The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

“It’s obvious, we need to be continually innovating”, we say to our team.  But is it obvious to them and do they believe it?  Also are they really interested or motivated to do anything about it? They may feel they are super busy already, with what they have on their plate.  Then, the boss turns up talking about better, higher, further, faster and the eyes start to glaze over.  “Here we go again”, they are thinking and recalling the last time this big innovation push petered out and went nowhere. Further, most people in Japan are not that keen on change, because with it comes risk.  We all get into our routines of work and we are comfortable and competent in the way we do things, so changing what we do now isn’t that attractive.  We are in our Comfort Zone and we like it right here thank you.   In order to sell the innovation idea to our team, there are some key stages we need to go through.  Now, counterintuitively, we have to remember that our innnovation design phase order is different to the presentation

“Yeah, I’m a good communicator”, we say to ourselves, but that proposition is rarely seasoned with some solid self-awareness.  We blandly make this type of statement because we see communication as a one direction process, where we are telling someone, something which is important to us.  Being perpetually time poor, we abbreviate complex ideas into “headlines” devoid of the sustaining background and context. Try gauging your actual communication abilities against these sixteen principles to see how you really stack up.   Understand your own and your listeners’ assumptions, viewpoints and attitudes and harmonise both.We tend to make comments without much reflection, either about why we think what we do or considering how the other person might receive the content. Build an open and creative culture where “a hundred flowers bloom and a thousand schools contend”.In modern business, bosses no longer are all knowing or have a monopoly on good ideas. Being open to subordinates ideas and thinking requires boss inn

Our image of leaders is often of someone giving orders or pontificating about what is supposed to happen.  Our leader monologue is always one way traffic and we may be laying down golden advice in English or our imperfect Japanese, but is it being received, understood, digested, accepted or employed?  In this modern, stressful, super busy life, we give the team a rapid burst from our content firehose and then we move on, because there is a lot for us to do.  Subsequently, we discover what we wanted wasn’t done at all or was done incorrectly or was taken off on a tangent we never imagined possible.    This is more common than it should be and we must be cautious when we are engaging in linear communication with our teams.  The content is often published rules and regulations, policies and procedural guidelines.  We may have developed Standard Operation Procedures which outline how things are supposed to be done.  We send out our memos, emails, text messages using various broadcast media. The good thing is it i

Out of all the things we do as leaders, one of the most difficult is dealing with poor or substandard performance.  Inside that broad spectrum there are crimes, sabotage, toxic people, idiocy and people on the wrong bus or on the right bus, but in the wrong seat.  The most common recognition points concerning poor performance are missing deadlines, poor quality of the work submitted, not making the sales quota and mistakes.  Mistakes tend to be public events and so the team are watching how you deal with them.  Your credibility with your people and their consequent loyalty to you can be clearly compromised if you get this wrong.   I joined the rest of the seniors in the firm for the weekly meeting in this quite tight meeting room with the new Group President.  With so many people crammed in there, it was a bit claustrophobic on a good day. He had a resume that was platinum, a prince among men, an elite double alumnus of one of the best varsities, highly intelligent and a boot strapped, self-made executive.  H

Developing people should be a committed constant of leadership.  That is not always the case though.  Often the leader is actually still the manager and hasn’t made that important transition to be a master of leverage.  We can work 80 hours a week and blow ourselves up or we can have ten people working their 8 hours every day, achieving the same level of output in a single day.  The manager’s job is to make sure that those ten people are in the right positions, doing the right things and producing the right results.  In addition, the leaders’s job is to set the direction for the team, create the environment where the team can motivate themselves to flourish and assist in the personal growth of the team members.  This last consideration is often abdicated by managers and imagined that this is the responsibility of the HR Department. That would be a huge mistake in Japan.   HR managers are often on a rotation in Japan, where their previous job was heavy machinery export manager and their next job will be head o

The concept of motivating people is a misnomer really.  It is a short form of saying, as the leader, we build the right relationship, the right culture and create the right environment where our people can motivate themselves to be successful.  Yelling at someone to “be motivated, be motivated, be motivated” sounds and is ridiculous.  We know that but do we have a good alternative?  The degree to which we know our people is the key.  Well we think we know them, but often it is only at a very superficial level.  Bosses are busy very people, time is short and there is a lot to do.  Getting to know our people in depth is a big task, one which takes considerable time and requires a sustained effort.  This is why most leaders don’t bother.   When we take over the boss role we probably went around to everyone in the team and interviewed them about what they do, how they do it, how they like it and any issues they have which, we as the new face, may be able to solve for them.  This is probably the only time we inter

Thrusting oneself into leadership positions usually relies on confidence, drive, capability and ambition.  All good stuff, but those are not necessarily the key reasons we follow someone.  Of course, if they lack confidence, then they are radio-active and won’t command any followship.  To take on the accountability of the leader, you need to have that inner drive and ambition to want to position yourself above others.  Finally, you have to have the goods. If you are not good at the business then you lack credibility, especially with smart, competent people.  However, these attributes are not enough.  The calibration by the team on whether they will follow you has a big values component.  We might initially be snowed by the confidence, drive, capability and ambition, but if we flag the values are not correct, then things fall apart rapidly.   We can admire leaders for what they have.  They could be physically attractive people, well dressed and bristling with the accoutrements of power.  The big house in a ton

