THE Leadership Japan Series by Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo, Japan

We know the name Achilles because of Brad Pitt and Hollywood or we may have read the Iliad.  He was a famous mythical Greek hero whose body was invulnerable, except for the back of his heel.  His mother plunged him into the river Styx to protect his body, but her fingertips covered the heel, leaving it vulnerable.  Research by Dr. Jack Zenger identified four common elements which comprise Achilles' heels for leaders. Blind spots are a problem for all of us.  We can't see our foibles, issues and problems, but they are blindingly obvious to everyone else working for us.  Remember, subordinates are all expert “boss watchers”.  They examine us in the greatest detail every day, in every interaction. Let's examine what Zenger found and see what we can learn as leaders. Lacking Integrity Not too many leaders would be saying they lacked integrity about themselves but that may not be how they are seen by their subordinates.  The organization may be zigging but we decide to zag.  We don't agree with the policy, so we decide to head off in another direction.  There may be promulgated values developed in the senior executive suites and we are not modelling the correct behaviour.  Maybe our big leader egos can't admit mistakes or when we are wrong. We try to bend logic and justify our way out of the situation.  Maybe we say one thing and do the precise opposite of what we are preaching.  “Do what I say, not what I do” – does this sound familiar? Not Accountable “Of course, I am accountable – what nonsense”, may be our first reaction.  We may be telling our boss that the poor results of our team are because we haven't been issued with the sharpest tools in the toolbox.  It is all their fault and we are pristine and perfect.  The 360 survey results are a bloodbath, as our subordinates hoe into us for our various failings, but we dismiss the results.  “Piffle. Don't they know what I am facing here.  The pressure, the stress.  No one appreciates how hard I am working. They have no idea what they are talking about”.  Perhaps our decisions are poor and instead of owning them, we push the blame off on to others, particularly other departments.  “If only IT did their job properly.  If only marketing were more professional.  If only sales was pulling their weight”, ad nauseum. Over-Focused On Self It would be difficult to find leaders who don't have this attribute to varying degrees.  You don't see too many wilting violets whisked up into leadership positions.  Self-promotion is a fundamental aspect of getting ahead in business.  The issues arise when it goes to extremes.  Strong leaders can often believe they are in a zero sum game and another's success lessens their own worth and promotion opportunities.  Not cooperating with rivals or even attempting to sabotage them can be some fallout from this attitude.  Subordinates too can be seen as future rivals who might replace the boss, so better to not delegate to, coach or  provide experience for capable people in order to keep them down.  Uninspiring It would be a rare bird of a leader who admitted they were uninspiring.  We easily believe we are a role model for others, that we have credibility and are someone others would want to emulate.  However, we might be a hopeless public speaker, barely able to string two words together without injecting a series of ums and ahs into proceedings. We might be morose, weighed down with the pressure of our position and responsibilities, permanently in a bad mood.  We might be so busy, we are incapable of directing others and wind up dumping work on them minus the WHY and the how bits of the equation. There is a bitter pill for leaders to swallow to overcome their blind spots.  It is called “feedback” and it can often taste sour, jagged and unpleasant.  We cannot see ourselves as our staff see us, so gird your loins and ask for help to be a better leader.  This is never easy, but the alternative of blundering forward, repeating the same errors is not tenable. At some point the organization will have a reckoning with us and it might prove fatal to our careers.  Better to take our medicine early, under our own direction, than hoping for the best and eventually getting the chop.

