The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Play Nice At Work     The New York Times recently carried an article about the growth at work of rudeness and bad behaviour over the last twenty years.  Christine Porath, the author, noted, “How we treat one another at work matters.  Insensitive interactions have a way of whittling away at people’s health, performance and soul”.  These interactions release hormones called glucocorticoids leading to potential health problems.   The more interesting part of the research on this topic looked at why we are uncivil and more than half said they felt overloaded with their work and 40% said they have no time to be nice.  Nearly half linked career progression to using their position power and being nice was seen as weak. Boss’s attitudes were enlightening.  Twenty-five percent believe they will be less leader-like if they are nice at work.  Nearly 40% feared they would be taken advantage of if they weren’t projecting a tough manner.    There seems to be no shortage of bosses who can only muster position power, know i

Become A Rockstar Coach   A consistent issue our clients raise with us concerns effective coaching. Becoming a leader is usually the result of demonstrating your own ability to get results.  We promote the performers in the hope some of the pixie dust will get sprinkled around. The outcomes are often underwhelming.  For the organization to grow, it needs talent to be fostered right throughout the whole organization.  The natural owners of that fostering effort are the leaders.   Coaching fails because of the poor quality of the process being applied.  In many cases there is no real process at all.  Here is a 7 step process which will vastly improve the coaching outcomes.   1.     Identify Opportunities The need may be obvious or circumstances may reveal a need. For busy leaders, selecting who to coach is a critical decision.  The staff with the most untapped potential are probably the most attractive candidates.  You can’t do everything at once, so start with the option that will create the most value.  We wi

Our Habits Define Our Success   We are all the product of our habits.  What we do regularly defines our level of success.  Bad habits, good habits are all the same, in terms of the production of results, so the input point not the process, becomes very interesting for those wanting to succeed.  How do we ensure that we are adding good habits and eliminating bad habits?    Part of the input process is selection of priorities.  Going to the gym rather than the sports bar is a choice.  Eating that donut rather than an apple is a choice.  Discipline is a famed part of military life and various slacker generations are recommended compulsory military service as a way to fly straight.  Where does this military discipline come from?  Regular habits are a big part.  Doing specific things at the precise same time, in the same way without variation instills habits.  Doing things that must be done, regardless of how you feel about wanting to do them, instills disciplines, which become habits.  You don’t have to join the

Hip Hop Rapper Advice for PM Abe     Vince Staples, American Hip Hop Rapper, was recently quoted in a Financial Times interview, “You have to paint the picture because everyone doesn’t come from the same background”.  Having just attended the Japan Summit 2015 at the Okura Hotel Ball Room run by the Economist and sitting there listening to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Minister for National Strategic Zones Shigeru Ishiba and Minister for Economic and Fiscal Policy Akira Amari, I was struck by the lack of picture painting and storytelling in their presentations.   By the way, Abe has improved since I last saw him live.  Whether it was some coaching before the Olympic bid or thereafter, the man is much better.  More animated, using bigger gestures, more eye contact, using those see through glass prompters to help engage the audience rather than looking down at a page of notes. He had humour, pauses for clarity and some voice modulation.  Hey Japan, take note, it is possible to be better at public speaking!   I can

Romancing Japan   Japan’s ignominious end is being triggered by a lack of romance.  This retarded romantic environment is whittling away vital procreation efforts, which in turn is creating shortages of corporate fodder for the captains of industry.  The end of the world is nigh.  Well that is what is being served up to us, following the Cabinet Office’s June release of statistics, which show nearly 40% of 20s and 30s singles, the prime marriage target group, are not wanting a romantic partner.  Relationships are bothersome, according to 46.2% of those singles surveyed.  Who knew?   Drivers for this end of epoch trend are long work hours for the young, insufficient leisure time, 70% of women quitting work to have babies and not returning to the workforce and less face time because we have screen time instead.  The surge in part-time workers, means young guys not in the mainstream are the working poor.  As young women say they will only marry someone with income of over JPY5 million a year, that is a bit of a

SMILE !     Grumpy, angry looking, unfriendly customer facing staff  - welcome to America!  Dale Carnegie's Human Relation's Principle Number Five is "SMILE".  It may sound a bit simplistic but actually the idea is very profound and has a lot of depth.  You would never guess that this idea to smile when you meet people, especially when in a customer facing roles, had been around since "How To Win Friends And Influence People" was first published in 1936.   I was in the US attending  our Owner's Meeting in Chicago, but had also spent time in New York and Washington DC, so my observations were not influenced by one location.     The idea of smiling when you answer the phone, hasn't made it to some of the staff working in major hotels yet either.  Very angry voices would pick up the phone and repeat the name of the Hotel.  I asked one lady if she was angry? That threw her and she said "no", so I asked her why she answered the phone with such an abrupt, unfriendly, angry voice?  Her self-awareness factor was tren

