Q: Have you found Cultural differences, setting up MITS (Melbourne International School) in order to gain the trust and the respect of the players?

When I first came to Singapore I (Michael) had a quite interesting experience.

In Australia, when a kid doesn’t look at you eye to eye, then you basically say, “Hey, listen, look at me while I’m talking.”

So, I was coaching this Indonesian boy once and he was a really lovely boy. We were on the court and as the big tough, but fair Australian that I saw myself as out on the court I was trying to push what I wanted from him. At the change of ends, once he went and sat down and I was a little bit disappointed in the way that he executed a drill and came up to the net. His mum was there at the time. I was talking to him and he was looking down and I said: Look at me when I’m talking.”

He just kept looking down to the point where I said: “Why don’t you look at me? You have to look at me when I’m talking to you!” He continuously never looked at me. I could see that he started to get upset and I think at that time he may have even cried. When the boy walked down to the opposite half of the court his mum approached me and said: “What are you doing to my son?”

She politely said to me that in Asia and especially in their culture, if you look somebody in the eye, it’s actually disrespectful. So, there I (Michael) was trying to get a kid to look at me, but in actual fact, by his culture, he was doing the right thing by not looking at me. So, cultural differences like that was very evident when I first came to Asia. But once you’re aware of them, you get used to them and you sort of understand.

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