The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

How To Identify When You Need Help As A Leader   Asking others for help can be difficult.  The psychology of driven, perfectionist people though is to prefer doing everything themselves.  Others never seem to match up to their expectations and standards.  Founders, entrepreneurs, strong willed individuals are often guilty of this “I will do it myself” mentality.  I am one of them.  For various reasons to do with different backgrounds and experiences, we are seized with the need for independence and self-reliance.  This works fine up to a point.  The modern age though has seen business become so much more complex.  Specialisation, niche dominance, technology, the need for light speed are all driving us toward realising we cannot do it all by ourselves.  How do we audit ourselves so we know we have to turn off that independent streak spigot and unleash that “get help” flexibility?   Here are 7 indicators that we need to rethink our approach and tackle issues from a different mind set.   When we need more exper

Problem Solving In Business For Leaders   Leaders are problem solving experts.  They have the authority, money and time to apply their skills to fixing things that are broken in the business.  In fact, they spend a lot of their time eyes peering toward the horizon, trying to identify future trouble.  They are detail oriented around systems because they have learnt if the systems break down and they don’t know about it, things get ugly very quickly.  They also know that their staff are card carrying Keep The Boss In The Dark experts too.  Japan is great like that.  Most of the things that go wrong, you as the boss, never get to hear about.  That is because people bury the problem from your purview, never fess up that something has fallen off the rails.  You usually only find this stuff out by chance.   Well if your team fail to keep it hidden from the boss and you do discover a problem, what is the best way of dealing with it.  Here are four handy steps.   Clarify what exactly is the problem? There tends to

Leading Virtual Teams   We have seen some major changes within Japanese corporates as they move overseas. In the old days, the Japanese headquarters would dispatch a generalist company man, as an expat to be posted for five years in a foreign clime.  They would be forgotten for five years until they came back to work in Japan.  Typically, to be sent to some totally unrelated business area than where they had been gaining valuable skills. This was the established logic of moving people around throughout the company, over many years, to make sure they understood how the whole thing operated.   With the predictions quite clear about the limitations to the market in Japan for good and services, many large companies have begun buying offshore companies in their industries, so that they can continue to make profits, even as the home market declines.  In the new model, staff situated in Japan will be running virtual teams located around the globe.  Foreign business heads will have Japanese staff here in Japan report

The Secret World Of Conflict When Leading In Japan   Japan doesn’t like conflict.  As the foreign boss you will be super busy and may be missing some areas of conflict operating within the team.  You can’t deal with it, if you don’t know about it, so the difficulty scale can get high here quite quickly.  You are also often tied up in meetings or visiting clients, so things may be boiling over and you don’t hear about it.  As is the case with any part of the world the boss is always the last to be told about bad news.   Conflict can be situational.  Something was supposed to happen or didn’t happen and someone is now unhappy with someone else.  Words are exchanged and now we have a tense situation between people in the team. It might be a communication trigger point that leads to the conflict.  Attempted humour is often the offender in this case. An amusing remark isn’t amusing at all to the person on the receiving end and they take offense.  It might be a miscommunication.  We meant one thing, but they take i

Managing Or Leading - Which One Are You Doing??   Last week I was teaching a leadership programme for new leaders and this key question of what is the difference between leading and managing came up quite a bit.  They are not the same thing.  Also, most of those so called “leaders” are only managing and not doing much leading. In Japan, we promote people into leadership roles running sections and don’t give them any training.  They continue with this pattern throughout their career, rising, ever rising, but never doing much leading on the way up.   Managers are the Swiss watch mechanics.  All the little interlocking wheels must be properly aligned, integrated, running in a well oiled fashion, not suffering from breakdowns or disruptions. The point is efficiency of process, in both design and execution.  It does require adroitness to create work arounds, when things lurch out of control or to apply first aid solutions to an open wound in the system.  A mastery of logistics and detail makes the job much easier.

