Leader in You - Robin Lee, APAC Head, Napier

hi everyone welcome to a leader in you interview series created to gain insights from diverse leaders in their field today i'll be chatting with robin lee who is head of apec of napier ai leading the asian expansion of one of the hottest red packs in the market he has an illustrious career from silicon valley wall street to now in little red.singapore building and growing his experience in mnc startups to many of his philanthropic experiences

thank you robin for coming on this show robin thank you it's an honor and privilege to be here thank you very much robin as a leader in evolving in different roles companies and countries share how has your leadership leadership style been fundamental element that has definitely been been prevalent throughout my career is is the teachings i i receive from my um my professor my

sales management professor at santa clara university uh and it revolves around this one one phrase that he he came up with which is um leadership versus management right and then he said robin um a manager makes you want to do something whereas a leader makes you want to be somebody and that's something that has stuck with me throughout and as has always been in the back of my mind in the the various reader various leadership roles that i've had throughout my career since then

good to hear that what has changed in your leadership over time okay um well i i would i would i would put it down to three things okay uh the first would be what i call the bruce lee approach right where um you're constantly learning but you're constantly learning new things and taking what's applicable to you so bruce lee the variety of martial arts from karate to kung fu to jiu jitsu took learned everything and then took again

what was applicable to him his style his his body type etc etc to make him way more effective the other um element i i think has changed or is um is what i alluded to earlier with this this concept of adapting right so it's what i call um the captain kirk versus captain picard so for those of you who want star trek fans out there um these are the two prevalent captains of the starship spaceships that they they

have um the the first captain kirk um was very more very much hands-on like he would go down with his team and do things with his team and get get um you know in the trenches per se whereas captain picard was more presidential right he you know he would send other people out he'll do a lot more delegating and was less hands-on and i think depending on the size of organization that you you work in you need to be able to um figure out you know which which

style is is is more applicable to you as well so i've done startups where i'm you know doing the accounting doing everything and what have you where is simultaneously organizations like thompson reuters or refinitive right where where you know you have thousands and thousands of employees you can't be doing all that by yourself so you need to need to figure that out uh the last but not least is the um is is people reading right the ability to read people and figure out who's real who's not not um and i'll i'll talk more

to that later but but i i think that that's another important factor is your people reading abilities as as you progress through your leadership journey oh that's good to know so you accommodate depending on the company size and people that you work with that's good yeah yeah very much so so what is the key virtue as a leader to maintain in one's leadership so i i i guess i guess um

um my my initial thought of that is the whole human experience you know i i have a a maya angelou quote on my um my linkedin which is that people will forget what you said yeah they will forget you did but they will never forget how you made them feel right and um and and to me that that that's that subject that as a leader if i draw it back to that you know manager makes you want to do something that people a sort of leader makes you

want to be somebody you know is it's something that you you have to get across right um the second is is to recognize that a lot of the times decisions should not be made by you as an individual it should be made by the team and so when you're more inclusive and and and and when it comes to decision making um i i think it's it's more effective especially the different perspectives that the the the variety of of um

individuals on your team can bring um the third is is you know if people are working hard you've got to work harder right you lead by example you have to show that that you know you're you're not you know you know the organization you know has to has to you you have to you have to not so much inspire people but show people that you you walk walk the talk right um and then last but by no means least

is creativity right be original come up with original ideas try and leverage other people's creativity and and you'll you'll be surprised as to um how many um obstacles you can jump through shall we say when when you leverage those creative juices that's good to hear i think it's very important now to be an inclusive uh leader yeah those of people more focused on diversity and inclusion and then getting people because i don't think any leader can work alone you need a team

to go and help you so what would be your advice to future leaders in this ever-changing workout world and after span that make things move so fast and now we're going into the metal was worth future too sure so look it it's it's not too different not too different from where we are today right it's not like we're all stuck physically in a room anymore you know i i think i think um you know that that human element that i

spoke to earlier is really really important and so your communication styles may change right and so if you if you get get get as much in person one on one and i guess the metaverse changes that right because in the past i would say that if you have a a scale and on one end of the scale you have face to face and the other end of the scale you have email right you want to be as close to the scale as possible when it comes to communicating with your team or or um and um