How To Retain Your Millennials (Part 2)   In Part One, we looked at what were the drivers for retaining and engaging Millennials, based on The Dale Carnegie MSWOARS research.  Personal life issues we have already covered, so now let’s look at the issues around the work environment and organizational leadership.    Being recognized by their immediate supervisor was important to Millennials.  This sounds simple, but in the real world how many supervisors give meaningful positive feedback to their staff? Being told “good job” is basically useless, unless what we did is actually specified.  In Japan, the older generation of leaders do not have a habit of handing out anything other than “tough love”.  Are your middle managers recognizing the work of your Millennials – if not it might be a good time to do some more leadership training in this area.   Millennials are also looking for support and help in their work.  The amount of free time bosses have is limited and though honoured in principle, in practice not a l

How To Retain Your Millennials (Part 1)   Kids today! Each generation struggles to understand why their successors are so different (and usually, by definition, “useless”).  The Millennial cohort are those born between 1982 and 2000.  This is a key group, especially in Japan, because they are not making enough of them any more.    Over the last 20 years, the population of 15-24 years olds has halved.   Recruiting and retaining young staff has become a big pain for all of us.  The war for talent means we have to learn quickly how to understand them and what they want.  To those firms who just don’t get it, a big Arigatoo!  Please keep training these Millennials so we can poach them.    Dale Carnegie and MSWOARS have been doing major research on engaging employees and recently focused specifically on Millennials.  The overall results show that 30% of Millennials are fully engaged, another 56% are partially engaged and 14% are disengaged.  So what? Well, engaged staff are more likely to stay and so let’s dig d

Today's podcast was recorded at a live session in Nagoya for the American Chamber Chubu Branch.     Whether we realise it or not we are all in sales.  Remarkably, the vast majority of people in sales are untrained and certainly very few understand the importance of asking questions.   Even amongst those who get it and do try to understand the client's needs, probably very few understand that they need to vary the language they are using, depending on who they are talking to.   In this podcast, we explore these issues and explain how we need to ask good questions and also how to vary the way we ask them, to ensure we are having the maximum impact possible with our clients.

Japan Is A Marathon Not A Sprint   There are specific work rhythms for Japan.  Spring is hopeless because of kafunsho (allergies) killing our concentration.  May is no good because of gogatusbyo (May miasma). Everyone is adjusting to the start of the new financial year in April and many are struggling with their new environments and situations.    Also, after the Golden Week break, people are exhausted from the crowded travel and from all the family activities which take place during that time. Summer is also bad because the heat makes us feel drowsy (natsubate).    Of course we also have tsuyubyo or summer sickness thanks to the endless rain, high humidity and associated joint pain. The Obon season is no better because you have to travel back to your hometown to worship at the ancestor’s grave and the roads are clogged and the railways packed.  Recently, we have added a new one - akibate or Autumn drowsiness - to our woes.  Those long dark days of winter are seriously depressing and the bitter cold seeps i

Hey Boss, Your Nightmare Begins Now!   Here is a collection of indicators that should send a shiver down the spine of all employers in Japan.  The average job securement rate of graduating University students in April 2015 was 97%.  Also keep in mind that this is already a relatively small pool of higher education talent, from which we want to recruit.  In 2013, figures showed that only 50% of High School Graduates went to University compared to an OECD average of 62%. There is no major change in the offing though, because currently 99% of High school graduates found a job upon graduation.    Official numbers also tell us that over the last 20 years, the number of 15 to 24 year olds has halved.  From another angle, the number of Japanese turning 20 was 2.76 million in 1976 and in 2015 it is 1.26 million.  So youth recruitment demand is likely to outstrip supply, forever!   They are just not making enough future workers here.  The required birthrate for stopping population decline is 2.1 but currently Japan is

Hussle Hassle   Is speed expensive?  Pushing ourselves is getting crazier.  Constant hussling can lead to large and small errors of judgment.  We get so caught up in living 24/7 lifestyles that we start missing big pieces of the success puzzle.  People are the key to most businesses, but look at how we treat them.  We push past them to get into the subway car or we block the train exit corridor, because we are transfixed by a tiny screen.  We cut drivers off in traffic to get a 10 second edge.  We try to barge into elevators before the inhabitants have all moved out.  We hit the panic button on a piece of work and make everyone jump through hoops to make sure the deadline is met.  We either end the sentence for the person we are speaking with or we cut them off and lunge in with our own preferred words and ideas.   Doing more, faster with less, we are constantly hustling to gain time.  The process becomes addictive.  The unrelenting daily email tsunami pushes us to gain extra time - all the time.  You would n

Chinese Tourist Tsunami Stress   You know you have adjusted to Japan when you get totally annoyed by visiting Chinese tourist’s behavior.  This is the latest incarnation of the 1950s “Ugly American” and the bubble era “Ugly Japanese” phenomenon.  Remember all of those provincial Japanese tourists roaming the planet in the late 1980s? The nouveau riche Chinese are now spreading around the globe, busily devouring the sights, sounds and tastes of different worlds.  The OECD calculated there were 157 million middle class Chinese in 2009.  They expect this number will grow to over 1 billion in 15 years time.  Multiply the numbers of Chinese tourists visiting Japan by at least a factor of six and we will “live in interesting times”.    Shop entry points are favourite gathering spots for multitudes of wheeled luggage bearing continental tourists, especially when it is raining.  On nicer days, sprawling out on the sidewalk in front of gorgeous Ginza boutiques seems natural when you are so tired from all that vigorou

