The role of management can vary from organization to organization, causing a great deal of confusion for both leaders and their employees.

Employees often view managers as the experts guiding a team’s vision, much like a CEO or President might. For managers, however, the pressure to perform well and delegate work to others can be a demanding and challenging responsibility.

Do management styles in Vietnam promote trust and collaboration between colleagues?

“Influenced by the hierarchical structure in Confucianism, it is quite common that most Vietnamese employees think that they have the obligation to respect people who have a higher position or are older than them,” says the writer behind Agile Vietnam, an online blog detailing various aspects of Vietnamese work culture.

In Vietnam, like in many cultures, respect is important.

And while respect is considered important in the work setting, respect should also come with trust and collaboration, in a bi-directional flow, where employees not only respect their managers but managers also respect employees for the value they provide as contributors to the business.

Respect should be about more than one’s age or tenure, but about a culture of respect for everyone in the organization.

Understanding micro-management and why you might be guilty of it

As a manager, you might struggle to balance creating an overall business strategy with the reality of things - with what happens daily inside your organization, including managing operational tasks.

Over time, you may even have adopted the mindset that if you don’t oversee every detail of a project or operation, things might even not get done properly.

While managers are leaders, they should remain cautious of enforcing a culture of fear that results from superiority or a hierarchical structure.

If you are a manager that gets “stuck” on the details instead of the bigger picture, you might not be allowing employees to feel comfortable or collaborative when working with you.

While this might seem well-intended, it can sometimes border on micro-management, which can do more harm than good.

The Forbes Coach Council, an organization comprised of leading business coaches and career coaches further writes, “when you work for a micromanager, you may feel like your boss doesn’t trust you to do your job.”

Micro-management, more often than not, stems from a lack of trust.

Harvard Business Review also offers some tips to understand “signs” that you might be a micromanager, some of which include:

• Never being fully satisfied with your employees’ work or deliverables
• Being extremely focused on details and making an extensive amount of corrections
• Always asking your team to send updates or reports describing in detail what they are working on
• Wanting to be CC’ed on all emails, even ones that don’t need your inputs
  You might recognize some of these behaviors mentioned above in a current or former boss. You may have also practiced some of these behaviors before.

The bottom line: A great manager is someone whose employees should be able to look to for feedback, honesty, and support.

So, how do you create strong business relationships?

The first step

Trust is the foundation for everything. Creating a workplace based on trust will ensure your organization has the building blocks to create alternative systems of management.

Some might argue that more social events or gatherings could help. But it’s not always enough to just grab lunch together in the office or have dinner outside of work.

While personal relationships are undoubtedly important, facilitating trust-building within working relationships is key.

Within the walls of your organization are probably long-term employees who have a keen understanding of how your business operates. Ask employees for their feedback on gaps or areas of improvement.

The first step to changing your organization’s culture of management is to do an internal assessment and gather experts from both inside and outside the organization who will help design new workflows.

Discovering where to improve

Give employees an option for a “wish list” for process improvement, in which they answer the following question: “If our organization improved on ____, our department would be more successful.” Example fill-in areas could be: communication methods, frequency of updates, and greater trust between managers and employees.

And don’t limit these conversations solely to the more senior employees. Diversity of opinions is always best.

Ensure that you understand the perspectives of both your long-term employees and new hires.

Once you’ve completed your internal assessments of the organization, don’t forget to seek outside expert advice. Sometimes, all it takes is having fresh eyes to develop an innovative perspective that can change your organization.

Hiring a skilled consultant experienced in working with unique management styles can help you to “diagnose” gaps within management and areas for improvement. Leadership coaching can help point out blind spots and also support in developing a managerial style that feels right for you.

Taking Action

Once you understand how your organization’s management can improve, now it’s time to take action.

Here are some ways you can support your employees and managers to work better together, without a micromanaging mindset:

Solve problems together

Consider training and workshops that facilitate collaborative problem-solving and effective communication, such as a “team-building” program where a coach will guide your team through creative exercises, games, and brainstorming, designed to improve communication between colleagues and address workplace challenges. When teams work in harmony, they are more likely to be successful.

A particular strength of TYDE Consulting is helping teams to find their shared vision, so they are aligned, inspired, and committed to reaching their objectives together.

Increase your team’s self-esteem with practice

An unfortunate effect of micromanagement is leading your employees to believe that they aren’t good enough or that their value to the organization isn’t as strong as they want. This can severely affect the morale of an organization and an individual’s self-esteem.

Celebrate one another’s successes. Regularly commend your employees. If someone on your team did a stellar job on a project, or worked late to meet a deadline, email to the office and share the story with others. And when you are overseeing a project, try to let employees complete tasks on their own.

Offer employees space for greater creativity to try out novel ideas and solutions, and applaud your employees for doing so, no matter the outcomes.

Create an internal coaching system

It’s already clear that relationships and trust are important for Vietnamese culture. But beyond organizational trust, having intimate relationships such as a mentor-mentee system can be helpful.

“A good mentor can be a bridge between individual and organizational needs, between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards,” says Forbes Magazine.

Being able to discuss career goals, challenges, and opportunities with a dedicated mentor offers employees a sense of greater wellbeing in knowing they have a coach. For the mentors, having someone to guide and support is also meaningful and can deeply enrich their employment beyond a salary.

With proper training and practice, your managers and employees will enjoy greater communication in the long-term.