The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Social Intelligence For Leaders In Covid-19   We admire people with very high IQs, as badges of intellectual prowess.  Members of Mensa International are an elite group established in 1946, for people who scored in the ninety-eight percentile or higher in the standardised IQ test.  We respect technical experts be they lawyers, medicos, engineers, architects, etc.  The thing we desire most is that we be treated well by our boss, Mensa reject or otherwise.  Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman was a bestseller and we would all prefer that our employers be people who voraciously devoured the gospel according to Goleman, chapter and verse.   The obvious things for leaders are often subsumed by society’s devotion to brainpower.  Having social intelligence means being able to get on well with all sorts of other people.  It means being the boss the team would crawl across a mile of broken glass for.  How do we up the ante on our social intelligence?   We need to invest time in relationships.  Too obvious you cry

The Leader Must Be The Flagbearer Of Hope   Daily reports of doom and gloom descend on all of us through the media.  Unemployment, enterprise obliteration, crashing growth rates, plague and pestilence run rampant.  The short term looks bad, but the long term looks worse.  Unlock in haste and repent at leisure or stay locked in and gamble with elimination. I was participating in a German Chamber webinar where the speaker flagged his company’s current research which said 39% of Japanese worried they would lose their job and the same number feared their firm would collapse.  Every continent has trouble and every continent is enmeshed in global supply chain configurations, that line up the national economic dominos for big scale, long lasting recessions.  Optimists like me are running on fumes right now.   As a leader, I have to be a fully paid up, active member of Optimists International.  I have to give my team hope of a way through and a future – together.  US firms are fast to furlough and fire, compared to J

Embracing Change In This Covid-19 Crisis   The concept of co-existence with the virus puts a different spin on the “new normal”.  Yes, the lockdowns are coming off, but what will we need to be doing from now going forward?  We may be moving to a murky world that is not quite office and not quite home.  We will be keeping aspects of both, but not having the totality of either.   Here are sixteen ways to master on-going coexistence with the virus.   Every morning, get your brain into 100% productivity by getting into your work battle dress as per usual.You may be going to the office or you may be working at home, or you may be doing a bit of both, with a late flex-time dash to downtown. Anyway, you are not on holiday, so no jammies, shorts or T-shirts.   Start everyday with a group huddle at 9.00am. Whether some are in the office and others are at home, cameras must be switched on to set the professional tone for the work day.  It is important that everyone can see each other to feel connected.  It also aler

Bad Bosses In Covid-19   Douglas McGregor coined the descriptors Theory X and Theory Y bosses back in the 1960s.  Basically, Theory X bosses doubted people working for them and felt their worst elements had to be watched carefully.  Theory Y bosses saw the potential in their team and wanted to develop them further.  It was not quite black and white, one was 100% good the other was 100% bad.  It was more a question of where to sit on the scale in view of the team and circumstances you faced.  Theory X bosses did have to deal with people who were not motivated and couldn’t be trusted.  The problem became that they started from a negative position, rather than a neutral one.  Another researcher into human motivation, Abraham Maslow, presciently warned us, “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.   Here we are today, with a lot of our staff out of sight, locked away at home.  How do bosses know what they are doing?  Have some bosses moved more to the Theory X side of the equation, expecting th

Many leaders get to the top because they are very smart, technically skilled people, with broad experience and high levels of competence in their area of speciality.  In Japan, they often become the leader because they have been with the company for a certain number of years or have reached a certain age and stage. Scary thought that, isn’t it.  In our collective Covid-19 world, whether you are legend of your area speciality or just of a certain chronological age, the leadership skills we need today are going to be different from the “previous normal”.  Here are eight ninja skills to help us shine as capable leaders in lockdown.   Arouse in the other person an eager want Leaders want stuff and their bosses want stuff too.  That often means we are telling people what we want, how we want it and when we want it.  Reflect on this last week for you – does that summarise your monologue of late?  Leaders with better communication skills express desired outcomes in ways which resonate with the highest self interes

