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

CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) Team Coaching - Collaboration & Communication

“𝐃𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦’𝐬 𝐭𝐲𝐩𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬?

Imagine the difference when we ask: “Who’s handling this work?”versus “Who’s built for this?”

Many meetings drain energy because they overfocus on tasks. Adding strengths conversations into such meetings shift the energy positively because they shift the focus towards people. 

Instead of saying, “Good work on the deck. Let’s now quickly prepare for the presentation”, we ask, “I saw your energy and enthusiasm when you were putting the deck together. What about doing slides make you so happy? How can we partner together?” 

The difference? One feels like a to-do list. The other feels like unlocking superpowers. My work as a #Teamcoach is helping teams redefine their habits.

In this most recent #CliftonStrengths session, we didn’t discuss work—we discovered flow. When members of the team explore what they see in each other and in themselves, they stop reinforcing the negative stories about each other. 

They start being curious about what each other cares for at work and what makes each other feel like they are thriving.

The energy shifts. The body relaxes. The smiles appear. 

Collaboration and partnership becomes a natural outcome. 

My own reflection after the team coaching:
There was a deeper realization that I aim to integrate emotional work with strengths. Sometimes it’s peace-making work by diffusing existing conflicts. Other times, it’s amplifying hope for teams that feel burdened. My superpower is injecting clarity into a team’s emotional context and generating the required shift. I love seeing teams come alive and this session gave me evidence of what I can generate in terms of the outcome! #Grateful

CliftonStrengths Workshop and Team Coaching - Bintan Indonesia

1st team coaching session for 2025!

Travelled to Bintan and did a CliftonStrengths Team session for Centre for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (CSP) team from Singapore. The aim was to have the team connected at a deeper level, focusing on strengthening psychological safety and demonstrate an increased level of openness. 

It was a small intimate setting. After a short time of covering the foundations of CliftonStrengths, we deep dived into team dynamics and culture. During one of the workshop activities, an opportunity opened up and I switched from workshop facilitator to team coach mode. 

That meant putting all my content aside and choosing to work with the team in an adaptive way, focusing on emerging data. As I sensed a shift, I invited the team to go deep with each other and share about they can thrive with each other and receive tangible support. 

In the end, each person on the team took risks to be vulnerable and the sharing became raw, honest and at the same time uplifting and inspiring. One took risk to share a pent-up frustration. One displayed courage and shared how certain areas of hurt that took place. One apologise for certain behaviours. As an observer, I saw how the team connected deeper and were united in spirit.

It certainly is not common to see such team dynamics and deep conversations. Am super delighted with the outcome.

CliftonStrengths (StrengthsFinder) Team Coaching - Events & Spaces Team

Had a wonderful time doing my 7th session with the Events and Spaces team. This time, we decided to go into discussing team and individual strengths and understanding expectations of each other.

As a highly collaborative team, there are always opportunities to rub each other off in the wrong way. The intent of the session was to help different ones articulate what might be important for each individual and to gain greater awareness of self and the team.

Ontological Team Coaching - Motion Events and Spaces Team

After a series of new hires, I had the privilege to start a series of team coaching sessions for the Events & Spaces team for Motion for Impact. As the in-house team coach, this is something I really enjoyed doing.

As part of the ongoing Newfield Ontological Team Coaching program, I also had the privilege of getting a mentor coach give feedback to my team coaching sessions to get even sharper in my team coaching practices.

As an ontological practitioner, the team coaching practice and feedback is extremely valuable as I get to observe my own ontological coaching and notice my blindspots.

The team coaching sessions really helped me to see how powerful a team can be when there is high trust and openness with one another and how team members get to be highly performing and highly collaborative.

Victor Seet • World & Singapore's 1st Gold Awarded Gallup CliftonStrengths Coach • Newfield Certified Ontological Coach

CliftonStrengths Group Coaching - Motion For Impact

[Hit the Pause Button]

In coaching, one of the common moves that coaches do is to hit the pause button. This move is done intentionally to slow things down and to invite people to observe their mental & emotional states. By doing that, the aim is to facilitate awareness and learning. 

Different ones at Motion got to do that yesterday as we had a group coaching session together. We hit the pause button after three consecutive weeks of back to back events. 

We explored assumptions behind team work. We talked about how to collaborate better. We talked about how to better understand each other using each other’s CliftonStrengths profiles. 

It was a good pause. 

#StrengthsFinderSingapore #leadership #teamdevelopment #peopledevelopment #peopleandculture