When sending employees overseas, it’s important for employers to carefully select the person they’re going to deploy. But how exactly should employers choose who among staff is the best suited for an expatriate role?
New research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology said that organisations should seek out employees with high implicit aptitude rather than those with high IQ.
Nanyang Business School Singapore, said in a statement that while people with higher IQ were better in learning information through conscious effort, “people with higher implicit aptitude are better able to automatically pick up complex patterns in the environment without conscious effort.”
It helps amid the “complex and noisy regularities” overseas that make it difficult for employees to explicitly learn local norms, which can ultimately influence work performance, according to Michael Morris, a professor at Columbia Business School.
This also suggests that explicit instructions may only play a limited role in helping expatriates overseas, according to the research.
In the past, a separate study also said that these are the qualities of a successful expatriate, as also cited by Chris Pardo of Plus Relocation Services:
* emotional stability * openness to change and an ability to adjust/adapt to different customs, perspectives, and business practices * cross-cultural interest and sensitivity * very strong interpersonal skills * flexibility * resiliency * respect for diverse viewpoints * a high level of autonomy * a sense of humour
A number of tests can be carried out by employers to find who among its staff have a high implicit aptitude for expatriate assignments and then support them with professional cultural business training and coaching.
In the ranking for overall work-life balance, however, Singapore came in #18 out of 50, while Hong Kong ranked #45; Bangkok, Thailand ranked #49, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ranked #50 with a score of 50.
Raise your hands (virtually, as we’re now used to) if this has happened to you – you’re working on a pressing project and you want to make progress so badly, you don’t realise the time passing. Before you know it, it’s dark outside and you’ve just worked a 12-hour day. If that is you, then you might be working in one of the top 10 most overworked cities identified in this current research: 1. Hong Kong (29.9%) 2. Singapore (25.1%) 3. Bangkok, Thailand (20.2%) 4. Buenos Aires, Argentina (19.9%) 5. Seoul, South Korea (19.5%) 6. Tokyo, Japan (18.3%) 7. Houston, Texas, US (16.6%) 8. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (16%) 9. Calgary, Alberta, Canada (15.5%) 10. London, United Kingdom (15.4%)
Cities with the best work-life balance: Helsinki, Oslo, Zurich rank in the top three.
Here are 8 ways to help you reduce or stop working long hours: 1. Begin with the end in mind 2. Identify the value-adding vs. the non-value adding 3. Prioritize 4. Plan 5. Delegate 6. Focus 7. Avoid distractions like social media, web surfing and emails 8. Set a deadline on your tasks
There are countless comparisons between an effective leader and a mere manager. A common visual you’ll find splashed across the internet is a split image of a scenario handled by two different individuals: a ‘boss’ and a leader. The boss is typically seen barking orders at employees who are expected to lug the weight of the boss, while the leader is seen down on the ground with employees doing the grunt work and leading them on which way to go.
The image portrays how a leader gets involved in the work and stays focused on inspiring performance, while coaching the best out of the team. Additionally, leaders tackling today’s complex set of challenges are expected to embody a more human-centred model of ‘responsible leadership’, according to a World Economic Forum (WEF) study. Instead of just generating results for the business bottom line, leaders are required to showcase capabilities across five attributes:
Stakeholder inclusion – Leaders need to ‘safeguard’ trust, showcase accountability, and create positive impact for all. This requires considering diverse stakeholders when making decisions and fostering an inclusive environment where diverse individuals have a voice and feel they belong.
Emotion & intuition – Unlock commitment and creativity by being truly human, showing compassion, humility, and openness.
Mission & purpose – Advance common goals by inspiring a shared vision of sustainable prosperity for the organisation and its stakeholders.
Technology & innovation – Create new organisational and societal value by innovating responsibly with emerging technology.
Intellect & insight – Find better paths to success by embracing continuous learning and knowledge exchange.
Younger workers especially believe that leadership decisions in the coming decade will require a balanced approach that cuts across all five areas. All this doesn’t mean that financial performance is no longer vital to business success. In fact, the study found that responsible leadership is linked with higher financial performance. Companies that showcase higher levels of innovation and trust outperform competitors financially, research showed. HRD finds out what it really takes to be a great leader in today’s disruptive world.
Able to manage change
In a study by Deloitte, about three in five executives said that leadership was important to prepare for unknown futures – the top-ranked priority for supporting preparedness in a crazy, uncertain world. “And while much of leadership has historically been about setting direction and ensuring compliance, now effective leadership is shifting to preparing for the unpredictable by coaching, teaming, and fostering workers’ ability to learn and adapt,” wrote the study on global human capital trends.
According to Deloitte, effective leaders are the ones who consider the following:
Job evolution: How often are jobs changing, which ones, and to what degree?
Future workforce readiness: How ready is the team for the future of work? How do you close any capability or skills gaps?
Change ability: Are you and the team able to quickly adapt to change?
‘Future leader’ readiness: Do your leaders have what it takes to succeed in the future?
As disruption becomes the norm, leaders who showcase the potential to succeed in their roles are the ones who can collect real-time information, reassess the company’s and employee needs, and translate it into ‘meaningful action’.
A good communicator
And with constant change, leaders need to be adept at developing trust. The best way to do it? Through clear and effective communication. Unfortunately, Edelman’s annual trust barometer this year found that over half (56%) of employees mistrust business leaders. Regardless, companies have emerged the most trusted institution (61%), compared with governments, with employees citing communications from ‘my employer’ as their most reliable source of information.
