The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

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

As The Leader, Never Assume In Japan   Leaders are busy people. Processes become established and we assume they are working properly.  You are sent in to run the Japan operation and or you join a new company here and you are faced with major tasks, like raising the revenues  or reducing costs or expanding market share or all three.  These tend to be the big chunks of work which command all of your attention.  Because these are usually not start-up operations, there are existing methods for the functions of the business.  Over time, you start to play around with how the business is run, introducing innovations or making changes.  Time moves on and you assume that these changes are part and parcel of the standard operation procedure for the business.  In Japan, assume nothing.   When we take over and concentrate on the key KPIs we have been given, we don’t have a lot of time to dig down too deeply on the operations component.  This is a mistake, because there are bound to be inefficiencies, anti-client structur

Power Harassment And Being the Boss In Japan   “Pawahara” the Japanese adoption of the English term “power harassment” has only appeared in the last few years in this country.  In 2006, there were 22,153 complaints lodged with the Japanese labor Bureau and in 2016 it has jumped to 70,917 cases.  In a 2016 government survey, 33% of respondents said they had experienced power harassment in the past three years.  The Japanese government is drafting a bill to go to the Diet to ban power harassment in the workplace, but the bill does not include any penalties. What does this mean for bosses trying to get results from their teams?   Power harassment is defined by the Government as being an act that causes physical or emotional pain, or demoralizing the workplace by exploiting one’s position.  In 2012 the Labor Ministry listed six examples of power harassment: physical attacks, verbal abuse, deliberate isolation from other employees, making excessive demands, making too few demands and infringing on the privacy of o

You Have To Chastise People, Right?   I was meeting with the HR team from a client company.  In fact, this was the first meeting with the HR team, because previously we had been directly dealing with the sales line managers.  They were looking for a leadership programme for people being moved up into leadership positions for the first time.  They had requested the manuals, so I brought them with me and we were going through them.  The HR head stopped on a page where it referred to giving praise to staff.  “Doesn’t the boss have to give out corrections and chastise staff for poor performance, rather than giving praise”, she asked? She said she had a attended training from a competitor – a very large Japanese domestic training company and that is what they were teaching in their programs – how to give strong leadership to staff.   I have to say I was overjoyed when I heard that piece of market intelligence.  It means this behemoth rival of ours is a dinosaur and so far behind it is breathtaking.  I explained to

Change Agent Leaders Are Highly Vulnerable In Japan   The Japan business has been around for many years, but it never seems to live up to the expectations the firm had for the initiative.  They employed an aging Japanese CEO thinking, ”well a Japanese person is the obvious one to lead the business in Japan”.  It seemed logical at the time and the individual chosen had many years experience working in the industry.  Gradually the penny drops that this very expensive CEO is not much of a leader and isn’t up to the task to take on the market and win in Japan. This is where you come in.  You are selected for the Tokyo assignment. You are honored to be selected and off you go, bringing the family to this new and exciting country.   You don’t speak the language, so you have trouble being able to directly discuss issues with the staff. Your assistant doubles as your interpreter and off you go to change the world.  Headquarters keeps reminding you they expect you to get the business to start performing, after many ye

How To Kill Off Organisational Silos   Every organisation suffers from the Not Invented Here syndrome.  This is where collaboration is dismisseD in favour of independence, even when it is a cost to the business.  Sections or divisions within the body of the organisation do not cooperate and form a united front to win in the market, because of rivalry, stupidity, egos, history, politics etc.  The cost of all of this hairy chested independence is high.    Gaining collaboration from other parts of the organisation is the mark of the superior leader.  The good news is that we don’t have to work this out for ourselves.  There is a nine step method we can follow to make sure 1 + 1 = 5 rather than 2.   Goal Defintion What is the issue exactly? What is the central goal we wish to achieve through this collaboration?  How will this increase the competitiveness of our team against the rival companies’ team?  We need to define what success lookS like at the start.   Building A Case Opinions are cheap and everybody ha