Build Your Successor’s Storytelling Skills   We enjoy movies, dramas, novels, plays because they all excel at telling stories. They are not executed as simple chronologies – this happened, then this happened after that and then after, this happened.  They have what is a called an arc in writing.  It takes us on a journey that engages our emotions.  The majority of business presentation journeys are as engaging as road kill.  That is to say, mainly on the depressing side or at best, just plain boring.  “But business is boring”, you say.  “Greg, we are all about the numbers over here baby. We don’t have time for fluffy stuff like bedtime stories.  We live in the real world dude, get it”.  Well that is not true.   Leaders have two jobs.  One is to manage processes.  We make sure the system is working on time, on budget, on point for quality and on plan. This is the execution piece and without it, things turn ugly real fast.  Try missing a salary payment sometime in your company and see Pandora’s Box spring open

Don’t Take Bad Advice From The Buyer   Clients worry about their bottom line, cash flow, brand reputation and their own career.  They often move around between countries and companies.  We are still here though.  When the client requests something that ultimately impacts our brand in a negative way, we are the one who has to face the subsequent and consequent ramifications.  The lure of the fee payment is powerful but sometimes we should walk away from the money.  We are in haste to get the dough, to make the target, but we reap the whirlwind down the track and then repent at leisure.   My client was new to us and this was the first solution we had delivered for them.  In the prior discussions about their needs, we had identified what was required for developing their sales team.  The client had quite a split between the newbies recently hired and more experienced salespeople. Naturally, I proposed we split the groups out, because they had quite divergent requirements.  The slow pace suitable for training a n

Leading Projects Across Multiple Offices   What a nightmare this is, dealing with different times zones, work styles, understandings, offers, commitments and varying degrees of time consciousness. Big projects bring big headaches with them, especially when the client wants something done in a hurry, across multiple markets.  In a global world of business these types of challenges are only going to increase.  The hard bits are when you have to rely on others for vital information.   The client has a formula which suits their situation.  If you are dealing with procurement officers they want to get it all down to a one size fits all spread sheet.  The fact that you are being asked to fit the square peg in the round hole is of no interest to them.  They want to gauge comparisons of cost across all the potential suppliers participating in the beauty parade.  This has the effect of warping some of the information from certain markets.    Even in the same organisation, not everyone offers exactly the same thing acr

Killing Rumours And Misconceptions   Staffing is a subject that gets a lot of attention from those within and without the organisation.  Those outside see staff movements as a bellwether of how the company is travelling. High turnover indicates disruption and uncertainty about the future.  Rapid high turnover indicates real trouble within the ranks.  When executives arrive in Japan, they often discover a lot of deadwood and they get about cleaning them out.  They are wholly focused on internal issues.  The outside perspective hasn’t been a consideration in their minds. They have forgotten about their competitors and how they will try to use this information to damage the firm. They think they can operate in a vacuum.   Japan being such a risk averse culture, unscrupulous rivals have a field day playing up your instability and therefore heightened risk as a business partner.  I remember running ads for sales staff when I was in Osaka.  I merrily ran the ads looking to expand the sales team.  Now I knew that, b

How To Fix Burnout   Previously we looked at preventing burnout but what happens if we missed that tide and the ship didn’t sail?  Burnout can be a gradual build up of tensions, stress and issues that affect our physical and mental health.  There isn’t a buzzer that sounds to tell us we have hit burnout and the whole lead up phase is a bit vague.  Is this burnout or am I just a bit tired after a big week, month or year?  Many of us were brought up in cultures where you suck it up, soldier own and don’t grumble.  The grumbling usually starts in intensive care, as the medicos rush to save our life, because we have pushed it too hard.  Few people in Japan die from excessive hard work.  They normally kill themselves instead because they are so stressed about their situation and so tired from the ridiculous hours they are working, that they want it all to end.  No one pushed the emergency break to get off the careening, runaway train.    Burnout is beyond stress.  When stressed we still care.  With burnout, we are

