this event that currently top priority on my agenda, which was 3 crucial days to launch. I was on the brink of burn-out, averaging 3hrs of sleep for 2 weeks, and struggling with a punishing project load that was back-to-back for almost 8 months.

There will be blood.

There were many questions asked in the WhatsApp chat– questions that I increasingly deem stupid and time-wasting – impeding decisions that had to be made quicky to achieve the project progress that I was leading. My answers became increasingly short, sarcastic, and finally, ragey. I had zero capacity for navigating niceties and my social filters were shut down. Oddly, I thought I was in complete control.  At which point, one of the quieter, senior clients exploded into a typed tirade calling me out for the “unprofessional” manner in which I was conducting myself. When she got tired of typing her displeasure, this became a flurry of recorded voice messages decimating my behaviour. I had missed all of these messages as I was in another meeting and didn’t see them till 2 hours later.

Aftermath

When I saw the maelstrom after panicked calls from my poor suffering colleague, I finally took pause, shocked. I recognised I was in the wrong for the way I had responded – being in a hole was no reason to take it out on others; creating a tense situation was not helpful, and disrespectful of everyone in the group. So I apologise. I typed out my apologies, and rang every single person in the chat to apologise more. I also had to explain to my agency superiors what went down and wrong.

It was humiliating but also illuminating. It cast light on how unsustainable my current professional life and work load was. I was at the peak of my career. But it really was the beginning of the end. The incident called it out for me. How I was regressing as a team player, not being a very nice person, what my triggers were when stretched, and also how when I knew I couldn’t, I shouldn’t even try. I should have steered the group chat towards a healthier, more conducive working (and professional) environment that protected my colleague and myself. Most of all – I should have just watched myself, and not let myself burn to detrimental effect impacting others in the group. And that was the beginning of my professional transition. I quit everything to recuperate from the burnout, and decided the next steps for change. All great two years later, now. Until it nearly happened again – but that’s another story…heh.

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Carrie (1/1) Covered in Blood at the Prom (2002) HD

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No one person can do everything, but everyone can do something. 

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This story took place when I was into my first job, and I was in the marcomms and events department of an established travel agency. Being a local SME, the working culture was constantly hectic, and each incumbent had to juggle at least three projects at a time. The company believes in working every employee to the bone.

I had a planned holiday over the National Day long-weekend, not knowing that we would schedule a travel fair during that period. This was going to be part of a 21-day stretch of no rest with 3 travel fairs across 3 consecutive weekends. My boss reluctantly approved my leave but told me to think about it. My colleagues were also understanding. A big part of me really wanted to go for my trip but at the same time, the guilt was eating me up. Knowing how much workload there is for each team member for such big-scale events and what impact there would be should I go ahead with my trip, I decided to cancel my trip despite being unable to get a refund for any of my prior trip bookings.

The learning of this incident taught me to look at the “bigger picture” and really reinforce that “teamwork is everything”. Some sacrifices are worth it and the 21 days spent with my team built a much stronger bond together and we went on to achieving greater success at subsequent campaigns.

The movie scene that comes to mind would be chess scene in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone”. The self-sacrifice of Ron Weasley allowed Harry to go on to defeat the antagonist.

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International Red Cross Donor Forum, 2004

I was in charge of all the administrative procedures for the conference, which brought together 50 top executives from leading donor National Societies (each country’s Red Cross) and the International Red Cross. My immediate supervisor was in charge of the overall management of the conference. The lack of cooperation and coordination within the organization in the whole operation of the conference was outstanding and left me with a bitter memory though I was given a serious responsibility in my second year with the organization and learned a lot.

Why this was the most negative impact?

-Even though the conference was a great success, my immediate supervisor was beaten up internally. There was a lack of coordination between the president, director, and section chief. The instruction line was messed up.

-My resentment over having to create documents not only for the meeting participants but also for the organization. Two weeks before the conference, I had to work until 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. every day. I was furious against the other directors who complained about everything we did.

What was the hardest part?

-Working overtime until midnight to prepare internal documents close to the conference.

Information sharing within the organization did not go well, and there were many times when I felt that I had to go through the process twice, such as when I was asked the same question by another person, or when something that had already been decided was discussed again.

-The problem was that enough internal consent was not made beforehand.

The problem was that the preparations for the conference started in a haphazard manner without a clear idea of the protocol for the conference. In retrospect, the root of the problem was the fact that only the department in charge was working without a clear idea of who was in charge and the chain of command. The entire organization should have shared the purpose of the conference at the beginning and clarified who was in charge and how to proceed.

I would change...

Our team was united even more by getting criticized by other departments, but it was far from the ideal status.

If I were in charge of the conference team again, I would first share the purpose, protocol, and each staff’s role in order to be on the same page within the organization. I would lead the team better than my then-immediate boss by listening to other directors’ thoughts and sharing my ideas to make the conference succeed. I would see the situation from a higher perspective.

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Working with my dad in business.

We had very different values and couldn’t seem to come to terms with many things. I remember feeling burnt out and struggled to see any light at the end of the tunnel. Every decision either of us made was the wrong decision for the other.

I believe now that we have very different values, but we never discussed them. We only frustrated each other with the decisions that we made in the business.

I didn’t have enough experience in business to to tell him his the plan wouldn’t work, even though I disagreed on principle.

I felt starved of a common understanding and felt we could not come to terms. I felt trapped and demoralised. There were times where I felt powerless.

In retrospect, a conversation around values was probably important if we were to work with each other in such close proximity. What did we want out of it? How would we work together? What’s important to us individually?

An understanding of each other’s values and being able to appreciate and respect each other was missing. I still don’t fully know how to do this but perhaps some open mindedness toward the situation would have helped. A reassessment of the events that have transpired and how we would have done it differently could aid in our understanding of each other and prevent future frustration.

I think in the end, sometimes - a willingness on everyone’s part for the team to work better, because a better team will have a better output and longevity. I still wonder if the disparity in authority also contributed to the fallout.

A genuine masterpiece of a story in human failure.

We can definitely fail hard even with the best intentions.

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Fuqua Partners Int'l Chair 2015-2016

As the Cabinet member of Duke MBA's Partner’s Club, I worked hard to make sure that the 150+ active members feel comfortable and that any problems are resolved. 40% of the members were international. As International Chair, I organized events to share the culture of each country, and provided ESL classes and personal support to non-native English speakers. It took us two years to build a good team, and now, five years later, we still keep in touch with each other every month.

What was difficult?

-Make the club an accessible place

There are people in their 20's to 40's from various countries with different backgrounds and different motivations for partner’s club activities, so I tried to keep an open mind to make the club an accessible team so that people who have problems can ask for help. One wanted to attend the English study group while taking care of her toddler. Another needed a driver who takes her to the language school. I emphasized the aim of the club at every opportunity and made a cooperative atmosphere at any time.

-Detailed and behind-the-scenes work
For example, for the ESL class procedures, for each semester, I had to survey the applicants, set the date, time, and amount of tuition, secure the venue (from the school's classroom to another venue due to parking problems), secure the teachers, and contact the teacher and participants in case of bad weather, etc. I could have just left things as they were, but I spent a lot of effort to improve what I could.

What I accomplished

-We made the club united. As a result, spontaneous activities were created in a good atmosphere and more partners started sharing their thoughts and experiences.

Through the activities, I realized how much fun it is to create something with people of many different nationalities and backgrounds. For example, in the cooking class, I recruited people from among the members who could teach us how to make the traditional dishes of their countries of origin, secured the venue, confirmed the material fee, contacted the members, wrote reports, and there were many other small tasks. However, the experience of cooking, eating and cleaning up together on the day of the event strengthened the unity among the members.

-I felt satisfied with the visible results and the relationship between members.

Why was it possible?

-deadline

I wanted to make the most of my two years in the USA.

-responsibility and independence

I volunteered to do work that I wanted to do or thought I should do. I was able to choose what I thought was necessary and avoid doing what I thought was unnecessary.  So did the club members.

I would perpetuate my kindest attitude where I would do anything for others with my all resources. This volunteer experience was enabled mainly because I did not do paid work. Although, after this experience, I tried to be the kindest person in my workplace and could make a good relationship in teams I belonged.

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I have honestly had very little experience working within teams in my professional life. In school and university, I managed to get through comfortably without any explicitly positive or negative situations. I did enjoy my time working in theatre - mostly good vibes and trusting relationships… hardened by the many situations of “the show must go on” and last minute struggles working late into the night.

That said, a core positive memory that does come to mind is.. when I was about 24.. and my brother was still studying for his Diploma in animation.

I was fast asleep at 3am when he barged into my room and said in a really panicked voice, "I'm in trouble, I need help."

Still half asleep, I muttered.. what is it?

He gave me the context. Apparently, he had entered himself into a school competition to create an advertisement. His work had piled up and he managed to have accomplished nothing with regards to his upcoming submission.

"How much have you done so far?"

"Nothing."

"Ok when do you need to submit it?"

"I need to present it at 11am."

Immediately I got up. It was GO TIME. If the submission was going to be halfway decent, we didn't have a minute to lose. In retrospect, if I had been more sober I might have questioned many things. At that moment, however, the only thing on my mind is how we can accomplish this near impossible task. Including travel time required to get him to the presentation... we had about 7 hours. In that time, we would have to conceptualize, design an ad, shoot it, render it and win over the judges.

We immediately started brainstorming. We knew we could not work on anything too complex - it had to be minimal. We didn't have time nor resource... we didn't even have daylight.

The ad was to sell a school to new students. We were selling dreams and ambitions.

We decided to use voice and kinetic typography. It would be simple, clean - YET EMOTIVE. We decided to tell a story from the student's perspective, imagining himself having visualized his own success in life... but working backwards to that single decision of signing up to the school programme.

After that -boom. we split the workload... did the required voice recordings.. edited it.. rendered the typography... then off he went to school. We were done by 10am, the rest was rendering and hoping nothing went wrong.

He came back later in the afternoon - all smiles.

We'd won. We placed first. The judges were split on 2 teams. My brother versus the other team of 3. On top of the ad, the other team had designed a whole bunch of collaterals as well. We didn't win by muscle.. we won by hitting the brief just right.. and not giving up.

My takeaway - Trust in teams is critical. My brother and I have the benefit of years of hard won trust that when the time came to get stuff done, to buckle down for crunch time, I didn't spend it questioning his intent or his character. Being able to effectively and reliably (sometimes quickly) develop trust in teams is crucial to long term success. I suspect very much that it has to do with vulnerability and being there for each other when the chips are down.

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At the start of the financial year, my department underwent a slight restructuring. The purpose of the restructuring was to expand teams and more clearly define roles and responsibilities as the organisation grew.

Change is never easy, and such restructuring can be hard, messy and disruptive. After the restructuring, the department ended up having 3 managers. I was initially hired to work under one of them but soon after joining, I found myself being asked to support and help the other managers. Part of my job responsibility is to help manage the younger executives and the quality of deliverables.

There are numerous challenges to working for more than one person. My team and I were often found ourselves being overloaded, received conflicting instructions and faced competing demands to prioritise one project over the other. Consequently, there was a cascading effect. I found myself struggling to give direction and feedback on exactly what was expected of the team. The quality of work deteriorated and there were several instances where we had to push back timelines because the team had to rework the deliverables.

As a result, I was often frustrated with myself, with the team as well as my managers. My feelings of frustration was compounded by my approach to work whereby I set very high standards and expect the team to deliver a piece of work that is as close to perfect as possible. When the quality of work started to deteriorate, instead of trying to understand the challenges that the team was facing, I would jump in and take over the work to cut out what I thought was the inefficient process of trying to communicate unclear instructions from my managers and trying to articulate what the end result should look like. Part of me was also convinced that the easiest path to producing quality work was by doing it on my own.

