Many people in Hong Kong ask me about the best way to get coach training. Well, there's no easy answer, as there are limited options in Hong Kong, a plethora of options if you're willing to travel, and many different paths to becoming a coach.
So instead I keep a webpage with the latest options that I know of and my opinions about advantages and disadvantages. Please see Coach Training Options in Hong Kong.
I'd love to hear if and how this is useful to you, and how I might make it more useful.
Hong Kong
is a modern westernized city on the surface, but it can be surprisingly
difficult to adjust to the unspoken cultural norms of many workplaces. Expat
managers should raise their levels of awareness about workplace assumptions and
values to avoid sticky situations.
Take the case
of Bob joined the Hong Kong office of a large
multi-national financial services corporation 6 months ago. The new job was
very similar to his previous roles. He wasn't expecting a major challenge: how
wrong he was.
When he joined the office, the first
thing that struck Bob about his new workplace was the working hours. Large
numbers of his staff were regularly in the office past 9pm. This fact caused
him to take three important decisions that had a snowball effect on his success
at work.
First of all, even though he was the
boss, he felt uncomfortable leaving the office at 5 or 6pm as was his usual
practice at home. He wanted to fit in to the local culture in order to build
rapport with his staff. Consequently he started a habit of staying late as
well.
Secondly, Bob assumed that because his team
members were staying so late, they must have had far too much work to do.
Indeed they all confirmed that they were very, very busy and had been staying
late at work regularly for at least the past year. Bob was very surprised
because he had been assured that he would be receiving a well-staffed and
established team. From his point of view, the workload was completely out of
hand. It was practically a crisis.
He felt
concerned for the immense strain on his employees and was worried that some
might quit just when he needed them most. So he decided not to delegate any
more work to them in order to protect them. He would have to take up the slack
himself until he could get a larger staff.
He
chose to focus his attention on lobbying upper management for more staff. To
him the need was urgent and obvious. And yet, he was surprised by how difficult
it was to convince others of this fact.
These
three decisions, made almost unconsciously, soon began to have negative effects
on Bob's work results and reputation.
He was
wearing himself out with long working hours and constant stress of trying to
catch up to a seemingly impossible workload. As the work mounted, he was less
able to intelligently address the complex issues that he was facing. He made
some critical mistakes. And he was ill-tempered and withdrawn from the people
he most needed. Rather than warming to his team and colleagues to build mutual
consideration, he was creating deeper divisions.
In
trying to protect his staff, he fell into the trap of doing the work rather
than managing the team. He was spending his time on spreadsheets rather than
relationships and decisions.
His strategy for
focusing on the need for more staff failed to impress or persuade his colleagues
or seniors. Unknowingly, he was working against the values of the prevailing
culture.
In Hong Kong,
working late is often accepted as normal and workers are not strongly focused
on leaving the office at a particular time. People see the requirement for long
hours at work as a sign of their importance, and they use their office spaces
as second homes where they often have more privacy and comfort than at home.
They don't have the Western habit of escaping the office as quickly as
possible. Consequently, they may not see the same urgency to reduce workloads
and improve efficiency. They're more compliant to 'busy work' as they're happy
to fill the time and it makes them feel recognized.
These
aspects of the culture, and other subtle differences can easily confound the
efforts of an experienced manager to achieve desired results. And the best
solution is not simply to learn the fundamentals of the culture, because in
fact each workplace is completely different.
A
more dependable solution is to take the time to reflect fully, with the help of
a trustworthy and informed friend, colleague or professional coach. By
frequently stepping back to assess the situation from different points of view,
a newcomer to the workplace culture can discover and clarify the real issues at
play in order to develop and apply smart sustainable solutions.
For a few well-timed hours of reflection, Bob could have saved himself
and his family from a great deal of stress. He could have learned much more
quickly and painlessly to be a success in Hong Kong.
As
published in the South China Morning Post, November 2006
This week I watched the movie
'The Secret' which
was an excellent reminder of the easiest possible way to achieve our dreams.
The movie relates 'The Law of Attraction' that states that whatever you think
about, you will attract. And it is so simple. All it takes is three easy
steps:
1) Ask for what you want.
2) The world around you will answer.
3)
Receive.
But that's too easy, you may say! Here's
another description with a bit more information and with an example related to
leadership.
Examples:
I have a continuing strong positive motivating influence on the people in my
department. (See it. Feel it.) My department's productivity is double what it
was last year. (Write down the number in a place where you will see it. Know
what that would be like.)
Examples:
Feel grateful for the qualities in yourself that allow you to influence others.
Feel grateful for the positive qualities of the people in your department that
allow them to be productive. Notice and appreciate the opportunities for
progress that come up every day.
