Latest True Insights
2025-07-02Last Updated on 2025/07/02
Dear Friends,
I hope all is well with you. I’ve been quiet for a while because I’ve been working on the manuscript for my book, Training Zen. I was fortunate to receive a contract from a division of Taylor & Francis, and my book will be published early in 2026. I will keep you posted on the publication date and where you can get a copy if you are interested.
The Talent Shortage
On June 9 and 12, I gave talks on how leaders and organizations can successfully work with foreign team members, in partnership with Talent Taiwan. The June 12 talk was reported on through several media outlets in Taiwan. Here is one of them.
The talent war is real. The labor force is becoming more and more mobile, a welcome trend for companies in Taiwan and elsewhere experiencing talent shortages. Maybe your company has already been recruiting foreign talent—many of the clients I work with started doing this 10 or more years ago. If your company has not yet begun to recruit foreign employees, I predict that before too long, you will be working with colleagues from other countries.
The Power of Diversity
Diversity in general has been proven to be a characteristic of the most effective teams. If we look specially at cultural diversity, we discover an interesting finding:
The most high performing teams are culturally diverse, and the worst performing teams are also culturally diverse.
The difference lies in how diversity is managed and leveraged to bring all of the value it has the potential to bring—increased energy and creativity, a rich variety of perspectives, and a stronger mix of skills.
Tips on Bringing Foreign Talent to Your Team
As part of my consulting role for Talent Taiwan, I prepared a set of tips for companies hiring foreign talent to work in Taiwan. While I do focus on Taiwan, my suggestions apply to most countries. I hope you find them useful.
Bringing Foreign Talent to Taiwan
What You Need to Know to Help Them Succeed
Common Challenges Challenge
Explanation Language differences
Communication can be slow, unclear, or confusing—even if everyone speaks English. Silent meetings
Local staff don’t always speak up. Foreign staff may misunderstand the silence. Unclear roles
Foreign professionals often don’t know what’s expected of them. Cultural gaps
Different work styles can create confusion or conflict. Social isolation
Foreigners are often left out of informal team activities. Too much hierarchy
Local teams may wait for orders, while foreign staff expect faster decisions.
Recommendations
Communication Remind foreign colleagues to slow down and use plain English.
Focus meetings on a few important topics.
Use written messages to exchange information.
Talk face-to-face for sensitive or emotional topics. Meetings Clarify the purpose of the meeting.
Invite each person to share their thoughts.
Write down decisions and next steps so everyone understands. Support Give local teams basic training on working with foreigners.
Help foreign staff understand local culture, hierarchy, and work style.
Offer regular feedback and check-ins to both. Pre-Onboard to First 90 Days Give new foreign hires a clear onboarding plan.
Assign a friendly local colleague to help explain “how things work.”
Follow up regularly during the first 3 months. Social Connection Invite foreign staff to team lunches or company events.
Explain the meaning of holidays or team-building events.
Praise people who make the effort to connect across cultures.
Learning Resources
Books
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
Leading with Cultural Intelligence by David Livermore
Online Courses
(Free) Coursera: Working in Multicultural Teams: https://www.coursera.org/learn/intro-multinational-cross-cultural-teams
LinkedIn Learning: Communicating Across Cultures
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/communicating-across-cultures-2023
Videos
YouTube: Erin Meyer on Leading Multicultural Teams: https://youtu.be/Q3X7legs3gM?si=f1e5s8WS-ZSTK09O [...] Read more...
2024-10-21Last Updated on 2024/10/22
Dear Friends,
Early in my coaching career I worked with a leader who taught me more than I taught him. His name is Jim Chang and when he reached out to ask if we work on something related to leadership together, I realized this was a great opportunity to produce a video series on the common questions leaders ask in leadership training workshops.
Jim is a deeply experienced leader in the asset management industry and has held senior leadership positions for over 30 years. I’ve observed him in these roles over time. Jim is a brilliant, highly successful leader with a great deal of knowledge and wisdom to share.
We filmed videos on 10 different topics:
How do you know if you are a good leader?