In one my earlier projects of managing the launch of a new project, my team was tasked with the creation of a new microsite, the sign up forms and social media content. When we spoke with our managers, they were unsure of what they wanted and had given different instructions over the course of the planning. As the timeline given to us was short, I found myself taking over the work instead of delegating, correcting and guiding the younger executives in their work. That week, I found myself working overtime almost every day and had to push back another project’s timeline in order to meet the deadline for the launch.

As a result, I was feeling more overwhelmed and stressed out. I was also not showing the team that I trusted them. The team was not empowered to do their work and the younger executives also felt that they were cut off from the project and were not learning.

Looking back, my behaviour was definitely detrimental for the team and myself. I should have instead spent the time guiding and supporting the younger executives instead of taking over their work. Till this day, I am still working on building trust with the team and learning to find the right time to intervene. While I may not have been the exacting/demanding lead that Louis Litt was with his associates in Suits, I am definitely working towards building the type of dynamics that Harvey Spectre had with Mike Ross - one that is built on trust and mentorship. With regard to my managers, I am learning to be more transparent with my struggles with the conflicting instructions and how it affects the team.

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One of the images taken during the event described below 

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In my early years as a photographer, there were commercial work to pay the bills  and personal work to get more commercial work in your style. Personal work tended to be stuff that you wanted to craft from a vision, putting your time and resources to do so.

There was one particular set of images i had in mind but required the collaboration of 10 people. Models, Hair and make up artist, Stylist, Assistants and photographer(myself).

The location was 3 hours drive from Sydney, requiring everyone to stay overnight at the model’s home. The model and her family were generous enough to offer board. Wake up at 5am , take a 20 min hike in the national park carrying all the equipment and finally Crawl thru a cave to the location for the shoot.

I managed pitch my vision and asked for a collaborators, boldly asking people I respected  for the time, skills and resources.

In the end the shoot went ahead, with full cast. I was so proud of everyone coming together to pull thru the discomfort of the long drive , the overnight stay the fatigue of the early morning and hike. Everyone performed that their best to put together a high memorable shoot.

I felt the pressure of delivering professional images, because everyone was there because of me, what happened if i didn’t get the shot due to my incompetence or if the weather messed up.

Despite the pressure, i directed everyone by giving broad strokes and believing in my team execute it to the best of their abilities. This gave me the mental space to perform at my best,  i remember a state of flow, where I focused on getting the shots i had in my mind’s eye.

A few days later when i was retouching the shots there is something magical about it, the photos look good and the process in getting there was one filled with positive vibes/energy.

Since then i have always strived to build an environment where my team can be both professional and personable at the same time. Casting a clear version  trusting people by giving them autonomy to perform at their best, where the process is just as important as the results.

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My feelings when my boss would pull me aside to compare my cohort to another cohort over 3 years…. 

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When I began teaching I was one of the youngest lecturer to be given their own cohort of students to lead and mentor for 3 years. Those 3 years have been some of the best and most stressful of my career.

The negative aspects were where my boss would bring me aside and make comments comparing my cohort with the previous cohort, insinuating they aren’t as good / talented and that i should look to the previous cohort for inspiration. The cohort is a reflection of the mentor and hence my extension i need to be a better mentor / leader as my colleague leading the previous cohort.

Long story short, I was always being told i was a step or level behind my colleague leading me to doubt my self worth and ability to guide my cohort. There were times where i found myself bringing this negative energy to class, teaching from a position of weakness. I felt unsure, never enough and felt bad that my cohort got ME instead of my colleague who sounded that he was rocking it.

In time, I found my footing, my voice and my unique style. I found that i didn’t have to be like someone else. My cohort graduated with their unique identify. i had genuine connections and keep in touch with them to this day.

I also learned that my boss was playing the same game with my colleague and many others. This strategy of competition is not one without merits. As a a boss its his job to make sure we perform our best, but i personally found this particular strategy  to be manipulative and detrimental to building a collaborative team.

It did push me out of my comfort zone and think ways to be better. So I would def keep the intention of this growth mindset using challenges , but without the manipulative nature of speakings half truths and sowing negative feelings to make yourself better by putting others down. I have suspicions that this process worked well for my boss and hence he used it on us.

Now as a more senior and reflective educator, I believe that we all have own own race to run. With our own set of strengths to leverage on and weakness build up , any meaningful comparisons should be on based on our personal journey. Naturally there will also be a need to compare with other colleagues but it should also done from a position of growth / openness vs  manipulation. We can’t use a cookie cutter approach to mentor everyone the same way.

I’m happy to say my colleague and I work well together with a lot of mutual trust. The team is much closer after my boss got re-assigned. I don’t harbour any ill will to my ex-boss and will learn from this experience to be a better mentor to my students.

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The context of this story should be read from my previous negative impact story.

There were a few months where my time at my previous workplace was not as bad, and I actually enjoyed myself more. Although this time was also particularly lonely because my manager and only other colleague and teammate had gone for maternity leave which meant there was no other person to support me in handling the Nordic market.

My managers own boss was the one overseeing me during this period and things were great. She was a wonderful and highly competent manager; she knew how to make her employees feel supported and how to deal with difficult situations constructively.

I had just had foot surgery and was due to be on medical leave for 2 weeks, but this fell in very bad timing as on the second week we were selling one of our biggest businesses in one of the largest transactions the Swedish market had seen for years. I was handling our internal side of the sale all by myself and I realized without me they probably will struggle to meet the closing deadline of the transaction. I got myself prepared and managed all the directorial level board documentation necessary for the approval and legal compliance of the sale. I was the middleman between the project group and all the board directors and CEO of the various legal entities involved in the handover, it was HUGE.

Especially in such a big global organization where communication between countries and directors don’t necessarily come naturally. I had to organize and keep up the circulation of documents between different groups of individuals and make sure everything was executed in a compliant manner, it was the most insightful experience into how it would feel to lead a team.

I managed to pull myself together and handle the whole Nordic part of the transaction with nothing falling between the cracks and it was a wonderful feeling receiving all the feedback from people in my team. These few months where I was working with a supportive manager were the months, I grew the most and was given the space to do so. It was a very clear indicator of the impact a good leader has on a team, its teammates, and its accomplishments! It was so clear to me how different I was in a work setting I felt comfortable in compared to one where I was constantly tiptoeing and afraid of stepping on toes.

A song dedicated to the moral of THIS story, a song about unlocking potential, a song that makes you feel good about yourself and reminds you to not be so hard on yourself, the journey is not over yet… Ladies and gentlemen Unwritten by Natasha Benefield. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7k0a5hYnSI)

“Sometimes my tries are outside the lines

We've been conditioned to not make mistakes

But I can't live that way

Staring at the blank page before you

Open up the dirty window

Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find”

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Please read this before you read the positive impact.

I am not going to lie- I was scratching my head at this pre-work assignment. Still being relatively or very fresh to the job market my experience is not expansive and have unfortunately been working alone for the largest part of my career.

I have recently joined a new workplace and team with such great potential; therefore, I still need some time to unravel my team player instinct.

So instead, I want to take this time to reflect on the working dynamic of my previous workplace and my role in the team, consisting of myself and my manager and the negative impact it had on me as an individual but also my work ethics. Our team was very small, and we didn’t work with many people outside of the team, at the time when I was hired my manager moved abroad for personal reasons and I was left on my own at the office. I mostly worked alone and didn’t have any colleagues I could chat with or exchange ideas with.

Looking at the first two years of my first job out of University, I am grateful for the things I learnt and the experience I accumulated but from hindsight, it did have a very negative impact on me mentally. My manager was an avid micromanager and like things done her way and was very clear to make an example out of everything. She constantly made me feel like everything I did was lousy and that I wasn’t good enough, specifically when giving feedback. Maybe this fed into my insecurities and always wanting to please but after 2 years of being there, I was completely devalued and demoralized, felt taken advantage of and left in a state of ‘workplace’ trauma that I am still trying to move away from.

During May each year, we are particularly busy as all our companies need to hold annual general meetings and various legal documentation need to be prepared and signed. I had missed one of our deadlines but not because I forgot but rather because it fell between the cracks of our internal communication’s. Instead of taking ownership of this miss and being completely transparent about it, I chose to not reveal it as the relationship had become so toxic that I was too scared to open to conversation. I had a lot of respect for my manager, in the beginning, so her words had a huge impact on me but after a time of being there, I started to realize that maybe it wasn’t me who was the problem but rather her.

Regardless, I let these patterns continue on instead of bringing them up and discussing them openly in an attempt to consolidate things. I hid it away and shied away from mentioning anything about how unhappy I was. Maybe I should have said something because otherwise, how could she know? And how did this affect my personal values and beliefs of constructive communication?  WHO WAS I THEN?!

But always remember, like Kelly Clarkson said what doesn't kill you makes you stronger ;)
Everything is a learning journey.

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My Most Positive Impact: Kaori Nishijima

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My Most Positive Impact: Kaori Nishijima

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In 2016, I was assigned to lead a project to formulate marketing measures that would capture market trends over the medium to long term, incorporate them into business strategies, and implement them in order to expand sales of the products I was in charge of. The team consisted of 15 people from four departments: Sales, Development, Production Engineering, and R&D department.

My Role

My general role in my position was to lead the business growth of the Advanced Ceramics Division by promoting marketing activities in order to achieve the mid- to long-term plan. In order to achieve the mid- to long-term plan of the Ceramics Division, the marketing plan was needed to redesign due to the changes in the internal and external environment.

Since it was right after the job change, I felt anxious and a bit isolated. To be honest, I did not have a deep understanding of the marketing and technology of the products, nor had I built relationships with my team members.

My Actions and Behaviors

First of all, before kicking off the project, I tried to sort out the issues and current situation of the sales and the products I was in charge of from the mid-term management plan in order to understand the purpose of this project correctly. Sometimes I relied on my colleagues who were knowledgeable in the field and read past documents and literature to deepen my basic understanding. At this time, there were full of unfamiliar words, and my mind was in chaos. However, I accepted and enjoyed this situation since I considered that it was perfectly natural when starting the new things. Next, I focused on building a relationship of trust with the team members. Especially at the beginning of the project, each team member was working at a different location, so I visited the sites and have face-to-face conversations with them. As continuing the direct communication and exchanging the opinion, I gradually built a relationship of trust with them. The aforementioned basic learning was also useful in building these relationships of trust. I was able to deeply understand their opinions and reconciling our opinions. During the project activities, I involved members of each department in the market research and strategy formulation stages. For example, when visiting potential customers, I asked not only sales but also engineers and researchers to accompany me to increase their engagement in this project. I believe that proactive involvement is important to make the project from "someone else's problem" to "my problem”. In retrospect, there were three key elements that I valued when leading a team: Humility, Honesty, and Expertise.

As a Team

After gaining the trust of my team members, the team’s morale had risen and each team member in each department began to act as a leader. Around the end of the project, there was a time when the organization had to make a difficult decision. It was to decide the direction of new material development, which had already started several years ago at R&D and development division. As a leader of the project, I needed to make decision whether it was appropriate for the company to continue the development of the new material. Through repeated collection of objective facts, hypothesis analysis, and discussions with team members, I decided to recommend to the general manager that the development of new materials be discontinued. It was not an easy task considering the hardships of the team members who had actually promoted the development of the material, but we were able to reach a consensus by making a proposal based on the mutual discussion. When a leader is faced with a difficult decision, I think the ideal attitude is "Cool head, Warm Heart". In a Japanese culture where once something is started, it hardly changes the direction. It was expected that there would be a backlash, but each department was convinced and agreed to it because of the trust I built in the team.

Now, I have moved from the department where I worked at that time, and although I don't have much contact with the team members from that time in my work, I can still say that they have become a great team who I can rely on to help me whenever I have a problem. I believe that a true team, even if it does not take the form of a team, has a loose connection and remains as "team" no matter where it is or when it is.