Leadership Soft Power   Harvard Professor Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” to describe how nations can achieve their aims through persuasion and the ability to attract.  Our world bristles with nukes.  Testosterone fueled fighter pilots duel at supersonic speeds over rocky outcrop flashpoints.  Drones have 007 licenses to kill and volatile dictators strut, posture and provoke. Hmm…having a soft power alternative to World War Three sounds attractive.    Closer to home, can soft power in our businesses achieve persuasion and attract cooperation?  There are plenty of testosterone fueled dogfights going on in the C-suites amongst colleagues and between Divisions.  Corporate leaders strut and posture, while middle managers whip the troops to do more, faster with less.  Power, status, authority, rules, regulations, contracts etc., keep people in line, but none of this engages them.  Time for some fresh thinking!   Here are four soft power plays that persuade and attract the team to outperform the competitio

Why Your Boss is Difficult   Are you the engagement survey assassin carving up your boss or are you the victim having to explain to senior management why your team’s scores are so dismal?  Naturally, the very top bosses rarely ever get surveyed, so they can be totally bolshie about your low scores.  Research informs us that Japan is a bastion of bad feelings and unhappiness, leading the world in low scores.  Even taking out the “Japan bias” of conservative scoring, the results here are still pretty miserable.  We also know from the research that the biggest factor in lack of team engagement with the ideals, direction and aspirations of the organization is the lousy relationship staff have with their boss.    Good communication skills are often in short supply with bosses and this leads to unhappiness.  It is not that bosses can’t talk, in fact often they talk and talk and talk.  It is the way they speak and the thinking behind the words that are inflaming their subordinates.  Bosses can be limited by their o

Modern Sports Coaching For Business Leaders   The classic half-time locker room Churchillian oratory from the coach, whipping the team into a frenzy for the coming onslaught is now gathering dust in Hollywood’s archives.  Today’s most successful coaches are masters of human psychology, combining insight with superb communication skills.  What about leaders in business?  Conferences, off-sites, retreats are supplying substantial income for sports coaches, as they induct business folk into the mysteries of motivation.  Everyone heads back to work feeling fired up, but they often fail to adopt what they have been told, because they were not clear on how to do it.    I originally came to Japan in 1979 to study karate, have competed internationally and have been a national coach for Australia representing my country.  In my experience, the Japanese model of sports leadership is antiquated, excelling in only one area - “gaman” (perseverance).  The Japanese really know how to gaman.  They do love technology, so lot

Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys   This Polish proverb made me smile.  A handy phrase for whenever the needle on the “ridiculous meter” is hitting red and overloading.  While it serves as a great smarty-pants one-liner, it actually invites some reflection on the difficulty of getting people and teams to work together.  Another great zinger is the “not invented here” attitude of disinterest, when you are trying to introduce change into organisations.  Reflecting on working in small project teams, big divisions, across divisions, and ultimately across industry sectors, this “not my circus” disclaimer pops up all the time.  It is funny, but painful.   Japan throws up a number of challenges around getting cooperation or innovation when it is not that person’s “circus”, not their direct responsibility.  The social ramifications of failing or making a mistake in Japan are such that people have become geniuses at micro-defining their roles and responsibilities.    A hoary old tradition of “tough love” Japanese bosses

 Market Yourself In One Minute   Meeting new business contacts, expanding personal networks, promoting a reliable, trustworthy “Brand You” are the basics of business.  By the way, even if our job title doesn’t explicitly mention “sales and marketing” we are all in sales and marketing.  In modern commerce, even professionals in non-traditional sales roles like accountants, lawyers, dentists, engineers, architects, analysts, consultants all need to pitch their expertise to get new clients.  We try to influence a decision – buy my widget, fund this project, open a new market or even where shall we go for lunch, are all sales and marketing efforts to get others to follow our ideas.   First impressions are so critical.  When I ask my participants during sales training, how long does it take to form an impression of someone, the range of answers is usually between 2 and 5 seconds.  Think about that - we are so quick to judgment, we are shockers!  An opinion is formed immediately and it takes quite a bit of effort t

Mad Terrorists and Middle Managers   “They are looking for a place where they are highly valued, feel they are needed, and are praised for being useful to others”.  Professor of Social Psychology at Rissho University in Tokyo, Kimiaki Nishida was quoted in the local media commenting on why young people join terrorist groups like Aum Shinrikyo or the Islamic State.  I was struck by the similarities to the problems confronting Middle Managers in Japan dealing with Millennials.    Japan is facing a crisis with succession planning.   This is driven by a demographic pivot where the number of young people entering the workforce will decline faster than demand for their services. The social and political debate about immigration to curb this demographic spiral downwards hasn’t even begun yet.  Anti-Korean groups paraded through areas in Tokyo and Osaka, populated with a high concentration of Koreans, promulgating hate-speech and screaming for these Koreans, mostly second, third and fourth generation locals to leave