63: Cross cultural influences and leadership in PR with Becky Cho, VP Corporate Affairs, VFC APAC

Shownotes:Becky Cho, Head of Corporate Affairs at VFC, APAC is my guest on of The Elephant in the Room podcast this week. Becky has lived and worked across countries and continents and did not take the traditional route into PR. Interestingly she was an art agent before moving to Leo Burnett and then taking on her first role in corporate affairs at Philip Morris in Taiwan. In the episode Becky speaks about her own journey, cross cultural influences, transferable skills, the barriers she faced while navigating her career, being a disruptor and good trouble maker, leadership, role models, transformational trends for our industry, employee engagement and skills for the future. We also spoke about the importance of work life balance, micromanagement, over communications and the importance taking charge to craft your own path, being fearless and not being afraid to fail.As Becky said, β€˜we are not brought up to fight, we are brought up to share, to comply and follow the rules. So, figure out a way to accept yourself so that you are not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything. As leaders we need to take the liberty to do basic things for ourselves, like just turning off your phone for the day. Sometimes the most mundane things but hard to do.’ Memorable Passages from the podcast: πŸ‘‰πŸΎ Thank you, it's really a pleasure to meet you again. It's been a long time and with the COVID world. I cannot tell you what a great surprise when I hear you reaching out because in the corporate world, we really have to do that. Otherwise we don't really get an opportunity to meet each other and it brings us closer if we can meet virtually. So thank you for the opportunity.πŸ‘‰πŸΎ Yes, of course. So I have a really interesting, I would say cross-cultural background, so if I'm changing geography, as I'm speaking and making reference to location, please bear with me. I was born in Hong Kong, I left Hong Kong as a teenager and moved to Canada where I continued my education and do my college and university, and actually subsequently I immigrated to Canada.πŸ‘‰πŸΎ So I think from an educational point of view, I am raised as a Hong Kong student, British education, I read and write Chinese, completely bilingual. So that gave me a really solid background on culture of my own nationality. But Canada really opened my eyes, I think the East and West was a really good mix for me and it really also opened up a perspective for me later in my career. I wouldn't say skill because I think we all can do and learn skills from different parts of the world, and especially with inclusion, diversity, being such a key focus these days for corporations, I couldn't say more about the mix of Eastern Western in my early education.πŸ‘‰πŸΎ Sometimes when are talking about inclusion and diversity, that I would participate in like say the Western part of the world, I feel that having that background, that culture really provide the foundation for a lot of the discussion that's not otherwise available to my Western colleagues. πŸ‘‰πŸΎ Yeah, so I think long story short is, I did stumble into many different areas before I come into public relations. I'm not your traditional business school, studying communication, become a journalist and then turn it into PR. That's not the traditional journey. I took a completely unconventional one.πŸ‘‰πŸΎ Early in my career, I was actually an art agent, so I guess half of my career is in the arts. And when you in the arts, one very common phenomenon is, you're dealing with a lot of starving