How do I improve my team’s performance?
How do I effectively develop subordinates?
How do I conduct an effective year-end evaluation?
How do I effectively manage upwards?
How do I strengthen my strategic thinking?
How should I manage a heavy workload?
How to delegate effectively?
How do I smoothly collaborate across departments?
How to deliver negative feedback effectively?
You can find the whole series here:
These videos provide actionable insights and proven strategies to help you grow and develop as a leader—whether you’re just starting out or looking to take your leadership skills to the next level. It’s also a perfect series to share with other people in your organization, including:
High Potential Employees (HiPos)
First-time or Junior Managers
Emerging leaders
Supervisors and Team Leads
Mid-career leaders
For more content with tips on effective leadership, communication, and more, subscribe to our YouTube channel, where we post videos in both English and Chinese:
https://www.youtube.com/@truedevelopment3566
Yours in learning,
True
[...] Read more...
2023-12-29Last Updated on 2024/06/17
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year! May 2024 be a wonderful year for you.
Each year we facilitate several Effective Everyday Coaching training programs. There is also a “coaching lite” version called Developmental Dialogue.
Most of the participants are leaders or project managers who want to learn to use coaching techniques to boost performance, enable development, and empower others to do their best work.
Coaching Gets Results, But…
The benefits of coaching are well established. Coaching dialogue stimulates thinking. It unleashes potential. It builds trust and leads to higher levels of satisfaction and engagement.
But…learning to coach effectively can be challenging for many leaders. A few common issues that come up:
How can I take the time to coach when I need them to produce results now?
Why coach someone to find their own best answer when I can just tell them what works best?
I ask questions and my team members don’t know how to answer them. They expect me to tell them what to do.
Am I a manager, or am I a coach? I can’t be both.
These are good questions. If you would like to know how I answer them, read on.
*This is the first in a series of three editions of True Insights devoted to Coaching at Work.
Why are We Coaching?
The first thing to clarify is the purpose of coaching.
Do we coach to improve performance or to support learning and development?
The answer is both. If you coach only around performance, you will miss opportunities to support another person’s learning. This is often as simple as remembering to ask, “What has been the most valuable thing you learned this week?” in a one-on-one conversation.
If you only coach for development, you are ignoring the practical need to solve problems, develop better solutions, and reach or exceed targets.
If you coach well, you will experience a number of benefits.
People will be less dependent on you or others for solutions. They will be able to do their work more efficiently and at a higher quality standard.
You will help others build confidence in their capabilities.
It will stimulate creativity and critical thinking.
Motivation to do great work will increase.
You will help people understand their potential and perform at their best. Who is Coaching For?
The answer to this question is crucial to your effectiveness as a coach. If you are coaching to make your life easier, you will fail to coach well.
Am I suggesting that you should coach for purely altruistic reasons? No, but I am suggesting that if you coach for any reason other than to support the success and growth of the person you are coaching, you will use an approach to coaching called “coaching for compliance.” You will expect certain answers to your questions. You will judge the quality of the other person’s thinking. You will ask leading questions. The person you coach will feel pressured to please you. All of which will result in failed coaching.
If you don’t believe me, Google Dr. Richard Boyatzis’s work on Coaching for Compassion versus Coaching for Compliance.
Coaching must be done as part of an effort to help someone succeed, learn, and be the very best they can be. It doesn’t mean we don’t challenge the way people think. The best coaching will challenge people’s thinking, but not because we want people to think the way we think. We challenge thinking in the people we coach because we want to help them think in a way that is most helpful to them.
The ironic thing is, if you coach someone you work for their benefit, you will benefit as much as they do from your coaching.
When to Coach and When to Teach
Coaching is not always the best way to communicate with team members. Let’s say someone just joined your team and on their first day, asks you where the restroom is. Would you coach this person? “What is your goal?” “What options do you see?” “What is getting in your way?” Your new team member would have serious doubts about your sanity.
Experience is the barometer that tells us when someone would benefit from coaching, and when they need us to teach them or share our experience with them, aka, mentoring.