Networking When Doing Business In Japan   There are two varieties of networks here for me - the Japanese speaking and the English speaking. With regards to the Japanese speaking groups, there are a few things which are a bit different.  Japanese people are raised not to talk to strangers and guess what, they carry this idea over to networking events as well.  In a typical Japanese event, it goes like this: if I know you and I meet someone else I know, I will introduce you to each other.  I won't walk up to a complete stranger and start introducing myself.     This is how it is done here, but it is pretty limited in terms of how many people you can get to meet. In our case, with my team, we bowl straight up to strangers at networking events and introduce ourselves. If you are going to create a contact point with someone new, you have to make it happen.  You have to be polite and reasonable, but you also have to break through the barriers.   As a foreigner, the social rules are not as strict for me, as compared

Don’t Hit Burnout Baby   Leaders encountering this title preventing burnout might be thinking “I am tough, self-reliant, hairy chested and resilient. I don’t need to worry about it”. This means your business is probably sailing along smoothly and everything is hunky-dory.  What happens when the economy starts dropping precariously or key people bail out and join the competition.  Or when rivals within the organisation start making things difficult for you internally or the new “bad penny” boss turns up and upends your neat little world? One day you are a hero and the next day zero is in the offing. Also, what about the members of your team who are not like you?  Those who are more vulnerable to becoming stressed or who are sacrificing their health for the business, through a strong sense of duty and loyalty?  We know the impact of psychosomatic illnesses today, so sucking it up and carrying on isn’t the answer for everyone.  On the sea or in the air, the captain of the vessel is responsible for the lives of e

Dealing With Superstars In Your Business   We are all looking to develop talent within the ranks.  We invest time and treasure to boost skills and experience.  We succeed. We produce outstanding individuals who can really take the business forward.  Whether it is a large enterprise or a small-medium sized firm, the superstar looms large.  We might think that a superstar’s influence gets dispersed inside a large company, because they have so many staff.  The problem is that the numbers of superstars are relatively few and their presence inside certain divisions or sections makes them crucial to that part of the business.  If it is a smaller business then the talent concentration become intense.   Superstars usually come with super egos.  They may have had tiny egos at the start, but over time we have promoted them and boosted them to become the superstar they are today.  What happens when they start to go rogue?  Their self belief becomes vast and they want to strike out on their own.  They have been cosseted

How You Can Get Change Engagement In Japan   We know there are many challenges to getting the team to embrace changes. Resistance, poor buy in, fear of the unknown, the breakdown of cooperation, vague priorities etc. are common problems.  Change engagement won’t be achieved by email announcements or mass town halls.  These usually spark cynicism, criticism, scepticism and outright hostility.  We need a better approach.   Begin by placing your feet firmly in the moccasins of your team members who are about to undergo the change.  Think back to workplace changes you have experienced in the past.   What was your initial reaction at that time?  What were the outcomes as a result of the changes? What went well and what didn’t go so well?  Reflecting on your own history, positive or negative, is useful when trying to enlist others into the brave new world of change which coming down the pike.   How do we do it? We should not get tied up in the logistics of change – reporting lines, Division restructures etc.  Inste

Anticipating Trouble Before Activating Change Engagement   Change is glacial in Japan.  Everyone complains about everything but no one wants to change anything if it impacts them.  We call this the NIMBY Protocol.  Not In My Back Yard sums up this philosophy toward change.  This company should change what it is doing, my boss should change, my colleagues should change, but I want to stay exactly the same. It would be good if everyone got behind the changes with full enthusiasm and cooperation.  However, that is rarely the case.  Caroline Schoeder’s advice is salutary, especially for Japan.  “Some people change when they see he light, others when they feel the heat”.    “Forewarned is forearmed” is ancient wisdom, so if we are contemplating change, what are some of the roadblocks we can anticipate?  If we know what is coming down the pike, we will be better able to me deal with it. In this week’s episode we will look at the blocker issues and next week we will look at how to make change engagement work.   Here

