Even the Thai Manager can go Wrong

April 2000

This is a story from one of my Thai friends who is working in an organization that has just changed its ownership from pure Thai to a joint venture with a foreign partner. He was recently appointed as the department head in this organization. His experience with working with MNC's spans 20 years.

Last week he called a meeting with his subordinates from various departments. The purpose was to develop a new work procedure. As the only veteran professional manager with MNC work experience, he practices a modern leadership style by empowering his staff to develop new working procedures by themselves. He facilitated the meeting at the beginning and later left them to develop the rest of procedure.

A day later, the first draft of the procedures was submitted to him. It looked complicated with many unclear organizational flows. There was repetition of work that did not create value to the organization or clients. Since he ran out of time, he decided to take charge instead. The second time, he gave more instructions and directed them step by step in developing the work procedure.

The staff were frustrated and thought that their involvement was being ignored. He was also frustrated because his management style did not get the result he had hoped and was used to getting.

Over the weekend, he spent some time thinking about it. What went wrong? Here are some of his learning points he wants to share:

• His management experience was with MNC's with people who were highly competent in their thinking process and skills. This is because they worked and were trained under an environment that had clear goals and was result orientated. Empowerment was an appropriate leadership style since it created a high commitment where staff participated in the development of the work process.

• His current organization has a history. It was purely Thai owned and the staff were used to working under a more directive style. They were not familiar with the "empowerment" style of management. They were happy to be involved in development of the work process and they jumped right in to it when he gave them the opportunity. He, as the boss, did not clarify the purpose and the objectives of the work process. They therefore assumed that the boss needed a process that was well controlled and looked sophisticated.

Both parties used their background experience in this new situation. This is a typical human behavior in that we tend to use our experience or our standard to value others. In this scenario, the leader used the right leadership style at the wrong time!

Could this scenario happen to those Expat bosses in Thailand? The answer is "definitely yes!"

In Thailand, a lot of organizations are changing ownership from purely Thai to partnerships with foreign partners. These foreign partners are mostly major players in the world market with an established and modern style of management. They send their people to organizations in Thailand. However, the staff of their new joint venture organizations have a history. They were mostly used to a more conservative style of management with many management levels. In addition, the staff were told how to get things done. They were rarely empowered and staff were not able to become proficient in problem solving and decision-making.

Here are some suggestions that might help those Expat bosses and hopefully prevent them from repeating my friend's mistake.

• Before empowering or delegating major tasks to Thai staff, try small things first, so that the damage will be minimal.

• Be clear about your goals or end results. Apart from telling your staff, you may need to make it in writing so that the staff will at least "see" what the boss wants in addition to "hearing" from the boss in a second language.

• You may need to deploy various degrees of empowerment. At first, you might put a lot of emphasis on instructing, directing, guiding and coaching your subordinates. The degree of instructions may vary from one person to another. This is done based on the assumption that they do know the "How to". However, if you are unsure that your staff knows the "How to", you would need to check first prior to delegation since your staff might not have that kind of experience.

• Set some milestones for monitoring the progress. Try to make the monitoring informal and friendly. For example, you may have regular chitchats a few minutes a day with your Thai staff. This will tremendously reduce the communication gap. Another worthy effort is for the management to walk around the work area. These informal ways should be done as the Thais dislike being formally "checked on" or "pushed". Polite words and manners will help.

• Observe their feedback and make adjustments where appropriate.

The above suggestions are not the "rules". They are to a guide. Each organization has it's own value and style. If you observe and make adjustments where appropriate, it will help. Hopefully, you and your Thai colleagues will be happy working together.

Kriengsak Niratpattanasai
DBS Thai Danu Bank, Bangkok, Thailand