Courage creates trust: Tiffany Tang
Reckitt Marketing Director Tiffany Tang understands the importance of a cohesive corporate culture. Now she is using her leadership skills to drive the company’s growth across Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam.
After 25 years in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, Tiffany Tang has a clear eye for what works in the space. As Marketing Director Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam of global health and hygiene powerhouse Reckitt, she ascribes her success to a mixture of humility and courage, claiming that a modern leader needs to be humble enough to genuinely listen to their partners and followers but courageous enough to speak directly and respectfully.
"Keeping learning, stay humble – this applies whether you’re at the bottom of the ladder or the very top," Tang tells The CEO Magazine, explaining that this philosophy has been with her since the beginning of her career, when she started in sales.
"The right analytics, the right data – every company needs to access the right insights to make their KPIs effective."
It’s also an attitude that fits neatly into the culture at Reckitt, which sells 30 million products every day while mobilizing a 40,000-strong workforce.
Having been in the post of Marketing Director for Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam for four years, Tang explains that Reckitt’s corporate culture is a critical enabler of its success.
"We encourage courageous conversation," she notes. "We want a diversity of thoughts and ideas because things are very dynamic. If teams experience psychological safety at work, they can thrive."
Ownership and freedom
This approach impacts heavily on the leadership style favored at all levels of management, where each leader is given the creative space and tangible support to stamp their own mark on the brands and processes that they oversee.
This strong sense of ownership is, according to Tang, what drives entrepreneurial and innovative thinking across the organization.
"We are given that freedom, that ownership, and it makes us agile because we are entirely invested in securing success for what we are building," she explains.
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After eight years with Reckitt, Tang says that this cultural affinity for empowering its leaders, particularly women, is what has kept her happily engaged with her work and her pursuit of new challenges, goals and successes.
"Women often feel like they’re not ready for certain positions, or that sometimes when they have progressed to certain levels, they feel stuck," she says.
"I’ve gone through this journey, and it’s not easy. I want to encourage them, to help them on their journey as well."
Encouraging leadership
Reckitt is investing heavily in South-East Asia, from new R&D centers in Singapore to state-of-the-art factories in China, as these regional economies assume greater importance on the global stage. For Tang, this means adapting and innovating faster in an already highly competitive industry.
"We have the right culture in place to succeed, but it must be paired with the right processes," she insists. "The right analytics, the right data – every company needs to access the right insights to make their KPIs effective. What gets measured gets done."
"If the teams are thriving, results are coming in, it’s all result of maintaining the right culture and leadership behaviors."
While creating, maintaining and stress-testing a clear operating model falls on the shoulders of the leader, Tang notes that empowering the people in key positions is as vital as setting the right structures and a positive overall example.
"Operating models don’t live on paper; they live in the actions of the people who use them. So, if you develop the right people to drive it through, while giving them the flexibility to refine it, then the desired business results will come," she says.
Encouraging authenticity
With Reckitt embarking on increasingly ambitious technological implementations, ranging from campaign optimization via AI to boosting sustainability across its value chain, Tang believes the keys to success include remaining agile and authentic.
"Since we’re highly entrepreneurial, we have to overcome a lot of obstacles and a lot of changes, which requires having a high learning agility. This means having courageous conversations while also ensuring their psychological safety at work by being supportive of one another," Tang points out.
"My key leadership values are what drive me to believe in myself and continue to be my authentic self. Whatever comes about after that, if the teams are thriving and results are coming in, it’s all a result of maintaining the right culture and leadership behaviors."