Getting Coaching in Asia RIGHT

May 20, 2011 1.00pm - 5.00pm Hong Kong

All You Need to Know about Executive Coaching A 1/2-Day sponsored program Facilitator: Charlie Lang  Organized by Progress-U Ltd. More details & registration

Getting Coaching in Asia Right (Part I of III)

The latest trends how progressive organizations make use of the benefits of coaching

Jenny is the Chief Operating Officer of a Hong Kong based medium sized company with about 1,400 employees in twelve offices across Asia-Pacific. The company is a trading company importing various products including high-quality packaging, apparel, pharmaceuticals and furniture mostly from Europe and North-America.

Jenny was appointed by her CEO to explore together with the Regional HR Director how the company could evolve to the next level. The CEO pointed out to her that he heard from one of his business partners in France that they underwent a major corporate culture transition that accelerated both their growth and profitability. They developed a corporate coaching culture and redefined the overall direction of the company. He asked Jenny to find out more and if a similar transformation would help their company, too. He was not sure if the same approach would work for their company because they are in a different business and also because of cultural differences between Europe and Asia.

Besides interviewing the VP HR of the CEO’s business partner, Jenny thought that she’ll need local expertise to determine what would be the right thing to do for her company.

Her HR Director knew Progress-U and mentioned to her that we might be able to assist.

I asked Jenny what she learnt from the business partner of her CEO and she replied: “To be honest, we had only a 30 minutes phone conversation, so it was hard for me to fully grasp what he meant. He said that his company didn’t initially think of a corporate culture change but rather started engaging external coaches for some of the senior executives who wanted to optimize their leadership approach. When they noticed some significant positive changes that made a real difference, it was one of the executive coaches who inquired if the company would be ready to take it to the next level. Then he mentioned something about coaching as a leadership style, talent coaching and team coaching which were deployed to drive a cultural change. Apparently, they also did a corporate culture assessment to identify key areas that would have the biggest positive impact on the business if changed.

The thing is, I don’t have a full understanding what coaching is in the first place, but that VP HR was really excited about how the atmosphere in the organization changed and how collaboration has soared since they started working on a coaching culture. Politics apparently has been reduced also significantly and as a result overall engagement and retention seems to have improved as well.”

“So what’s your understanding of coaching, if I may ask?” I responded.

“The way I see coaching is that a coach works closely with someone to help that person to improve what he or she wants to improve. Probably the coaches use their experience and guide the one being coached in how to achieve what they want to achieve.”

I confirmed that this understanding is in principle correct and added that the purpose of coaching is two-fold:

1. To assist the coachee (the one being coached) in thinking ‘better’ – to reach new insights and working out more options for acting or deciding and as a result make better choices.
2. To keep the coachee accountable to actually undertake any agreed changes that are considered to help the coachee achieve her or his goals faster and more likely.

“So what is then a coaching culture?” Jenny wanted to know.

“There is no one coaching culture. A coaching culture in your company may look different from a coaching culture in another company, for example your business partner’s culture.

What coaching culture really means is that coaching is an important part of the culture of an organization. But any corporate culture has many different aspects and some of them may be entirely unrelated to coaching.

For example, the corporate culture of an organization may include a particular high pace – it’s not directly related to coaching. Of course, we could explore how a coaching culture could also integrate and support a high pace.”

I further shared with her that nowadays the most progressive companies integrate various forms of coaching into their culture. They may use coaching in various ways, for example:

• 1:1 Executive Coaching for senior executives by external coaches
• 1:1 Executive Coaching for middle managers by trained internal coaches
• 1:1 Wellness Coaching for all employees – as a perk for top performers
• Small Group Coaching for small sales teams (3-6 participants per group)
• Team coaching for senior management teams to optimize the team performance (productivity & positivity)
• Talent Coaching performed by trained senior executives for top talents 2-3 levels down the hierarchy
• Mentoring to support and connect protégés who are considered for greater roles within the organization
• Coaching as a leadership style for all managers with people responsibility
• Experiential workshops to increase happiness and collaboration across the board

Depending on what we want the ultimate coaching culture to look like, an organization may need to deploy coaching in a variety of ways.

“Wow, this sounds quite extensive to me.” Jenny was concerned that this would be a high cost and wondered if it’s really worth it.

“Have you ever calculated the cost of staff turnover, especially of key talents? Have you ever calculated the cost of people not giving their best at work?” I responded.

“No, we haven’t, it seems rather hard to measure. Of course, I admit that with a better culture, we’ll probably have higher levels of loyalty and overall performance. I can clearly see for example the difference between my previous employer and the current one. In my previous company, the culture was overall stronger and I felt that people were more engaged and I know for sure that our retention rate was lower then, even though it was not a coaching culture.”

“I admit that it’s difficult to measure accurately the impact of the culture but we could make an approximate estimation of the cost of high staff turnover and lower than optimal engagement. We could define some benchmarks and calculate the returns if these benchmarks would be reached. This way we could mirror it with the investment you’d need to make for a first phase towards a coaching culture.” I knew that while not simple, it’s possible to work out some reasonable numbers to see if a sufficiently positive ROI could be achieved that would justify the investment. Jenny was excited about this idea.