In today's business world, leaders need to be “authentic” leaders. We have all come across this somewhere, endorsed by self-proclaimed gurus and prophets.  I often ponder what does that actually mean?  I am sure all of those Japanese leaders screaming abuse at their staff, when they make mistakes, are being authentic.  They are authentically terrible, dictatorial, abusive leaders.  Actually this worked like a charm for a very long time in postwar Japan.  You joined a company for life and there was only one route for those who changed jobs and that was down into a netherworld of strife, insecurity and lower salary.  In the goode olde days you had to dodge the flying ashtrays thrown at you by your authentically enraged boss, endure their publicly delivered abuse and keep going. Yamaichi Securities going down in 1997, made changing jobs mid-career respectable for the first time for those who became unemployed through no fault of their own.  Can a boss be passive at the other end of the scale? No.  Bosses have to lead the charge, set the direction, check on the milestones, monitor the performance and drive results.  They have to praise those who are doing a fantastic job or have a difficult conversation with those who are failing.  Where is the line between aggression and assertion though.  One boss's idea of assertion is aggressive power harassment from an employee's perspective.  In years past this didn't matter much, because there were plenty of people to go around and it was “my way or the highway”.  Today, we are rapidly running out of young people. There is a temporary pause in hostilities in the talent war here in Japan, which will shortly resume, once Covid is brought under control. Aggressive bosses are self centered, concerned about their career and how they look to their bosses.  Assertive bosses will stand up for their team and themselves vis-à-vis the big bosses and sharp elbowed thrusting rivals.  They have a 360 degree view of what is going on and how actions affect the whole organisation, rather than focused on the needs of one aggressive individual. Aggressive bosses are often lashing out because they cannot control the stress and pressure they are under.  They play a toxic version of “pass the parcel” and take it out on their subordinates.  Assertive leaders know how to keep calm. They have techniques for handling the stress. They realise that their dark, erratic, satanic moods can destroy the motivation and equilibrium of the team.  They are the swan bosses paddling like crazy under the waterline but moving elegantly through the days no matter what is on. Aggressive bosses believe their job is to tell errant staff “how it is” and be very blunt and direct in their speech.  Assertive bosses can be honest and direct with subordinates but the language they choose doesn't become inappropriate or demotivating.  They know they need this person to recover and get back into the fray and try again, even though their self-confidence is shattered by their poor work output.  When your young staff are useless you can't easily replace them, so your job becomes to help them become useful. Aggressive bosses often have deep underlying poor self esteem, which is why they lash out and whip people verbally.  They need to establish their supreme dominance over the team and fear is their weapon of choice.  Assertive leaders have a confident self-image and good awareness of their strengths and weakness.  They are at home in their own skin and don't feel the need to constantly prove themselves or beat up their staff.  Rather they are looking for ways to further develop their team.  They know they are stuck right where they are, until they can groom successors which will free them up for promotion to bigger jobs.  Every firm needs leaders. The person who is the leadership factory is going to be given more accountability within the organisation. I think words like “authentic” need to have more nuanced meanings.  What we are really talking about is someone who is honest, transparent, confident, considerate and a builder of people, because they believe that is the best thing for everyone.  Being an “authentic “bully in this era in Japan, will be a career ender once the top leadership work out this person is a sieve, rapidly leaking talent out of the organisation to rival firms.

Engaging your team as a leader is a relatively new idea.  When I first started work in the early 70s, none of my bosses spent a nanosecond thinking about they could engage their staff as a leader.  What they were thinking about was catching mistakes, incompetence, error and willful negligence, before these problems went nuclear.  That meant micro managing everyone.  “Management by walking around” meant checking up on people.  The construct was that the team were problematic and the boss needed to have forensic skills to stop problems escalating.  That was the age of the hero boss, who was the best at everything, knew more than everyone else and could do it all.  That won't fly today because technology has made business so much more complex.  Back in 1971 Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon noted, “ a wealth of information would create a poverty of attention”.  This is where we bosses are today, with hand held devices which keep us permanently connected through the flood release valves of the internet.  We are time poor, handling trouble aplenty, struggling to keep up with market shifts and spending too much time on Clubhouse.  What this translates into is bosses are too busy to engage their staff properly.  Unlike the 70s when it wasn't a “thing”, engagement is known today and expected.  We are doing a poor job by design today rather than through brutal ignorance.  There are three useful foundation tools we can apply to spark the process of engaging our staff. Engagement levels are closely calibrated with how well the direction, values and culture of the organisation synchronise with those of the individuals in the team.  