Some weeks ago, I had a conversation with a bright student at my graduate school (Thunderbird in Phoenix, Arizona). He wanted to discuss how he could network with others in a way that felt more natural to him than the typical approach to networking he’d observed. He’d obviously thought about the subject for a while, so I started with coaching. I asked him what he hoped to accomplish with his networking activities. I asked him what felt unnatural about the way he sees others networking. Then I asked him what kind of relationships he likes to build with people, and how he goes about building those relationships. Asking him these questions helped him think more clearly about how to network in a way that feels good to him. He was less puzzled.
Then he asked me if I felt that a lot of networking seems to be about building shallow relationships in which two people use each other for mutual gain. It would not be helpful to him for me to ask him a question in response, so I shared my experience with him. I told him there is no need to build shallow relationships, that he would be better off following his heart, and that this would lead to building relationships that would be meaningful and helpful to him and others. In other words, by sharing my experience, I taught him something he might not have known before.
The best conversations you will have with your team members will be similar. A mix of telling or teaching, mentoring, and coaching. All of them have their use, depending on the situation.
Next Time: The Coaching “Dance”
We’ve begun to address some of the questions managers ask when they are learning to coach. In the next edition, I will explain how to be a “manager who coaches.” Someone who drives great performance without needing to use the command-and-control style of management that is of very limited value in today’s workplace.
Yours in learning,
True
P.S. See True Talk #17 for my Top Three Tips on how to optimize the effectiveness of your coaching.
[...] Read more...
2023-07-21Last Updated on 2024/06/20
“We become hopeful when someone tells the truth.”
–Margaret Wheatley
Dear Friends,
How often do you observe counterproductive behavior, think to yourself “I should say something,” but end up saying nothing because you don’t want to create conflict?
The Dual Nature of Truth
Conflict can be costly. Candid feedback can cause hurt. Completely objective feedback does not exist; whatever we say will be colored by our values, preferences, and communication style.
These are legitimate concerns. The other side of the coin is the fact that telling the truth provides an opportunity for someone to grow. If your behavior was causing you and others problems and frustration, wouldn’t you want to know so that you could decide whether to make adjustments?
When no one speaks up, the opportunity to grow and develop as individuals or as teams goes away.
Work Truth
Imagine a scenario at work where a colleague constantly interrupts others during meetings. It’s really getting to be a problem. A serious conflict may soon erupt. If the other members of the team avoid the discomfort of addressing this behavior, the interrupting colleague remains unaware of the impact of the behavior. However, by mustering the courage to provide honest feedback on the observed behavior and suggesting alternative approaches, we give the colleague an opportunity to reflect and change the way they behave.
By embracing the truth, the team enables growth and enhances team effectiveness. The best teams will always develop a culture of open and honest feedback.
Coaching Truth
As an executive coach, I often give my clients candid and sometimes uncomfortable feedback on their mindset and behavior. I have no wish to harm anyone, especially someone I am coaching, but I know from experience that if I don’t give them feedback on self-limiting beliefs and potentially harmful behaviors, I am not doing my job as a coach.
The more senior the client, the less likely it is that anyone is telling them the truth about their behavior.
Clients always appreciate this, even if it is painful to hear. They understand that hearing the truth is necessary in order to grow.
If you are a leader, you know that you must provide candid feedback, both positive and negative, to help your team members become their best selves. If you’re a great leader, you don’t hold back. And if you want to grow as a leader, you ask your peers, your boss, and your team members for feedback on your behavior and impact.
Truth an Act of Respect and Care
If we genuinely care about someone, telling them the truth is an act of compassion and respect, even if we know that truth is always somewhat subjective. The recipient of our truth is allowed to respond, express disagreement, or feel that it is biased, but this does not diminish the value of honesty. By expressing our truth, we show that we genuinely care and are willing to engage in open and sometimes painful conversations.
Tips for Giving Honest Feedback Check your intention. If you are telling the truth primarily to make yourself feel better, I doubt your message will be well-received. Focus on how your message might help the other person before you decide to deliver it.
