UNTIL recently, Chinese companies have concentrated on the export-oriented manufacturing sector.

Today, Chinese companies are building brands, and winning market share against well-established international competitors.

Somehow, they have adopted many international management practices. Yet, they have still managed to retain the intrinsic values of Chinese culture. How do they do it?

Well, fusion is a popular concept these days. Restaurants serve fusion food, which combines Western and Oriental flavours and styles of cooking. And musicians play fusion music, combining instruments and musical styles from several different countries.

Now Eva Wong and Lawrence Leung of Hong Kong-based TopHuman Group describe the benefits of combining different cultural traditions into the Ren Coaching Model, which is proving to be very successful in China. “Ren” means person or people in Chinese, so it’s no surprise to find that people are at the core of The Power of Ren (John Wiley & Sons).

Wong and Leung dismiss the common “focus on issues, not people” approach to dealing with problems in the workplace, saying that it causes more problems than it solves. They point out that in China everything is personal and relationships are paramount, so ignoring the people will never lead to a solution.

Of course, coaching is a recent concept in the business world – and one, which feels distinctly Western. It raises the image of an executive in New York with his personal coach or trainer. So you might wonder if coaching is really going to work in China.

Wong and Leung are convinced that it does, and point out that many of the underlying principles of coaching have been fundamental to Chinese culture for millennia.

In my experience a common mantra in China today and many parts of the world is the need for more training. However, we need to be careful that this does not blind us to the importance of coaching. Training serves as an important role in teaching people transferable skills. But coaching goes a step further by changing our way of thinking about problems and helping us to set more appropriate goals.

Wong and Leung tackle their subject with admirable passion and enthusiasm, illustrating their approach with many success stories showing how the Ren Coaching Model has cut through apparently intractable problems to yield positive outcomes. They could have stopped there, but chose instead to combine many different strands of knowledge into a comprehensive “Tao of Ren”.

In their model, “modern coaching techniques are fused with Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, to produce a new, successful people-oriented approach to problem-solving and personal development”.

Drawing on topics as diverse as calligraphy and ancient Chinese writings, they show how leaders in Asia can adopt eight attitudes in working with others to open up unlimited possibilities for the future. ThePower of Ren gives many practical illustrations of how coaching has transformed business in China.

It tells the real-life stories of Chinese managers and describes how coaching led them to recognise what was holding them back, to deal with it, and move on to success.

Eva Wong will be speaking at a forum on The New Generation Of CEOs & Entrepreneurs Of China: How They Are Changing The Way China Does Business And How Malaysian Entrepreneurs Could Engage Them, at Menara Star. Registration closes today. For further details, please call 03-7967 1388 ext. 1431/1168, or e-mail
msd@thestar.com.my.