Here is the tricky bit – how well informed is the busy, busy boss about the team members' agreement with the firm's direction, their value set and the culture they want for their workplaces? This is where the “poverty of attention” kicks in and bosses don't know much about their team, because they never ask. There is scant time for asking questions when you are busy raining orders down like missiles on the team.  We can create connections with our team members by asking factual questions about where they were raised, how many in their family, where they went to university, etc.  We may find commonalities of experience or gain insights into what has made this team member the person they are today. We need to have this information as a base, but we need to go deeper to help us understand the way they think.  That means using causative questions.  These are enquiries such as, “why did you choose to study geography at university” or “why did you choose to join that company” or “why did you get involved with parachute jumping as a hobby?”.  You get the idea.  These questions reveal motives for decisions and inform about priorities. The third tool is asking value-based questions.  Our values drive our decisions and carve out our behaviour.  For companies this is often where the wheels come off. The rhetoric about what the company stands for and the leadership behaviours don't line up.  There is nothing like tough times to reveal the firm and the boss's true colours. These are not immediate questions we would ask, because they can feel intrusive.  Imagining you will engage someone by getting to know them better and leading off with a question such as “tell me about a turning point in your life” is not going to have the desired effect.  We need to be building the trust over time and once we have gotten to know them reasonably well, we can then ask deeper questions.  We can enquire, “thinking back to the way things have gone in your life, would you do things differently?” or “what have been the high points of your accomplishments so far?”, etc.  Things are in constant flux and a conversation held eighteen months ago may have been overtaken by a series of events in the meantime.  So we have to have to make chances to keep engaging with our team to keep up to date on where they are in their thinking, what are their current primary values and recent experiences. Less time on Clubhouse and more chatting with the team will do a lot more for the engagement of your people and will help to drive toward achieving the organisations goals.

Smirks emerge quite quickly when you mention “role model” and “leaders” in the same breath.  Most peoples' experiences with leaders as role models have been that they encompass the “what not do as a leader” variety.  Hanmen Kyoshi (反面教師) or teacher by negative example, as we have noted in Japanese.  What are some of the things we should be focused on in our quest to become a real role model for our teams? We can break the role model aspect into four major areas: Self-Aware; Accountability; Others-Focused and Strategic.  Within these four categories, there are eleven sub-categories on which we are going to focus today.  Do a mental audit on yourself and see how many boxes you can check, acknowledging that you are doing a good job. 1.    Self-Aware covers a number of sub-categories: “Self-Directed”. Leaders have to give others direction, so they must be independent types who don't have to rely on others to know what to do.  They have to be “Self-Regulated” which is a fancy pants way of saying they need strong personal discipline.  The leader has to decide what needs to be done and then marshals everything needed to get the job done.  This effort has to be sustained over time and that is where the self-discipline aspect kicks in. “Develop Self” talks about taking 100% responsibility for one's own career.  Depending on others, or the company in general, to take care of your career is folly.  We need to represent value to an employer, because if we don't, then we will be replaced by someone who does.  The tricky thing about business is they keep moving the goalposts.  What was required when you started and what is required today may be quite different. Scarily different. I see so many senior leaders and friends sacked by the organisation, despite many years of loyal and successful service.  A new CEO arrives, a merger takes place or a new direction for the firm is set and the next thing you know, you are out.  If you have been pursuing your own personal growth, then there is a safety factor involved there to enable you to weather the storms.  If you have just been working hard, which is admirable, you are left tired and then on the street. “Confident” is a vague term, really.  What actually defines being “confident”.  We can recognise it more easily than we can articulate it.  A leader who has confidence speaks in a certain way, with gravitas, with a certain finality.  Hesitation never arises and the body language backs up the confident words. 2.    Accountability is another area with sub-categories: “Competent” describes our capability to understand the business and do the work.  Most people rise through the ranks, so they have done the jobs their staff are doing, so they know the content well.  Changing jobs and entering as a mid-career hire can sometimes make the competence piece a challenge, though.  We have to be a fast learner to build credibility. “Honesty and Integrity” are both problem sub-categories.  Honesty is easier to gauge than integrity.  We can see if you are honest and can measure it.  However, while everyone says how important integrity is, defining it is a challenging task.  Saying and doing what you say is a fundamental basis of demonstrating integrity, as is standing for higher ideals.  How do you actually behave when no one is watching?  3.    