Kokorogamae means to clarify your true intention. It is a compound word combining two characters – one for kokoro and the other for kamae, which becomes gamae when in the compound format.  Kokoro can be translated as our spirit and kamae as our stance.  If you have studied a Japanese traditional martial art, you will recognise kamae as the command to take your fighting stance.  Why is this idea of your true intention important for those of us in business?   We talk a lot about trust is business, but this is the outward manifestation of our inner thoughts, which in turn guides our actions.  Kokorogamae as a concept goes straight to the spark of the idea, the attitude, the approach, the true intention.  In traditional Japanese arts such as ikebana, the master will strip the stems of the leaves themselves, rather than leaving it to their assistants.  Similarly, in shodo, the master will grind the inkstone to produce the ink for the calligraphy to be written.  In martial arts, the master will sit quietly at the s

When we think about leadership what is the perspective we are taking?  There are many ways of thinking about this, but today let’s consider some different perspectives which create tension for us as leaders.  “Make sure everyone follows the rules and we will get ahead”, sounds like reasonable advice.  Compliance, regulatory rules, internal systems, standard operating procedures all push us in this “conform” direction.    “Break all the rules, innovate, practice shoshin – the beginner’s mind – and let’s start with a blank sheet of paper”, sounds like reasonable advice.  Freeing our people from group think, conformity, too many proscribing rules, pushes us in non-conformist directions.  How can we hold these two countervailing thoughts in our minds at the same time and lead others, all the while providing a clear direction?   Usually, we are promoted to leader because we followed the rules, did a brilliant job on our accountabilities and have proven we can be trusted.  We are told to take care of others now and

Business is stressful.  It becomes very stressful when your industry is hit by a global pandemic.  Just when you start to believe we might be finally escaping the death roll of the virus, we get Omicron pop up and raise the ante completely.  Just to add to the stress levels we now look like we are entering a global economic meltdown, because of the impact of the war in the Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia.  Oil, gas and grains are rapidly rising in price as are the delivery mechanisms of the global supply chain. If you are in certain industries the pandemic has smashed you, however other sectors have been sailing along quite unaffected. A global recession however, is much more democratic and will share the pain with everyone.  As leaders we have to be the rock for our teams.  Everyone gets nervous about their job and in some cases about whether the company can survive a one-two punch of the pandemic followed by a global recession?   “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is an old mantra.  For le

Giving feedback at any time about performance issues is always fraught. Providing constructive feedback is one of those areas which we often dread, only surpassed by the prospect of having to give negative feedback.  Ideally, we can avoid negative feedback altogether and turn it into a more positive version. Nevertheless, those on the receiving end of anything but adulation and lavish praise, are rarely in a positive mindset about receiving corrective feedback.  They are keen to justify what they did, sometimes deny it was their fault or try to wriggle out of it and shift the blame to someone else.  It is extremely rare for someone to put their hand up and take ownership for problems.  What can we do about giving feedback?   Here are nine ideas on giving better, positive feedback. Be certain the feedback is positive and constructive. Don’t boost your own ego or pull an authority powerplay of blatant status affirmation, by putting down others less knowledgeable or less skilled. Whenever someone is struggling

How did it go last week delegating to your team members?   This week we will look at accountability.   Having delegated a task, we must make sure that the delegate maintains a strong sense of accountability for the results.  If we did a good job selling the delegation to the individual we have chosen for the task, then there shouldn’t be too much to worry about regarding them carrying out the project.  The issues arise when we think we were successful in persuading them why this task completion is in their best interests, but we weren’t as persuasive as we imagined.    Business moves quickly and perhaps when we spoke to them, there was some margin in their schedule, but now something else has popped up and they start allocating more time to that endeavour and let our delegated task slip and slide. They are reallocating their priorities and we have a mismatch between what we think is happening and what is really happening.  How do we make sure that isn’t the case?    Micro-managing people isn’t effective.  Nob

This week we will look at becoming a master of delegation.   Delegation is a mystery for many leaders.  They don’t know how to get it to work properly, so they ignore its power. This is a busy life and business is becoming more and more complex each year.  The leader needs to delegate for a couple of reasons.     The most important one is to help their subordinates become ready to step up into their own leadership positions.  The fear that a subordinate will replace you is a misplaced concern in my view.  Every organisation is looking for leaders and if you can show you are a dynamite leader production machine then the organisation will give you a bigger job to spread that magic further.  For our own capacity to move up the ranks we need a replacement.  If there is no one to succeed us, then we will be kept right where we are.   The other reason for delegation is to make sure we are only working on the most high level tasks that only we can do.  If someone else can do it, then we should give it to them and gi