Actions to be sustained

From both episodes, whether you are a member or a leader, I would like to emphasize the three elements of Humility, Honesty, and Expertise. Also, I want to sustain the attitude that the first step is to change myself before asking others to change and “Cool head, warm heart” attitude.

Behavior I want to change

I want to change...
- Don't work too hard and neglect my own mind and body.
- Not to be too emotional to the things.
- Don't take lots of tasks by myself. Trust team members and rely on them.

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Like Hannibal, Faceman, B.A. and Murdock, I would say that the team I am part of now is like the A-Team - minus the being framed for a crime we didn’t commit, of course.

We are a rag-tag bunch of specialists that can be relied upon when things needed to get done. It took us about 3 years to build this effective team that we have now, and interestingly 75% of it only joined right before the Circuit Breaker, and then we had to work from home.

However, my colleague and I had already built a good foundation, a solid team dynamic, and team culture that can be transferred from office to home.

The pandemic plus the Circuit Breaker was really the most challenging time for our team, as we had to connect, and engage our guests digitally. Although it took a while for the new team joiners to acclimatise, and familiarise with the work, I - leading the creative unit of our team - empowered my colleagues to be more creative, and take more risks to come up with compelling work.

It wasn’t all that rosy as we were trying to get used to the new work arrangements, but regular check-ins, and feedback helped to smoothen the ride together. And we had each other’s backs when we needed help. Not to mention, drinks over Zoom also helped to maintain openness, and transparency which also fosters a positive team culture.

I could say that some of our best work was born during the Circuit Breaker, and we have the trophies to prove it.

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The A-Team Opening Credits and Theme Song

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This happened when I was working at a local telco’s digital unit. Our team was already effective one, we knew our roles, and tasks, and delivered the work. And the results showed.

Then one day, the parent company brought in a new CEO to lead the team, and this was the start of things going wrong. The usual friendly and helpful work culture in the org progressively turned toxic, and unfriendly as this new CEO had a habit of pointing fingers, and shifting blame - to divide rather than unite in contrast to the previous CEO’s nurturing way of working which brought out the best in everyone. It was everyone for himself now.

To make things worse, this new CEO also inserted himself into our team, saying that he will take on a dual role. Our usual way of working was upended overnight as we were more preoccupied of pleasing the CEO or doing needless tasks rather than our own work. Our ideas also were not acknowledged, or implemented as he wanted us to follow his plans instead. And it shows. The work wasn’t as great as before because the team was not effective anymore.

Like Thanos with his Infinity Gauntlet, this new CEO also had a version of that, and with a snap of his fingers, the whole organisation was cut in half - to find ‘balance’ and manage costs.

Most senior colleagues were let go, and those that remain feared they could be next. And anxiety-levels were through the roof. For an organisation that supposedly ‘brought’ joy to the public, it wasn’t the case back-of-house.

I was given the chance to lead our team, which I took, of course. However, the team’s dynamic had massively changed, and we weren’t that focused anymore. I tried my best to steer the team, adapt how we work, and attempted to revert our dynamic but it was so badly damaged. I did convey the overall mood to the CEO but nothing was done to raise morale.

I wasn't really ready to lead the team, while we had each other's back, my inexperience back then showed. My whole team, including me, progressively left the organisation. But the chain of events left such an indelible mark in me, especially in terms of leadership, or in this case bad leadership.

That it's all about them: A leader who doesn't grasp the notion of "service over self" will struggle to gain the trust, confidence, and loyalty of people he or she leads. Any leader is just as good as the willingness of his or her team to follow them. Overabundances of ego, conceit, and arrogance are not desirable qualities in a leader. True leaders accept responsibility for their actions and offer credit to those who deserve it, not the other way around. if a leader receives a vote of non-confidence from their subordinates…it’s game over.

And if there was a song that could encapsulate this whole experience, it'd be Muse's 'Map of the Problematique'.

This song conveys the frustration I faced when I felt as if every choice I made was the wrong one. Various possibilities play out and seem to pass as I struggled to find a way to escape feelings of fear, panic, and despair.

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Thanos You Will Cease To Exist GIF - Thanos You Will Cease To Exist Infinity War - Discover & Share GIFs

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The perfect Thanos You Will Cease To Exist Infinity War Animated GIF for your conversation. Discover and Share the best GIFs on Tenor.

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Context: This happened in late 2018 when a number of my senior colleagues left the team at the same period, leaving me behind as the most senior person to lead a relatively large consulting business in Singapore. The situation was further complicated when a few months later, my former parent company decided to divest the consulting practice line that I was in to a new investor. I was then inevitably tasked with the impossible job of setting up an independent entity in Singapore with what was remaining and to scale it to the next level.

Challenge: When the crisis first happened in 2018, I was an extremely inexperienced leader with only a total of 4.5 years working experience after graduation. In fact, I was not even a formal leader and had just risen to become a first-time people manager. There were many doubts on my leadership and technical capabilities by the wider team, which was exacerbated by the rest of the toxic bystanders in the other teams who had gotten ready their popcorns for the drama they anticipated to happen. To many, I was in the position by circumstance rather than by merit. Everyone was looking forward to see me fall.

My team of about 10 colleagues was mainly made up of people with less than 3 years of experience and were very impressionable. By then, they were extremely disengaged and upset by the events that happened. The situation they found themselves in was definitely not what they had in mine when they signed up for their respective roles.

As expected, the various gossips, politics and speculations had successfully gotten into the team and I was painted as an incompetent leader before I even began. However, the mission was there and there was no room for failure. Thus, I had to figure a way to pull myself and the team through.

What I did:

Firstly, I had to turn my team around. I started by initiating very hard and honest conversations with team members who were becoming toxic. They were typically folks who were better performers and had higher expectations of their leader.

As a leader, I realised everyone was looking for something to
push their frustrations to. They needed a punching bag before they could move
on from the drama. I decided to be a bigger man and apologised for the
situation and the mistakes made by the leaders who abandoned them, even though I
had no part to play in that. I told the team that I will be accountable for everything
in the past and everything moving forward. The only request I had was for them
to give me a chance to make things right again.

Once I removed the dramas the team had created and was
subjected to, I began to talk up on the future so that I could get everyone united
again and focussed on moving towards a common goal. One of the major talking
points was the excitement and vision of the new company and how all of them would
have an influence as the “co-founders” and/or pioneer group of the startup.

I was aware that every individual is different, be it their
perception of the situation and/or their career aspirations. I decided that a
one-size fits all strategy would not work and worked hard to draw up a plan for
each individual on their career. I also tried to resolve, to a large extent,
any hygiene issues they had such as pay, promotion, learning opportunities. My
main objective was to free up their minds so that they would be able to channel
their energies on business issues that really matter.

As a human resource consultant, I knew that team relationships
will be very transactional if I only focus on profit and losses. I made an attempt
to ensure that the team had an opportunity to refresh and experience new
things. We moved from a traditional corporate office to WeWork to give the team
a more vibrant and start-up environment. I also put aside a budget to ensure
that colleagues were able to have access to developmental materials to build up
their soft skills and maturity at work, given that the team was very young.

Inevitably, for every supporter I had, there would always be
dissent. While attrition was managed from what was first feared, they still happened
in droves. It was important to encourage my people managers to view each departure
as an opportunity and not a crisis. Any vacancy can present us with a chance to
reskill, retool and reenergise the team with better, more committed and
passionate new hire. The other managers and I worked hard to recruit fast but
stringently and we managed to change the profile of the team from one that was
filled with glory hunters to a group of collaborative and resilient colleagues.

The attrition also presented us with a chance to remove the sense of entitlement of the people, to provide the remaining team members with a realistic view of the situation and instilled the necessary grit in them so that we were able to overcome the difficult times we were in.

Back then, I took a lot of inspiration from a speech made by Mr Lee Kuan Yew many years ago (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uAYnSpp3hQ&feature=youtu.be). My challenge was admittedly minute as compared to his but I thought his passion and his fire were qualities that I had a lot to learn from and mirror! What I have learnt from this episode is that a great team culture is of utmost importance. It will sound fluffy initially but when things get real, a good culture will get you over the line. To get the culture right, the leader will have to take the lead. It is easier said than done because that would mean swallowing your own injustice and emotions in many occasions and only the big picture matters.

To many young leaders out there who may be suffering from an imposter syndrome, this is a song for you:

Rachel Platten - Fight Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo1VInw-SKc. Like the lyrics suggest:

My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care if nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me

A lot of fight left in me

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Lee Kuan Yew - This is not a game of cards

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We had just gone through a major restructuring in our company and it just so happened once again, that I remained in the department I was in, somewhere in the middle, while all my juniors and seniors were new hires.

Naturally as the knowledge manager of the team, everyone relied on me to furnish them with every piece of historical information along with my feedback on how we might improve existing systems and ways of working in order to create value for our clients and pioneer a new culture for our team.

As compared to the negative impact story I recounted, this was not my first rodeo in the workforce, and I had a number of years of experience already. The old me would have hated doing anything outside of my level and would have felt a sense of discrepancy and unjust having to “do more” for other co-workers who would not bother to pull their weight. I suppose experience plays a part and having had the chance to grow through each experience taught me more about myself rather than the other party. Approaching new challenges with a calm head has opened more doors for me to test my leadership capability and also help me discover what that style might look like for me.

A month after putting structure and processes together for the team through two-way feedback and collaboration created a sense of physiological safety for the team. Now a year after being in this team, we exceed our KPIs, the business is healthy and most importantly we all look forward to coming to work daily for new challenges to conquer.

What I have found to be true is that sometimes you don’t need a title to be a leader. You just need a great team of people who would trust you enough to take on a leaf of faith, kind of like how Nemo got an entire school moonfish to swim down to escape the fishermen.

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The story:
The team was newly set up to develop a new product. The team needed to work on a very tight timeline though they barely knew each other. Not to mention some are not in Singapore. As the team lead, I have to ensure that the team understand and buy into the product vision and strategy so that we can deliver the outcome in time. Therefore, I initiated the workshop (Design Sprint) to enable the team with knowledge of the project. This is also a good opportunity for the teammates to have favour on the individual's style of working. This workshop did flush out many strengths and weaknesses of the individuals. It set a good foundation for the team on developing the team way of working and culture. Along the journey, there were teammates that resigned or were removed from the team due to poor performance. As the leader, I had to manage these performance issues professionally so that the individuals will focus on their improvements. There were also times where the team was worried about developing too few features compared with other products. I have to reference back to the development strategy so that they will feel driven and assured to continue.

My team successfully launched the product within the given timeline (9 months) and was awarded for the best product development practice.

The elements of success are:
* Purpose and strategy
Articulation of the purpose and strategy of the project was critical for the team to prepare themselves mentally for the tasks that will achieve the outcome. As the team lead, I had clearly explained the purpose of the product and the development strategy that could lead the team to complete the required within the timeline. We identified sufficient features to build to satisfy the requirements together. With this, the team planned for the jobs to be done. The outcome is split into sprint goals. Regular showcases were conducted to engage the external stakeholders to assure that the development value adds to the business. The feedback from the stakeholders motivated the team. It also boosted the confidence of the team and confirm that the work done was progressing in the right direction.
* Team Culture
During the workshop (Inception), the team participated in an exercise to discuss and understand each other's values and preferred way of working. With these insights, we collectively agreed on the team value, namely transparency, empathy and respect SME (subject matter expert). The team and I constantly reminded ourselves of the above while making decisions, resolving conflicts and improving processes. It helped the team to build up trust gradually among ourselves and with the Sponsor. This sense of togetherness and commonality pulled the team together.

