Client Oriented Coaching Approach (COCA) by Wenyue Ding

Yesterday a coaching colleague asked me a very fundamental question: what is your special and unique coaching approach (Auf Deutsch: Coaching Ansatz). At that time I was unclear. This morning I got an answer: coca! Client Oriented Coaching Approach. (Copy Right Notice: All Right Reserved. Please refer to the origination when you use this name.) (Auf Deutsch: Klienten Orientierten Coaching Ansatz: KOCA)

Coca is based on three believes:

1) Coaching is vehicle: Coaching is nothing else than a tool to bring SOMETHING from A to B. The original meaning of coach is vehicle. Therefore all the tools and methods are allowed in the coaching, which meet this purpose. The only question remains: is this specific method or tool effective and efficient? There is no dogma.

2) Beyond the Boundary of I: in the traditional coaching approaches there are two parties involved: the coach and the coachee (client), as separated entities. However, this view limits us from the fact that coach and coachee build actually a system with very special relationship. They stay in an energy field. Coaching is about to bring this energy field to somewhere.

3) Time and space are illusions: Once it is clear where this energy field should go, then the way of coaching can be obtained. Sometimes face to face sessions with systemic questions and answers(see "Beratung ohne Ratschlag" by Sonja Radaz) can be the most effective way, some times to tell a story is the simplest approach, sometimes email communication can work wonderfully. Some times meditation can reach extra ordinary results. To realize the enlightment it can take a single question at this moment or a whole life of suffering. So the coaching contract should be more focused on the clear defined outcomes. The duration or the ways are secondary questions.

Therefore to select a right coach it is important to know and feel if you can come along with him/her and if the coach has the wisdom and flexibility to chose with you the most cost effective and results oriented way for your very special issues.

7 Steps to Realize Your Dreams – Any Dreams

Step 1: Be crystal clear about your dream

Dreamers seem to be creative people and creative people tend to wander with their ideas, wishes and desires. However, if you are serious to realize your dreams, you need to focus only on one big thing. Being clear about this for a long enough time is the starting point of the realisation. There you gather sufficient energy which will be transferred to the materials. Your dream will be materialized.

Step 2: Ask the big WHY question

People are uncertain about their dreams because their dreams do not pass the big WHY test. Why do I have that dream? Would I approach that dream even I lose all my money or lose all your friends? Would I feel passion and love to approach the dream? Would I do every thing possible to achieve it? After asked all the questions: would I still like to approach the dream with 100% certainty? If the answer is yes, then the rest is just technique.

Step 3: Visualize the end results

Use your imagination to visualize what it looks like when the end results are achieved. Create a space in your mind and put all the elements of your dream into it. Be generous because in your mind really nothing is limited. Where are you positioned in that space? Do you feel really happy about the end results? If not, what should be changed to make you absolutely happy? Then change it. Remember, in your mind nothing is limited. You can revise your end results several times until you are absolute comfortable.

Step 4: Ask how to finance the project

Now this is the key part: you might first separate your dreams from the question how to finance it. Because it is so overwhelming that would become the blocking issue to act further. Google’s dream was to develop the best search engine in the world. And in the first years they did not have any revenue. The big money comes later. Youtube still lose money today. Think about that there are people in the business of giving away money. There is enough money in this world. What could be the models of financing the project to realize your dream?

Step 5: Generate continuously ideas to realize the big dream

The quality of your ideas is proportional to the quantity of your ideas you generate. Make a habit to generate ideas. Some ideas are just stupid, but that is the nature of ideas. Write down any ideas you can find. And manage your idea pool well. Sometimes my ideas are generated in my dreams in the night. Then I woke up and wrote down the ideas. Some ideas are coming from other people, people who are different than you or even people you dislike. Take any ideas from any sources. Speak with people in different industries. Do some thing unusual. The idea to write this article is inspired by a friend in a conversation about her career development.

