Coaching Leaders in Asia Pacific

APAC Leaders Are Global Leaders

Business has grown remarkably since the global financial crisis of 2009 in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. According to Nikkei, half of the world’s fastest-growing companies are working out of the APAC region, in sectors ranging from Finance to IT and Healthcare. BOLDLY and our experienced consultants and coaches have been operating in the APAC region for 15+years now, and have developed a depth of expertise across the business cultures, languages and talent markets of APAC.

What’s Unique About The APAC Leadership TalentMarket?

When you're in emerging markets, as opposed to mature markets, you need professional coaches and HR strategy consultants who can work with you when the business is growing and 'things aren't perfect’ (because when are they ever?!). The APAC business environment is dynamic and innovation is essential. In years gone by, companies haven’t always invested in developing APAC leadership, instead deploying expatriates to ‘train up’ local leaders, who often fell into a reliance on external talent. IN 2021, the need to develop our own domestic talent is even more imperative and is possible due to the exceptional international talent available in our own backyards.

Companies in APAC still need to make a concerted effort to build leadership capability at all levels and do it quickly to respond to ever-emerging commercial opportunities. BOLDLY works with APAC companies and leaders to define and develop the essential skills, competencies and capabilities they need to respond and thrive in this environment. We develop customised solutions depending on the growth phase and business strategy of the organization, to enable the whole business to be empowered to make great decisions, take accountability for outcomes, and go on the journey to business maturity. We do this with the expertise of our executive coaches and expert HR consultants.

Why Is Coaching Suitable For APAC Leaders?

Every APAC leader needs a professional coach or executive coach who understands their unique psychology and culture and helps them and their organization innovate and compete in the rapid growth markets. The unspoken understanding our coaches have of the APAC landscape enables them to build rapport and credibility more effectively, and immediately start working with a leader on their goals. Through our coaching, we have seen APAC leaders create positive change and advance their commercial interests despite uncertainty, ambiguity, and the vastness of their markets, and often do this while reporting back to headquarters in very different markets and business contexts.

Because coaching is hyper-personalised, it’s the perfect method of leadership development for APAC, where we want to see the leaders authentic strengths and attributes shine through. There’s a place for group learning and formal development programmes, and we do design and deliver this work too, however, we always encourage an executive coaching approach to ensure a strong ROI on development spend in APAC, tailoring learning specific to the leader.

What Leadership Model Works For APAC?

Leadership development and coaching are about expanding a person's capability to be effective in senior roles, where complexity and greater visibility demand intentionality and business purpose for the leader to be successful. We often find working with a leadership model brings a framework to executive coaching. With this in mind, our BOLDLY executive coaches often refer to a model of complex adaptive systems (CAS) in our coaching approach in APAC. A complex adaptive system is one where there are many agents (colleagues, stakeholders, customers, direct reports etc) and these agents interact with each other in interdependent roles, and business results emerge through the collective actions of the network.

By using this model in our coaching in APAC, we open leaders to the idea that their leadership approach may be indirect, but have far-reaching ripple effects if they work with the right agents, share the right message, enable the right behaviours, and empower people at every level. Due to constantly changing business scenarios in APAC, we need leaders here to be performing despite ambiguity, and we do this by building capability across the broader business. It takes time, and the leader might feel like they have lost some direct control, but by zooming out and working on the whole system they can have a much larger impact on business success. One of the critical strategic issues for organizational leadership is understanding and managing emergent processes that generate innovative outcomes.

The Complex adaptive systems (CAS) have three components; entrepreneurial, operational, and enabling leadership. Using this complex adaptive system (CAS) our professional coaches can both enable leaders and teams to develop on their own, with transparency and understanding for their own work. While CAS is not the only framework or model that has been effective, we find that leaders inAPAC have a high tolerance for ambiguity, and building leadership at all levels in the business is challenging but appealing to our coachees.

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We’re here to discuss the unique needs of this market, and look forward to connecting with you. Find out more about BOLDLY or reach out to us on connect@boldly.app.

About the Author:

Alexandra Lamb is an accomplished organisational development practitioner, with experience across APAC, North America, and MENA. With 20+ years in professional practice, conglomerates, and startups, she has collaborated with rapid-growth companies and industry innovators to develop leaders and high-performance teams. She is particularly experienced in talent strategy as a driver for business growth. Drawing from her experience in the fields of talent management, psychology, coaching, product development, and human-centred design, Alex prides herself on using commercial acumen to design talent solutions with true impact.