Cultural Insight Drives Impressive Results from OFS
In this talk, the speaker shares a comprehensive framework for achieving high‑quality output from online Filipino specialists (OFS). He argues that quality, not quantity, should be the primary goal and outlines a series of inter‑related practices: building trust by guaranteeing job security and providing training; setting clear expectations and shifting responsibility for impressiveness onto the worker; fostering open, respectful communication that includes personal rapport; respecting Filipino cultural norms such as indirect communication, strong family orientation, and holiday observances; assigning meaningful job titles to boost status and accountability; implementing a kind yet strict quality‑assurance process; removing practical obstacles (internet, equipment, environment); and using thoughtful incentives. A case study with a client named David illustrates how treating an OFS with empathy, offering support during personal crises, and avoiding profit‑sharing can still lead to exceptional performance and internal promotion. The speaker concludes that time‑tracking is counter‑productive; instead, creating a supportive, career‑focused environment unlocks impressive work from Filipino specialists.
Chapters
How to Get Impressive Results from a Virtual Assistant. I've been hiring virtual assistants from the Philippines since 2005, and today I'm going to go into a deep dive on how I get such good results from it. Before I do that, I want to comment on the title of this, which I talked about. How to Get Impressive Results from a Virtual Assistant. I'm actually not talking about virtual assistants. I actually want to talk about ofs, about online Filipino specialists, because this is specifically about people from the Philippines, people who are really good at what they do. How you get better results from those people. How do you get good work out of someone? And maybe that person is doing data entry or maybe they're writing your newsletter. Maybe they're doing social media management. Maybe they're a programmer or a graphic designer. How do you get really amazing results from people? So this stems from two different things. I recently had a conversation with the SEO team of mine. I have five or six people working on our SEO team and they write content, they get links, they update our website, they do all kinds of stuff to help us rank well on Google. And in that one day, I found some content that they had written and published that was pretty mediocre. And I wasn't really happy with it. And they knew that what they had published was mediocre, that it wasn't good, because I've seen them do some really, really great stuff. And, and this content wasn't good. And so I gave them the charge that their responsibility was to make their content impressive. And then after I sent it to my SEO team, I really started sending it to other people. I sent it to my content team and my social media team and my QA person and to my customer support people. And I really just sent this throughout the company. Hey, your job is to be impressive. It's not to get work done. It's not just to put something out there, just to put it out there to check a. Check a box. I don't care about how many things you get done. I care about how well done those things are. I don't care how many customers you respond to. If you're making customers mad, then I would rather have you not respond to them. I'd rather have you make them super, super happy. Everyone that you respond to and respond to way fewer than to do really poor work and do a lot. So before I get into this, I'll just say that this comes back to quality over quantity, which the Philippines in general has a culture of quantity over quality. And a big part of that is because of the way the culture works. So one of the things I'm going to talk about today is cultural issues. But before I get into the cultural issues, I want to talk about trust. So the number one way that you can get impressive results from people in the Philippines is to gain their trust. And I know this is not what you want to hear. This is not like crack the whip on them or monitor them with, with a time monitoring thing. That's not, that's not how I get impressive results from people. The way I do it is I do things specifically to gain that person's trust in me, that I'm not going to yell at them, that I'm not going to fire them, that if they do something poor that they're not going to lose their job, that if they get sick, they're not going to lose their job, that if they have a problem with their work or if they don't get along with someone else, then they're not going to lose their job, that they're not going to not get paid, that I'm not going to dock them pay. In the Philippines, they're scared of losing face. And if you don't reassure them that you're going to treat them well, that if you don't gain their trust, that they trust you to treat them well, to take care of them. They don't want to go above and beyond and step out on a limb and risk doing something incorrectly versus just kind of getting it done and getting it done mediocre. The other side of that is culturally in the Philippines, it is the supervisor's responsibility to make sure things are done right. It's not the worker's responsibility. The worker's responsibility is just to get it done. Then the supervisor makes sure it's done right. Well, in the US that's the opposite. And for me, that's the opposite where I don't want it to be my