Step 6: Sort out the best ideas that you can do immediately and do it

Ideas will only have impact if you act on it. Try first to sort out some cool, great ideas and act on it, immediately. Then see the results. Then adapt and change courses if you see fit. Act on ideas every day. Through your action you will generate more interesting, more useful ideas. And the most relevant fact about action is this: as long as you are acting toward your dream, you will imprint your dreams even more into your mind. And as long as you are acting toward your dreams your means will grow, your capability will grow and your determination will grow and your certainty will grow.

Step 7: Enjoy the life such, where possible, as if your dream was already realized

In fact the realization of the dream is not the state of the outside of you, it is inside you. It is your state of mind. Therefore to feel like if you already realized your dream is the most effective way to get there. What would you feel and think? How would you behave? Would you be more powerful? Would you be more loving? Would you be more generous? Would you have more fun? Just feel, think and behave like it. Remember, our mind does not need any time and space to go from state A to state B. Change your mind once, every thing else will follow.

House Leasing Termination

After two years leasing of a house within a compound in Hong Qiao, Shanghai, we decided to terminate the contract and started to look for an apartment. There are a couple reasons for it.

The house is little old, built in 2002. The windows are not tight, so it is cold in winter and hot in summer. We had to switch on the air condition all the time to keep the temperature under control, which cost money and was not environment friendly.

There are also other reasons for us to leave. The compound is not particularly well managed. When I use the gym, there is always something missing, water, water cups or towels. I had to call the service personnel to get them.

Then there was a problem with the club house. Some private drivers of the compound tenants slept on the sofa of the club house during the day. And the management decided to create a small, closed room within the club house to let the drivers sleep there. And now the club house looks really awful.

When the service person heard that we are leaving, she came to us and politely asked us to stay and ensured us that her management will consider any conditions we might have on our mind. We could take another house nearby etc. And I got the sense that she really wants us to stay, because there are already several other empty houses they are looking for tenants for.

I could also sense that when the situation continues with the leaving tenants, the management may think to cut number of employees for the compound. And we do really like the service personnel. They are nice, polite and available and do everything we ask for. We also observed that the compound management does not put his heart to manage the compound, but instead taking care of his private business.

I feel sorry for the employees there and think about some large companies where the management made mistakes and employees had to go. The world is not fair and far from perfect. And I would like to call for actions for all managers to take more responsibilities for the people below them, because their fate is dependent on your competence, dedications and decisions. Thank you.

Coaching for Talented Leaders

Why do talented leaders still need coaching? They are smart people. They have skills to lead big organisations or companies, driving excellent results, and they even have coaching capability to help others to be better. Why do they still need coaching for themselves?

The answer is pretty simple. Although talented leaders know how to behave in almost all the situations – theoretically - they some times miss the perspectives from others. They are so focused leading other people and can sometimes not clearly see themselves in the equation. Therefore they need a mirror.

Good coaching provides them other party’s perspective, a mirror that should reflect exactly how they appear to others. Therefore excellent coaches do not teach. They ask questions instead of giving instructions. Those questions will lead to more clarity and insight about how the person being coached really is, how he thinks, behaves and acts.

Personally I coach regularly 3 to 4 people whom I really respect and admire. And I have people coaching me on regular basis. Some times we coach each other on different subjects.

It is really a rewarding activity for the coach and for the person being coached, because while you get to know yourself better through different perspective, your goals and purpose of life will become crystal clear, you will feel happier.

Select Your Leaders Wisely

A Company is NOT run under the principles of democracy. And the leaders are selected top down rather than bottom up. So what is your freedom to choose your leaders, your managers or your bosses?

You freedom to choose the leaders is by the time you decide to accept a job, an assignment or a project, because at that time the leader is already appointed. But you can only choose, if you have developed valid options. And I believe you will always have options, if you are a talent.

What are your criteria to select your leaders? The most important qualities of a good leader are integrity, character and judgement. However, too often the company’s leaders are selected based on the relationship and loyalty to their bosses.

