Interview • Portraits
Trainer Spotlight | Feedback Is Not a Conversation — It's a Culture
Catherine Claudepierre, Managing Director at Lead and Succeed, highlights the importance of feedback and trust-based conversations
Q1: You founded Lead and Succeed to help leaders and organisations unlock their potential. What is the core mission behind your work, and how does your approach differ from traditional leadership training?
At Lead and Succeed, our mission is simple: we help people thrive — as individuals, as leaders, and as teams. After 26 years working across Asia-Pacific and globally, I have seen too many leadership programmes that deliver content but don't change behaviour. What makes us different is that we never deliver off-the-shelf solutions. Every programme we design is tailored to the specific culture and context of the organisations we work with and the challenges their employees face. We also bring a genuinely multicultural lens to everything we do — cultural intelligence is not a module we add at the end; it is woven into all our programmes.
Q2: In the "Leading People & Teams" module for the FCCS Leadership Program, you focus on feedback, recognition, and difficult conversations. Why are these skills so essential for modern leaders, and what are the main challenges in applying them effectively?
These three skills sit at the heart of what it means to lead people successfully — and yet they often remain among the most underused tools in a leader's kit and the most difficult skills to master confidently. Feedback drives growth, recognition sustains engagement, and the ability to hold a difficult conversation with honesty and empathy is what separates average leaders from exceptional leaders. The challenge I see consistently, across industries and cultures, is that most people understand the value of these skills intellectually but struggle to apply them under pressure. They either avoid the conversation altogether, underestimating the cost of not giving the feedback, or they deliver constructive feedback in a way that triggers defensiveness rather than self-reflection and behavioural change. In a nutshell, their intent is not aligned with their impact. That is exactly what this session is designed to address — not just the theory, but the practice, with real scenarios and role-plays that build confidence to deliver a feedback that benefits both the giver and the receiver.
Q3:What practical advice would you give to leaders who want to build a culture of trust, accountability, and open feedback within their teams?
How a leader shows up moment to moment determines the impact and influence they have on their people, and largely affects the organization's climate, culture, and outcomes. Start with yourself and role model. The culture of your team is a direct reflection of the behaviours you model as a leader. You bring the weather to the workplace — and here in Singapore, we know how quickly the weather can shift from sunny to cloudy to stormy within the space of two or three hours. Leaders cannot afford that kind of unpredictability. Creating psychological safety and an environment where feedback flows honestly in both directions requires consistency, every single day. If you want your team to give feedback, you need to actively ask for it — and then visibly act on what you hear. If you want accountability, you need to hold yourself to the same standards you expect of others. Three things make the biggest difference in practice: first, build trust and invest in relationships as they are the foundation that ensures people are ready to both give and receive feedback honestly. Second, make feedback a habit for the team, not an event. Brief, specific, regular conversations outperform the compulsory annual review every time. And third, remember that what works in one cultural context may not work in another. In Asia-Pacific especially, adapting your style without diluting your message is a critical skill. The good news is that all of this can be learned — which is exactly what brings us together at the FCCS Leadership Program.
Catherine Claudepierre is one of the trainers of the FCCS Leadership Program, bringing her expertise in leadership conversations, feedback culture, and trust-based team development directly to FCCS members.