Stressed Leaders Must Lead Their People Through This Stress   Watching your business implode is stressful.  Losing access to good staff through furloughs, firing loyal people through brutal necessity, bum rushing suppliers by not paying them, seeing your clients cancel orders, smelling burning cash reserves are all hurtful and hit hard.  You didn’t sign up for this meltdown, but it is upon you anyway.  You are under immense stress and so are your people.  How are you dealing with your team in this environment?   I was watching a video of an American sales guru talking about how to lead your team in lockdown.  He had already fired one third of his own team and had some harsh advice on how to inspire the survivors of the first wave of cuts.  Those working from home had to be ridden hard to make sure they performed.  If people couldn’t match their number targets, they needed to be fired immediately.  Whenever there has been a recession, companies fire people and those remaining fear they are next, every working

Leading From The Covid-19 War Frontline   In wartime, there are leaders back at HQ, pouring over maps, receiving intelligence, creating strategies and making decisions about where to position their troops.  On the frontline, there are on the ground commanders, assessing the situation and then following or adjusting HQ orders, based on what they see in front of them. At the sharp point of battle, leaders are with their troops, as they all move into close mortal combat with the enemy.  Where are you in this battle with Covid-19 and the business terrors it has unleashed?   We are in lockdown, so for many of us our troops have been dispersed to the winds.  Contact is done remotely over video conferencing or phone hook-ups.  The chain of command has become much more fraught, than when we were all happily congregated in the office.  In this situation, communication and coordination can become more challenging in the fog of war against the virus enemy.  Delegation becomes a necessity and with it the challenges that

Lockdown Leadership and Coordination   Technically Japan hasn’t gone into lockdown, as other countries have, but in typical Japanese fashion, it is effectively the same thing.  By requiring “honourable everyone” to cooperate with the Government’s “request”, they have achieved the same outcome as a lawful direction.  My fellow Aussies have had to be given fines for not cooperating with lawful requirements, making us toe the line, because we are wild colonial boys and girls.  Not here in Japan though and so now we have many more people working from home.    Leading from home is a challenge.  The first things that pop up are the difficulties of coordinating things that were so much easier in the office.  In this isolation environment there is a greater degree of separation between the team members and with the boss.  Everything seems to slow down and drift even more than normal.  Actually, in the best of times, despite your heroic leadership efforts, nothing moves at a rapid pace in white collar work in Japan an

The Nuts And Bolts Of Running Virtual Meetings   Running meetings used to pretty straightforward.  We would all assemble in the meeting room, go through the agenda and then get back to work.  Now people are sitting alone, operating at all different levels of adjustment to working in isolation. They are in all different family situations too, some of which can make concentrating on remote meetings very taxing.    As the host of the meeting or as the leader of the meeting, you have a role to play.  Start by making sure to welcome people by their name as they join the call. It can be simple, “welcome Sachiko, thanks for joining the meeting”.  Using people’s names gives them a feeling of inclusion and comfort.  Some people will join the meeting by phone and the name won’t necessarily pop up on the attendees list screen.  If so, just ask who is joining by phone today, so you can connect the code for participation, with the name of the person on the call.   The worst combination is having some people on a speaker p

Leading Your Japanese Team In Lockdown   Your team are sitting at home, unable to go outside and so as the leader what are your priorities?  Crunching out work, pushing people to perform, driving results?  Are you concerned about your people’s mental health?  They are used to working together in a group for 16 hours a day and now they are at home, either on their own or jammed together with the family, in their small home.  What are your expectations and what is the tone of your communication?   This has never happened before, so the road map doesn’t exist for us as leaders. Where do we start and how do we cope? Let’s start with the identification of the possible and the impossible.  If you were able to go through this exercise in the office, while everyone was still together great, but if you didn’t, then you need to do it now.  The technology exists to group people together on video calls.  A massive town hall of everyone might even be possible, but probably division by division, section by section will be

