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.

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. 

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.

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

The game developers are from Taiwan.

.

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.

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

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. 

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. 

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

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)

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.

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.  

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. 

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:

 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 

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. 

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. 

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. 

The elements of a friendship in leadership is this:

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. 

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. 

 

 

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. 

 

 

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.

 

 

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

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, 

 

 

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 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.

 

 

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

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

 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)

 

 

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.

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.  

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.

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. 

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. 

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.

Back at my previous organisation, the company would organise one of the biggest industry event at the end of the year. 2020 was the 5^th 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.” 

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 5^th 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. 

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.   

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. 

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. 

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.

 

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. 

 

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. 

 

 

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 1^st and 2^nd 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 3^rd 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~

<sup>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</sup>

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

 

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. 

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.

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:

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.

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.

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 .

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.