Leadership Conversations - Gloria Chan
In the first of our leadership conversations, we have the privilege to discuss a variety of topics with global HR expert
Gloria has led an illustrious HR career, including spells with Sealand-Maersk and Chase Manhattan Bank, before going on to a successful 18 year career with Hutchison Ports, the world’s largest port network. As Deputy Group HR Director, Gloria led the organisation through significant global expansion and oversaw a workforce of more than 30,000 people worldwide.
Gloria has kindly shared with us her perspectives on managing one’s career, the role HR plays with talent development, and how building joint ventures can be mutually beneficial. Through the illustration of Mr. White’s career we can see the realisation of these points.
Making the correct decision for your career is often challenging
Some might say that you could either make the right decision or make the decision right. One should seek to optimise the situation/opportunity at hand.
The career adventure Mr. White made in a global transportation company was built on a joint venture supported by multiple parties within the organisation. Mr. White commenced as a sub-function manager and progressed to be a group-wide functional leader, managing the full spectrum of the company’s business operations across 50+ branches globally, covering strategic service deployment, innovation, and product development. Technically speaking, he managed 85% of the company’s global workforce.
The importance of self-belief and having a career plan
A quote from Ayn Rand, “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me”, might be the best description of Mr. White when discussing his accomplishments and career. In a way, his persistence and arrogance made him an ‘untouchable’ high potential manager. He could go all the way to his business head to defend his plans and initiatives with critical facts, which others might want to avoid. Unaware of other senior management’s concerns, he confidently contemplated his own pursuit as a functional head.
How can HR contribute to talent planning & development?
During this period the company was active with acquisitions and expanded rapidly. A brand new Global Mobilisation initiative was implemented, to facilitate the identification, selection and appointment of potential managers into over 100 international career opportunities. Human resources took the lead to match the potential candidates with the available opportunities, orchestrating cross-functional and regional movements with all relevant stakeholders. Typical appointments were set for 3 years, the company had over 40 movements or appointment extensions per year, accounting for one-third of the international managers count and around 8% of the company’s total management population.
What guidance would you provide for hiring committees to be successful?
The cross-functional and regional movements were operated like joint ventures, comprising the related senior management and functional leaders. For example, the branch CFO appointment would involve the regional finance director and the head office CFO, together with the branch management teams concerned, both the outgoing and the incoming ones. Numerous discussions and updates were given by human resources to the parties involved for concluding the appointment. At the headquarter level, talent review and planning was discussed quarterly amongst the company’s global leadership team.
How can stints in other functions help to develop someone’s career? Can the right pivot be beneficial?
Without calling on individuals to present their career aspirations to the leadership team directly, human resources had to gather the relevant information and provide updates to both the leadership team and the candidates concerned, as well as their unit human resources and management. For the case of Mr. White, the panel did not support him stepping up as a functional head in the branch but recommended him to expand with a lateral move to work in another branch offering a different functional focus. It took multiple discussions with Mr. White to convince him that the move was not a punitive measure; rather that it would allow him to build a solid foundation with additional specialisation, and also polish his management skills in a typical bureaucratic structure.
In our Pacesetter Matrix, we highlight traits such as curiosity, resilience, and adaptability. How did these qualities serve Mr. White’s success?
Stepping into other functions presents new challenges. One learns a lot by being curious to go outside your function and it demonstrates courage and willingness to go further. Adaptability is a very important trait. Followed by several challenging assignments in very tough locations, Mr. White gradually gained insight into his developmental needs and made plans to perfect his functional knowledge with attaining his dream job in mind. He made plans to track for improvements, shared with human resources for updates with the panel. His effort was evident and reflected in a clear path to his target position. After a total of over 15 years’ well-crafted career journey, Mr. White became the most confident and capable functional leader, appointed as the company’s group functional head with the new role to nurture upcoming potential functional talents as his successors.
What tips would you share to manage one’s career development?
Careers in organisations can largely depend on decisions by other people, however, career pursuit is entirely dependent on the individual’s efforts in sharing career targets, self-development or improvement plans, credentials, and accomplishments as well as maintaining an on-going dialogue with stakeholders. With a clear understanding of the individual’s perspectives and objectives, appropriate plans can be made to gauge support from within the organisation as well as the leadership team.
Operating in a form akin to joint ventures facilitated enticing the required level of commitments, and at the same time providing a full view for customised plan, and making appropriate changes when situations warrant. Organisations evolve and so do people. Plans will require adjustments whenever market factors, business conditions, and organisation needs present new opportunities or risks.
What recommendations do you have for talent retention?
For sizeable organisations, it is no doubt a challenge to create mutually respectful and equitable joint forces in any people issues, especially when talents become a scarce resource in most markets. To facilitate balanced decision-making HR must be super alert in their liaison works. The optimal outcome is to provide feasible options to meet the organisation’s needs while supporting the individual’s career goal. Practicing a consistent approach for managing employee career development will allow the company to retain their best people in the war of talents. It is the same case for an individual when one outgrows the organisation; securing and building the required network to support the on-going journey is the key to a successful career.