Which behaviours you would perpetuate and change, and why.
I will continue to apply the above elements in building and leading a team. I find that showing empathy to the team is equally important to the target customers. Adopting servant leadership to put the team before anything (even timeline) allow me to accumulate earned respect. To drive the team to burn out is the last thing that I will ever do as it will damage trust and reduce efficiency.

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My Most Negative Impact: Kaori Nishijima

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My Most Negative Impact: Kaori Nishijima

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This was the episode that had the most negative impact on me, but at the same time, it was the most meaningful episode that greatly influenced the way I worked afterwards. When I was in my second year of working, I was selected as the youngest member of a company-wide BPR project and participated as a member of the team to promote sales process reform.

This project started with the aim of standardizing and unifying the sales and management processes of the 26 countries in which we operate on a global scale, thereby making management more visible and enabling quicker management decisions. Big project team was structured with the team at the head office and personnel in charge selected at RHQ and SC as well. There were probably more than 100 members and managers participating in the project globally.

My Role

I was in charge of promoting sales process reform in the Asian region within the project structure. In order to unify the sales process on a global scale, my mission was to understand the needs of Asia region while grasping the needs of other regions.

Each country/region and each salesperson had established their own sales style and had built up good sales records, so there was resistance in the field to unifying the process now. In this context, I felt uncomfortable and uneasy about taking on this mission, even though I had no experience in sales. (This kind of position that is different from one's expertise or career path happen frequently in Japanese companies as the most company don’t adopt a job-type system.)

My Actions and Behaviors

First of all, I started by listening to my colleagues in the same department who also had sales experience to understand “What is Sales?”. Although I couldn’t grasp the whole picture of the sales and the project, I started the communication with the person in charge of the Asian region, who communicates daily with and understands the salespeople in the field. Since I knew that there was little conviction about this initiative, I tried to communicate as much as possible from their perspective, telling how this initiative would be valuable for them. As communicated regularly in this way, I began to gain the trust of the regional staff, but I wanted to strengthen our unity as a team, so I asked my boss for a two-week business trip. During the trip, it was beneficial for me to have face-to-face discussions together. Also, an informal communication such as eating together and chatting also helped to shorten the distance between me and the team members in Asia. After building the tight relationship, we could have more openness each other, and the activities in Asia went more smoothly.

As a Team

Although the Asian team was worked well, the project was not able to create cohesion until the very end as a global team including other regions. We were not able to bridge the gaps in each region, which prevented us from achieving the standardized sales process we had initially planned. The reason for this was that there was not enough discussion as a whole team at the stage of deciding on a major direction, and this led to a situation which every member agreed in general, but its details were yet to be agreed. In addition, in many cases, Japanese people would not say "yes" or "no," and would not speak up even in the important steering committee meeting where decisions were made, because they valued harmony with their surroundings. Additionally, it might be happened due to the low level of psychological safety and openness to discuss on an equal footing, ignoring hierarchical relationships. This kind of problem is occurred due to the traditional Japanese companies’ system including personnel system and decision making system.

As an individual

At the beginning of my participation in the project, I felt anxious and uncomfortable, but I ran hard to meet the expectations of the people around me and the great opportunity I had been given. However, in the course of communicating with the members in Asia, potential problems with the way this initiative was being carried out came to light, and I began to wonder if it was the right things to do. I felt helpless because I could not find any meaning in the situation where I had to involve other people to promote something that I did not agree with. Frustration and every day’s overwork almost made me mentally sick, but for the first time I felt the narrowness of my space of influence in the company and learned an important lesson. I learned that in order to become a person who can change the world, it is important for me to first develop my own skills and knowledge, become a great leader, and expand my space of influence.

Through this experience, I focused on changing myself, even if it was difficult to change others. Since there is a change to make a presentation to the president, the sales department, and the head of business strategy, I participated into this presentation session and presented my idea on the project. Fortunately, my idea was recognized as the best proposal among the various proposals. I realized the importance of taking any action instead of having frustrations inside.

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I also found this song best represent my emotions then: Try

The story:
This team that I work with was very lean. We were a three men team working on a new concept product. We had to be in charge of customer interviews to go to market strategy and activities. There was no clear leader in the team. The way of working was to complete the tasks that I think I can assume from the many on the Kanban board. This method worked out fine until this day. One of the teammates asked me to work on a presentation for the management within a day. There was no way I could do it as I had an appointment that evening. My explanation is not accepted. The frustrated me deliberately delayed the report so much that the management rescheduled the meeting. It tarnished the trust management had with the team. It also soured my relationship with the team. No one wanted to find out the cause. Neither did I explain as I was already very disappointed. After this incident, many decisions made were without my consent. Our relationship gradually deteriorate. We only speak about work related topic. No causal chitchatting. Though so, this condition did not keep us away from the commitment to the deliverables and timeline. Together, we completed the product development. The launch was a huge success.

Which behaviours you would perpetuate and change, and why.
I will consider this as the worst self I have ever been as a teammate.
I should have set the expectation correctly on the presentation materials. I would have explained my frustration to avoid any misunderstanding.
I could have been more professional.
But at that moment, nothing motivated me to do the above. I do not appreciate the team culture. The poor leadership is one of the reasons for my resignation after a short 18 months with the team.

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Background:
It was for an event I was organizing as an intern for our internship cohort of 100 pax. This event happened monthly and a group of interns would take turns to organize the event. The previous events organized by the other interns were unsuccessful as the turnout rate was around 10-20% and so my team and I were hesitant to take up the challenge when approached by HR. But for some reason we decided to give it a go.

What I did:
Naturally, at the beginning my team was very disheartened by the turnout of the previous events and their attitude was let's just organize the event and be done with it. Whether people come a not does not matter. However, I was very determined to make the event a successful one. So I did some research to find out why people did not come for the previous events and I studied the group dynamics of our internship cohort during lunch.

I found that the reasons why people did not come for the event was firstly, because their clique of intern friends were not going. Secondly, it was on a weekend and they had no interest to hangout with other interns outside their clique. Excited about what I found, I shared my findings with my team and they started getting excited and positive about it. We started to identify the person who had the most influence within the various cliques and got them involved in the event planning.

Outcome:
To our amazement, our event had a turnout of 99%. Everyone came on time and stay till the end. The best part was we all had fun and got to know others in the cohort better - which was HR's goal.

What I learnt:
As a leader it is important to know the ground and understand people's needs and motivations. Also, bring people into the process not only gives them a sense of ownership and autonomy but it allows you to see their potential. Lastly, the morale of the team determines how far, how well things get done.

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Happy Keep Your Head Up GIF by JCPenney - Find & Share on GIPHY

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Discover & share this JCPenney GIF with everyone you know. GIPHY is how you search, share, discover, and create GIFs.

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I'm currently working as part of a project delivery team. I've been the proxy product owner for a project with multiple levels of outsourcing for the past year. Working with multiple teams from Japan, India, Vietnam, China, Germany, and Singapore is complicated, to say the least. Our end client is Japanese, as is our primary contractor.
Many complications happened when they refuse to provide proper information in English. For example, we get UX mock-ups in Japanese. It creates confusion for our Indian developers as the Japanese characters look like pictures to them. Japanese UX mock-ups also does not help discussion among the international team.
Due to numerous technological and resource constraints, I opted to step up and spend time translating over 60 pages of mock-ups during my days off in order to avoid disrupting the development schedule.
Because of the project's tight deadline, I had to undertake many additional (sometimes trivial sometimes difficult) tasks outside of my scope to remove impediments. It's difficult to go into depth about all of them right now.
I believe in leading by doing, rather than issuing orders and expecting others to carry them out. Although having empathy and serving the team is great, I believe self empathy and work life balance are equally important too. I will strive to not work on my days off in future to avoid burn out.

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I was tasked to lead a project awhile back. This team was formed to look into enhancing one of our existing app. What started out as a simple straightforward project became complicated as we realized that it affects another project that my team member was in charge. Soon the lines were blurred and I became involved in my team member's project mid-way.

To make matters more complicated, in my team was my boss and a team member who was more senior and experienced than I was. I started to feel insecure and doubted myself as a leader. I wondered what value I could bring to this team. I saw my attitude and feelings towards this project change over time. From feeling excited and upbeat to feeling dreadful and frustrated. Soon I started taking a backseat and adopted a passive attitude.

Upon reflection, I realized that in order to lead a team I first needed to manage myself - thoughts and emotions. Everyone brings their unique skill set and self to the team and I needed to know what mine was and be comfortable with it. Lastly, being a leader does not mean you need to know and do everything, rather it is to understand your team members unique strengths, leverage on it and help them reach their potential.

Quote: As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others - Bill Gates

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Andra Day - Rise Up [Official Music Video] [Inspiration Version]

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Authentic Leader is not afraid to show their vulnerability and reveal their true self and connect with the team with openness

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Background:
I once lead a team of 10 (of different gender, race, age and background). With people joining and leaving the team, unavoidably mini teams will form and we will need to work out our differences. It took me about 3 years to "establish" and "stablise" the team and business had been doing well. We had our fun moments despite tough operations requirement.

What happen:
When COVID-19 strike, the early days were extremely tough for operation as we had no idea what will happen. The management was too "optimistic" that it will be over soon. While some MNC had allowed their staff to work from home, our operation remains physical.

Emotionally the team was worried (for self) and to make things worse, most of our customers are not the most understanding ones. As our business dealt with young kids, worried and kaisu parents kept hounding on us. We were not able to provide answer as we did not have clear direction from the ministry nor corporate directive. It was waiting for "dorscon ORANGE" everyday for further directive.

What I did:
I could have ignored all the emotions that was visible from the team so that life goes on (since our management and HR felt it was ok and dorscon orange doesnt seems to come). I choose to be true to the team, I shared my fear, concern and my thoughts on what are the possible scenarios and encouraged open suggestions/ discussion if situations get worse. I was also open about what I know and do not know from the management.

Outcome:
As the team communicate, we were aligned. We may not have consensus but we definitely have understanding.

During the most difficult times where we had to communicate undesirable messages to our customers, the team stayed tightly knitted because we knew that we were in this together regardless of our difference.

Reflection:
“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.” ~ Brene Brown

True leader leads the team and fought along side like a warrior.

During times of unknown (such as COVID-19), being PRESENCE is more important than a decision/instruction which may become invalid the next moment due to changing business situations.

Theme song for this:

The Greatest Showman Cast - This Is Me

Fast forward to today:
I have move on to another organisation but our relationships never stop. We have evolved from team mates/ colleagues to friends (a team who still gathered for fun activities).

Professionally, I am currently in the progress of building a team from scratch and handling business that is new to the organisation.

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Context: I was just promoted to a people manager and was assigned to manage a young fresh graduate who had just joined the firm. After a relatively bright but short-lived start, he was struggling to cope with the expectations and demands of a consulting life (i.e. expectation vs reality of consulting world - https://images.app.goo.gl/Xdw5Wj22BVWvefLWA) .

What I did:

I tried to bring his performance up to expectations but on hindsight, my methods may not be the most appropriate just like how this meme suggest:  https://d207ibygpg2z1x.cloudfront.net/image/upload/v1566487717/articles_upload/content/aurfsh3b66axji8g8bpr.jpg

Back then, I was open and honest about my opinions on his
work quality. However, that came off as insensitive to him. I also realised
that I was also very much into advice giving (like this: https://images.app.goo.gl/tSdnuDD6fqBPEMubA), rather than playing the role of an active listener. I could have coached him into resolving his issues. My actions back then created a hierarchical and psychological unsafe environment for him to speak up. This was probably how he felt back then: https://images.app.goo.gl/LpofMK3UW5WYMxbb7

Other colleagues (like this: https://images.app.goo.gl/eYeMrYRYZNwUkKtZ8) caught wind of the situation and began to gossip behind my back. This escalated the drama beyond control. However, I did not confront the issue and simply allowed the situation to escalate. That was a mistake because perception became the reality such as this - https://images.app.goo.gl/R79zGhbq39hrLawx9.