Ask for permission. Tell the other person you would like to give them some honest feedback that you feel will be helpful. Ask them if they would like to hear it now—they may be in a rush or very tired. Give them the chance to tell you when and how they want to hear the feedback, if at all. If you are giving feedback to a subordinate, you don’t have to ask for permission, but you should help them prepare by first telling them you want to give feedback you feel they need to hear.
Allow space to digest. Don’t expect an immediate response. Depending on the style of the person, they might need time to reflect on what they heard. If you suspect the person needs that time, ask them if they would like to think about what you said, and book a follow up conversation in the near future—the next day is ideal. This gives them a chance to come back with questions and maximizes the opportunity to learn from the feedback. If the person prefers to just listen and not have a follow up chat, that is also fine.
Ask for feedback yourself. If you like to give feedback but don’t like to hear it, after a time nobody will welcome your feedback. Feedback is a two-way street, as they say. We all need to hear it, and we all should be willing to give it.
Address the behavior and the impact. Do not give feedback on mindset unless you know the person very well. Focus on the behavior and the impact of the behavior.
Discuss the future. It isn’t enough to tell the truth and then leave the person alone to figure out what to do. If your feedback was given with good intentions, and focuses on behavior and impact, allow space to talk about a better way forward. If I interrupt you a lot, tell me what I’m doing and the problems is causes, and then suggest that going forward, I might want to let people finish before I speak. Let me respond to what you say. Help me get better.
If you’re already a capable, bold truth-teller, I applaud you. I’m sure I could learn some tips from you.
If you need to increase your truth-telling moments, go for it. Do it because you care.
Yours in learning,
True
P.S. To hear more on this subject, check out the latest True Talk here:
2023.8.22 Update:
For more about how to give your BOSS feedback, check these out: [...] Read more...
2023-06-15Last Updated on 2023/07/27
Dear Friends,
As a team or project leader, how do you win the trust and loyalty of your team members?
Start by learning to see the good in everyone so that the people on the team feel accepted for who they are.
Accept People as They Are?
Isn’t it part of the job of the leader to develop people? That means we get people to change, doesn’t it?
It IS, but you cannot support the development of anyone who feels like you think of them as a flawed person who needs to be fixed. They will resist all your attempts to develop them until they feel that you accept and like them as they are.
It’s ironic, isn’t it? You have to accept a person as she is before you can influence her to change in any way. This is not the same thing as accepting everything she says and does.
What Leaders Get Wrong
Most of the leaders I meet do not understand this. When we talk about improving performance or developing the team’s capabilities, the first thing they think of is the things that are wrong.
“I have a team member who is very experienced. He is quite good at his job, but he is not open to feedback. Every time I give him a suggestion, he argues with me, whereas I have team members who are less skilled who are very open to feedback.”
My question to someone who says this: “Do you like and respect this person? Does he know it?”
I ask because if he doesn’t feel your respect and acknowledgment, why would he take direction or feedback from you without being forced to? Would YOU want to listen to a boss who doesn’t recognize your value if you had a choice?
With Feedback, Intention is Everything
This all has a big impact on the way you give feedback, the way you train people, the way you mentor or coach them.
If the intent of the feedback is to say, “You aren’t very good, and now you’ve done something wrong again,” I suspect your feedback will fail.
Why not change this to “You’re good. That’s why I think you need to hear this feedback from me, and why I want to talk with you about a better way to handle these situations.”?
If your intent is to serve, people will feel it and will work with you. If your intent is to correct someone who you don’t really acknowledge to begin with, good luck.
Accept people as they are, then try to influence them to become the best they can be. Reverse that process (try to change them so that you can accept them), and you’ll waste a lot of time and cause a lot of needless heartache.
If you’re interested in the evidence behind what I write, check out this video from one of the most well-respected leadership researchers in the field: https://www.coursera.org/lecture/emotional-intelligence-leadership/watch-the-positive-pea-and-negative-nea-emotional-attractors-4GRcY.
Yours in learning,
True [...] Read more...
