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The Importance of Choosing the Right Executives to Send to Korea
By Heejeong Haas | October 2, 2007
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So, what lesson did I learn a few years ago?
I talked about assigning the right type of personnel in a Korean operation. That’s right, the right type of person. We all know that to implement and carry out a certain effort, there must be a qualified person who is a perfect fit for such a task. When it comes to Korean operation, the the same theory applies. Only that who you think is perfect may later prove you that the person was not only the wrong choice, but also the whole operation became a complete failure because you just assigned a wrong person.
A few years ago, I had an opportunity to represent an American company to locate a Korean manufacturer and pave the way to enter a successful negotiation. I spent a great deal of time to build up that personal relationship with them and promote the image of this American company and worked hard to have a successful negotiation for every single aspect of their Korean operation. So, everything was set up and two companies were good to go to run the full operation. When I learned who the company chose to run the day-to-day Korean operation in
When I sat down with him to go through all the necessary cultural differences that he had to be aware of, I noticed that he was quite irritated about a few things I was suggesting him to do. What was I suggesting him to do? “Go out with them, be careful with your email messages if you are not to have a staff who is fluent in both languages so that he or she can aid you in communication effort, try to learn some phrases in Korean so that you can get by, these are Korean holidays when you may want to send gifts to them and reinforce your personal relationship with them, and many more….” I expressed my concern in a very passive way as I knew that it was not my place to say something about it. But they thought that he still was the perfect fit.
When he landed in Korea and started working with them, not only that the Korean business partner felt like they were in a business deal that only seemed great when I was representing and working with them, but also they constantly felt like this American employee was quite condescending to them. He never wanted to go out with them, he would only communicate with them for necessary business matters, the way he was treating the people around him was not pleasant. He simply couldn’t handle that personal aspect of Korean business culture. It was too much for him. He was not at ease dealing with people in such a way, and he thought it was quite backward. It simply was his personal preference how he professionally performed, however it was the wrong attitude to have in Korean business world.
And when the company finally learned that the things were not going great at all, in fact, their operation was at the brink of shutting down, they pulled him back and contacted me again. As I learned what had been happening, it was an eye opening experience to me, and at the same time, I felt greatly responsible for not being clearly expressive about my concern. One of the reasons I was not clearly expressive was because I didn’t want to cost somebody’s job or damage somebody’s reputation without any proof. However, their relationship and deal were both mended with a great effort costing both companies huge expenses.
Since then, I carefully observe executive members whom I have to accompany to Korea on a business deal or assignees going to Korea to run an operation, and tell clients what I think without hesitation. I learned that it is a lot better for them to ridicule my opinion and not trust me and for me to be proven wrong than my clients’ having to find out that their effort is about to be ruined. Even when I am not in the position to say so, I do it anyway as I learned what it will cost my clients.
There is also one more important lesson I learned from this very experience—email and messenger communication. But that is to the next post.
Topics: Communication, Korean Business Etiquette, Korean business culture |