He began to also believe that I was targeting him on a
personal level and turned deaf ears to my feedback. In his mind, this was
probably what went through his mind whenever I spoke to him:  https://images.app.goo.gl/fW6H3qb2XqiTPpmF6

Again, I did not address the issue and let it festered.

Looking back, there is some truth to why he felt that I was
personally against him. Back then, as a young manager who rose to the position
through technical merits and definitely not leadership, I was too performance
-driven. I failed to exercise empathy to understand his circumstances. He did
not graduate with the right domain background, had a relatively speckless
academic record which gave him a lot of false confidence as well as mentally,
he was lonely in a foreign land and had to put up a front.

He also had a very high
self-esteem (like this- https://images.app.goo.gl/2fkXVvjJgJKC6zyw9)
which I did not take into consideration.

My dressing downs at times would have
pierced deeply into his ego and hurt him. That could explain the ultra-defensive
attitude he had towards me.

What happened:

Due to my oversight and inexperience, his performance inevitably
deteriorated and he was put on a Performance Improvement Plan. This was a big setback for him in the firm which could be totally avoided if I had put in more thoughts into my actions and addressed all the misunderstandings with more bravery.

This comic strip summaries what possibly could have happened very well: https://images.app.goo.gl/LoqhY5X1SP7fBWT47. I could have been in a “Set-Up-To-Fail Syndrome”.

Further because my expectation of him lowered over time, his performance could have inevitably dropped as well due to Pygmalion Effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aN5TbGW5JA

Through this episode, I realized the importance of understanding colleagues’ way of working well. It is important to exercise empathy and awareness of the others’ situations and not jump into conclusions quickly. Leadership is not a pack of theories. It is at times more of an art than science. This requires managers like myself to place more emphasis on observations, to be close to the ground and be suitably aware of my own actions because any slight move could cause an unintended ripple effect.

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A great leader needs to manage the "goal post" effectively both "top down" and "bottom up".

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Background:
A company retreat in year 2013 where I was the chair-lady and together with my 5 other committee members, we organised  team bonding session (overseas trip) for over 100 of other colleagues. I had high expectation as I wanted to prove myself given this opportunity to lead.

What happen?:
Everyone was relaxed (since it was an oversea trip) except for the <<Boss>>, with his agenda to drive some corporate message across during the "games" session which we thought we were "supposed to have some fun with".

Half way through the game segment, he wanted some changes. He gave me his comments and being the "greenhorn", I was caught off guard and immediately "reacted" to his request.

Due to the short lead time, I was not able to give direct instructions to my "game-masters" and also a proper consideration to the practicality. I resorted to giving instructions on the stage to the group of 100 pax of participants.

The result?.... I had my "game-masters" giving me that "huh" look as it did not went according to the "agreed format". Everybody started to do things the way they interpreted from the "new" instructions.

Consequences:
From the perspective of the <<Boss>>,  the game session was "messed up". He pulled me aside after the event for "debrief". His comment was "You were giving mixed instructions that resulted in the messiness".

Actions and behaviour post event:
I was filled with anger, sadness as I felt that I was just carrying out the instructions he gave. I was not able to hide the disappointment and my fellow committee members could felt it. I narrated what the <<Boss>> told me and the team spirit went spiral down.

Reflection:
I could have managed the situation better, by managing the expectation of the <<Boss>> and be serious with the understanding that the intention of the game was not meant for "pure fun". Lastly, the way I behaved after the event was immature and had affected the team spirit of the committee.

Theme songs for this:
It started with <<Panic! At The Disco - High Hopes>> to <<Imagine Dragons - Believer>>

Many years later:
I have grown to be a better leader and always remind myself not to be overly reactive to the requests of bosses. Managing expectation of bosses is equally important as managing a team.

As for managing team, I learnt what is meant to be shared and what is not. Some words are not meant to be shared in verbatim if the consequences will be detrimental to the team spirit.

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Fresh off my most negative impact experience, I had the opportunity to join an up and coming company, not knowing that I was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

The new company toxic culture made the old one look like Disneyland! However, as a manager now I was determined to take what I've learnt before and apply them. I knew i had to start slowly, being the newcomer I had to build trust within a  team whose organisation exploits it on a regular basis.

What I did:
From my past experience, I knew the absence of trust was the main reason for a toxic culture to flourish. To built trust within the team, I believed in real communication and leading by example were some of the key steps.

Real communication through regular 1:1 check-ins and understanding each team members purpose. I remember through these check-ins i was able to understand certain "juicy" roles were only reserved for the senior team members and that there was no plans to train junior ones. Junior team members felt stagnant in their roles and lost their drive. It took alot of persuasion to make the organisation recognise this bias and rectify it.

Leading by example rather than dictating others to carry them out. It's very easy to dismiss one's hard work without fully understanding their process and obstacles. Not only should a leader get their hands dirty to understand their team's plight but it also offers an opportunity to develop insights on how to improve or to reduce the process.

It was challenging and took a very long time to establish this trust and positive work culture. It's not perfect but we could all see the difference, there was a real sense of camaraderie and everyone was able to learn and grow. It's funny how we take something so simple as trust for granted.

"Without trust, we don't truly collaborate; we merely coordinate or, at best, cooperate. It is trust that transform a group of people into a team" - Stephen M.R Convey

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My Most Negative Impact : Bryan-Mark Teo

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My Most Negative Impact : Bryan-Mark Teo

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My most negative impact was a single simple but very detrimental incident.

A few of years ago, I was made a people leader for the first time.  This was also a time when a series of high-profile projects were underway, and we were all hands on deck and now with a new captain a helming the ship and a set of crew who were professionally experienced but had never worked together before.

Having been a single contributor earlier, I was always so hung up on maintaining a certain sense of control over my project to ensure they go smoothly and according to plan. Of course, with the large surge in volume I would nether have the time nor capacity to do everything myself and with the team, I would need to delegate the work and yet ensure speedbumps are cleared and rocks in the way removed so it was smooth sailing. I had also set up some recurring meetings with our management stakeholders to provide regular progress updates on the book of work so that escalations where required would be easier sought and left each member responsible for updating progress of their own projects.

I vividly recall it was maybe the third of fourth update meeting wherein this incident occurred. One of my team members provided an update in the meeting which essentially suggested a time and cost impact of the project which was met with a series of rapid-fire questions from the management who (myself included) had not heard of this prior. Instinctively and possibly for self-preservation, I put my team member on the spot and expressed my disappointment in her publicly as she should have flagged this much earlier and verbalised my surprise.

Simon Sinek shared that a great leader is someone who makes their employees feel secure and can draw them into a circle of trust and I completely failed at this that day. Worst of all was because I shared this publicly, I also lost the trust of everyone in the tribe who were under my charge and I was responsible for making feel safe. Instead, I create an environment of fear which weakened the fabric of safety to work within my team.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmyZMtPVodo)

I apologised to her and my whole team later, but this also meant I had to start rebuilding and expanding that circle of trust which would take time. Upon reflection, I had 3 major learning lessons from this,

1)      Delegation does not mean Abdication. As a leader when things go right, I should ensure the team gets the credit and when things go wrong, I should have been the one to take the responsibility.

2)      I am not in charge, I am responsible for those in my charge – As a leader, we go first and we need to be the ones who take the risk and make the sacrifice so my team could be ‘safe’.

3)      Trust is fragile. It is hard to gain but even harder to regain once lost. Regaining trust requires time and action, not just words.

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It was the first time our tiny social media agency had secured an integrated project that required us to take on the event management portion of a huge cycling project also better known as Car-Free Sunday.

In my lean team, it consisted of two senior directors and myself as at that time, a junior executive (who was practically clueless...first rodeo at working life at that time..). Given my lack of experience, I did not find it at that time to be too eager to suggest anything not knowing what the outcomes might be. So I had just defaulted to taking instructions from my two bosses.

Most things were going smoothly in the lead up to the event. The bulk of what we had to do beside providing PR and social support was to also arrange for bicycles for certain high ranking government officials who would be cycling as part of the event. Prior to this, I had advised my boss to cater for more bicycles than less, but instead she declined my suggestion assuming that most people would bring their own bicycles.

However, we had found ourselves in a situation when in the queue to get a bicycle, a certain VIP had lined up only to find out that there wasn’t a bicycle reserved for him for some reason. Naturally the VIP was upset and was about to throw a fuss. At that moment, my boss simply apologised non-apologetically and attended to the next person. Because of this small incident, it escalated pretty quickly so much so that it caused us to lose this client’s business.

At our post-mortem, when my boss asked if there was any improvements to be made. I brought up that VIP incident to her and relayed it in an almost ‘I told you so’ manner and it rubbed her the wrong way.  I knew that in that moment, my almost cocky behaviour was unnecessary even though I had a point to make.

My lesson learnt here was perhaps I was too focused on getting my point across, that I failed to pick the right battle to fight and I didn’t express respect at that moment. That’s a lesson I’ll take with me for the rest of my career as I venture into working with more senior people.

And of course, the song for this entry would have to be Miss Aretha Franklin’s R E S P E C T.

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My Most Positive Impact : Bryan-Mark Teo

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My Most Positive Impact : Bryan-Mark Teo

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My most positive impact is a story which has unfolded over several years and began from a very negative place.

In 2018, a new peer and (senior) member was brought into the team to lead one vertical of the department. As with many new joiners, he brought with him a certain enthusiasm which I, because of my ego at the time, misconstrued as political acts to mark his dominance. This led to several verbal altercations between over the course of a year or so and a strained professional relationship from the get-go.

Having been in the organization for some time, I found that I was able to navigate the politics much more easily compared to him. Slowly but surely that enthusiasm fizzled out and it was clear that this took a severe toll on the quality and output of his work and resulted in him being viewed as underperforming and my team having to pick up the slack.

In the period prior to 2020, I was progressing well with an expansion in the scope of my role and the size of my team. With the advent of COVID-19, I also started doing a lot of self-reflection on how I could be a better person personally and a better leader in my organization. This brought me to the realization that the organization can only thrive when we have highly motivated individuals across all parts of the business and having a member of my larger department who had a dwindling motivation was not helping the organization.

I recalled a keynote speech by the famous Simon Sinek on leadership and understanding empathy where he said that leadership is typically so quick to judge underperformance and many times say that “we need to get the right people”. Yet the reality is that if we were to create the right environment, we will get people who perform well. In my self-reflection, while I was not directly responsible for him, I was another part of the toxic environment that contributed to his underperformance. I did not show him empathy. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi86Nr9Mdms)

I started to reach out to him on a more personal level to start building the trust bank between us and we soon became more collaborative. However, another spanner in the works was thrown in when he was subsumed under my team making me now formally responsible for him. Safe to say this was an awkward transition for him but perhaps fortunately the months preceding and the trust we started to build helped buffer this slightly.

I wanted to help him be his natural best, to set him up for success by building the environment for him that I should have helped to create from the beginning. I started an open dialogue with him about that he felt he needed to grow and with that input, restructured the team to give him a fresh path to chart. Visibly there was a marked improvement in his commitment levels.

He has however recently resigned from the organization. You might ask, how then could this be a story of your most positive impact? His leaving words to me were this – “While I feel this isn’t the long-term path for me, you gave me the opportunity and support to really show my true potential. Thank you for showing me what this organization could be like”. To me, this was success - turning soured relationship of my own wrong-doing around into a positive learning journey for both him and I.

