China Communications Training Case Study

Recently, a leading global provider of products for the computing, graphics and consumer electronics markets, decided to invest in leadership development and coaching for its worldwide leadership team. A global leadership development coach had found that the China team was especially challenged and that more than half of the team members’ development goals fell in the area of communications.  The company brought in Loma Communications’ principal Kristine Schaefer to help bring the team’s communications skills in line with global practices. Kristine, a prominent executive communications coach, is conversant in Mandarin Chinese and previously lived, studied and worked in China and Taiwan.

Kristine identified specific challenges the team could work on from interviews with the participants over the phone, a survey and conversations with the client’s U.S.-based employees who interact with the China manufacturing plant.  She and the client agreed that the purpose of the training should be to help the team become more effective communicators within a global company.  They concluded that a four-day-long program would begin to address these needs.

Kristine was to train eleven executives from the China plant that had been built in rice farmland two years before.  The responsibilities of the executives, who were mostly in their 30’s, ranged from overseeing the entire plant to security director to facility director to the HR director.  Kristine planned to spend two days on influencing skills – such as having difficult conversations, making requests and gaining agreement.  The last two days were to be spent on presentation skills, with video recording, group observation and one-on-one coaching.

After the first hour of the training, Kristine realized that the team was facing issues that were more challenging than her initial phone conversations with the participants had indicated. From her experiences living in Asia, she realized that culture played a huge role in how the team was communicating, both amongst themselves and with their western counterparts.

The Cultural Context
Although China is on an economic and technological fast track that will soon set the country on par with the rest of the world, its culture and many of its business practices differ greatly from the West.  Many common ways of communicating in business that have been prevalent for decades or even centuries in the West (and also in Hong Kong, Singapore and other parts of ex-colonial Asia) are considered odd or, even worse, impolite.

The executive team members were exceptionally accomplished individuals who, since they were very young, were recognized for their individual achievements.  Teamwork and related communications processes such as collaboration, creative problem solving and constructive confrontation were unfamiliar concepts to them.

Speaking directly about problems or needs was another burning issue.  Sharing information that might make a person unhappy is simply not done in traditional Chinese culture; it would be rude.  Avoidance of direct speech frequently escalated issues to an international level when the team was faced with answering “uncomfortable” questions from headquarters such as, “Are the products ready?” and  “How about the packaging?”  The standard answer was always, “Everything’s great!” Managing up was unheard of, as it would be considered extremely rude to make suggestions to one’s manager.

In fact, as “everyone’s manager,” the plant director was expected to solve all peer-related problems such as settling differences or investigating alternatives to the problems.  He had to solve his employees’ problems and was disappointed that his team had not developed more quickly into stronger leaders.  He was also unaware that his own communications style fostered this behavior.

The team had a remarkably low level of discussion skills.  The idea of win-win negotiations was new to them.  They were unfamiliar with the concept of self-awareness; when asked to rate themselves, they gave themselves much higher ranking than what others rated them.  One manager, a graduate of a prestigious university, considered himself the intellectual superior of the others and had a difficult time listening to others who had not achieved this level of technical expertise.

“This team was not functioning as a cohesive group at all,” said Kristine.  “It became apparent very quickly that they needed to focus first on each other, rather than on customers or the global team, as we originally had planned.”

The team was surprised as well by the training style of the session, intended to be half theory and half skills development. Used to the passive learning style common in their previous training, all had brought in notebooks and pencils. 

Refocusing
Kristine had started the session with a discussion of communications concepts. She began paring down the concepts she would discuss and asked them, again, this time face-to-face, about their issues. 

She realized she needed to teach them how to give constructive feedback. “We have only four days here,” she said, “If you want to accomplish your goals, you need to speak to me and everyone here very directly about what is working and what isn’t.”  Slowly patterns began to emerge.

As she listened more and began to understand the group dynamics, Kristine changed the goals of the session to increase basic conversational and presentation skills.  Noticing that the group quickly learned and enjoyed role-play, she used it to address the issues she was hearing and to illustrate those concepts she still needed to present.  On the spot, she redirected more of the program’s focus from “presentations” towards “difficult conversations,” with the goal of helping them organize their thoughts and communicate more effectively through the challenges they faced.

Using the Tools that Work Best
For example, participants had been asked to come with real examples of the toughest questions, difficulties, objections and situations they have had to overcome.  Using these scenarios, the participants broke into groups, with one playing the difficult person and another practicing the skills and techniques learned in the concept section.  Others observed and commented. The session changed from approximately half concept and half role-play to about 30 percent concept and 70 percent role-play.

Kristine also used one-on-one sessions to assess and recommend a development plan for each participant.  Each session involved frank and practical feedback for the individual, and included agreement on the three most important things for them to work on in the future. 

“Behavioral change takes time and practice,” says Kristine.  “My intention was to create the habit of excellence in each of them, making it part of their conscious thought process throughout each day.”

While the entire group realized that more time was needed for them to work on communications basics, in a post-session evaluation, every participant “strongly agreed” that the workshop was valuable.

Feedback
A sample of comments from the session participants follows:

“Nice working with you. You have given me another perspective at looking at myself.”

“Thank you so much.  This is a bible for me. I will make a plan for my improvement.”

The Future
Kristine recommended four goals as a whole for the group:

• To view themselves as cooperative management team vs. strong individual contributors
• To develop trust, empowerment and/or ability to solve problems amongst themselves
• To develop clear understanding and alignment with the company’s strategic objectives
• To develop critical thinking and story telling capabilities

 “These managers will need to balance demands of working for a fast-paced, results-oriented technology business with the cultural practices with which they are accustomed,” she says.