Every successful person you have ever met uses at least some part of
this process in some way. If you want to be persuaded, watch the movie! There
is no limit to what you can achieve.
Cheers, Angela
| “Strong feelings do not necessarily make a strong character. The strength of a man is to be measured by the power of the feelings he subdues not by the power of those which subdue him.”
–William Carleton |
One of the fastest ways to develop
yourself, or support the development of others, is to learn how to handle
unwanted negative feelings. That's because negative feelings are one of the
main obstacles to effectiveness at work, or in any aspect of life. They block
us from acting in our own best interests and doing what we know is best.
Masterful coach managers know how to manage those feelings in themselves and
how to help others raise their awareness about them in order to reduce their
negative impact.
If you think deeply about almost
any difficulty you have at work, such as interpersonal conflicts,
procrastination, stress, lack of motivation or ineffective communication, you will
notice that there is almost always a negative feeling acting as a root cause.
All of us experience feelings such as fear, rejection, hurt, lack of control,
insecurity or other feelings which motivate us to act in ways that are not
constructive.
Coach managers may experience
specific feelings that stop them from effectively building trust, listening,
challenging, supporting or using other coaching skills, particularly with
'difficult' staff who press their emotional buttons. Mastering those feelings
is a way to greatly extend your abilities as a coach manager.
A useful place to start in this subject is to identify at least one of
the important negative feelings that you experience and to understand how it
influences you. So, I'd like to lead you through a self-assessment now, if I
may.
When you're ready, think of a time when you
have acted in some way at work that you know is not in your own best interest.
For example, you spoke sharply to someone when it would have been better to be
more diplomatic. Or you avoided making a phone call. Or you agreed to do
something when in fact you wanted to delegate it to someone else. Remember the
time when it happened and notice what is the feeling you had at that moment
that influenced you to act in the way you did?
Then
ask yourself what would be different if you didn't have this feeling? Would you
act more rationally? Would you have the opportunity to be more effective? If
you answer 'yes', it's not surprising because after all those negative feelings
are generated in a very primitive part of the brain that is acting out of
instinct or very basic programming rather than from rational, well-informed
thought.
Luckily, ingenious human brains have
devised some very effective and simple ways to master these feelings so that
they lose their initial power to disrupt our actions from what we know to be
best.
1. Noticing and breathing
The simplest of all methods of mastering negative feelings is to
cultivate your ability to notice those feelings as soon as possible so that you
can give yourself just a few seconds to breathe and allow yourself to escape
the grip of them. This sounds easy but many times it is not. The deepest feelings
that are controlling us may distract our attention in subtle ways that we
cannot control. Nonetheless, this is a very good first step for understanding
and mastering our feelings.
2. Feeling
into the core
This is a methodology I
have used with surprising effects with many of my clients. For example, I had
one sceptical client who tried this method in order to reduce his feelings of
fear and inadequacy that caused them to erupt in anger whenever people
disagreed with him. He was very surprised to realize a few days after the
practice that he had completed an entire controversial discussion
constructively like he had never done before.
This
process involves simply taking a few quiet minutes alone to feel deeply the
physical feeling in your body. It could be an ache in the chest, a headache, or
subtle pain in the throat or almost any other physical sensation. These
feelings often have power over us because we find them uncomfortable and have
developed a habit of ignoring them. Paying close attention to them puts them
back in our control.
For detailed instructions on
how to do this, please see this article. www.spaxman.com.hk/feelingcore.html
3. Emotional Freedom Technique
Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT is another way to process feelings
such that they lose their power over us. This technique involves tapping at
meridians in a precise order while concentrating on the feeling we wish to
reduce. Once mastered, this technique can be used very conveniently on any
feelings whenever you have a few minutes alone (or even in public if you don't
mind looking a bit strange!) The instructions are very well laid out in the
free manual available at www.emofree.com.
4. The Release Effect
The
Release Effect is a guided personal development process that allows you to
permanently release any of your unwanted negative feelings. A practitioner
helps you to identify specifically the feelings you wish to release and then
guides you in a series of relaxing meditations where you allow your unconscious
mind to let go of those 'feeling beliefs' that are no longer serving you. I
tried this process myself this summer and can say that I am very pleased with
the results. It is much more powerful and permanent than the other methods
named above and it doesn't require any on-going practice.
If you are willing to invest in the very foundation of your emotional
intelligence, this is a method that I heartily recommend. You can read more about
it at www.spaxman.com.hk/release.html.
Whatever methods you choose to develop mastery over your feelings, the
rewards are large. As well as building your effectiveness in relationships,
communications and leadership, you are removing the barriers to all the
positive feelings that make life so enjoyable.
Loving
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