On September 14, 2022, Andree Mangels, General Manager of ManpowerGroup Vietnam, as one of the keynote speakers, joined the Leader Talk: Leadership & People Management Skills at Hotel de l’Opera Hanoi. The event was jointly hosted by British Chamber of Commerce Vietnam and British University Vietnam. It was aimed at giving audience valuable insights from leading experts about leadership qualities and modern rewards at MNCs & large corporations. The leaders talk received great attention and witnessed the participation of more than 100 people, who are C-level professionals, startups owners, HR practitioners, British Chamber of Commerce’s members, and MBA students & Alumni.
Andree Mangels brought to the talk an exploratory session about emotional quotient (EQ). He kicked off with a fundamental question from his mentor in his early career, “Which skillset or capability should someone start their emotional intelligence learning journey?” The venue was filled with energy and excitement as participants joined a small exercise of “self-awareness” – the first step of the EQ concept and got chances to know each other better.
The DISC model, a behavioral assessment dividing people into four main behavioral styles, were then introduced. In order to increase engagement and better understanding, participants were asked to move to the group with characteristics most closely describing them (i.e. Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness).
A participant, who loves to work in his company, shared “I don’t want to leave my company, because it’s perfect fit for me, however, I have problems with my line manager in the aspect that I don’t have trust in her”. Andree suggested he could apply DISC model to learn more about his manager. It may change the situation if he could figure out an effective approach to communicate with his manager.
Self-awareness and DISC model are some of good ways to start and leaders quite often quote authentic leadership as their preferred leadership style. However, there can be a toxic side of it. “Just ensure you have done an internal vs external awareness exercise, otherwise, your “authenticity” might become a burden to other people”, Andree emphasized.
Developing from the fundamental of EQ, the other speakers focused on top leadership qualities in the new era of work, including decision making, delegation, critical thinking, hybrid work management, etc.
High engagement was witnessed during the Q&A session where most of the questions weighted in the relationship between a manager/leader with other team members. Jane, who started her own business when she was 25, shared “After five years running my own start-up, I still feel a lack of connection with my employees. Therefore sometimes, I doubt my leadership style”. In giving professional advices, the guest speakers shared many case studies for reference and especially, suggested having a coach and/or doing a 360 review to get to know herself and her co-workers better before developing any HR management strategy.
Under the impact of the pandemic, many leadership traits have become more and more valuable to organizations. As long as leaders stay flexible in times of change while applying suggested core leadership theories, they can sure get the best out of their staff and drive business success.