well to anyone right because you want to focus on that i guess the metaverse kind of replicates that in a way right it's that you're doing it in a virtual world but i i think less less text because a lot of stuff can be misinterpreted with text and more face-to-face is definitely um important and so what comes with that is stuff like your you know authenticity character integrity stuff like that right because we we do live in in a world today where we have

you know everybody can see everything because of social media and because of of all these different platforms right everyone has a voice right everyone can get on twitter and stop and open up a twitter account sorry and start tweeting stuff et cetera and so when you have like cancel culture and and and what happened you just got to really really stay true to who you are and and be you right um and and and your ability to do that in a in the vuca and metaverse world i i

guess you know um um can also um um have have the opportunity for individuals to to not be real but but people will still see through it in the long run right so i i think it's really important to to just just stay in your lane and and be be who you are yeah i think i agree very well it's very true because no matter what you can't hide behind anything or better because your true self and and people do search

about you whether did you stay offline and so on and the refrigerator will kind of find you and see what you're doing and um you know what do get out right yeah yeah people talk right so finally share with us the best lesson you have learned as a leader um okay the the best lesson or a funny lesson i i i can i guess i'll i'll start with the the funny one um i mean um so when i worked at one of one

of the the big firms that i worked at right yeah the best ones make sure i'm sure you have many many great lessons that you learn as a leader yeah what's the most yeah it comes to your mind okay the most memorable one from a okay i'll talk about i'll talk about a funny one and then i i i don't have a best one yet but maybe that will that will come as i'm telling the funny story but from a funny perspective you know one of the the um corporations i worked at they had they had very very company

specific terms nomenclature et cetera et cetera and so i joined the company and um we were introduced to the elt the executive leadership team okay and everyone was like oh um you have to present robin to the elt or the elt is going to be the e-l-t-e-l-t-e-o-t so i was like oh wow okay uh so i asked around i was like what's an elt um when i first joined and um some of my my colleagues were oh yeah

that's the elect executive leadership team it's it's a very you know us thing referring to our organization so i'm all right all right i've i've got that and then um just overnight the company so i was about i was about uh um a month in the company started using the term blt and um so i was like what's blt and and and some of my colleagues are like yeah it's a term that's been thrown around for the like just before you joined

it's actually been here quite a while robin i'm like okay what does it mean and like oh we don't know okay uh but this is a uh us thing right and they're like yeah yeah but but no one knows the the elt just came up with it overnight so i'm like okay cool um and it's been around for a while so i'm like okay okay um and then and later on we had a massive massive conference call and um so this involved it's a global call

everyone from the us europe asia they were all on this call and um and someone on the call was like yes um elt is aware of this now um now let's get the blt to execute it and and i i at the time you know new guy right i was like i gotta ask this question sorry guys but what exactly is a blt the new guy question here what is a blt and my colleague who was sitting across across the the desk from me and

he was clearly like like in a zoned out um mood and he was like e-l-t bacon lettuce and tomato and i was like oh and then and everyone on the call heard this and just started cracking up and then someone else came on and said it's actually the business leadership team and i was like oh okay got it got it got it but it just goes to show right from a leadership perspective that you don't communicate right and you don't you don't share these little things like this that a lot of people could end up

being really confused because there was a period for about two three months where guys were going around not knowing what blt and who was in it right yes yeah actually it's true quite a number of companies use a lot of acronyms and then the thing doesn't like flow through and so on to other peoples a good funny story and good learning for all of us so any comments for you when you're doing running in your own team any acronyms

um no acronyms per se um i i guess i guess i guess what i what i try and do is is like do little things like host weekly training sessions um make make things a little bit more um tangible for people on my team um because you know you just we spend just as much time working as we do in our social lives arguably more right so unless unless you

make things you know um appealing tangible et cetera et cetera people just just aren't gonna relatable right people just aren't gonna be engaged and and and i really love what the the culture that you know originally um sas and then later google brought to the table where you you create as as awesome an environment as possible whereby people not that people want to work but people want to work more than than than think

um and this is a this is a job not a career you know i'm not i'm you know i'm not gonna get any learning done here i'm not gonna go very far here i just just just put punch that's how old i am a punch called in punch card out kind of kind of hyper yeah it's good to hear that thank you very much robin for your sharing thank you so much for having me and thank you everyone on uh for for watching this as well really really appreciate it