'Thai people should be more active participants in the international arena such as under the Asean platform and look forward to career expansion beyond traditional borders," says Subhasakdi Krishnamra, the outgoing chairman of Deloitte Southeast Asia.
Subhasakdi: Thais need to speak up
"Generally speaking, we must proactively develop ourselves in order to be capable leaders. We have many great systems and practices but we tend to speak less. Therefore, nobody really knows how good we are," adds Mr Subhasakdi, who is the current managing partner of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Jaiyos in Thailand.
Deloitte Southeast Asia's board of directors comprises 12 members. Seven are the heads of each country's office. Another three are senior partners with unique expertise. The last two are a director from Deloitte Global and the CEO of Deloitte Southeast Asia. Mr Subhasakdi was elected chairman in 2009 and just finished his term in early June.
A regional business perspective is important to Deloitte as an accounting and professional services firm, Mr Subhasakdi points out.
"We started a conversation on how to work together as a group in Deloitte Southeast Asia in 2004," he explains. "By 2005, the group had been formed by Deloitte's offices in this part of the world comprising Guam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam."
Process-driven practice: Mr Subhasakdi started his professional career at Deloitte in 1989 after finishing his MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago. He came back to Thailand in 1993, after extensive experience from the Canadian and US operations, mainly in productivity and process improvement.
"In 1995, I was promoted to deputy managing partner. Then, in 2002, my boss asked me to be the managing partner to manage business in Thailand. I have to admit that I was quite afraid to accept at first," he says. "However, I finally accepted with the support of an experienced deputy who performed as my right-hand man at that time."
Mr Subhasakdi sees himself as definitely not an autocratic manager. Dominating others' opinions or conversations is not his style. He prefers to be flexible when managing and leading the team.
"My approach to management and leading can be characterised as 'inclusiveness'. I believe it's necessary to have an opportunity to hear the others first. This way, participation will happen not by force but through the willingness of each individual," he says.
"I believe in an open-door policy since it will enhance the feeling that 'everyone can create the future'. It's worth mentioning as well that initially, I tend to focus more on the process than the result."
'As One' with collective power: Mr Subhasakdi's approach to leadership is a good fit with Deloitte's strategic initiative called "As One" _ a conceptual approach that encourages people to work together to acquire and broaden their collective knowledge and ability in order to serve the client as the ultimate goal.
"However, for some, such as our Singaporean friends, they may consider inclusiveness a distraction from work since they are more focus- and results-driven than us. Although we work hard to serve our customers, we also enjoy working under a less stressful, more relaxed and not-too-intense working atmosphere. Hence, I believe that inclusiveness is suitable in the local context."
Deloitte's shared values are based on four principles: Integrity; Commitment to each other; Outstanding value to markets and clients; and Strength from cultural diversity. The internal CSLA (Client Service Level Agreement) is one example of the commitment to each other, with elements such as on-time delivery of services as earlier agreed.
"Our succession plan policy reflects our practice of shared values. Each top executive must have three designated successors at any time. In turn, each of these three people is aware that he or she is the next person in line for a particular post," he explains. "We also adopt this approach on the client service front. For a large account, the account director always has three successors in hand to ensure business continuity in case anything happens."
Servant leadership: As Mr Subhasakdi continued sharing his thinking, I could not help but think of the famous concept of "servant leadership". In his essay "The Servant as Leader", Robert K. Greenleaf coined the term "servant leadership" back in 1970. He told us that his thinking was influenced by Hermann Hesse's Journey to the East. Hesse is the 1946 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature whose famous works include Siddhartha, Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game.
"Although I'm running a customer-focused organisation, I believe that we must not forget our own internal customers as well," says Mr Subhasakdi. "We normally organise a few town-hall style meetings each year for each of our functions which are advisory business, auditing business and also administration support. It's my practice to balance my schedule to equally join departmental events of both the frontline and support functions.
"I also suggest to my people not to immediately react to any emotional provocation or instant demand from others; we should wait for a while in order to think things through thoroughly and avoid an emotional response. No need to prompt a response to every e-mail every time."
Larry Spears, the CEO of the Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership, defines the servant-leader as someone who has the following key characteristics: listening, empathy, healing, awareness, persuasion, conceptualisation, foresight, stewardship, commitment to the growth of people and building community.
"If possible, I would say we should listen to everyone's opinions," adds Mr Subhasakdi. "Responsiveness, with the appropriate gesture during conversation, and exchanging ideas are also the things to do. We try to take what [clients] propose to be included as our final solution. Then, we can take action afterward. Recognition of each individual and their valuable thoughts is important and proof that they are truly part of the team."
Sorayuth Vathanavisuth is a former chief executive of the Thailand Management Association. His areas of interest are leadership development, talent management and executive coaching. He can be reached at sorayuth@sealeadership.com