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No, I didn't actually use my middle finger to express myself, but I was probably quite close to doing so.  I don't recall all of the details at this point. This happened while I was still in my first job as a fresh graduate. It was my second year at the firm. And when I was younger, I had a short fuse. My manager was new and inexperienced, he had a habit of saying things that were tactless.  For example, he would said to me, "I’ve asked every other co worker, they said they cannot take this task, can you please take this up?”  In other words,  I was always asked to do some shitwork. This had happened numerous times before. Another identical situation occurred one day. This time, in front of other team members, I blurted out to him, “I want to resign!” What should I do now that I've lost my cool? I don't recall making an apology to my manager. He gave me a lecture without a doubt. At this moment, he probably had a different opinion of me. The dynamics of our relationship most likely shifted from poor to worse.  In addition, I needed to rebuild my reputation among my coworkers. Why couldn't I maintain my composure and renegotiate my workload? Why couldn't I evaluate the conflict and, if necessary, escalate it to higher management? Even though I was much younger, I didn’t need to be this hotheaded person. It was a humiliating and stressful experience.

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My Most Positive Impact: Chuang Hui Wen 

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My Most Positive Impact: Chuang Hui Wen 

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Linked from the negative impact that the scenario shouldn’t go on any longer, especially we have a tight timeline to meet.

As the project lead, I quickly analyse the project parts and spilt up into several parts for each team member to take on. Taking the approach to divide and conquer. Also, setting event timeline for everyone to follow diligently.

Every knows their own interest and forte business topic, they picked and worked on it. Individual topic close catch up were setup with me to focus on the progress of the respective topic and a finale review meeting with everyone to comment on each other topics.

During getting the work done, majority of them are efficient but there is always tendency to have some members who have some procrastination and not progressing as expected.

Can't afford to bounce back. Determined to press on to make things work for this team. Think through ways to pull the team members together and motivate them.

At this stage, I use recognition reward. Mentioning to them to let me know their reporting manager contact and I would like to highlight their effort in this project to be input and recognised in their year end assessment.

Somehow, it lit everyone’s motivation and drive on. This finally made a great leap and project progressed very quickly and we even managed to have everything ready before launch date.

Theme song for this: Kelly Clarkson - STRONGER (What doesn't kills you)

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Sometimes, small gestures and small habits can make a big difference and turns into the stuff that binds you as a team and helps you face adversity together.

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My Most Positive Impact - Racquel Narciso

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My Most Positive Impact - Racquel Narciso

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When the Circuit Breaker started and we adjusted to working from home, the creative department found themselves swamped with back-to-back meetings. Back then I was part of a team of five people, and we were one of 3 teams that made up the department. We had regular 15-minute WIP calls three times a week, just to report what projects we were working on, what the status was, and if there were any issues.

This quickly turned into 5 grumpy people, rattling off our project lists, rushing to get back to whatever deadline was looming over our heads.

We (along with the entire agency) were missing those casual collisions--those sparks you get off random encounters in the pantry or random chit-chat while sitting at your desks. It was just put-your-head-down-and-work. That, combined with this new experience of lockdown, isolation, and uncertainty, was making it very difficult for the team to stay creative.

My Approach

Our team lead was a really quiet guy and one of the busiest ones on the team, so I decided I would take the lead and do something about it instead of waiting for him to act. I made a small request that when our team does our 3x a week WIP calls, we add one item on the agenda: we talk about one creative thing we encountered in our day. It didn’t have to be anything related to advertising, just something that made us go, “hey that’s cool.”

I wanted it to be easy to do (because workload), no research needed, and no deep analysis or pressure for it to be super creative or artsy-fartsy. (Here's a video of how IDEO approached creating more casual collisions in their workplace)

During these WIPs, we talked about cool IG accounts, discovered a new website packed with fun short films, talked about the thoughtful design of the Nespresso cup and machine, an innovation of fine-dining delivery, HDB vending machines that have salmon fillets, camera equipment, Animal Crossing, and of course LOADS of Netflix recommendations. What used to be a pretty hasty meeting, with just a list of projects and an air charged with stress, turned into a lively chat. Because our WIPs were at the end of the day, we got to end those days on a somewhat high note, armed with a bit of creative inspiration. It also had the added bonus of helping us bond as a team, get to know each other better and develop camaraderie, checking in with each other and how we were coping.

This camaraderie we built really helped us get through the first round of layoffs, where we almost lost 2 of our team (we hired 1 back because we won a pitch). And this helped us get through the second round of layoffs, which was even more excruciating than the last one, because 3 of our team members were let go, including our team lead. When the layoffs were announced, we really stuck together and helped each other find job opportunities and get in touch with head hunters to find a new job, especially those that were on work visas and didn't want to leave the life they had built in SG.

Reflection

I am proud of having taken that extra effort to think of something to help team morale. I was tired and burnt out myself but I felt that we needed to pepper our days with a little inspiration and laughter, even if we were going through some really troubled times. (Apart from the friendships forged by the characters in Stranger Things, I feel one of its inspirations is also quite apt, along with a classic from The Beatles) When I came up with this idea to add something to our WIP sessions, I made sure I explained why I was doing it and what I hoped we would get out of it as a team. I deliberately added it to an already established WIP series that was already in our calendars so that it doesn't create yet another block in their schedules. I also knew that tensions were high because of how busy and stressed we were, so I assured them that it wasn't extra work and that there was no need to impress each other with how artsy we were. It was simply an exercise in finding the creativity in what they had in front of them: a spoon with a nice curve, a pen where the ink flows just right, but of course if there was something even more creative, then of course it was most welcome.

At first I was nervous that they would ignore my suggestion or simply say they were too busy to appreciate anything creative in their day, but we all just dove in and had fun sharing our inspiration with each other. I think it really helped that I've had individual conversations and shared projects with them where they knew me as someone who built a safe space. I also think it helped that I made sure it didn't encroach on our workload. They were really fun sessions to have, and I was happy to have added that to our team culture, even if I wasn't the team lead and even if we were just a small team. I'm no longer with that agency now and even though all 5 of us work for different companies now, we are all still in touch and we are all still friends, waiting for the 5pax socialisation rule to come back so we can meet up to have drinks.

Moving forward, now that I'm part of a new team and a new culture, I'd like to keep designing these mini-rituals to build trust and connection.

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Many a times, we are tasked to manage a project out of nowhere. There was this time, I was assigned to lead a business cross refreshed project to go live in 3 months by my boss.

We needed business partners' support to work together on the project with their business knowledge input.

With the random volunteered business members joined as task force, it wasn’t walk on water to coordinate with all. It is like everyone entering into an unknown.

Everyone has their own views and opinions. With endless discussions that can continue forever and taking up everyone’s time. Discussions going into all directions. Goal seems very afar. Progress is very slow.

This made the team feels drained, de-motivated from the project. Especially when this is not their main job nor in their KPIs/ goals to achieved. Even as a lead, it felt losing of all the holding power; nothing is in control. The grip is loosing and everything felt scattering. The pressure was there definitely.

Theme song for this : Frozen II - Into the unknown

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“You’re never wrong for doing the right thing… but I’m sure Mark Twain said that once before.” (Ben 2015 The Intern)

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There was a finding raised which might lead to a financial lost due to a claim submission that my team have decided to drop. We went through several round of discussion and evaluation to seek for the guidance. If the finding is not resolved, it will affect the team performance rating, not just my team but up to our global head and also the management team in Singapore. The results, my team was asked to provide names to take up the responsibility. As the project lead, my role was at risk because of the finding. After a few rounds of investigations, the finding/ case was close as we have proven we have followed through our process and it was the right thing that we didn’t pursue with the submission without the supporting documents. Though the finding was closed, the investigation process and experience were devastating. At time, when we think we are doing the right thing, it will bring us down with challenges and unforeseen situation to suppress our decision. From this experience, I have learnt that being perseverance help to manage the situation. Believe in self of doing the right thing will never go wrong and trust the process. There is a lot of dirty work that goes into the job, and the best leaders are willing to keep moving forward even when the road gets rocky. Finding ways around hurdles and roadblocks and one consistent trend among successful individuals, and that trend is the ability to persevere.

In “The Intern” movie, there is this quote “You’re never wrong for doing the right thing…”. The movie taught me never give up on what you worked so hard for, and in any life situation, that it is never shameful to ask for help, advice or guidance through tough times in life.

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Speak up or you may just burn your house down and take your teammates with you.

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My Most Negative Impact - Racquel Narciso

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My Most Negative Impact - Racquel Narciso

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We had just won a big pitch. Our client had a big budget and was looking for award-winning work so naturally, my CD and ECD were excited for the opportunity to do good work. Because it was a new client, we had all the senior people from the agency working on it across the other departments, including our MD.

In the creative department, not only did they have the CD and ECD on it, they also put two senior art directors and one senior copywriter (me) on it, along with tapping the junior designers for support. We were tasked to do a brand relaunch--a brand film, and an integrated campaign rollout that would support the film.

The brand film was pretty much what we presented during the pitch, or so we thought. When actual work began, we quickly realised that not only did our Client have a somewhat skeptical boss with a competing interest, they also had to get buy ins from stakeholders in two other corporate entities. Without disclosing any names, we basically had to get approval from:

1. Main client who was already fighting her own battles within her department
2. A regional head from a different office but sitting in Singapore
3. Global clients in Europe

All those three entities had their own agendas and all of them had very detailed comments on the film script that had won us the pitch--comments that required a brand new concept.

I worked on new scripts, but my bosses would go into the Google deck and rewrite it or just write their own. And because they were dealing with senior clients and trying to detangle a very confusing process, my CD and ECD went to the client presentations to defend the work and come back into the office with new left-field comments and new directions. To add to the confusion, my CD and ECD often had opposite points of view on the work, so I would find myself feeling like a ping-pong ball between the two of them: first doing it the CDs way, then revising it based on my ECDs comments. Then my CD would see it and ask me to change it back. I would try and put in my angle and my voice but the micro-managing was in full force.

My Attitude

Those script revisions went on for almost a year and because of all the "minor changes" and push-backs, the film felt like an unrecognisable Frankenstein. It was death by a thousand cuts. All the revisions had made us lose sight of the big idea. No one could even articulate it anymore. And somewhere in the middle of that, I shut down. I felt that nothing I wrote would ever be approved because it didn't sound like my ECDs voice and it didn't have my CD's fingerprints. I felt frustrated, that I was just wasting time running between these two when I knew it was futile. So I gave up and gave in to whatever they wanted me to put on the script. Doing that caused my team to lose trust in me. They knew I had checked-out and it was adding to the already stressful situation. (This video pretty much sums up why i became disengaged after being hit with the harsh realities about my client and my bosses)

When it came time to start brainstorming the rest of the campaign rollout, I felt that my art director partner was having a hard time with my pessimism. I still did the work with a smile, but my heart and soul were definitely not in it.

Reflection

I convinced myself I was simply avoiding friction, choosing my battles and conserving my energy for projects that weren't micro-managed, but looking back, there were many points where I could have spoken up or spoken to my bosses individually. I've always found it challenging to let my voice be heard, afraid to cause disharmony, so I took the easy way out. Instead of shutting down, I could have seen this as an opportunity for growth. I could have responded to the situation with more maturity by pushing myself more and having those difficult conversations.

Since then, I've been really conscious of my tendency to shut down. I realise now that being overly silent is a form of violent communication and instead of maintaining harmony, it creates distrust, because my teammates have no idea what i'm thinking or if I'm present at all. It's a huge passive aggressive behaviour, with the same sort of mood as this song by Lily Allen (pardon the song's French).

Moving forward, I want to keep pushing myself to speak up and have those difficult conversations to avoid breaking my teammates trust. Because building that back up is a very difficult uphill climb.

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I believe everyone has experienced some form of Toxic work culture before. Mine started back when I was looking for some change in my career, and the prospect of working in a larger SME (w/ G backing) with better benefits and a promising career path seemed great after working in smaller organisations for so long.