Nine Leadership Lessons For Executives In Japan   As the leader are you coaching your people? I mean really coaching them, not giving orders or balling people out if they come up short or make mistakes. Do you have a methodology for your coaching or are you just thrashing around totally winging it? We are going to look at a structure for coaching your people and add in some human relations principles you can use, to get effective results.   Step 1. Identify The Opportunity To Coach The Person   Where can we see some critical factor, that if improved, would really help this member of staff get a tremendous lift in their productivity and outcomes. What is it we should be focusing on?   Step 2. Decide What Is The Desired Outcome   Do we know what success looks like? Do we have a clear vision of the goal once achieved? We need to nail down what the outcome of the coaching will be, so that we can work toward achieving that.   Step 3. Establish The Right Attitude   Trust on the employees' part that the boss is real

Okay Boss, Admit You Were Wrong   Litigious western societies are firmly against admitting wrongdoing.  Legions of lawyers advise to admit nothing ahead of the coming court case. In business, no one sees any upside to admitting responsibilities for failure.  Instead the blame shifting game gets underway, as the guilt is flung around from one person to another.  Bosses blaming underlings when things go wrong has a long and glorious tradition. Japan has its own version too.   Here no one takes any personal accountability for anything, if they can avoid it. The society has devolved a brilliant scheme for group responses for decisions.  If anything ever comes back to haunt the original decision makers, because it was all of us making the decision, none of us are individually responsible.  Genius.   This filters down into management as well.  Usually, leaders are self selecting.  They have shown they are the best at their job.  The best engineer, accountant, salesperson, doctor, architect, etc., gets recognised an

High Performer Coaching   Coaching high performers is tricky.  They have talent, ability and are already highly motivated.  They usually have a pretty healthy ego as well and have probably been mentally trying out your chair, to see how it fits them.  Interestingly enough, this is the group the boss pays the least attention to.  The under performer gets all the time, because the leader is trying to fix something that is broken.  The issue here is even if you get a 100% lift, it hardly registers, because it is coming from so far down at the bottom.  The high performers however are where the big results reside, but they are thought not to need any coaching.  Ask yourself, “How much time do I invest every week coaching my top performers?”.   If we look however into the world of sports all the top performers get tonnes of coaching.  The elite level of performance demands it and demands an elite coach.  Why aren’t we applying the same logic to business?  The first problem is we have mentally ruled them out from “n

How To End A Project Team   There are no shortage of projects and project teams inside companies.  Often, for big projects, various people are brought together to create a specialist team for that particular project.  The projects eventually come to an end and most commonly, start with a bang and go out with a whimper.  Are we gaining all that we can from these non-permanent team formations? What are we doing about the people part of ending the project team?  Are we leaving on a high or low note?   Teams have their own cycle. There is the Formation Stage where a team is chosen, and clear goals and direction are defined.  The next element is the Stabilisation Stage where everyone settles into their roles.  Following that we have the Integration Stage where the big goals are being broken down to smaller bits and being worked on.  People are starting to get used to working with each other in  cooperative way.  Actualisation comes after that stage and the team is really starting to gel well together.  Things are

Leaders Who Fail To Follow Up, Fail Their Business   Companies spend considerable time and treasure to improve the business.  Ideas are generated and projects initiated.  New hires are brought in to expand the business. Training is delivered to raise skill and ability levels.  All of these types of activities need leadership.  Why then are leaders so poor at doing the follow up?  Everyone is busy, but the leader’s job is to translate all of that busyness into results and outputs.  In Japan, a big part of this problem is the incomplete self-awareness about the true role of the leader.   I have seen this same scenario so many times over the years.  We gather for the offsite or a similar innovation session.  We break into groups and start brainstorming ideas to drive the business forward.  We spend hours digging out creative ideas, debating the priorities, getting them down on to large sheets of paper and sticking these sheets up on the wall.  We take our colleagues through the findings and then listen to their

Coaching Team Members   Coaching has been wildly misinterpreted in Japan.  It should be there to motivate and encourage people in their work but these current generations of Middle Managers have corrupted the idea.  Mistakenly they imagine that blasting out orders like a mad pirate captain is coaching.  Or that telling their people they are wrong is helping to correct them to fly straight. They are fault finders extraordinaire, never giving any praise.  Or if they do manage to break the mould and give some praise, it falls on stony ground and is totally ineffective, never believed.   When we criticise, condemn or complain about others, what are their reactions?  Do they dive deep into contemplation and self reflection? No, they go straight into justification of their position and become dogged and ideological or they spiral down into depression.  When we tell our staff that their idea is wrong or their opinion is wrong, do they bow before the boss’s greater experience, knowledge and capability? No. They whine