Therefore you have the responsibility to carefully select your leaders before you accept a job. This is your power to influence and your right to exercise. When enough talents are doing so, it will become a voting system for selecting leaders from bottom up, because if not enough good people like you follow the unqualified leader, then he will lose power and eventually disappear.

Every one has the ability to change the world, just by changing his thoughts, actions and behaviours. You, me and many others are able to collectively improve the leadership culture in the corporate life. We should do it, because we deserve the best leaders.

How to Negotiate Salary with Your Boss?

The toughest negotiators will hesitate, when they need to negotiate the salary with their boss. Why? Because negotiation has always two goals simultaneously: 1) achieving your negotiating target and 2) keep the negotiation partner fairly happy. Have you ever tried to negotiate your salary increase with your boss? It is tough. But there is a way to make it easier. Here is how.

1) Increase your negotiation power

Prepare your negotiation long before it happened. Build your negotiation power during this time period. There are four different type of negotiation power.

Relationship power
If you have bad relationship with your boss, don’t even think to negotiate. The best way is to leave him as soon as possible. Find a boss who appreciates your talents and your contributions. Try to build as good relation as possible with him by communicating frequently, by finding ways to be more useful to him, by being a positive and likeable person, so that your boss enjoys your presence.

Performance power
Get things done and get things done quickly with high quality. Do everything possible to exceed your annual goals. Do not just stop when you hit your goal. Set new goals, but communicate this with your boss often. He might not know what you are doing exactly.

Knowledge power
Get the knowledge from human resource department about the salary band for your position. Get the benchmarking from the market. Understand the process exactly of the salary increase from human resource department. Understand the average and the maximum of the salary increase. Not all the information is available to you. But please try to get as much information as possible.

Argumentation power
Prepare arguments why you should get salary increase. Articulate your value to the company is far greater than the average. Articulate that you are underpaid compared to the market and compare internally.

2) Ask for what you want

Some people enter into the office of their boss just to ask a salary increase. This is not enough. You have to ask the salary increase of x % or y € per month. And tell the boss your reason for asking exactly that amount.

3) Develop well your options

I believe here is the key for success. Always start a negotiation with an option in your bag, an alternative offer or other career possibilities. The option should be real, which means you really would consider the option, if your negotiation fails. But there is no need to mention it during the negotiation. If you decide to take the option, just take it. Do not use it as threat. No one likes that. To have an option is the way to build your confidence and inner strengths in your negotiation process.

Do not start any negotiation, if you did not prepare a walk away position.

5) Focus on the benefits for your boss

Try to understand the benefits of your boss, when you are successful with your negotiation. The cardinal reason for the boss to increase your salary is to keep you motivated in the future, so you can perform at the same level or better. But there are other reasons such as fairness, willingness to support and develop others or building stronger employee relationship. Find out his red button you can push to make him move.

Last remark
during the economic down turn, negotiating salary with your boss may become obsolete. You might be happy to keep your job and to keep your current salary level. But this is an excellent time to start preparing to increase your negotiation power. It takes time, maybe one year. And hopefully the economy will start to grow again.

Worst and Best Case Strategy for Any Change

There is a strategy you can apply as a manager for any change in your professional and private life. I called this Worst and Best Case Strategy. It starts like this:

1) Ask yourself, what would be the worst case in this situation. Then find a person whom you know as the most negative, pessimistic one. Ask his/her view. Also a negative person has a great value here.

2) Accept that the worst case can really happen. When it happened, in which way can you accept it and re-organize your professional/private life in peace with it? How can you get out the most from this case?

3) Then use all your imaginations to define the best case. Talk with a most positive, creative, dreaming friend you know. Ask his/her view. Ask what all you can do to achieve the best case.

4) Your job is to do everything to improve the worst case and do everything to get as close as possible to the best case.

5) What finally comes out by your efforts might be some where between the worst and the best case. So you can be happy that the worst case did not happen and you are motivated to continue your efforts, because you have still room for improvements.

6) The best thing here is that you always focus on the actions and do not worry about uncertainties and possibilities.

A smart strategy, isn’t it?

