To give status in Thai company

[SMF]

Dear Thai experts!

In my company here in Denmark I'm working on a IT project with our subsidiary in Thailand. Here we have found one of the employees to be a very quick learner and her understanding for the project is so good that we want to use her in a more central role in the project. Not directly as a manager, but sort of a project coordinating role on the user side, or we could call it "lead super user".

The issue is that this user is a female and she is only 22 years old.

My question is therefore, how can we give her the status so that the other users will respect her and listen to her, even though they are much older than her? With my knowledge about the Thai culture, this is not a very easy task, but would it be enough to give her the right title and make her i.e. refer directly to the local CFO (the project sponsor/owner in Thailand)?

[LivinLOS]

Depends on her..

Like many things in life status and face is earnt not given.. I know an early 20's woman who regularly argues with the head of the land office, confidently discusses with Pian (mayor), etc..

How she handles responsibility, how she handles staff, how she deals with it is the answer to your question.. Titles really mean little, even in face concious asia..

[barfly]

I can't answer SMF's question but last time out I realised that age is MUCH more important than I had previously though with normally quite forceful girls unable to criticise directly another,older girl. It was also the first time(after 16years!!) that I heard people being referred to as "pee ***" or *nong ***" instead of just khun ***.