Why I Built Global Citizens Skills™

For years, I thought I was learning new industries.

Looking back, I realised I was learning something much more interesting.

I was watching how the same capable people performed differently when the environment changed.

Different countries.

Different organisations.

Different nationalities.

The same invisible pattern kept appearing.

My First Definition of Good Performance

I grew up in a working-class family on the outer edge of one of Vietnam's largest cities.

My mother was one of the youngest of eight siblings. Around my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins — nearly thirty relatives in total — I naturally occupied one of the youngest positions in the family.

From there, I learned what good performance looked like in that position.

Follow the decision of whoever was older, whether or not it was the better one.

Wait before acting.

Watch the mood of whoever held authority.

Avoid creating disagreement.

Being good meant following. Speaking first. Making decisions. Suggesting a different way. Those belonged to someone with more standing.

That became my first definition of what good performance looked like.

At the time, I thought that was simply how life worked.

This wasn't the only place I learned these behaviours. It was simply the earliest place I remember learning what "being good" looked like.

A Different Definition of Good Performance

When I joined Etihad Airways as cabin crew, the first thing that struck me wasn't the flying.

It was the manuals.

The manuals laid out expectations, protocols, and situation details — clearly, in writing.

I had never seen anything like it. In Vietnam, much of what I had learned about work came from observation — reading a manager's mood, learning through experience, adjusting after mistakes. Here, I no longer needed to read my manager's mind to get it right. I only needed to understand my role well enough to perform it excellently. I could read the standard, learn it, apply it, and return to it whenever I needed a reminder.

As an entry-level crew member, I already held real responsibility inside my own role. I didn't need permission to act. I needed to understand where my responsibility began — and perform within it.

It wasn't a better definition of good performance. It was simply a different one, designed for a different environment.

When My Definition Changed

Clear standards weren't what changed me most.

What changed me was what happened when a passenger's situation fell outside the script.

If I made a thoughtful judgement, aiming for the right outcome, my manager supported me. Not blindly — there was always a process for explaining what happened and why. But good judgement was valued. I wasn't punished for taking responsibility.

Safety was different. There was no room for personal interpretation. Safety procedures were absolute. Service wasn't. Service required judgement.

The clearer I understood the standard, the more confidently I could act inside it.

That was when I realised something much bigger. It wasn't only that the company had written its standards down. It had also made clear what good performance looked like.

I Started Seeing the Same Pattern Everywhere

Singapore was the place where everything I had lived finally made sense.

By then, I had experienced two completely different definitions of good performance.

One taught me that respect meant waiting.

The other expected me to take initiative once responsibility became mine.

Working with young professionals, leaders and international teams, I began recognising the same pattern again and again.

Different people.

Different industries.

Different definitions of what good performance looked like.

The people were different. The organisations were different. The pattern stayed the same. That was the point I stopped treating these as individual cases and started treating them as one repeated observation.

Someone could reasonably argue that this was simply experience — that I would have noticed the same thing over time regardless of where I worked.

I don't think so.

The pattern didn't disappear as I became more experienced. It kept appearing in new people, in new environments. What repeated wasn't a lack of ability. It was a definition of good performance that had been learned somewhere else.

That was the moment I stopped asking whether people were capable enough. I started asking what definition of good performance they had learned before they walked into the room.

The Workshop That Made the Pattern Undeniable

I was coaching a team of young scientists preparing to host one of the year's major scientific workshops. One woman on the team stood out immediately — sharp, organised, clearly capable of managing the event's logistics without difficulty.

But the work kept stalling. Every decision, even the smallest one already inside her own responsibility, went through the same loop: wait for approval from her manager, wait for approval from me. She waited each time, and the event's timeline kept slipping.

I recognised it instantly. Not because I'd read about this pattern. Because I had lived it.

I quickly understood how the group's founder and management defined good performance, and the result this workshop needed to achieve. So I asked her coaching questions — to help her understand what her role required, and what her team needed to reach that result.

She didn't need her manager to make the decision for her. Her role already included that responsibility. What mattered most was which decision would bring the best result.

So instead, she learned to say:

After that event, her manager reported a real shift — she became visibly more confident, began offering suggestions, started taking initiative on her own.

That was the first time I saw, clearly, in someone else, the real power of what I'd been circling my whole career.

She hadn't gained a new skill.

She had learned a different definition of what good performance looked like in that environment.

The capability had always been there. The definition had changed.

It Might Not Be About Capability

The more environments I experienced, the less interested I became in comparing cultures.

I became interested in something else.

Why could the same capable person succeed in one environment and struggle in another?

The answer wasn't capability.

It was the definition of good performance people had learned before they entered the room.

Different environments define good performance differently. People carry one definition into another environment — and are often judged without ever realising the definition has changed.

Why I Built Global Citizens Skills™

Most training I encountered focused on building better communication. Better confidence. Better interview answers.

I realised something happened before all of those.

People first needed to understand how the environment defined good performance.

But the scientist in that workshop didn't need another skill. She already had the capability.

What she needed was a different way of seeing.

She needed to recognise how this workplace defined good performance — and adjust her behaviour without losing herself.

That became the reason I built Global Citizens Skills™.

Not to teach people to become someone else.

Not to teach one culture over another.

But to help people recognise how different global workplaces define good performance, so they can adapt with clarity while remaining authentic.

Every organisation develops its own expectations of what good performance looks like.

Every culture teaches its own definition at home.

Neither is wrong.

They are simply built for different environments.

Success isn't about abandoning where you came from.

It's about recognising which definition the environment is using — and responding accordingly.

That became the work I couldn't stop doing. For more than fifteen years, across three countries and more than 80 nationalities, I kept returning to the same question:

If different environments define good performance differently, another question naturally follows.

Why do some people recognise those changing expectations quickly, while others remain trapped inside the definition they learned years ago?

That question eventually became Trapped Talent.

It's one I'm still exploring.