What Are Your Employees Really Looking For Most?

I meet weekly a manager for lunch to discuss management issues we face. And here is the conversation once we had:

I: “What do you think is the most important thing all employees are looking for?”

He: “hmmm...”

I: “They are all desperately looking for recognition.”

He: “How do you come to that conclusion?”

I: “Why do you think they work hard until late night? Why do you think they come to ask for promotion or salary increase? Why do you think they are sometimes lack of motivation?”

He: “They want to earn recognition, claim for recognition and strike for recognition.”

I: “But why do we pay so little attention to giving recognition?”

He: “Because we do not get enough recognition ourselves, so why should we give to others? We are more often beaten up than recognized.”

I: “Yes. This is the turning point. Even we do not get enough recognition, there are no logical reasons why we should not give it freely and generously to others. It is for free in most cases and there is immediate return. The more you give recognitions to others, the more you will receive from others. It is similar like love.”

He: “This is really a great conversation. Thanks.” :-)

I: “You are a quick learner.” :-)

Effective Working Time

Last Saturday I had lunch with some friends and their families, most of them had studied at RWTH Aachen during the same time I studied there. Few of them were very successful and became the heads of China operations of large/medium German or other foreign companies.

I had an interest to understand how hard they work and threw a question on the round table: “How many effective hours do you guys work per day in average?”

One friend asked back: “How do you define effectiveness?”

“Adding value to your company.” I answered.

He smiled and responded: “I am happy, if my work does not destroy values.”

And another friend said: “Maximum three to four hours.”

That is exactly the phenomena I observed by discussions with other professionals. The higher you climb to the corporate latter, the un-clearer is it to determine the value of your work and therefore your effectiveness. Most people, yes, most people are focusing to protect their current positions. The best way to do it is to orientate to what the bosses require. And it is important too.

But is that all a leader like you should do? Obviously not.

You have an obligation to continuously increase the assets of your team, organization or your company, e.g. hire the best people, let the low performers to find other opportunities, develop your people as a team and as individuals, improve the working process, make sure that your team to stop doing things that either destroy value or do not create values.

If you have done all these perfectly, then the next step is for you to extend the responsibility of the team or create new business scope. As a leader you have always to move a step ahead for others to follow.

11 Leadership Challenges in China for Westerner

In his book “Business Leadership in China” Frank T. Gallo listed 11 key differences between leadership in China and in Western. Here is a short summary:

1) Truth versus Courtesy
Both Chinese and Western cultures are truthful and courteous. However, Chinese people are more likely to favor courtesy over truth if this approach allows every one to save face.

2) Trust
China is a low trust society in the business world. Chinese people tend to trust people within the family or long term friends, with whom they went school or university. It takes longer time for them to trust their leaders.

3) Empowerment
Chinese employees usually do not feel comfortable to be empowered. They need hierarchy and guidance from their leaders. They understand that responsibility is the job of the leaders.

4) Individualism versus Collectivism
Chinese culture breeds collectivists. But it is changing towards individualism, especially for young generation. Public praise for individuals may not be a good idea.

5) The Rule of Man versus the Rule of Law
The business law in China is still immature. Chinese people do not consider a contract as final documents, but rather letter of intend. When issues arise, they tend to try to renegotiate the contract terms or try to find ways to resolve the issues flexibly.

6) Innovation and Risk-Taking
Chinese employees in a company are low risk taker in order to avoid mistakes. Therefore they are generally less innovative.

7) Decision-Making
The approach of decision making is more holistic rather than linear. Chinese people do not follow a decision making process, but rather discuss the whole issue back- and forward. They are likely to be consensus builder than westerners.

8) Influencing Employee Motivation
The best way to motivate Chinese people is to become real friends of them. Leaders can easily ask a favor in China than in Western. But leaders must be very sincere to their very specific and individual needs, taking care to resolve their problems.

9) Teamwork
Chinese teams are very strong. Team members are committed and loyal. However, there is little cross-team collaboration. They consider other teams more as competitors.