This week we will look at getting the team members engaged.   Now this is a tricky subject in Japan because what is the native Japanese word for engagement?  We always have this dilemma when we try to translate “engagement” into Japanese.  In the end, we just leave it as “engagement” in the katakana script which reproduces the sound, but which in itself has no meaning, as opposed to kanji pictographs, which have actual meanings.    So, if there is no word for engagement in Japan, how on earth can you get people more engaged?  Also, how do you measure it?  Gallup have been running engagement surveys around the world on a regular basis for a long time and invariably Japan scores low by comparison with other countries.  Usually only around 7% of the working population are “highly engaged”.  This always triggers a reaction back at HQ for multi-national companies who run these global surveys.    I have sat in those regional heads’ meetings and seen the world’s scores paraded up on screen, with APAC the lowest regi

Meetings, email, social media, reporting, coaching, planning, performance reviews, firefighting, supervising re-work, the list goes on regarding where our leader time gets taken up.  Our talent got us into this illustrious position as the leader but do we have enough talent to sustain staying in this job over time.  Can we move up to an even higher position and what additional talent development would that take?  Are we investing enough of our treasure in ourselves, beyond anything the organisation may be providing?   I have the most powerful hand held tools at my command 24 hours a day.  I have access to the fastest communication tools ever produced.  I can access any information I want at lightening speed.  Do I feel I have more time?   Am I keeping up with the demands of business in this modern world of global interconnectivity and the global 24 hour work cycle?  In simple terms “no”.  If feel constantly pressured to do more, faster with less.  I have a continual anxiety about FOMO – Fear of Missing Out. 

We have seen the Hollywood version of leaders who are master blaster motivators.  These charismatic leaders gather the team together and give a rousing call to arms to slay the problem. They persuade the team to go beyond their personal limitations and get the job done.  In real life, usually the leader isn’t necessarily charismatic, nor a spirited orator. If you are leading in Japan, there is a strong chance that there are two languages in play and you are more likely to be better in one than the other.  Despite my now 37 years in Japan, my vocabulary in Japanese cannot hold a candle to my vocabulary in my native English. That means I can be more subtle, powerful, convincing in English than I can in Japanese.  Native Japanese speakers have the same issue trying to persuade others in English.   The days of the rousing locker room call to action are pretty much done for in sports teams, often the model for business leadership. The modern sports leader is more likely a skilled expert in understanding human natu

One of the big differences in the job when you move up in the ranks into a leadership position is you are now responsible for others and their development.  That means we need to coach our team members by ourselves.  Yes, HR may be able to organise valuable training opportunities, but that still leaves our role to follow up on that training and also to do on the job coaching every day. To better understand how to coach others, let’s look at the Seven Step Coaching Process   Identify Opportunities There are five ways to identify opportunities for your staff to receiving coaching.   1. You identify an opportunity for another person. You notice a weakness in their current skill set or you notice they haven’t been trained for a certain part of the task or you give them a new task that they don’t have any experience with.   2. The person identifies an opportunity for themselves. The staff member finds they don’t know what they are doing or finds they can’t do the task well.  They may have little experience with

How did it go in the last episode working on Performance Alignment?  This week we look at one of the most difficult areas of leadership – assessing others’ work performance.  This whole process is important because it leads to promotions, bonuses, bigger responsibilities and also to people being deleted from the enterprise.  No wonder each side of the table finds this process stressful.   Employees become nervous in this situation and bosses can also feel very uncomfortable.  There is nothing worse than having to let people go who have been in your team, unless they are completely hopeless or evil. That is rarely the case.  We are usually having to fire people who are average or slightly below average, who the big bosses have nominated for the cut.    I used to hate those department head meetings, where the whole population of the organisation is plotted on a bell curve of performance.  By definition, a group of people will be in the bottom 10% and that will include your own team members at different times. 

Organisations are made up of many internal moving parts, so coordination becomes an important aspect of success in business.   Divisional rivalries, egos, personal competition, “not invented here”, the list goes on and on concerning factors which make it difficult to operate as one smooth functioning machine. There are also various external challenges we have to deal with like regulation changes, mergers and acquisitions among our competitors, natural disasters, market movements, etc.  As the leader we have to make sure we have solid alignment amongst the team members within what the company wants to achieve. There are eight elements to make sure we have alignment between the individuals and the organisation.   Vision and Mission Our Vision is our window to a brighter future and our goals for where we want to be.  Usually there are two visions.  We have the overall company vision at the macro level and then we have our unit vision, which is a subset of the broader enterprise vision. This is important becaus

For a big chunk of my working life, I have been ruled by fear by my bosses.  With the value of hindsight and having run Dale Carnegie Training here in Tokyo now into my twelfth year, I wonder why it was like that or had to be like that.  Not every boss was a tyrant, but most were.  Today we are talking about psychological safety, diversity and inclusion, the end of power harassment, etc. I didn’t see any of that in my career as an employee.  Sadly, I inherited some of these negative leadership traits myself and ran my teams hard.  I was ignorant and thought that was how it was done, because that was how I was being managed.  I am a slow learner, but I have subsequently learnt that leading through fear gets you compliance, but it doesn’t get you brilliance.   I wonder how many bosses out there in supremo land are still running their teams in this fear first mode?   My way or the highway is a dead duck for a recruitment strategy today.  Many big Japanese companies have recruitment staff from HR clinging to the