responsibility to ensure something is done correctly or impressive. So I gave them the charge that it is now their responsibility to be impressive. And it's. And I specifically took myself out of the loop when doing this. I said I don't want to be the one verifying that things are impressive. And the reason I was able to do that with them is because I've spent a lot of time gaining trust. So here are some things that you can and should do to gain trust from your workers in you. Now, I know that you're concerned about you trusting them. You don't trust them to bring them into your business. What if they steal something, what if they mess something up? What if they do something wrong? I get that this is the opposite. This is you doing things to gain their trust in you as a boss. So here are a number of things you can do to gain their trust. The number one thing is to provide training to them. They really, really crave training so they can grow in their career. They want you to train them. Providing training says to them, I'm willing to invest in you. I'm willing to invest in you as an employee and as a person and in your career. I trust that you're going to stick with me and so I'm going to invest in you. That to them, gives them so much more trust in you as an employer that you're going to give them the correct expectations, which that's the next thing I was going to talk about is setting clear expectations. I guess I'll do it a little bit right now. One of the ways that you get really great work from is set clear expectations. If you define things well, then they know what to expect. And in the Philippines, like I've said before, they don't want to disappoint you. They don't want to let you down. And if expectations are unclear, then they don't want to try more. When trying less is just as likely to put them into the exact correct spot of what your expectations are. So if your expectations are way up here and you haven't given them this expectation, which I hadn't, I hadn't given them my expectation of impressive, then they're not willing to try to be up here. So when you're providing training, going back to gaining their trust, providing training, you get to set your expectations. Your expectations are this or this. Your expectations are this many. Your expectations are this, this good of something. So in your training you're going to say, well, hey, look at this thing that someone else did. I want your work to be like this. This is how good I want your work to be. The next thing in getting their trust is how you treat them. So being patient with people, being kind with people, not yelling at people, not blaming people, and actually more than not blaming people would be taking the blame yourself when something goes wrong. And this has been a big deal for me, I think in gaining their trust when something goes wrong, I typically approach it with, hey, I feel like I did something wrong here, or this work quality is poor and I feel like maybe I left something out of the training. I'm wondering what's missing here for why this was poor. So the way you treat people, the way you approach treating them, especially in the Philippines, really makes a difference on their willingness to, to go above and beyond or to try something new or to really try and hit the top levels of performance to be impressive versus if they fear that they're going to get yelled at, if they fear that you're going to be mean to them, then it's not worth the effort to be impressive. When being underwhelming is maybe just as likely to hit that sweet spot for you as going above. Like if they go above and they do, if they do A, B, C, D and E and ABC was correct and D and E are incorrect, then you might yell at them. Even though if they do A, you're probably going to yell at them for not doing B and C, but at least they didn't do the extra work and get yelled at. I hope that makes sense. Yeah. So the way you treat people is a really big deal in gaining that trust, which is another one of my ways to get impressive results from people. So things that I've talked about are expectations, building trust, providing training, and the way you treat people. And all of these things are not what you were expecting to hear on how to get impressive results. You wanted to hear, like, tell them to do it better or don't they recognize that the way they do this job has. Affects their job? Yeah, they recognize these things, but you must do things to draw that really good work out of them. So here's the next thing that will help you get impressive results, which is do a good job of communicating. So this isn't just about training or feedback or whatever. This is about having open communication with them where they feel like they can communicate with you. So one of the things that I will do with people when I first hire them is I'll tell them, hey, look, at some point I know you're going to get stuck on something. You're not going to know what to do when that happens. I need you to come to me because you're going to want to disappear. And disappearing is the worst situation that can happen. And if you come to me, then I'm likely to help you solve this problem. By setting this expectation with them, I. I open up this communication option for them where when they feel like they're stuck, when they feel like something's going wrong, rather than turning in something really poor, they can come to me and say, hey, I don't know what to do here. And when they can say, I don't know what to do, or I Have a