10) Reward Program Management
Reward program in China is very difficult to manage, because Chinese talk about every details of their package to their close colleagues. They use income as social status. Leaders should be very careful, if they try to motivate high performance individuals.

11) Executive Coaching
Coaching culture as leadership development tool is still not well established in China. People are ordered to go coaching, usually because they have problems.

“Business Leadership in China” is a very valuable book for any German Manager working in China. However, the author is from US and may have American lens in his investigations.

Overall the statements about Chinese employees and managers are generally valid and based on cultural background, author’s own leadership experience in China and interviews with top executives in China, both from China and Western. A must read.

The Magic Element of Leadership

For years I have studied leadership from different experts. And I learnt that leadership is about setting and achieving goals, getting followers, its about focus and persistence, its about building relationship and its also about values and characters.

Recently I spoke with a French friend and realized that there is still a missing element, especially valid for me. This is the element which causes a miracle, which turns a drama into a happy end, which makes a crying woman smiling. I asked him: “What is it?” He said: “Let me give you an example.”

“Recently I gave a presentation for 150 top executives and it went very well. After the presentation a man made some tough comments and his view was wrong and his attitude hostile. The moderator wanted to protect my reputation and asked me, Mr. D, is this view contradictory to yours? People expect a confrontation from my side, but I thought few seconds and answered: complementary.”

Another example. You go to hotel bar and see the woman of your life. How do you approach her? You start small talks about meaningless things. Maybe at some point of time you exchange your names. Now this is the critical point. You look at her and say: “Tanya. You look magnificent.” You immediately get her attention and then she may laugh. You keep your face serious and say: “I am not joking.”

The magic element of leadership makes everything lightened, easy, smooth, but still so powerful to break ice, turn things around and save a big deal or a company’s survival.

My suggestion: get a French friend and ask him: “How do you seduce a woman?”

Strategic Talent Development

Let me start with a conversation between an employee and his boss about strategic talent development.

Employee: “I would like to participate a workshop about strategic talent development on Wednesday at 7:00pm and it costs 250 RMB. Can you approve?”

Boss: “I understand your personal interest in it, but I do not see any relationship with your current assignment.”

Employee: “But it is exactly what strategic talent development all about: preparing for future assignments. And the cost is minimal.”

Boss: “In fairness to all employees I will not approve. It is not a matter of cost, but a matter of principle.”

Employee: “I do not really understand it.” He went there and paid himself…

Sounds familiar?

The workshop did really happen. It was organized by AHK Shanghai for yesterday evening. The Lecturer was Katrin Braun, managing director from Machwürth Team International Asia. (She shares something common with me. We went to the same university RWTH Aachen at almost the same time. The world is small.)

Contact:
katrin.braun@mwteam.com
http://www.mticonsultancy.com/

She addressed the differences between leadership and soft skills training in China and in Europe. The resonance was very positive, proven by a lot of questions and after workshop networking. A great success.

Why Didn’t You Take More Initiatives?

Years ago a friend of mine moved to a new department within his company and got a bad boss. The boss was not really a bad person, but had no clue at all what leadership means.

My friend was very bright and highly motivated to work hard and to change the way how things were done inefficiently in the department. One example: every one kept the information for himself. There is no central data base for things with common interests. And if you need some information, you need to go to certain person to get it, again and again.

But his boss felt threatened by the dynamic guy, and stopped everything the young man initiated. The boss told him that he was not entitled to do such things, because that was the job of the boss.

Slowly the young man realized that he would go no where with his ideas, energy and initiatives and decided to imitate the way how his "good" colleagues were doing, namely just followed the orders of the boss and did exactly what was told. The relationship between him and his bosses had improved. There were no argues any more. The department was doing the same thing with the same inefficiency as before.

In the year end review however, the performance of the department was moderate and the boss got a warning from his boss. He called every one in the department afterwards and tried to motivate them to do more next year. After he called my friend in his office, he told him: “Your performance is moderate. You do everything well what was told ONLY. But you can do much more. Why didn’t you take more initiatives?”

