What Seven Years in Korea Taught Me About Why Employees Don't Tell Leaders What They Need to Hear

When I moved to South Korea in my early twenties, I assumed my biggest challenge would be obvious.

I was a 22-year-old blonde American woman who didn't speak Korean, working in a country where hierarchy, age, and social harmony play a much larger role than what I had experienced in the United States.

I was wrong. The hardest part wasn't the language. It wasn't being foreign.

It was learning that when someone asked for my opinion, they weren't always asking for my opinion. At least not in the way I understood the question.

More than once, a leader would ask for feedback on a decision. Believing I had been invited into a discussion, I would offer an honest assessment, explain concerns, or suggest an alternative approach. The room would become noticeably uncomfortable.

Eventually, I realized the purpose of the conversation was often not to decide what to do next. The decision had already been made. The conversation was part of building alignment around the decision.

I wasn't violating a rule. I was violating an unspoken expectation. And that experience changed how I think about organizational culture.

Before living overseas, I thought culture was largely about values and leadership.

After seven years in South Korea, I think culture is better understood as a system of incentives, expectations, relationships, and unwritten rules that determine how information moves.

The question isn't:

"Do employees feel comfortable speaking up?"

The question is:

"What happens when they do?"

People learn surprisingly quickly what information is safe to share, when it is safe to share it, and with whom.

Those lessons become culture.

One lesson became particularly clear when I watched leaders respond to individual performance problems.

In one organization, a single employee wasn't meeting expectations. Instead of addressing that employee directly, leadership removed desk dividers, rearranged workspaces, and increased visibility of every employee's computer screen. Everyone experienced the consequence. Only one person had created the problem.

In another case, concerns about one individual's workplace attire resulted in new rules for every woman in the organization.

Neither intervention addressed the underlying issue. Both taught employees an important lesson about how the organization solved problems. Leaders often focus on the policy they create. Employees pay attention to the signal it sends.

Fortunately, I also worked for a leader who understood both Korean and North American organizational cultures. He welcomed disagreement in private as long as I supported decisions once they were made. He gave me space to ask questions, make mistakes, and learn. Most importantly, he helped me understand that effective influence wasn't about winning arguments. It was about understanding what mattered to other people and framing ideas accordingly. That lesson has stayed with me far longer than any organizational chart or leadership model.

The biggest lesson I brought home from South Korea wasn't about Korea at all. It was about systems. Before moving overseas, I tended to think of leadership as a function of personality. Today, I pay much more attention to the systems leaders create around themselves. The meeting norms. The reporting structures. The response to mistakes. The incentives. The everyday conditions people work within. Because those systems ultimately determine whether important information reaches decision-makers.

And in my experience, culture is rarely defined by an organization's annual picnic, mission statement, or employee engagement campaign.

It's defined by what employees learn happens when they speak up.