What Do You Do When Key People Quit?   I once had the perfect team in business.  I had spent years hiring well and really putting a lot into training everyone.  I thought, “finally, I have the perfect team”.  That wondrous situation probably lasted about six months before one of them quit.  A client poached them from us.  Why? Because we had done such a stupendously excellent job in training and developing them, that they were considered highly, highly  valuable by other companies.  What does this tell us?  We will never create the perfect team and even if we do, it won’t last, so get used to instability.   Whether it is a division within a large company or within a small company, there will always be key people.  Sometimes they are in highly specialised roles, which take years of investment in their training and qualifications to get them there.  They are truly unique talents, who are almost impossible to replace.  So what do we do?  We start treating them like princesses.  We are very keen to ensure they st

Why Japanese Staff Refuse Leadership Positions   It is an irony. In the West ambitious people have the elbows out to bundle you out of their way.  They are scheming and plotting to get the next promotion.  They exaggerate their qualifications, experience, talent and capability at every turn, if they think it will serve to see them step up over the bodies of their rivals.  They fake it now hoping they can make it later.  They suck up to those above and criticize those below.  Their peers are seen as the enemy who must be vanquished if they are to prevail.  In the Game Of Thrones and in the Game of Promotion “you win the game or you die” is the prevailing philosophy.  In Japan, when staff are recognized for their good work and given the chance to move up often they refuse.  They say things like, “it is too early”, “I am not ready yet”, “maybe in two years time”. This drives Western leaders here nuts.   Why are these Japanese staff so bashful and unmotivated?  The speed of promotion is fast in Western companies.

Value Led Leadership   When we think of the value of the leader, we are drawn to things like insight, vision, experience, technical knowledge, expertise.  The Yogi Berra quote on leadership however points to a fatal truism in being in charge of others, “Leading is easy.  Getting people to follow you is the hard part”.  Being individually talented and polished in the production of outcomes isn’t enough.  Our personal skill level as a doer is no automatic qualification for leading.     The real value proposition of the leader is in how they make their team members feel valued.  Here is where we locate the real value equation in leadership.  Getting everyone behind the leader’s vision requires that they be engaged.  Think about your own case and various places you have worked and bosses you have worked for. If you were not engaged, then you didn’t care about direction, vision, innovation etc.  Unengaged staff simply turn up to get paid, but don’t do much beyond that.  Now imagine your crew up against the opposit

The Leader Player Conundrum   When we are promoted into leadership positions or when we are running a small business, there is no luxury option of just being a leader, focused solely on working through others.  We have to both lead and produce.  As a first time leader, this can be extremely dangerous.  Often our career trajectory is shot down because we blow ourselves up.  We fail as both a producer and a leader and then we get shown the door.  Usually, we are promoted and left to our own devices to work it out, because there is no training on how to be a leader.   As the player, we are comfortable and as the leader we are feeling out of our depth.  Naturally we gravitate to where we feel the most comfortable and capable.  We were chosen as a leader because we were the best at our functional responsibilities.  The best accountant or IT specialist, the top sales person etc.  We distinguished ourselves through our ability to produce results.     The trick here though is all we had to worry about were our own nu

Virtual Leader Best Practices   Developing people who you can walk up to and speak with face to face is hard enough for most leaders, let along doing this when they are in another country and in a difficult time zone. Fortunately these days the technology is pretty good when it comes to virtual meetings, where we can see each other as well as talk.  We can share our screens and show various data as well, which makes the whole experience much richer.  This is fine for one on one, but what about when there are multiple team members scattered to the winds?  How do we create a team feeling, when all we ever do is see each others photos, in thumbnail size on a screen?  There are five things we can focus on to become a better virtual leader.   The leader’s job is to create a connection between the team members.  They can be remotely located but they don’t have to be remote from each other.  For example, sharing information is a good way to connect with each other and to establish some feeling of unity and solidarit