Leadership Conversations - Strengths, Trust Building & Cross Cultural Cooperation

🫸 Pushing the Limits ⚠️

What I learnt from my Lebanon 🇱🇧 trip.

Some context:

▶ It was a 5 days leadership retreat for an NGO and I was invited to facilitate 3/5 days, focusing on cross cultural cooperation and trust building.

▶ I had only 2 weeks to prepare amidst many other ongoing commitments. So I knew this work was going to really stretch me. 

▶ I had participants from many different countries - Syria, Lebanon, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, USA, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, South Korea and Germany.

▶ It was my first time listening, conversing and learning from those from the Middle East, Russia and South America. 

What I did:

▶ I needed an anchor to bridge the cultural differences. So I started with strengths as a language and a lens to build the container of safety.

▶ We explored how trust might look like in cross cultural work - what it looks like when it is strong and when it is broken.

▶ I taught a couple of leadership conversational skills and facilitated the practice - how leaders can generate context of trust and safety. 

▶ I had 1 on 1 coaching with each person to process the emotions and learnings. 

What I took away👇🏼

📍Listening for our bias and assumptions is crucial. It starts by being aware that we bring our bias into the conversations. On day 1, I felt I had so much to learn as I hear different stories in a very diverse context. I felt I was the odd one out as a Singaporean, living in my “safe” bubble. 

📍Listening in a cross cultural context brings out more of the emotional and body context because of language challenges. For many, English is not the first language. The other aspects are heightened as a result. As I listened to the stories shared in English, I often experienced the intensity of the stories through the emotions and the body of the storyteller. 

📍The Strengths Language truly deepens appreciation and respect for diversity. Once I facilitated the strengths conversations, the cross cultural differences was reduced and the strengths language facilitated conversations of trust building. 

It was truly an eye-opening week of being, doing and learning. My strengths felt satisfied. I’m now more confident in navigating high tension and conflict work. #Command #SelfAssurance #Communication #Connectedness

#teamcoaching #ontologicalcoaching #deeplistening

Relationship Coaching and Marriage Mentoring - Prepare and Enrich Certified

𝐒𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐬 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐛𝐲 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭

A few years ago, my wife, Michelle and I made a decision that changed everything—we went for marriage counseling. 

📌 Not because we were on the brink of collapse (though we definitely had challenges), but because we believe that thriving marriages need intentional care. 

We have seen how easy it is to be careless in marriage relationships and how neglect happens transparently. 

We walked away with a deeper understanding of each other, a renewed connection. 

Our marriage ❤️ was rejuvenated. I say that proudly. 

That experience also reshaped how I see marriage relationships. It has a multiplier effect to our lives and it cuts both ways. 

I’ve experienced how I struggled at work when my marriage is in disarray. It affects everything—my energy, my focus, even my success at work felt empty. But when the marriage thrives, I show up as a better coach, colleague, and human being.

⭕️ I have since had a conviction that the greatest gift we can give to our children is a thriving marriage. 

✅ So I’m pleased to share that I’m officially certified as a Prepare/Enrich Facilitator! 🤩🎉

My wife and I received 4 months of marriage mentoring by a lovely and experienced couple followed by 3 weekends of classroom learning. The sessions have equipped us to carry out marriage mentoring work with the younger couples we have been journeying with.

The biggest joy?

Learning together with my wife! 😁

The sessions have also given me stronger distinctions as an #ontologicalcoach. I can see how the learning will benefit my coaching work with individuals, teams as well as couples. 

#marriagementoring #prepareenrich #couplescoaching #relationshipcoaching

Leadership Development Program - Coaching Skills for Emerging Leaders

As more and more organizations adopt a competency-driven growth model, coaching skills is seen more as a key competency required for managers.

Finished another leadership development program focusing on coaching skills for emerging leaders. This was the last run for 2024. There were participants from Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, China, India, Malaysia and Singapore.

We did a couple of role plays to help bring the coaching skills alive. We also did some leadership labs to help the leaders realize how they show show up during highly stressful and dynamic situations and grow in their self-awareness.

Overall, it was a great partnership with Damien to bring the leadership lessons to life!

Emerging Leaders Program - Coaching Skills & Leadership Development

I danced with the participants! 🕺

This was how I ended the day after facilitating the last day of a four days leadershipdevelopment program last week.

Dinner by the sea. Lots of laughter, conversations and dancing!