Two Phases in Your Career Development

There are two phases in your career development in the corporate life:

1) Make yourself in-dispensable.

In the early development stage, you start to build your area of competence, try to do as much as possible and learn every thing you can and then finally got into the stage that you can virtually not be replaced easily. What can you do with it? Every thing. You can ask for a motivation (read: salary increase), for a development plan (read: paid training courses, on the job degree, e.g. MBA), for a flexible working time (read: more day-offs). Or even career development (read: promotion): Since you can not be replaced (please make sure that this is true also in the mind of your boss), he or she would be willing to accept your requirements.

2) Make yourself dispensable

When you got promoted and have team(s) working for you, your job is to make sure that the work will be done well with less your involvement as possible. When you take three weeks vacation, you can switch off the cell phone with the absolute consciousness that when you return every thing will be fine. What should you do with your time?

a) Clarify with your manager what exactly the team should accomplish and how to measure those accomplishments.

b) Structure the work such that every one can do their work in their area of excellence.

c) Make sure that the needs of those people are made, so they feel happy to come to the office.

If your job is doing well, you will have in fact less and less to do. So what should you do next? Three things:

d) Market your organization.

f) Develop your organization to next level of challenge.

e) Prepare for the next level of the job for yourself.

By practicing “Making yourself dispensable” you indeed take a risk that your manager may think that you are irrelevant for the organization. This risk is however worth taking, because he might not be the right leader who will take you anywhere. And you should leave him and find a better place to grow anyhow.

Your Values as Expatriate

Why should your company spend all the money multiple the expenses of a local hire to send you to China? Here is my view.

There must be a gap between you and a local employee, and the gap must be substantial enough to justify the difference of the pay. Here some examples:

1) Trust. This could be the top reason to send you as an Expatriate. If your manager is unable or unwilling to trust a local employee for good or no reasons at all, you are positioned strongly in his mind.

2) Technical and business expertise. Through several years working experiences in Germany, you must have gathered practical know-how and skills, which you may not be aware of, but will sharp your judgment and decision making.

3) Leadership ability. Leaders are rare anyhow. Leaders who can run an operation with multi-national work force are like diamond. In my own 18 years working experience I had more than 12 bosses. I would consider only one and half as good leaders, less than 13%. Am I overly demanding? No. Conversation with others and literatures provided similar results.

4) Motivation to work hard. Since your cost is much more than your local colleagues, you might decide to compensate this with more working hours, staying late in the office and coming in on Saturday, traveling a lot and seeing less your family, if you can maintain one.

Do I miss any thing substantial? What is the added value in your special case? And what should be your strategy to stay in contract as long as you wish to?

A) Please find the ONE key reason for your Expatriate contract. Then do everything possible to improve that key reason. Example, if you are sent because your boss can only trust you, so do what is in your power to make him to trust you even more. If you are a born leader, than develop your team and your organization to a higher performance level.

B) Improve with moderate efforts in other areas. The strategy here is to keep par with your local coworker. You could do more, but your limited resource is the time, always.

C) There is only one thing you should be careful, which is if the key reason to send you is number 4). Then you should consider changing job, because how much more time can you work to compensate your cost? Twice than your local coworker the best case, but never, ever 5 to 10 times.

Where are the Talents?

What is the biggest challenge in an economic down turn? Loosing Talents! It sounds a bit contradictory, because you may think that now we have more talents to compete for fewer positions. True. However, you might overlook the fact that talents always have options. And by the way, real talents require high standards of environment. They will not tolerant for mediocre working process, the type of work and of course the boss, exactly because they have options.

Let me ask you a question. In your last reorganization, when people felt uncertain, which people tented to leave first? Of cause the good ones. They are always alert, look for the best path for their career and they take quickly actions. Well, how do you identify the best talents in your organization?

