Leadership development in Vietnam: why good intentions stall

Leadership development in Vietnam works when it fixes a named business problem rather than delivering a catalogue. The common failure is not weak content but weak transfer: managers promoted fast for technical strength, trained in English, then returned to a workplace where nothing changed.

The Adecco Group's 2026 Business Leaders Research asked more than 500 chief human resources officers across thirteen countries what mattered most and how confident they were of delivering it. The answers were clear on priorities and uncomfortable on execution: the capabilities they rated themselves worst at, talent planning at 35% satisfaction and workforce trust at 38%, were the two their own top priorities depended on most. Only 39% said they had an effective way to forecast the skills they would need.

That is a global finding, and the gap it describes is real everywhere. What it cannot tell you is the particular shape the gap takes in Vietnam, which is where the money is actually spent and wasted.

Why the gap looks different here

Vietnam promotes fast. Sustained growth means capable people become managers years earlier than they would in a mature market, and they are almost always promoted for technical excellence rather than for any evidence they can lead. That is not a criticism of the decision; it is usually the right one at the time. But it produces a management layer that has never been taught the job it now holds, and no amount of strategy clarity at the top survives contact with it.

Most leaders here run two organisations at once. A country manager in a multinational reports into a regional or global matrix in English, and leads a Vietnamese team in Vietnamese, with different expectations about hierarchy, disagreement and face on each side. Development designed for one of those two worlds equips them for half their job.

Imported feedback models often fail quietly. Frameworks built on direct challenge assume a workplace where contradicting a senior person is low-cost. Where it is not, the training is politely absorbed and never used, and nobody reports that it did not work. This is the most expensive failure mode in the category precisely because it looks like success in the room.

And leadership quality is a retention lever here in a way it is not everywhere. In a market where professional turnover runs high and talent communities are well connected, the quality of a person's direct manager is one of the clearest reasons they stay or go. Development that reaches the manager layer pays back twice: once in performance, once in the people you do not have to replace.

What actually transfers

The Adecco research names complexity of change as the single biggest barrier the C-suite reports, ahead of cost. That is a useful diagnosis, because complexity is what a catalogue adds and what good design removes. Three things separate development that changes behaviour from development that is enjoyed and forgotten.

It starts from a business problem someone has already named. Not a competency framework, not a menu of modules: a sentence describing what is going wrong and what would be different if it were fixed. If that sentence is hard to write, that is the first thing to work on, and it is worth knowing before anyone books a room.

It runs in the language the work runs in. Programmes delivered only in English exclude, or quietly under-serve, the exact managers who most need them. Where the leadership team operates bilingually, the development has to as well.

It continues after the workshop. The gap between knowing and doing is closed by coaching, by a manager who expects the new behaviour, and by a measurable thing that changes. A two-day event with no follow-through is a morale expense, not a capability investment.

Four questions worth asking any provider

If you are comparing options in Vietnam, these separate a designed programme from a catalogue with your logo on the cover:

• What business problem is this programme solving, in one sentence, and who named it? A provider who answers with a module list has not asked.
• Who delivers it, are they based in Vietnam, and can they run it in Vietnamese as well as English?
• What happens in the ninety days after the workshop, and who is accountable for it?
• How will we know it worked? Agree the measure before you start, not after.

Start with the sentence, not the catalogue

The most useful thing to bring to a first conversation is not a budget or a headcount but that one sentence: what is going wrong, and what would be different if it were fixed. Our Leadership Development page sets out both routes, the programmes that exist as they are and the ones we build around a specific problem, so you can see which of the two your sentence calls for before you speak to anyone.

Research cited is The Adecco Group 2026 Business Leaders Research, covering more than 500 chief human resources officers across thirteen countries. LHH is a global business unit of The Adecco Group; LHH Vietnam has operated here continuously since 1998.

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