Covid-19 Financial Crisis Leadership   The Covid-19 virus is nomadic, persistently wandering around the countries of the world infecting people and proving deadly for those over 70 and or with an existing health condition.  Health professionals provide advice on how to limit the spread of the virus and washing your hands, cancelling events, restricting travel, working from home and social distancing have proven to be good advice.  For those businesses impacted by these preventative measures however, the restriction of activities to reduce virus contagion means constricting their ability to make revenues and therefore make payroll.  For small and medium sized business, it can seem like a race to the bottom, between which one will get you first, the virus contagion or bankruptcy.    As the business leader, you can feel you are staring down the barrel of oblivion.  You are worried.  Your team are worried.  They look to you for a way out of this and for some comfort that you know what you are doing.  Do you actua

Two Waves Theory And Covid-19 Leadership   As an Aussie, I enjoy going surfing in Australia.  Blue skies, golden beaches, clean oceans and good surf make the whole experience very enjoyable.  What is less enjoyable is when you catch a wave, get severely dumped, find yourself pressed to the bottom under the weight of the wave and have to struggle to claw your way to air.  You break the surface to grab some air and at that moment, you are smashed by an even bigger wave.  That is where we are as leaders right now.  The First Wave is the virus disruption to business, particularly hammering small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).  The Second Wave is a global recession that takes everyone down.   Naturally in Japan, we initially thought the virus was a Chinese problem, like SARS. Then we discovered that big influx of Chinese tourist money brought with it carriers of the virus.  We also had political leadership who after Cabinet debate, concluded that the 1000 people who had been locked in their cabins on the Dia

Covid-1929: Are You A Wartime Or A Peacetime Leader?   “Hey Greg, you misspelt the name of the virus, you dummy - it’s Covid-19”.  Well, did I now?  Actually the 1929 reference is more accurate.  Wall Street crashed and the chain reaction pushed the whole world into a miserable recession, that destroyed lives and businesses.  In my view, that is what we are looking at here and the question is, as a leader, are you ready for the commercial carnage?    Launching a start-up, maintaining market share and seeking rapid growth escalation are all different requirements and not all leaders can do all three with equal flair. China’s retreat from markets has thrown a lot of business plans straight out the window.  Now the virus contagion goes global. We are entering an economic war zone and are your leadership skills ready for the challenge?    As a leader, focusing solely on the health aspects is to join the media led sensationalist panic.  If you have an existing health condition or are over 70 years of age, then you

Stress Is Mounting In Japan And What You Can Do About it   PM Abe’s sudden announcement closing every school in the country from Elementary level on and up created immediate panic buying of toilet paper, face masks and people stocking up on rice and other long lasting food products.  This has pushed anxiety levels much higher. Hokkaido is in lockdown and the Covid-19 virus keeps popping up in unanticipated locations.  If you are unhealthy and or over 70 years of age, then you definitely don’t want to catch this virus, because the mortality rate for that grouping is relatively high.   For everyone else, the health concern while real it isn’t the most concerning issue.  Business disruption impacts the livelihoods of many, many more people. The majority of companies in this country are small medium sized enterprises (SMEs), seventy percent of which don’t make a profit.  Yes, they arrange their accounts to run everything they can through the books to avoid paying tax, but how much cash in reserve do they have?  T

Vijay Deol summary   Vijay Deol originally came to Japan to teach English in rural Kyoto before starting at en world, a global recruiting company where he now serves as Regional Director. During his first 8 years, Mr. Deol worked his way up to Sales Director ast enworld before becoming President of a British multinational recruitment firm. As the sole employee in Japan, Mr. Deol grew the firm to about 30 staff by the time he left in 2017, to make return to en world. He currently leads en world Japan, Australia and Singapore, managing approximately 350 employees.   Mr. Deol constantly puts en world’s vision of nyuushago shuukatsu, Enabling Success, to practice in order to effectively lead a large and diverse team. He emphasizes the importance of hiring the right talent, continuous improvement and active listening. For example, Mr. Deol admits his own mistakes in company meetings to encourage his staff to be more creative without fearing failure. To understand and address the different demands and expectations