Talents know how to position themselves as experts in some specific area. These people's names will immediately jump into your mind, when you think about a certain term. For example, who is doing marketing in your company? Who will you ask, when you have PC problems? etc. These people's job title may be different than their area of experts, but they are the ones people looking for advice. Just to name another example, people come to me, when there is an issue on leadership challenge.

There are no static talents. Real talents constantly develop themselves, reposition themselves, whenever the needs of the market (inside or outside) shift. They are learning and most likely also by providing value to others and by solving problems for others. Since these people are extremely useful. So it happened that they end up with 2 to 5 job offers during reorganization. Their problem is actually to make tough decision among all the good options, while many others will end up with no job offer at all.

Now, how do you, as a boss, attract those talents?

1) Position yourselves as some one who loves to be around with smart people, you do not mind that there are people working for you who are more capable than you. Question for you: do you have the gut, inner security and wisdom to do so?

2) Fully recognize their specific working style and try to meet their individual requirements, including working time, ways of communication and salary expectation etc.

3) Understand and meet their development needs. Where do they want to go, career, emotion, spiritual, life style? What are their values? Can you fully accept, recognize and support them?

4) Give them a lot of freedom.

If you do all these continuously, you will be overloaded with talents. And you are automatically positioning yourself as a "leadership talent" who will never have difficulty to find a job again.

How to motivate Chinese employees?

If you belong to those managers, who haven't figure out yet how to motivate Chinese employees, here I offer some thoughts for you to consider.

I have spoke with few friends who have lived in Germany and then moved back to China. Majority of them are either owners of a company or General Managers for China operations of a German company. They told me that the Chinese employee do not really take initiatives, they are general not motivated, unless you push them, set pressure to them or warn them to leave.

I asked them: "Then they are motivated?" "Yes, but only if you hold the pressure. When you take away the pressure, they go back to the old mode, namely do what you told them precisely or less."

That is exactly the point. Generally there are only two ways to motivate anyone in the world, Chinese included: the first is avoiding pain. The second is gaining joy. The only difference is that the first will stop, when you take away the pain. The second one will last, because human being is thirty for joy. So far the theory. How would it look like in the reality.

I usually start with an employee, after I got to know him with a statement: "My job is to make you happy. Your job is to make yourself happy by doing what you have to do." Then I would identify the needs of him coming day in and day out into the office. What are those needs then?

The most critical need for people I deal with is the need of being important. What could you do to make people feel important? How about taking time to talk with them, listen to their concerns and their interests? How about explaining to them in which way is what they do is critical for the entire business? How about taking them for lunch or having celebration after a deal is closed?

The second critical need is the need of development. It is not just a salary increase or a promotion. By the way, how often can you do this every year? It is about the continuously mental progress by doing a better job or doing a more difficult task.

Then there is the need of fun in the job. Yes. Highly motivated people are doing things they absolutely like, or even love to do. So I would always ask the question after job interview: "would this person do the job even for free?" Certainly it is just a hypothetic question. But this is the really test for motivation.

There are surely other needs that should be fulfilled in a job. Please do a test, select one employee you like and ask the question: "How can I make your job more enjoyable, beside money?" You will be amazed, what will come out. If you can realize those needs, they will stay with you even you would suggest them to leave.

Welcome!

Since you are reading this Blog, the chance is that you are a German manager working in China, probably as an Expat. This is an exciting place, wouldn't you agree? You will find a lot of fun. At the same time you will face many leadership challenges, that could make your job even more exciting or create you some headache.

In both cases, your experiences are worth sharing with other German managers working in China, so they can learn from you and you may have chances to gain benefits from others. This is the whole purpose of creating the Blog. Why should I do it?

- First of all, I share similar experiences with you, as a German Expat in China. I share same joy and pain.

- Secondly, I was born in China, so I am in advantage by knowing both sides cultures.

- Thirdly, during my time in Germany, I provided leadership training courses to managers inside and outside of my company Alcatel-Lucent. And I loved doing it.

It would be greatly appreciated if you can post your comments and feedback any time. This is your Blog, and it will be better and more useful for you with your valuable inputs. Thanks.