question that really allows them to try other things depending on how you respond. If your response is oh my gosh, that's a stupid question, I already told you that, then they're probably not going to be willing to try. But if you open this communication with where you allow them to ask you questions, even if they're stupid questions, even if you've answered them before, if you've answered them before, you can tell something is wrong in your communication. If they're not willing to communicate with you, then they're probably also not willing to go above and beyond in their work. They're not willing to be impressive. Another way I've done this is ask them about their families. What is your family like? How many kids do you have? Do you have a wife? Where do you live? What do you like to do? I'll talk about these things with people which lets them know that I care about them as a person. Also in this communication that opens communication, I'll ask people, how do you feel about your job? What is your role? How do you feel about your role at online jobs? What's your workload like? Are you overworked? Are you under work? Do you like the things that you're doing? Where else could you contribute with us that maybe I'm missing? I'll have an open communication with them and this is strictly about work stuff. Although maybe it ends up not being about work. But allowing that communication to happen allows them to trust you more, allows them to come to you with problems. It allows them to try something new and to recognize you're a human. They're a human. Where initially you might think they're a robot and they might think you're a big bad mean boss. You're both just humans working on the same level and they can try something new and you're not going to scream at them about it. So the next thing, this is a good time to talk about the cultural context of the Philippines and how they communicate. So typically the Philippines emphasizes relationships. They, they really thrive on relationships and feeling important and needed in that relationship. Much more so than in the US and in that relationship, respect is a really big deal. This is why they'll call you sir. This is why they, when they have communication, when they talk with each other, they often start or end things with po. It's a sign of respect. So they also tend to be very indirect and non confrontational. Non confrontational is what they say. They also say shy where they don't want to push an issue, they don't want to make something difficult. Often when communicating in the Philippines with a Filipino boss, they feel like they need to stroke their ego. They need to beat around the bush. If there's a problem, they're going to. They're going to talk their way around it, hope that the other person infers the problem. Why they do this, I don't know. This is just their style. Typically, Filipinos very much value family time and community. Family and community, like in their relationships, family tops everything. Community is really important. Work is then probably a third most important thing. Now, work is probably becoming a second most important to family in Philippines culture. But this just gives you an idea of what I'm about to say next and why it's so important. So next, understanding Filipino holidays and traditions and customs. If you don't do this, they feel that you are insensitive, that you are a bad boss, that you don't care. Now, going back to what I've said before about getting trust, if they feel like you don't care, then their likelihood to deliver impressive work is low. And so in all of these things in relationship, in their communication style, with it being indirect, and you come at them with, hey, you didn't do this right? And you're very direct, which I'm very direct. If you do that, they'll feel pushed down. And if they feel pushed down, then their willingness to go above and beyond is low. So respect the culture, respect their holidays and their traditions, respect their need for family time, which, yeah, it may seem like it's a lot, and it is. But that's part of getting impressive work from them. All right, the next two things would be titles and quality control. In the Philippines, titles matter. People care about the title of their work, which I ignored this for probably 15 years. I just didn't really know because as I started working with people in the Philippines, there was nobody to tell me. There was nobody to turn to to say, oh, this will make this better. I've become that person. I've become that person on accident, just by talking about it and then learning about it. So in the Philippines, people look at each other and their titles, and so if you want to get someone to take responsibility for work, to deliver impressive work, give them a title of social media manager or customer support or customer support representative or customer delight Manager or customer delight. Just a title. So they can, when they talk to their friends, they can say, oh, I'm in charge of customer delight. At online jobs, that title for them has a social impact, it has a financial impact, it has an impact. On how they feel about their work, about their job, about what they're doing. So one of the titles I gave to one of my people was content manager. Like, you're in charge of our content, you manage our content. Another one was quality assurance manager. Your job is to make sure that the quality of all of our everything is high. You are to look at stuff and see, is this correct? Is it done