Tan Kai Foong

100x132 Ms Tan Kai Foong is a faculty member at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore where she teaches both classes in cultural intelligence, leadership and HR. She has 13 years of experience as a consultant psychologist at PDI Ninth House, a global leadership consulting fim, where she held various leadership roles. She was the Regional Director of Leadership Solutions for Asia Pacific, as well as the Deputy General Manager for PDI Singapore for 5 years.

Kai Foong maintains an active practice as an executive coach, working with global leaders across Asia Pacific. Her coaching clients are high potentials and senior level leaders of multinational organizations, across Asia Pacific, who desire to take their game up to the next level. She has a particular passion for the typical challenges faced by Asian managers needing to operate in a global organization. Some recent clients include Holcim group of companies, SG Priv Asia, Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil.

Kai Foong’s professional training in Psychology includes a Masters in Occupational Psychology (Merit) from the University of London, and an Honours Degree in Psychology (2nd upper) from the National University of Singapore. She also has a Master of Business degree from the Nanyang Technological University. As a Full Member of the Singapore Psychological society, Kai Foong keeps up to date professionally by participating in conferences and elective training.

Cultural Intelligence & Global Leadership Development: Implications for Coaching

The global and dynamic nature of businesses today makes leadership a multi-cultural challenge more than ever before. As we move into the twenty first century, the stakes are much higher for organizations and leaders to be more effective in managing across diverse national, ethnic and organizational cultures. Developing Cultural Intelligence (CQ) “defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings” (Early & Ang, 2003) will become a key competitive advantage for leaders .

As leadership coaches, cultural intelligence presents a theoretically sound and elegant framework for us to help ourselves and our clients navigate the paradoxes of leading across cultures.

This session will focus on presenting the CQ framework as a road map to navigate the cultural terrain, showcase some tools available to measure it, and explore applications of using it in a leadership coaching context.