Building A Media Empire In Japan From Scratch: Episode #13 Japan's Top Business Interviews Robert Heldt summary Robert Heldt, founder and President of Custom Media, an award-winning bilingual media agency, originally started his career in the Maladives in the hospitality industry. Founded in 2008, Custom Media company had a rough start following the Lehman shock, but picked up soon after launching the bilingual lifestyle travel magazine WITHIM and BCCJ Acumen, the British Chamber of Commerce magazine, which recently celebrated its 10th year anniversary. Additionally, they help create ACC Journal of the American Chamber of Commerce, The Canadian of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, INTOUCH of Tokyo American Club and Mansion Global, a luxury real estate magazine. In 2013, the company won the prestigious British Business Award for their success. Starting as a close-knit team of just 3-5 staff, Mr. Heldt talks about the difficulties of recruiting and retaining a multicultural group of people in today’s Japanese w

Allan Smith: Ex-CEO of RGA Japan   Generally speaking, compared to other nationalities, they are a bit more reluctant to state their opinions so you have to know that, and cater for that by asking for opinions and waiting. They do however speak amongst themselves, so another useful source of information is having fellow Japanese people who are willing to come and tell you the vibe of things going on. I have found in Japan there are two extremes. People who do not speak English well, but want to speak English, and people who speak English perfectly well but would rather speak Japanese. Employees always rate the company and their job satisfaction as very low in Japan, but that is a cultural bias, no matter whether you survey Japanese companies or foreign companies in Japan. I tried to go out once a month with my direct reports and I expected my managers to do the same with their direct reports. I always tried to hire people who were smarter than me, and then trusted their judgement. We tried to share best prac

Nikhil Gutpe   The standard dress code is much more formal in Japan than many other countries, even including other Asian countries. Casual Friday, for example, is not a thing here in Japan. I have had to make sure in meetings, as the boss, that I do not state my opinion first, because then there will just be silence and no one will be willing to speak up. While in other countries, you are free to question the boss, and even say to a certain extent that I do not agree with this, in Japan, it would be a disaster. One thing that is excellent about Japan is the network of expats. You just need to ask the questions. You hear a big noise about how different Japan is, about how tough it is, but once you get here, and you ask questions of expats, and you experience things with an open mind as to why and how they are occurring, you can pick up simple things and start connecting the dots. You have not come here to be comfortable. You have come here for the challenge, so throw yourself into it and learn and have fun.

Seiichiro Asakawa   As a leader, I learned to not compete on things I did not have expertise in. I had a financial background, not a technical background, so there was no use trying to convince technically strong employees on that front – I had to use financial data as facts in order to convince my employees to accept that things needed to change in order to grow on the global scale that I wanted. While I accept there are differences in practices between cultures, I think the basics of people are the same. People are motivated to learn, to grow, to advance. Young people particularly, regardless of culture, are willing to challenge themselves and are not afraid to try and even fail. We invested heavily in the company computer systems so that all staff can, at the touch of a button, contact any other member of our overseas team. So, apart from being conscious of time differences, there is no excuse for a lack of communication. We communicate, even at the Japanese headquarters, mainly in English and what I enco

Paul Hardisty Once you walk the talk over a given period of time as a leader, you gain trust, and then people will follow you, instead of just doing what you say. Then you start getting buy-in and ideas and you can work cross-functionally. On engagement surveys, if you are giving a very low score, then you should not be coming into the office. If you are not going to be part of the solution, then you should reconsider your career and job. Engagement scores however tend to coincide with big decisions, e.g. head count freezes has a negative impact on scores, but bonus time has a positive impact. It is also not helpful to compare countries against other countries. It is about trends and patterns and feedback. You are always going to get people who score low, but it is when you see big swings that you know there is an issue. I used to think that my job was to find a local leader to replace me once I moved on, but I have realized we are an international company and rotation is a better solution, so succession pla