well? Is this up to our standards? Is this. And I really, recently I said, is this impressive? That's your job. Your job is to say, is this impressive? Your job isn't to make it impressive. It's to say, hey, look, here are some problems with this thing. Here's what I see, here's what I like, here's what I don't like. So those two things give titles. And then I hired a quality assurance person. I put them in charge of saying, like, is this good or is this not good? And people know they're going to turn this over to him before they turn it over to me. So they're going to get reviewed. Now, sometimes that can be a problem because then they feel like they have a manager over them and it's that manager's job to make sure it's good, not theirs. That hasn't been the consequence of this that I've seen. It could be. Just be careful with how you implement quality control. When I put the quality assurance person in charge, I told him that I wanted him to do it with love. I want you to make sure that you are being kind to people and being patient with people and not being commanding or demanding or demeaning. I want you to be careful with how you treat people in doing your qa. I still want you to be really strict in your qa, but be kind with it. Okay, I have three more thoughts on getting impressive results. One is make sure there's not a problem, that they don't have something in their way, that their Internet's not too slow, their computer is not too slow, that their working situation is not too hot for them to work, that there's not something standing in their way. This is an easy thing to approach. You ask them, is there something standing in your way here? Next thing you can offer incentives. Okay, so in this one, this is going to lead me to the very end of this conversation. I want to read a conversation that I had with David. So David sends me an email a while back and talks about his ofs. He talks about how amazing there. And I'll just read you some of this. My ofs Started off just writing a couple of articles a week for my newsletter, managing my Facebook posts and helping me edit my books. Now this is probably a couple months into working with this ofs. David's sending this to me. David continues. Now she has complete ownership of my newsletter. She writes the articles, does the research on local goings on, puts quizzes in the newsletter, along with jokes and quotes. In addition to putting a link for an ebook upsell, she formats the newsletter, runs the whole project. At this point, all I do for the newsletter is give a cursory glance when she sends it to me for approval. Before my ofs, I spent hours and hours each week. She does it way faster than I did and I like her version better than my own. That's impressive work. He continues. For my social media, originally she managed my Facebook account. Now she creates graphics and videos in Canva and posts them for me. She also monitors and contributes to several FB groups that we have joined. In addition to that, she also posts for me on Instagram and YouTube as well. So you get the idea here from David that he has this really, really amazing person, that she's just doing amazing stuff. So at the end of this email, David asked me, should I, should I offer her profit sharing? I want to give her more. She's doing so well. I, I want to give her more. And my the short answer to should you give profit sharing Is no. The long answer is irrelevant. The point is what David did with it and I want you to understand how he treats this person. First, he was interested in giving her more. He wanted to share more with her because she's doing so well. Well, that tells you how he cares about her. That tells you the relationship that David is building with this ofs. The relationship matters. How you treat them matters in the kind of work you're going to get back from them. So David sends me an email this week. He says I didn't offer the profit sharing and it has paid off big time. She is now a supervisor. She has another one of my ofs, almost completely trained in putting out my newsletter, which means that first one is not even doing the newsletter anymore. Someone else is. He says, last week she came to me with a serious family problem and might need some time off to help her family. I told her to take whatever time she needed and not be concerned that her salary would still be coming to her so it would be one less thing for her to worry about. And that tells you how David is treating this person. And in the end that's where I want to go with this whole conversation is you want to get great work out of people, treat them well, set correct expectations, provide really great training, gain their trust, give them a title, get a quality assurance person. What you don't want to do is turn to time tracking time tracking to say oh are you actually working this time is a bad way to try and get impressive results out of someone in the Philippines instead of tracking time recognize they want to provide great work they want to progress in their career they don't want a project they don't want a, they don't want a gig they want a career and having a career and being able to progress in that career means doing great work. They know that they want that you just need to provide them the environment in which they can do impressive work and feel comfortable. So some of that is recognizing the culture some of that is all these other things that we've talked about today.
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