Sheppard Moscow’s Asia Pacific Team is reporting varied activities and buoyant business.

With particular emphasis on Top Team Development, Senior Executive Coaching and Leadership Development, at the time of writing the team is engaged in projects running concurrently in Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia. Even with the core team of Ros Wilson, Fern Kan and Echo Yu now expanded by the addition of Ally Salisbury (based in Asia for the coming year), further consultants from Sheppard Moscow’s global team have been required to help meet demand.

In addition to client work, over the past few months the Asia Pacific team has created and hosted a number of successful client and consultant events, bringing important Asian insights to Sheppard Moscow’s global view of organisation development.

Gestalt – in Tune with Asia

In this recent event, Sheppard Moscow’s Asia Pacific Team explored the application of Gestalt approaches and models to organisational work, for business leaders, consultants and coaches.

Working with Sheppard Moscow’s Ros Wilson and Gestalt practitioner, Howard Boorman, the three day event gave a group of Asian clients and consultants the opportunity explore how Gestalt’s holistic principles fit with Asian attitudes and approaches to organisational life.

As Ros Wilson explains:

“The roots of Gestalt come largely from the USA and Europe, so there’s often some scepticism regarding how it can be applied to organisational development in Asia. It can be seen as a bit ‘western’!

“Our conclusion after three fascinating days was exactly the opposite. In fact, the fundamental beliefs and principles of Getsalt connect exceptionally well with Taoist and Buddhist philosophies and the workshop was regarded as a great and enlightening success.”

Leading in Uncertain Times in Asia

Designed to add an Asian perspective to the findings of a similar event created by Sheppard Moscow’s London Team, in June, Sheppard Moscow Asia Pacific hosted an afternoon of conversations entitled: ‘Leading in Uncertain Times –
A Time for Greatness.’

The day’s conversations centered around sharing experiences and views on the challenges of developing talented leaders in Asia in the current unprecedented economic conditions.

As Ally Salisbury explains;

“We talked about the challenges of leading in times of uncertainty and how people are now looking to their leaders to provide a sense of reassurance. We also discussed how emotional awareness and emotional intelligence are more important than ever: for example, requests from teams to their leaders have shifted from ‘help me with data analysis and logic’ to calls for reassurance, direction and acknowledgement of their emotional needs.

“In addition we explored cultural issues and talked about how leading in Asia presents challenges both for the ‘ex-pat as leader’ and for ‘locals’, in terms of followership and developing their own leadership style within a Westernized organisation culture – especially when this conflicts with their own country culture.”

In summary, the event provided clients with lots of food for thought – and everyone who took part commented on how useful their conversations had been. There was clearly a universal need to find meaning, share experience and simply to talk. It was agreed that a prime role for leadership is now to facilitate and encourage meaningful, true two-way, conversations (not relying on email!).

As well as maintaining a strong dialogue with staff, all leaders need to talk with customers and suppliers, to enable responsiveness within the organisation as the context evolves. It was also agreed that, while the current situation may cause a great deal of hardship, a change in the conversation regarding leadership, corporate expectation and the meaning of working life, could facilitate a new and ‘more human’ way ahead for many organisations.

Advanced Facilitation Skills Master Class

A recent one-day Master Class event showcased Sheppard Moscow’s approach to developing facilitation skills. Created as a result of a client’s interest in working with our team in Asia, ‘to see how you do things’, the event allowed clients and colleagues to join in an enjoyable day of shared experience and learning.

With a mixture of Asian and ex-pat participants, everyone experienced a great exchange of knowledge which has already lead to deeper conversations and to more work for the Sheppard Moscow team – including with the client who inspired the event… and who clearly liked how Sheppard Moscow does things!

For more information about Sheppard Moscow ‘s Asia Pacific team and details of our work across the region contact Ros Wilson at roswilson@sheppardmoscow.com or Echo Yu at echoyu@sheppardmoscow.com or give them a call on +65 6835 9188

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