11 September 2009: “Our Countries Have Known Each Other for a Very Long Time”

Perspective. These last two days were definitely a lesson in perspective for me.

“Our Countries Have Known Each Other for a Very Long Time.” That’s the response I got when I asked one of my participants if American guests were nice to them. I’m always a bit worried about Americans overseas. I myself go overboard not to be an example of “The Ugly American”. Even though I’ve lived abroad for over 7 years and travel on a Kiwi passport I can’t hide my accent. That is and always will be quintessentially American.

But I was especially concerned after spending two days with this lovely group of people. They touched my heart and it was important to me that they were treated nicely. I’m happy to say that they universally agreed that Americans, who comprise about 25% of their guests, were typically the nicest, the most congenial.

And the explanation? “Our Countries Have Known Each Other for a Very Long Time.” Indeed we have. Americans introduced ourselves to the Vietnamese by bombing the hell out of them and then we made ourselves at home by trying to deforest the entire country with Agent Orange.

But the war that left such an indelible mark on so many Americans was simply a blip in history for these people. After 1,000 years of Chinese rule and almost 100 years of French, I get the feeling here that our little war was but a minor nuisance. After all, they dispatched of us quite handily after less than 20 years.

A word about the work that I did over the last couple of days. I’ve done a lot of training and have worked with a lot of sales teams but I can’t say that I’ve ever worked with a group who was so keen, so enthusiastic. So eager to learn. And Andrew, their Director of Sales, assured me that they would implement what they were learning.

We shared a wonderful two days together. And they constantly surprised me. We have one exercise where they were to build a bridge out of sticky (celo / scotch) tape and pasta. Most western groups will do one of two things. Either they will spend most of their 15 minutes discussing how to do it and getting a consensus before even starting. Or they will splinter into several groups, each working on their own thing with little communication between the two. Neither normally results in a functioning bridge that can hold any amount of weight. But not this group. All three small groups got right to work. They all had different approaches (and taught me a bit about traditional Vietnamese bridge building) but all three finished on time with perfectly functioning bridges. I had to come up with something else to actually prove the point of the exercise!

Then there was the nail exercise. You have to balance 17, 6” nails on top of 1 nail which is pounded into a box. The solution is to build a thatched roof type of affair, but rarely do people get it. I certainly didn’t when I tried. But these guys? One group got it after just a few minutes. The other two also got it in the alloted time...but the amazing thing was that the other two groups didn’t even look over at the first group to see how they’d done it. Again, they just immediately went to work to figure it out.

What I learned about the Vietnamese people from this is their incredible ingenuity and their ability to work as a group! Also, their no nonsense approach. They just got down to it and didn’t faf around. In fact, that was the entire training. They were always in their seats early, ready to start. They paid attention during the entire two days. And the one participant that I thought was texting? He was using a dictionary to translate words that the group did not understand.

The other funny bit was that we have them introduce themselves and talk about someone they admire at the very start of the training. Several people mentioned their uncle. Well I thought they were talking about their uncle. Then I realised it was the same uncle. They described this Uncle as the founder of Vietnam. It wasn’t until morning tea that I realised that “Uncle Ho” was Ho Chi Minh. A man I’d been taught to hate and fear as a child. How weird was this? I had to completely readjust my thinking and by the end of the two days I was invoking him as an example. It fit completely actually because what we talked about was change. And how perfect...after all Uncle Ho dedicated his life to change.

All in all it was a very special experience and they touched my heart. At the end they gave me a book on the history of the hotel, signed by them all, and a gorgeous silk shawl. I can’t wait to go back next month!