What Is Your Tone As A Leader?   We understand tone very easily when we think about voice tone.  A soft, gentle tone when speaking contrasts with a harsh, strident tone.  What about the tone we set for the workplace and for the team, in our role as leader?  Have we decided what the tone will be or is it just what it is naturally?  Why would we set a tone and what would it be?  Tone in this regard relates to the dynamic between the team members themselves and what type of behavior is required.  It imprints on to the team an attitude about how we regard and how we treat our clients.   As the boss, this is all going on in the background, because you are super busy.  When you are juggling so many balls in the air at once, you need everyone to get on with what they are doing, because you have no additional bandwidth to be running around after others. Often we don’t set a tone, because we are so very busy ourselves and we just expect everyone to be an adult and behave accordingly. The issue here is your version of

Banish Personal Negativity   The boss is the fountain of positivity for the team, like a fountain of youth of lore and legend.  We have to stand tall, no matter what is going on, because people rely on us to lead.   That means reassuring them that the company will be okay or the section will be okay and that we will all get through this current difficulty.  When things look grim, who are the people first out the door?  The low or average performer? No, it is always the best people who jump ship, because they always have options.  The first sign of top performer overboard has everyone else worrying about what did that person know that they don’t?  The feeling of insecurity triggers people searching for exits, before it is too late. The boss is the bulwark standing firm against the tide of panic and confusion. What happens however when the boss becomes negative?   We all know what we are supposed to do, what type of role model we should be. But we have human frailties.  We are not robots, devoid of feelings, wh

Dealing With Really Toxic Staff   Be it big organisations or small organisations, the things nobody wants are rust or termites.  Rust in your car rots out the floorboards, the metal fabric, but it does so unseen.  Termites in your house silently eat out the boards, leaving a paint covered, paper thin illusion of a wall, that when you touch it totally collapses. The rust and termites in organisations are toxic people, equally quietly going about destroying the business from within.   Here are some types of toxic people to be careful of:   Negatives They are down on everything and everyone.  No one is good enough in their view, the world is bad and the future looks dismal. They are angry, depressed, frustrated people and want to enlist others to be like them.  They can list long and hard all the things that are wrong with the organization.  However, ask them what to do about any of it and they will quickly tell you that it is not their job to fix it.  If you are the boss, you need to sort them out.  Tell them t

This Year It Will Be Different   The new calendar year is always a time for reflection and goal setting.  We get a few days off and can put some distance between ourselves and the everyday bustle and minutiae of the business.  This affords an opportunity to think more strategically about where we want to be over the next few years and how to get there.  We look at our waist line and think we should strike a blow for freedom and do something about removing that fatty liver build up.  We also know this is not our first rodeo and we have done and said all this before. We have notes scattered amongst bits of paper or maybe even collected diligently in one place.  If you want a good laugh, go back and look at what you said you would do in the business or personally, a few years ago.   But this year it will be different.  Well, the Einstein take on insanity was repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  We were crazy kids in the past, but now we have seen the light.  So far so g

“Never Forget A Customer; Never Let A Customer Forget You”   This is an old saying in sales and one we forget at our cost.  We might have made the sale and then we keep moving forward.  We get wrapped up in the intricacies of the getting other customers to commit and in the logistical details of delivering our previously sold service or product.  Our schedule fills up quickly and we have filled it with the present and future, not the past.  That customer we sold to gets forgotten in this busy life and they return the compliment and forget about us too.  We know that creating new customers is more expensive on an acquisition cost basis and that selling again or selling more to our existing customers is easier than making a new sale.  Why then don’t we do a better job of developing further business with our existing customers?   We usually do a good job in the immediate post sales service period, but the key word there is “immediate”.  We don’t schedule in the “just checking in “ contact, because we are too bus