The interview process went well, the hiring manager was clear on the job role and responsibilities and my colleagues seemed enthusiastic about me joining, however I was dead wrong. Fast forward to Day 1, I was to be assigned to a different dept because of severe manpower shortage (which turned out to be a massive staff exodus), and into a role in which i had little experience, a fact which I has raised several times to the manager, however she was downright dismissive in my feedback a fact which I should have already taken as a red flag, however due to my inexperience and yearning to work in an established organisation, I stayed on.

Following the many months working there, I grew more aware of the telltale signs of a toxic work culture, one that my manager was largely responsible for such as:

Microaggressions (discrimination, implicit bias, victim blaming...)

Gaslighting Employees

Using Intimidation And Fear To Produce Results

Micromanaging

Scapegoats Employees

the above toxic behaviours did not just stop with my manager, like a defence mechanism my colleagues were also part of it. Sadly the whole organisation was attuned to this toxic culture. Even when I handled in my resignation, the treatment never stopped but intensified.

Takeaway: Looking back, I'm glad I got to experience this, It made me strive to not repeat or encourage such toxic behaviours as a leader. Lack of trust between team members, not being able to express a difference of opinion and lack of a work-life balance are the most common toxic behaviours that cause employees to quit. Employees should feel safe and happy at work.

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My most negative impact. - Shafiq Hanapi

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My most negative impact. - Shafiq Hanapi

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I once work on a digital transformation project. Led by a director who I would say had many bad experiences. She has no sense of what a multi-disciplinary team means nor track record of building successful products.

In her words, we are a “team”. But rather we are hands and legs to get things done. Theres too much - we should and should not.

Our individual works are always collated in a deck. Very surfaced explanation during management check-ins. And it always sounds like it’s important to meet the boss's expectation or rather “happy”. She decides which meeting we should be in and decide what we should work on in our free time.

I called her to share my thoughts twice but it dint went well. She gave me an option to continue to work as a team or I can exit, she will escalate to higher management. I eventually left and work on other projects. My action leads to more members leaving the team. Although I thought it was the best decision at that time, I realized I could have spoken up early in the process and helped define the ways of working as a team.

I sense that good teams work like high-performing sports teams. We need captains and coaches but not bosses who dictate. We can always change whos in charge.

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I experienced working for an SME that manufactures paper and leather products. Ranges from leather bags to corporate diaries. We supply to both corporate and retail customers globally.

My team was assigned to a corporate order In UAE. The scope of work was to design and deliver customized corporate gifts for an oil and gas company. It was our first time working together. All steps within the process were new to us.

From meeting the client in Abu Dhabi to making sure we have all the selected material on stock. Finalizing the design, press check-in a factory, and making sure we got the packaging and shipping sorted out.

At the last stage of checks, I realise that we made a production mistake. We had a batch of 20k corporate gifts, manufactured with the logo wrong and the UAE king’s name spelled wrongly on every cover.

At that point, I could either throw the member who did this under the bus. “Pretend” I didn't see the mistakes and delivered on time. Or call everyone in and discuss how we can resolve the matter.

So on a late Friday afternoon, I walk to my GM office and told her what happen. Although I was expecting her to blow up, surprisingly she was calm when she heard the news.

I shared the best plan I can think of in that panic mode, which is to deliver the right item first. Speak with the client about the affected items, and get approval to skip the production line so we could re-do this. I apologize on the team's behalf and told her I m ready to have a pay cut if necessary. Knowing this is a big-ticket client. Our reputation is at stake and there is a penalty for late delivery.

Fortunately. It was relieved damage control. We were lucky not to have to pay any damages for our mistakes. After the incident, I felt more comfortable speaking up. And realize things could just become worst if I don’t take accountability. We spoke as a team beforehand and I sense The fear of making mistakes. Maybe because our jobs are at stake. But there's also the right thing to do. Although I was the youngest chap on the team, I think I did the right thing.

The team communicates better after the incident. Everyone helps to look out for each other. I introduce a cross-checking process, meaning 2 different people will check each other works and request for pre-production mockup approved before mass production starts. This also shaped the working culture and trust each other more. We did well in other projects after.

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Without Ron’s wizard’s chess knowledge, they wouldn’t have been able to save the stone. (2001 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)

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As the employee engagement club president, I lead a team of volunteers to organise various employee engagement events. This group of volunteers are from different business role, personalities, culture and management style. In one of the largest event of the year - Family Day, we have to plan and organise the event for more than 6000+ employees with their family members to celebrate the event together. Beside bring all employees gather in one event, we are aiming to give back to the society with the involvement of charity events. My role as the club president is to lead the team from planning to execution within a tight timeline. During the planning stage and post the event, I try to cultivate a culture of openness and sharing among the team. We share critical conversations and positive confrontation over ignoring problems and challenges. We all have different ideas, suggestions and emotions. From the planning stage, to venue sourcing, charity organisation to partner with and with various logistic challenges to address for this major event. Recognising the value of my team ideas, opinions and challenges, I have allocated the task based on their personalities and skillset. The event was executed smoothly and was deemed as one of the best Family Day the employees have ever experienced. I believe the success and the great team work is from learning and growing together, doing trust exercises, utilising each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make the event a successful one. Similarly in Harry Potter movie, they needed each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make it past all of the traps. Without Hermoine’s book smarts to get past the devil’s snare, Harry’s Quidditch skills to grab the flying key, or Ron’s wizard’s chess knowledge, they wouldn’t have been able to save the stone.

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I think being with the same group of juniors after trip, and graduation did inspire them a lot. That was until I started to loop them into the corporate work - where the inspiration just dies off.

Work became mundane and there are deadline and expectations to meet. My juniors do not see me as an inspiration anymore but more of a painful and disappointing boss.

There were many fights, and arguements. Politics started to enter.

It was my mistake to mix friends with work when starting out my own company. During my startup journey, I had lost all my closest friends, and peers who respected me. People that were there for you at the start of your startup, has all left with disappointment.

The start of my company, is the most negative impact in my life. I really hope that I could have manage everyone's expectations better.

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"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." – Michael Jordan

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My Most Positive Impact: Eleanor Tan Su-Yin

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My Most Positive Impact: Eleanor Tan Su-Yin

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The story:
My greatest leadership moment was building my teams at TLL. When I came in, the founder had left, there was a leadership vacuum. There was no marketing team, just a ‘Branding’ team that was being led by unqualified staff who felt that choosing a pantone and checking copy was marketing. Customer Service staff were completely demoralised, unvalued and vilified by high-handed management. There was no Sales team.

Simon Sinek, one of my biggest leadership influence said service, giving another, the willingness to be there for each other that makes the highest performing teams: https://youtu.be/zP9jpxitfb4

Leaders are the ones who have the courage to go first, to put themselves at personal risk to open a path for others to follow.

I pushed hard for the opportunity to professionalise and build out the functions. I took on underperforming teams and non-existent systems and processes. I put myself out there to create the chance for them to realise themselves and be part of something bigger.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

Among the most challenging and rewarding elements, I took people who were disregarded, defensive, insular, entrenched, angry and steadily built them up to be leaders themselves, self-starters, people who knew and understood their talents and valued themselves.

Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.

I saw wonder in the brand, I believed in the product, I saw an opportunity to make a better world and build something that could truly go global. I set that vision for the team and led them to believe in it, to go further for it, to do whatever it took to make the vision come true. We worked late, and went the extra mile. We took pride in our achievements, we celebrated together, we helped each other up when feeling down.

The leaders who get the most out of their people are the leaders who care most about their people.

I empowered the team to be creative, imaginative and went to war to get them what they needed. I defended them to the hilt to anyone outside the team and they knew that, but I challenged them heavily inside the bubble and they knew that I would not stand for nonsense, nor would I accept anything less than the highest standards. Standards I set for myself. I promised them I would take care of them like family and because of that, we will always look out for each other and have each other's backs forever.

Theme songs for this:
'Whatever it takes - Imagine Dragons' https://youtu.be/gOsM-DYAEhY

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All things stripped away, without title and without responsibilities, we are bottom line: Friends.

The flattest organisation is firm founded on friendship. When we get that right on a team level, we can better see eye-to-eye, and be a back-to-back community of diverse individuals working at a common goal. This is the team culture that sustains the ways of working which we seek.

The elements of a friendship in leadership is this:

Care: It’s the little things that fill the cracks, it’s the little things that will make a team whole. It’s the little things we do as a leader–a smile, a check-in, generosity of words, benefit of doubt, an ability to talk about life outside of work, a hint of care–that build trust and by the same token, it’s the little things that break it down, ever so stealthily.

Help: I have always silently filled the gaps that I see lacking in my leadership as my own manner of leadership. Whether that means tighter communication for the lack of clarity, friendship for the lack of psychological safety, lightening the mood in meetings or finding loose strings to tie at work, I find myself approaching a project or team with a gap-filling mentality.

And I do that with a glad heart, because I believe in the value that I bring as a teammate and friend, and what I do to make work that much easier, enabling and relatable for my teammates. Fundamentally, I want work to be better experienced by all, so that they can bring their full selves to work, and find it fit to become their best selves at work.

I believe in individual connection, and I make an effort to do the same. So often people feel left out, unheard, and are unable to reach their fullest potential for the lack of trust and connectedness to even just one person. A team starts with 2–before it becomes 3, 4, 5 and beyond.

I would perpetuate the essence of friendship in leadership no doubt, as I enjoy this form of leadership best. Yet I will not stop here, but leverage the good foundation in team culture for the uncomfortable but needful growth: bracing constructive feedback, challenging ideas, aligning collective value and purpose (why we do what we do). These are often what is more difficult and less palatable in experience, yet essential for high performing teams.

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Did We Just Become Best Friends Did We Just Become Best Friends Meme GIF - Did We Just Become Best Friends Did We Just Become Best Friends Meme Step Brothers Best Friends - Discover & Share GIFs

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The perfect Did We Just Become Best Friends Did We Just Become Best Friends Meme Step Brothers Best Friends Animated GIF for your conversation. Discover and Share the best GIFs on Tenor.

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Richard Branson Quote: "Lead by listening - to be a good leader you have to be a great listener."

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My Most Negative Impact: Eleanor Tan Su-Yin

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My Most Negative Impact: Eleanor Tan Su-Yin

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The story (following on the positive one):

Subsequently, the team followed me to other businesses. Both times, they were founder-led businesses with very hands-on founders who were fixated on their ways of doing things. They wanted me to implement change and drive growth, but they didn’t fully trust and empower,

Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.

When I tried to recreate the TLL dream and get them to believe that the vision could be real again, it wasn’t possible. We weren’t working in the same empowered environment, and they knew it. We had our culture within the team, the one we had built at TLL, but in both cases, the pressure to conform and fit in created frustrations. They felt that we weren’t living up to the vision, they saw the company ways as wrong. I tried to get them to find ways to believe and adapt but they could see what I couldn’t.

The leaders who get the most out of their people are the leaders who care most about their people.

The team gave me the feedback, that these new leaders couldn’t work, that they couldn’t see the vision we had. I should have listened but instead I ignored them and continued to push them to achieve again. Despite them having many bad days, suffering, feeling uninspired, I kept on at them to persevere. And they became negative, disillusioned, the projects ended badly.

Mayor Tubbs said the most effective act of leadership is listening: (https://youtu.be/8DEiT-BPMv0) and in this situation, I failed to do so.

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

I think they felt by insisting that we could make it work with the existing cultures in the two companies, that I was compromising too heavily. The actual work we did was not inspiring, too many little things that we were micromanaged on – a font here, a picture there, a process, a system – they didn’t see me inspiring them with a new vision, just compromising to leaders they didn’t respect.

In the end, we chose to leave these organisations to start on our own paths. And even though some of us are no longer working together, the camaraderie and kinship that we have built over the years never wavers. I have learnt the hard way that you should always listen and observe closely to the people you lead because they bring valuable feedback and perspectives that you may not see.