[To be continued in the June 2011]


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EQ and the 'Crazy Customer'

New Article: 

EQ and the ‘Crazy’ Customer

By Charlie Lang


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To prepare for a sales training and coaching program for a major cosmetics firm, we arranged ‘shadow’ coaching sessions, meaning that we followed selected sales people during their daily work, visiting hair salons. The exercise was revealing.

To give you a taste of our experience, here are some true stories.

In one occasion, we walked in and the owner of the salon, a well-groomed barber of about 45 years of age, shouted at the sales person, apparently totally ignoring my presence: “You guys are so useless! I placed an order for 10 bottles of shampoo and you delivered only 9. And when I called, people pretended not to know anything. Tell me, why should I ever order anything from you again?”

The sales person responded in a very defensive manner, trying to ‘be right’ which made the customer even more upset.

In another occasion, the customer – another salon owner - was sitting at a table reading the newspaper. Upon our arrival, he kept reading the newspaper, only interrupting himself by uttering a disinterested ‘hello’. The sales person I was shadowing started to chatter her five minutes sales pitch about the latest promotion items, etc. The salon owner didn’t put his newspaper down, not even when at the end of her pitch she said ‘good-bye’.

You think I’m exaggerating? Can’t believe that such ‘crazy’ customers really exist? Well, I couldn’t believe it either – but seeing is believing.

How are these cases connected to Emotional Intelligence (EI)? And why might it matter to you even if you don’t have crazy customers like that?

What these two cases have in common with the sales situation you are facing is that we all deal with people with certain emotions and that we have certain emotions as well. If we can optimize the management of our own emotions and influence positively the emotions of our customers, we tend to be more successful overall.

According to Daniel Goleman’s model of EI, people who have high emotional intelligence

1. Have a high level of awareness of their emotions,

2. Have the ability to successfully manage their emotional states,

3. Are sensitive towards other people’s emotions and can ‘read’ them accurately, and

4. Are able to positively influence others’ emotional states.

For sales people to improve their success rate, working on these four dimensions has proven to be an effective approach. Consider this piece of research:


At L’Oreal, sales agents selected on the basis of certain emotional competencies significantly outsold salespeople selected using the company’s old selection procedure. On an annual basis, salespeople selected on the basis of emotional competence sold $91,370 more than other salespeople did, for a net revenue increase of $2,558,360. Salespeople selected on the basis of emotional competence also had 63% less turnover during the first year than those selected in the typical way (Spencer & Spencer, 1993; Spencer, McClelland, & Kelner, 1997).

So how would a sales person with high emotional intelligence deal with the above two cases?


Case I: The Screaming Customer

Before responding to the customer, it’s critical to become aware of one’s own emotions in this moment. For example, the sales person may realize that he feels unfairly treated because it was not he who made that mistake. Also, he may feel put down by the customer triggering the feeling of helplessness. Obviously, these emotions aren’t very helpful to successfully deal with this situation.

Noting that these emotions don’t help, it’s critical to now manage these emotions, for example, by telling himself that this customer is not really upset with him but with the company and that he simply needs to release his anger. He may even sympathize with the customer’s situation and develop an emotion of compassion instead.

As a result, it will be much easier for him to deal with this customer’s emotions. Instead of being defensive, he could show his understanding and focus on how to make up for what the customer experienced and how to regain his confidence in the company.


Case II: The Indifferent Customer

Considering again the four dimensions of EI, the sales person first pays attention to her own emotions in that situation. She might notice that she’s fed up with this customer’s behavior and as a result simply don’t care anymore. That realization could trigger her to reconsider her job mission. And she might regain motivation to make a positive attempt with this customer if she realized that this customer probably has a good reason for acting the way he acts – she just hasn’t figured out yet what exactly this is.

As a next step, she could think about what’s going on with this customer, why he behaves the way he behaves. By paying more attention, she might realize that this customer actually does buy from her company despite his even if he ignores her most of the time. She might also realize that this customer expects to be dealt with in a particular way and she just never bothered to find out exactly how.

Walking her through the concepts of EI, she became quite curious and a few weeks later excitedly reported about her experience. Instead of doing what she has always done previously, this time, she didn’t rattle down her sales pitch but instead first asked with assertively for the salon owner’s attention. This puzzled him and he indeed put down his newspaper. Then she went on to say something along these lines: “I noticed that my sales pitches seem not very interesting to you and that’s alright. At the same time, I want to ensure that I don’t waste your or my time and therefore, I’d really like to know how I could best serve you so that you see value in my visits.”

Eventually, the salon owner shared with her that he actually appreciated the products of her company but that he finds her sales pitches very boring and most of the time irrelevant. They agreed that instead of producing a sales pitch, she would first ask him about any needs he may have and then very shortly update him on any special promotions – and that only if she felt they could be useful for him.