Despite this, Adrian Warr, CEO of Edelman Hong Kong and Taiwan, market growth Thailand explained that it’s okay if a leader is not a ‘great communicator’. He said that many individuals get promoted into leadership roles because they’re brilliant at their jobs or simply “fantastic people”. “They don’t all have to be great communicators, but they have to have an authentic style of communication,” Warr told HRD. “Doing what’s right for that leader and the type of company is far more important than following some kind of formulaic approach.”
Good communication also needs to be relevant. “It’s about understanding,” he said. “It’s very basic communication stuff but it’s communicating in a way that’s relevant to your audience rather than the business.”
How do you identify and develop effective leaders in your organisation?
Warren Bennis, American scholar and pioneer of leadership studies, once said: “Managers do things right; leaders do the right thing”. Bennis’s work still holds true today, even though most of it was published in the nineties and early noughties. In that short quote, Bennis suggested how leaders must be able to go beyond the status quo to achieve what is best for the organisation. Whatever the odds, leaders must seek out opportunities, be adept at managing change, and be able to “translate vision into reality”.
Those are just some of the crucial capabilities of an effective leader. And in today’s constantly disrupted world, enabling people’s performance and profitability has more to do with the human side of things than ever before – being active listeners, clear communicators, and being able to connect and engage with employees.
The above list of exemplary leadership capabilities is a mere glimpse into what a successful leader looks like. It goes without saying then just how difficult it is to pick the right leader for your organisation, so how do you go about this complex task?
The impact of a good leader
To make things even more complicated, the ‘right leader’ may look very different for each organisation, since companies vary in size, span different localities, serve vastly different industries, and have their own set of goals and values.
Despite this, a global culture report by OC Tanner Institute found that an effective, modern leader can make or break your culture. If you choose and develop the right leaders, you’ll likely be able to see “thriving cultures with higher engagement, retention, and employee net promoter scores”.
The annual study found that 63% of employees look to their leaders to promote a shared vision, and another 67% of staffers expect leaders to create a sense of camaraderie for them. If leaders manage to inspire a sense of purpose in their work, make them feel appreciated, accomplished, and connected to the company, it can lead to:
10 times greater odds of having a thriving culture
11 times greater odds of creating an inclusive culture
7.5 times greater odds of enabling an adaptable organisation
6 times likelihood of developing leaders with a global perspective
How to develop great leaders
On the other hand, choosing the wrong people to lead the organisation can lead to costly consequences, including severe burnout, disengagement, feeling excluded and an overall negative employee experience, all of which are precursors to high attrition rates. Unfortunately, OC Tanner found that a mere 17% of bosses today are effective, modern leaders who hold the prime qualities of a strong people leader, while also showcasing the ability to manage today’s disruptive challenges such as the ongoing pandemic and the changing world of work. Another 64% of global heads surveyed, however, did qualify as ‘average’ leaders.
It’s clear then lots more work needs to be done to develop successful leaders in your organisation. Loh Siew Kim, HR partner at Lenovo Singapore believes it begins with creating opportunities to allow potential leaders to prove their worth and showcase the contents of their character. It’s also best to start creating those opportunities early on in someone’s career to properly develop their capabilities, so one of the best ways to do it is to train managers to be fair and astute talent scouts.
“They are assigned as the scouts for talent in their teams and also to create the opportunities and pathways to assess the ‘early career leader’,” Loh told HRD. For example, the ongoing pandemic has created many opportunities for employees to develop and showcase their leadership capabilities. Managers need to be trained to look out for HiPos in their teams and assess their strengths and weakness. If the HiPo seems lacking in certain qualities or skills, managers are responsible for suggesting the necessary training courses to bring them up to the ‘next level’.
In that way, managers will also benefit by learning to better engage with talent within the department as well as at the divisional level and beyond, act as mentors and sponsors to the company’s future leaders, and coach individuals to realise their potential to excel. That cycle can thus create better leaders out of mere managers and expand your pool of potential top rank for the organisation.
How to assess potential leaders
As to how to ensure you’re selecting the right leaders, Loh told us that you must constantly put the HiPo individuals through tests to see that they have enduring leadership and interpersonal skills, as well as the right level of integrity and change agility. This is why after identifying potential leaders, it’s best to put them on stretch assignments to let them put the skills they learn into practise and demonstrate their capabilities.
The company needs to be transparent when going through the process of identifying and assessing leaders, so you should communicate clearly what kind of qualities the company expects in its leaders and how the HiPo employees will be assessed throughout their assignment.
This process, Loh believes, should be able to withstand any changes in the way we work, for instance remote working arrangements. At the end of the day, even if you’re unable to meet your teammates in-person, you’re still interacting with your co-workers and clients daily, and how you portray yourself in every scenario will demonstrate whether you’re a capable leader or not.
Additionally, the process of picking and assessing potential leaders isn’t a one-off exercise – it’s a journey in resource planning, succession, as well as talent management. Which is why even if the company is on fully remote arrangements one year and only return to the office the next, a HiPo is likely someone who’s engaged and has stayed in the organisation for a while, making them worth the investment.
“I don’t think that most of employees will change year after year,” she said. “If you have those attributes and you demonstrate them in certain situations and circumstances, and have the opportunities created for you, yes, you meet the pre-requisites of a high potential. The important question is how do we create the opportunities for the HiPo to demonstrate the results.
“I will say in lockdown, [when you’re] not able to have physical interaction… I don’t think it affects the assessment [or] the path. We measure by results and deliverables. The question goes back to whether the assessments were not done well in the past. At the end of the day [it’s about] measurements, the set targets, the results and capability demonstrated – not about face time or physical interaction, although that does help.”
Grow Money, Love, Health and Wellness @ GTPGlobal 
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