Theme song:
In the End - Linkin Park https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVTXPUF4Oz4

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This happens when i was working with the oversea company.

I was in a R&D team that consist of multi nationality developing an in house game engine

The game developers are from Taiwan.

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I was the technical artist. Whenever we add a new feature in the engine - I have to lead and guide the team into how to use them, create tutorials or video clips examples if needed and get feedback on the feature I can take back and put into the backlog for the enhancement.

Seems like a straight forward task, the complications happens when I have different teams using the engine to develop different games. Although the features are generic enough to cater to different needs but each teams has their requirements that makes it really hard to please all.

As a company, we struggle with the top power - development team had to do monthly presentation of their work. In order to please the boss and prevent criticism from him, Team beautified environment and touch up characters to showcase their work. Team trying to outshine one another with their work. the more recognition you get from the review session. This caused lots of friction and created internal competition among the team. The producers tries to outshine each other and ask for the best skilled personnel to be under them. They refuse to share their people as well as their knowledge with one another.

When I went over for the demo and knowledge transfer, it was hard for me as the different team had their own agenda. I spoke up to encourage them to share their knowledge but was also being challenged along the way.

In the end, my R&D team got the most blame for not delivering what the developers had ask for. There was a lot of badmouthing at the other end to the top management. Being an oversea branch, we have no one to defend us at the main office. Our researchers are eventually disbanded in the restructuring and high maintenance cost of the team and we are asked to use over the shelf product for development. A year later, I left the company as well.

The lesson was an impact to me. People are hired for their skills yet fired even when they have done nothing wrong. If we could have more communication with the top and bottom management, things could have been different. As an oversea branch who are implementing features, we should have involve them right from the start and agree on the priority for implementation. Have everything minute down as well. What I learned from this story was pretty simple: no matter what, we can't avoid inter-office politics. Not only to new entrants in the workforce, but also to seasoned professionals, the advice is simply to be aware to protect others and also yourself.

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Background:
In my stay in NTU, the operations team which I was heading consists of 5 executives and 2 operators. The executives provides support to the many operations and the consumable store, while the operators operates the waste and cleaning services.

The executives are generally holding a diploma and above qualification, while the operators usually fetches only a minimum wage (as defined by me, not the Singapore government unfortunately - but we always try to give them the most that HR can allows).

The Setting:
One year, when it was nearing Christmas, I've decided to create a secret Santa gift exchanging game where we would draw lots and get a present for one another in secret. The gift could be anything but not less than $25 dollars worth.

I was worried that the $25 can be quite a heavy burden financially for my two operations staff, therefore I decided not to involve them in the gift exchange but just within the 5 executives instead. I would be getting another two gifts separately for my two operators for Christmas instead.

What happened:
Christmas came and gone. After the celebrations, my assistant shared with me that the two operators are not happy and in fact, is quite disappointed in me for leaving them out of the Secret Santa game.

I tried to explain to my assistant my rationale for leaving them out of the gift exchange. But she explained that the operators were angry with me for NOT ASKING them. What I could have done is to at least ask them, and they could then make their own decision of whether to join or not. If they think that it is out of their budget, they can then make the decision of not participating in the gift exchange.

But when I leave them out, especially for the reason that they could be hard up for case - What I was doing is actually belittling them.

The lesson:
This has been an important lesson to me. I have held two decisions I've made out of this lesson till today.
1. Never assume. Even when I has the best of intentions - Do not stereotype and risk belittling people.
2. Always give people the chance to make decision. It is their's to make. They have all the rights, not me.

Leadership may not always mean TO LEAD. But to listen, and to tap on the power of the team. Everyone has a role to play. Our role can switch always. I am pretty sure my operators know the kink of the machinery they have been tinkering with all day. When there is troubleshooting to be done, they would be the lead.

When we allow others to make their own choices, when we allow people to work autonomously, we will be surprised by the result. More importantly, people feel empowered. We will then be able to build a team by trust, rather than by giving (and following) commands.

My reflections, today:
I have always been trying my best to think for others. But I can be overzealous in my approach. For example, when my wife dripped something on the table, I would reach out to get the tissue for her. But she could have thought of reusing the used napkins beside her which she had been using for dinner earlier on.

I could have stopped myself just for a second, asked whether she needs any tissue. She could let me know that she needs and thank me, and then I pass her the tissue.

So do ASK. People will appreciate your concern, while at the same time, they can make their own decision.

For me, I would now pause, then ask myself:

Have I given the person the chance to make a choice?

Done. ;-)

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Background:
Back in my NTU days, one of the important units is the consumable store. It provided consumable used in the research labs mostly to users in NTU, and is open to other research labs in Singapore as well.

The consumable store serves as a warehouse that ensures stocks and at the same time provides economy of scale where individual labs can enjoy bulk pricing at the same time.

It is also an essential part of the scientific research logistic ecosystem as it allows for better logistic planning for vendors for goods importation as we also provide forecasting for usage at institution level.

The Setting:
Apart from standard bulk orders, the consumable store also provided for common orders of items in lower quantities. There are a lot of orders to be done every day, with a usual turnaround time of within 5 working days.

Ordering is done manually and the task is distributed according to the vendor they are in-charged of.

What happened:
There was this time during the mini-town hall meeting, the professor of a lab raised the issue that my staff has failed to keep to the time frame in ordering the requirement consumables. This is so despite constant reminders. This has resulted in the failure of the lab's experiment which has been scheduled with the expectation of the ordering being on time. This not only has a major impact on the progress of the lab's research but there is also wastage involved in scrapping the initial experiment, as well as re-setting up the experiments once again.

All eyes were on the errant staff, which happened to be the store leader. I know that it is due to the procrastination of the store leader as she has a problem of frequent procrastination, despite many interventions and consultations done prior. However, the problem still persisted.

As the lashing came to an end and awaiting for the errant staff to respond. I stood up and apologise. Being the leader of the operations team, although it is really the wrong of the particular individual, however, I took the case as my own. I always believed that the wrong is the leader alone, whenever the team is at fault.

I apologised not only on behalf of the errant staff but took it as my own. It is my responsibility to make sure that these things should not happen in the first place. I offered the apologies and then proceed to solve the problem by liaising with the vendor directly to expedite the procurement.

The affected professor seemed to be taken aback and somehow the anger disappeared immediately. Probably he was not expecting me to be standing up for the errant staff.

The operations team bonded much right after the incident. I believed that they felt that I was there to back them up. The team started to do things with much more trust with one another, not just towards me only. They seemed to now understand what teamwork is better and often stood up for one another after that incident.

Of course, everyone also ensures that the errant store leader no longer procrastinate. Everyone is supportive and also respect and expect everyone to be responsible in their own work - for the team.

The team has really embraced all for one, and one for all.

The lesson:
I will need to take responsibility for one another. In a team, there is no weakest link. Everyone is a whole. To function as a team, the team serves as one. There should not be a weakest link, nor the strongest cog.

Also, if I lead by example, people will learn from it naturally and reciprocate accordingly.

My reflections, today:
There is a lot of time, we wanted to change our team to make it better. While this is what we would like to do. But a lot of time, we may have forgotten that changing others is not easy. While there is a much easier way to do it: Changing ourselves.

As we are part of the team, and we can always change ourselves. When we change ourselves, we are thus changing the team. If it is a good change, it will get reciprocated. We just have to make sure that we always change to be better, and not the other way round.

For me, I would start that change, with myself.

First.

Now.

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I had the privilege to lead a project for the airport emergency service

The client wasn’t easy- trust is not there as it is the first time collaborating with our company. Ever work with client who tells u everything is confidential?

Thankfully, my team and I have a common goal.

We worked together to scope the work with help from the subject matter expert. Trust is built step by step as we manage our delivery for the client

Looking at many unknowns, we use scrum instead of waterfall for the first time. We had no idea how it could be done. I attend the scrum course and jump right into action afterward, learning and adjusting the wrong along the way. It was fearful at first but I was given the blessing from my manager to kick start the new process. Above was a photo of our scrum board.

40 % of the team consist of interns. I had to trust them to do their job and they in return share and explore ideas with us.

Winston Churchill once said, “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.” Courage is a skill that helps to overcome fear and can be developed.

The fear turn into courage then become joy when we are awarded another project the following year

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I went for a school YEP trip with a group of film school juniors as there was an extra slot when a lecturer backed out for the trip. During this journey, my role was to capture and document the things that we have done. At the same time, I made the above documentary with a few of the trip mates. I had personally felt the hunger and interest of my juniors to learn more about filmmaking and producing videos there. I was told that my teaching in Cambodia had inspired the juniors in the trip to explore their own filmmaking techniques. I felt that the passion and connection with the peers really did help to create a positive impact for my juniors :) After all, we did raise funds for the schools in Cambodia with our video projects!

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My Cambodia (កម្ពុជារបស់ខ្ញុំ)

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My Cambodia was a result of a 14 day Youth Expedition Project, service learning trip organised by Ngee Ann Polytechnic with support from the National Youth Council of Singapore. 21 students from the School of Film & Media Studies travelled to Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. Originally meant to be a mere record of what we saw, it morphed into a collection of perceptions and emotions. We listened and learnt closely from the locals we met. And tried to recreate the simple happiness we experienced from them. This film explores the hopes of a local Khmer child in a letter written to her mother (who is working in another part of Cambodia to provide for her family.)

The film has won second runner-up in Adobe Youth Voices competition. With the help from Adobe, the team had made USD$500 worth of donation under Kevin's name to the following 10 organisations in Cambodia:

M'Lop Tapang
Youth Star Cambodia 
Cambodian Rural Development Team 
Kasumisou Foundation 
Village Earth 
Lotus Outreach 
PLANET WATER FOUNDATION
The HALO Trust
Cambodian Children's House of Peace
Cambodian Community Dream Organization Inc.

Director - Kevin Ng
Written by - Zi Wei Chung & Piseth Chap
Voice - Vongvichra Nay

Awards & Recognitions:
2015 - 2nd Runner-up, Narrative, Adobe Youth Voices
2015 - Finalist, My Hero International Film Festival
2015 - 1st Place, High School Documentary, My Hero International Film Festival
2017 - Featured at Singapore Discovery Centre, International Friendship Day from 28 March 2017 to 6 July. 
2017 - Featured at Many Lenses, One YEP Exhibition - National Museum of Singapore from 15 to 16 July.

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When I am hurt, I hurt people the same.

Hurt can look like dishonesty from a coworker or going through a personal grief/ challenge.

When you feel one thing and say another, when you say one thing and do another, when you do one thing mean another–these can all mean dishonesty on the receiving end, and it is trust breaking and heart breaking all at the same time. Real honesty to me encapsulates transparency, authenticity and emotional honesty. Once trust is compromised, I get hurt and my relationships get hurt in turn–my default response is to set up hedges and retreat. Yet when I am finally ready to talk about it, people are no longer. Things were left frayed and sour because the window to effectively address and fix something is past.

I have also encountered personal grief in years past that has nothing to do with my coworkers, yet I have affected them negatively. The loss of loved ones left me emotionally drained, to the degree of feeling victimised by my circumstances, which creates unwanted stigma for a teammate to approach or respond at work. Violent communication from my end is not explosive, but a silent war as a form of coping mechanism, being ill-equipped to respond constructively. It leaves my coworkers confused at times, and the best of their intentions wasted.

In retrospect, I would bite the bullet through difficult, emotional moments and brave it–to speak up for myself and articulate my inner reality at the expense of my foolishness and vulnerability. I would choose to believe that mending comes first from identifying the broken pieces. That giving words and language to the issues can bring clarity and understanding, and with it, resolve: without which, what is blinded can cause more harm.

It is a matter of self-leadership and learning how to better lead myself, even emotionally.