The Science of Building Leaders

When Kimberly Clark's HR team approached us about bringing 47 foreign specialists to Malaysia for a critical manufacturing expansion, they expected the usual challenges: visa paperwork, regulatory compliance, and processing timelines. What they didn't expect was the leadership crisis that nearly derailed their entire project three months later. The work permits arrived on schedule. The expatriates settled into Kuala Lumpur. But by month three, productivity had dropped 35%, two senior engineers had resigned, and the local Malaysian team was requesting transfers. The problem wasn't immigration. It was integration. And it revealed a blind spot that costs Malaysian companies millions annually: the failure to lead across cultures.

Evelyn Teh of Leaderonomics shares her take on this subject as we also touch on “surface alignment” and “minority effect”.

In this episode of Be A Leader with Roshan Thiran, we dive into the world of gorillas and explore an experiment where people fail to spot the gorilla even when it is right in our midst. This happens all the time in life. Watch to find out more