Trust is a word that everyone has heard in their daily lives. Everyone is a believer in having good trust and respect for others. However, we often find ourselves not able to express and show our trust to other people in the right way. In this episode of Asian Tyde, we talked to Mr. Yeoh, who is the Group Director, People Department at Vietjetair, the airline company. Together, we discuss how to build a trust-based environment, how he sees agile management, and how to drive a team to go the extra mile.

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The benefits of agile management

Agile management is not something we need to be afraid of. Instead, we should embrace it because that will allow us to be innovative. It's a fact that the most effective and productive companies have adopted this methodology. According to Mr. Yeoh, “Agile management must be flexible enough to make changes and movements.”

Some of the obstacles that the company is facing now, first of all, might have too many levels of hierarchy. For example, a company can have six to seven levels from the CEO down. And another thing is also companies do need to have policies in order to manage the day to day operations. But they shouldn't emphasize too much on the policy and shouldn't be tied down with the policy.

Moreover, the power of decision-making must be centralized in person, as soon as possible. To have that, it is necessary to have a hierarchy of management, as mentioned before, but we must also be careful to prevent that hierarchy from becoming a structure. Because this is what happens with a lot of organizations today, where the power is transferred downwards, with the consequence of losing autonomy and initiative and control. He added: “And of course, we still need some empowerment. Because if there's no empowerment, even though the people down there, know what to do. But they still can't do, because they don't have the power to do it.”

Explain the meaning of empowerment and trust

Trust is a two-way thing. Mr Yeoh explained, there's one old Chinese proverb saying is that "If you want to use the person, you have to trust him. But if you have doubts about the person, don't use him." Trust needs to be earned and this can be done in many ways, one way is by giving empowerment to the person who is new or who is just coming into the workplace. And this also can be achieved through training them on what are the things that they should not do, which are the kind of rules and regulations in our company and so on.

Moreover, this empowerment must be accompanied by a strong internal discipline in order to enforce that empowerment, and this discipline must be communicated all along the hierarchy.

What's more, your work environment is also very important. Mr. Yeoh continued: "If the team members all have a positive attitude, you can go the extra mile. But if the team members are all very negative or passive, regardless of how positive you are, to a certain extent, one day, you will be influenced by these people."

Making team members have a positive thinking

Talking about how to create a positive workplace, Mr. Yeoh added that as a result, you have to take the lead of the team from the top, that's the key.

"The other thing that we can do to further improve ourselves is to keep on learning. We know that all people learn differently, but we do not need to be very particular about it. If we can learn from their experiences, then we will be able to do even better. So, if they are learning the wrong thing and we can provide some learning points that can help them learn. If we are always trying to improve ourselves, whether it is to improve our personality or to improve our skills, or whatever it is, so we can be able to go to the next level, and we can also be able to motivate others to go through that, as well. So it's a continuous process."

Nevertheless, it is very important to have a strong and stable organization to ensure that the values ​​are clearly understood and internalized by all members. In this sense, TYDE has adopted a tool to facilitate communication between teams, processes and workgroups: the Process Communication ModelⓇ (PCM). This tool allows employees, managers and leaders to create trust, establish a common vision for the future and encourage continuous improvement of their companies’ performance. Find more details at this link!