These are just two simple examples, somewhat extreme in how the customers responded, but the principles of EI are universal and can be applied successfully in any interaction with customers or prospects.

Feel free to contact us if you’d like to know more how to build a highly emotionally intelligent sales force.

---------------- End of Article ----------------

Coaching or Mentoring?

Dear Reader,

Asia, and especially China, has long been known for being excellent in catching up with trends that were usually set somewhere in Europe or North America. Perhaps with the exception of Japan, Asia has not been perceived much as a trendsetter. This is particularly true for the areas of management and leadership.

This is about to change. We notice an increasing number of organizations based in Asia that develop thought leadership in these areas. Granted, it probably will take years if not decades until the wealth of thought leadership on management and leadership can be compared with Western countries such as the US, UK, France, Germany or even tiny Switzerland, for that matter.

The interesting thing is that this kind of thought leadership starts to emerge in this part of the world and that sooner or later executives in the West will seek advise and inspiration from Asian based thought leaders, something that rarely happens today.

If you are looking for progressive and perhaps innovative inspiration for your leadership, are you only looking in the West? How open are you to check out latest Asia based thought leadership? Progress-U is contributing to the trend to set trends from this part of the world. Let me know if you’d like to know more.

Let's keep progressing!

Charlie Lang
Executive Progress Expert and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor
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Coaching or Mentoring?

By Charlie Lang

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“What is the difference between coaching and mentoring?”

This is a question I am frequently asked which reminds me of the questions, “What is the difference between management and leadership?” or “What is the difference between vision and mission?”

Go online and use any search engine to answer these questions and I promise you, your confusion will be heightened, not reduced. Check dictionaries or ask several ‘experts’ and you won’t be enlightened either.

While I have my own definitions and differentiations of the terms coaching and mentoring, which make most sense to me, I would never claim that mine are the ‘correct’ ones. They just make sense to me, that’s all.

Ultimately, it’s really up to you how you define and distinguish these terms.

Why does it matter anyway?

Well, it does matter. Let me give you an example. About a year ago, one of our clients asked us to assist them in setting up a mentoring system in their organization. My first thoughts were: ‘OK, let’s first check the ability of their leaders to take on a mentoring role. Are they able to know when a coaching approach is more useful (and are they actually able to coach), when sharing is more appropriate, and when they simply need to teach the mentee?’

When I met the COO, I held back with my thoughts and wanted to clarify first the purpose of setting up a mentoring system. While it seemed obvious to me, I learned that even though such assumptions may 90% of the time be correct, sometimes they are plain wrong. And this was the case here, as I was about to find out. I assumed that they wanted to set up a mentoring system for taking care of their top talents and ensure their proper development and advancement in the organization.

It was a good thing that I first checked if this assumption was correct because I was in for a surprise. The COO’s understanding of mentoring was to appoint subject matter experts who could be consulted if anyone needed specific advice in the area of the mentor’s expertise. The purpose was to provide to any employee access to the needed expertise.

You see, had I not checked, I would have approached this case with my own assumptions and preconceived thoughts how to establish a mentoring system there. I would have been totally off track. It is important that an organization develops a common understanding of what certain terms mean for them, so that they minimize misunderstanding and ensure aligned communication and action.

I recently followed a thread on the definition of vision and mission statements on LinkedIn and got tired reading it after about 80 posts. In total there were a couple of hundred comments, many of them very passionately claiming that they have the ‘right’ answer and rejecting with equal amount of passion any other definitions. It was amusing and at the same time insightful to observe how excited people could get over two harmless words.

If people can get so engaged about two words when nothing is at stake, can you imagine how serious the implications could be for any leader or organization in terms of communication within the organization?

Over the years, working as an executive myself and having coached and trained hundreds of senior executives, I have learned to appreciate how important it is for an organization to develop a common ‘language’ and ensure that everyone in the organization adopts the same understanding of ‘soft’ words that are frequently used, such as vision, mission, strategy, management, leadership, coaching, mentoring, counseling, consulting, etc. To do so effectively, I found it’s helpful to openly admit that there are no strict official definitions for these terms and then agree on certain definitions for the said terms, within the organization. Everyone in the organization should be encouraged to adopt these definitions in order to facilitate effective communication. This is ever more important in multi-cultural teams or organizations.

Developing a common language, by the way, has some other advantages aside from reducing misunderstanding. It also leads to stronger groupness (sense of belonging to the group) which is a contributing factor to higher engagement and loyalty.

In case you want to know how I distinguish between coaching and mentoring, for me, mentoring is coaching plus sharing of relevant experience and assisting with the mentor’s own network. In my understanding of mentoring, an effective mentor is also an effective coach. Unlike a coach, a mentor needs to have specific and relevant experience in the field of the mentee and is able to make use of his network of contacts to help the mentees in their advancement. As a result, a mentor is typically more senior than the mentee. This is not necessarily the case for coaching.

If you want to know my definition of coaching, feel free to contact me and I’ll be glad to share it with you.

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