It was a blast.💥

Often, we as facilitators might choose to disconnect from the participants after the program ended (mostly because we are too tired).

This time, I intentionally chose to stay after the program to connect with the participants. Many would be flying back to their home countries.

And I’m glad that the participants open up and invited me into their space. We chatted about leadership lessons, challenges in organizational leadership, hashtag#coaching and parenting.

This wasn’t a StrengthsFinder program.

Instead, I’m one of the two themeweavers on the last day. Our job is to help participants internalize and practice all the content they have picked up from the program.

This was the second last run of the program for the year. Looking forward to the last run!

📷: Sorry. No photos of me dancing with them.

Victor Seet • World & Singapore's 1st Gold Awarded Gallup CliftonStrengths Coach • Newfield Certified Ontological Coach • ICF Coach (ACTC, PCC)

Leadership Development Program Workshop - Values, Standards and Strengths

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐬

In my limited exposure to the world of leadership development, I see primarily four types of leadership development training programs in the market. 

Type 1️⃣ programs

Primary focus on improving leadership skills. Mainly cognitive in nature with frameworks and concepts. The emphasis is on skills and knowledge. This is probably the category with the widest range of products. Examples of such programs include strategic thinking, stakeholder management or performance management. This is often the territory of Corporate Trainers. 

Type 2️⃣ Programs

Primary focus on improving self awareness for leadership effectiveness. There is also quite a range of products in this area. Some are designed from people development, coaching or behavioral science frameworks. Some are designed based on profiling assessments such as Lego Serious Play, CliftonStrengths or Hogan. Others might be designed on mindfulness, somatics etc. This is the space where practitioners are often both trainers and facilitators and have hybrid skill sets. 

Type 3️⃣ Programs

Primary focus on integrating type 1️⃣ and 2️⃣ programs for personal leadership effectiveness. Many of these type 3️⃣ programs are experiential in design. Such programs employ the use of simulations, competitions, environmental constructs or leadership labs to trigger real time behaviors for participants to gain self-awareness. These programs are usually delivered by skillful facilitators who are comfortable working with emerging data and responding to unpredictable situations. 

Type 4️⃣ Programs 

Primary focus on integrating type 3️⃣ programs with organizational values, leadership standards and expectations. The distinction is the intense focus on aligning with Corporate Value. These are highly customized programs and least common in the market. The expectation is on facilitators learning, internalizing and modeling the organizational values and leadership behaviors on top of facilitating the content and context. 

P.s All four types can be designed with “post” workshop follow ups that include project work, community of practice, coaching sessions, micro learnings etc. Many believe the follow ups are just as critical to the success of the leadership programs. That is a separate topic. 

📸: This was a type 4️⃣ program I got to facilitate. It was one of the toughest in terms of my onboarding  and learning as a facilitator due to the complexity and expectations. 

What others might you have experienced that are not within the four types? I’m curious!

#leadershipdevelopment #peopledevelopment #learninganddevelopment 

Victor Seet • World & Singapore's 1st Gold Awarded Gallup CliftonStrengths Coach • Newfield Certified Ontological Coach • ICF Coach (ACTC, PCC)

Experiential Leadership Workshop Program - Facilitation

In one of the rare moments, I get to experience a senior leader opening up to share about a huge mistake made during a high stakes global project. The entire room was immediately uplifted by the story that was told. That set the stage for a week of powerful learning. 

I had a fantastic time of facilitating the last day of the week long learning with Ryan and Alice. 

The goal of the day was to help the leaders put their skills into a time of practice. We created a sandbox to achieve the purpose.

Through the experiential leadership labs and role plays, the leaders get to apply all the knowledge and skills they have learned over the week. Many get to practice navigating difficult conversations, practice noticing their overdone strengths under pressure and practice balancing care for subordinates and being accountable for performance. 

Many realized how difficult it is to listen, to stay open and curious under pressure. The tension experienced brought out so much learning. The debrief was very rich and extremely insightful.

I’m so glad that the design created the heat for the participants. We simply shared our observations on how different ones showed up. 

My goal was to help the leaders become better observers of themselves in how they show up and I felt I achieved that. 

Looking forward to the rest of the sessions scheduled for the year!

Victor Seet • World & Singapore's 1st Gold Awarded Gallup CliftonStrengths Coach • Newfield Certified Ontological Coach • ICF Coach (ACTC, PCC)