Lessons Learned Managing People in Asia

Losing face in Asia slaughters the head of the prized pig. Telling someone they make a mistake can be tantamount to a complete cessation in dialogs between two parties. I have read much about this in books like "Culture Shock: Thailand", warning of the dangers when telling someone they fucked up, but this is much more difficult to handle in practice. The natural tendency is just to ream the person who is in the wrong. But doing this is not a good idea.

Whenever I fucked up as a kid, my father would never get really mad as much as show how disappointed he was at my behavior. This had a tremendous effect that I'm only recently starting to understand. It worked great. But in Asia, it doesn't.

I made the mistake of telling one of my teacher's that I was disappointed in him, when I made a surprise visit to his class to find no students. I called him in the morning so he knew I was coming, but why weren't the students there? Apparently they were busy cleaning their government school - a task that happens every so often - but I was a bit still perturbed. This was added to the fact that I was showing the school to some people who bought school supplies for the students, and it didn't look good that there were no students.

I kept my cool, but told him that I was a bit angry, and I didn't know if I believed his excuse. Shouldn't there have been at least a few students?

After that encounter, I haven't heard from the student in 2 months. He is unreachable and his classmates say that he is scared to talk to me now. This is good for neither him or me. I need him to help with our projects, and he needs to fulfill his commitment by helping in the community so he doesn't loose his much needed scholarship.

So I've learned a valuable lesson. In Asia, managing people should focus on encouragement, highlighting when people perform well, and offering suggestions to improve behavior.

~ J-Dub