Teaching in China

Intel sent me to China to do a specific job. That job is the matrixed management of several product development teams focused on developing ingredients for notebook computers. These ingredients are the boards that go inside the notebooks and the plastic cases on the outside. This is a pretty simplistic explanation of what I am doing - but enough for this post.

In addition to the job I am sent here to do, there are certain expectations about mentoring and training. I am a mentor (official and un-official) to a couple of my Chinese co-workers, and for the last 4 months or so, our internal training group (called “Intel University” or “Intel U”) has really been pressuring me to deliver one of the classes that I am certified to teach.

I have been hesitant to teach while I am here in PRC. My biggest concern hasn’t been the time involved (although the class is a big commitment – 2 days delivery and at least ½ day prep when I have not taught in a while). My biggest concern has been my insecurity over delivering the class to a group that uses English as a second language and a culture that is less direct than my own.

The class is called Situational Leadership. It is targeted to our managers. I have been teaching the class for a number of years, and generally have received very good feedback in our evaluation process. I credit the class itself for the majority of the feedback. The material is extremely well developed, put together in a format that allows the material to be engaging throughout the 2 days, and highly applicable to the participants taking the class. I have no doubt my new co-workers will benefit from the class.

So why hesitant? First, I really think the class and the material is outstanding, and in the light of Intel choosing not to continue with the best management class we have (Managing Through People – which I also facilitated), I think this class is important for managers to take and apply. I was fearful that my delivery – all in English, and sometimes too fast – would result in students not being able to fully grasp the concepts. I was also concerned that they would be hesitant to stop me and tell me I wasn’t making any sense. Surely a Mandarin speaking instructor would be better.

My second concern was that I have exclusively delivered the class to participants in the US (and occasionally one from Costa Rica or Europe). I was really concerned that the material would have parts/pieces that would be culturally challenging to apply to these people’s teams. I have learned a lot about working with my Chinese colleagues, and learned enough about Chinese culture not to make an ass out of myself in public – but fall far short of being a ‘cultural guide’.

I tried desperately to find an instructor in PRC (native Chinese, or Mandarin speaker) that would co-teach with me. I struck out.

Then the Intel U contact that owns the class started to sound as desperate as I did – turns out the Shanghai site took a ‘quarterly objective’ to get a certain % of managers trained in this material… and they couldn’t get anyone to teach.

So the desperation of the Intel U guy, along with the feedback that the organization wanted me to step up and provide more leadership for the site, outside my specific responsibilities led me to bite the bullet and agree to teach.

This week was my first class. Overall it seemed to go well. The feedback from the couple of students that did talk with me afterwards was good – they indicated that they enjoyed the class, and one asked if I was going to teach any other classes. Another indicated that he wanted his staff to attend my next class.

I lead off the class with giving them express permission to ask me to slow down if I spoke to fast, to ask me to rephrase if they didn’t understand what I was saying or trying to communicate, and to stop me if they thought any of the concepts would not be applicable to their teams/work groups based on cultural differences between the US and PRC. None of the above happened, but I don’t necessarily think it was because everything was perfectly clear and applicable. I think it was a combination of some people being there to ‘complete the requirement’ and potentially their concern over ‘questioning the instructor’.

A couple of interesting observations I thought I would share.

I struggled to get the class to engage in discussion – In the US I usually have to cut off the discussion – everyone wants to give their opinion and be heard! I really struggled to pull comments and discussion out of the group and continue to rack my brain on why that might be…

So many possible reasons were running through my head ‘they don’t understand what I am asking them – this will be the worst class ever’ and ‘they are so bored they aren’t paying attention – this will be the worst class ever’ and even ‘they are so uncomfortable with their English skills they won’t engage – this will be the worst class ever’. I do have to admit it got a little better the longer class went on, but nothing like class in the US.

The second really interesting observation was about a game we play in the class. It’s a game focused on applying the learnings from the class about management and leadership. The group is split into teams and they read scenarios and decide on the appropriate response from a list of 4 options. They get to move their playing piece either forward or backwards based on the response they choose. First team to the end of the game board wins.

In the US what happens is one team wins and all the other teams stop and put the game away. “Someone won, it wasn’t us, the game is over” – the pieces get put away.

But in PRC it was totally different. Every team wanted to get to the finish line. They continued to work on the scenarios – continued to ask me to score their answers. They worked right through their break, as it was important to them to finish. Not that winning wasn’t important – they all wanted to win… but if they could not win, it was still important that they finish.

Now, I don’t have any idea what this says about the US culture vs. the Chinese culture, just something different that I didn’t expect… And it was cool!

As I mentioned, some folks came up to me afterwards and mentioned they enjoyed the class, and they thought it was a good use of 2 days. The evaluations went out today, so I should be getting some feedback in the next few days to see what they really thought! :)

For anyone curious, I’ll post about the results when I get them!