Others-Focused is a big sub-category and so not all aspects can be covered here, but we will focus on some key areas: “Inspiring” is in the eyes of the beholder, so as the boss, you have to create the environment where everyone can be inspired.  We need to uncover what the range of views on the subject are amongst the troops, to get an idea of how we need to appeal to everyone's individual needs.  This means making time to talk to people, rather than just barking out leader commands all day long. “Develops Others” means going beyond the managerial functions of everything done on time, to spec and to budget.  We have looked at this earlier. It means putting time into coaching staff and giving them stretch tasks through delegation.  Most people stay functionally at the manager level and never quite level up sufficiently to become a true leader.  Whose fault is that? I would argue it is their boss who has failed them.  The leader's job is to create other leaders, and every organisation is crying out for good leaders. “Positively Influences Others” is an all weather skill for leaders. Our grumpy mood, short temper, irritability can bring down the motivation of the team.  Also, speaking ill of other divisions or sections to knit our own team together, a weak leader favourite, makes the team doubt the robustness of the organisation. “Effectively Communicates” sounds reasonable, except most leaders are not very good at speaking in public.  They do not generate confidence in what they are saying by the unprofessional way in which they are saying it.  The solution is simplicity itself: we need to get the training to master this attribute. 4.  The last category we will cover here is Strategic. We will deal with just one sub-category “Uses Authority Appropriately”.  We are talking about using our position power for good, rather than self-aggrandisement.  Bossing people around to boost our own fragile ego and having the need for power over others is totally sad.  We are given power to help our people do better - that is the only reason.  So how was your self-audit?  We now have a framework to place around the term “role model” and we know where we have more work to do.  Always a good thing for a leader.   

We are recognised for our capabilities and potential and promoted into our first leadership role.  We have been given charge over our colleagues and now have additional responsibilities.  In many cases we don't move into a pure “off the tools” leadership role. We are more likely to be a player/leader hybrid, because we have our own clients and also produce revenue outcomes.  One of the biggest difficulties is knowing how to balance the roles of “doer” and “urger”.  Jealousy, bruised egos, sabotage, mild insurrection can be found amongst our former colleagues as we are now their new boss.  There will be some who feel the organisation has made a massive error and they should have been the one promoted. Their enthusiasm for striving for the greater good has become diminished and results begin to suffer.  The more Machiavellian may be thinking how they can unseat the new boss, by lowering outcomes enough, so that it damages the new boss's credibility, without getting themselves fired.  They are happy to spend long hours conspiring with others to calculate the nexus of those two points.  The danger here is we double down on our own production because we have more control over that and we actually don't lead.  We are busy with dealing with all the accoutrements of power, exciting stuff like approving leave applications, tracking sick leave, filling out reports and general paperwork which is the bane of a leader's life.   Leaders have four main jobs.  Set the strategy, create the culture, maintain the machine so it runs on time and on budget and we build our people.  When we were team members we were given guidance and direction by the boss, now we are the boss.  Are we sufficiently knowledgeable and talented enough to take the organisation in the right direction?  Are we relying on what we knew before we became the boss?  Are we studying, reading, listening to podcasts, watching TED talks and doing everything we can to better educate ourselves for the different demands of this leadership role?  If we are busy, busy, busy working on our new leader tasks or servicing our own clients, we may not be devoting the time needed to grow.  The leader needs to have a long term perspective, but our subordinates tend to have a short term view and invariably so do our superiors.  They expect results from us and in short order or they start wondering if they made the right choice about who should have stepped up and be the boss.  The boss has to challenge orthodoxy.  If we keep doing the same things, in the same way, we will get the same results.  How can we get better results?  That is what the boss needs to be working on.  We need to persuade others to follow us and to have influence.  Often none of those factors were part of the selection process though.  We got the job because we were the best salesperson, accountant, engineer, bookkeeper, architect, etc.  Actually, many new leaders don't even like people and much prefer numbers. Many are poor public speakers have big brains and no friends.  Do the new leaders get any training to build on their skill sets and give them the tools to succeed?  Often they get nothing.  They keep focused on what they can control which are their own clients, don't build the people and they wind up carrying the team.  That works as long as the outcome demands don't go up.  As the ask increases, the gap starts to form between how much one person can do to hit the targets and the total team contribution.  Because we haven't developed our people, they are not filling in the gap between where we are and where we need to be.  After three years of this, the new leader gets fired and the cycle begins again with a new person sitting in the boss's chair. New leaders relying on their companies for their security to remain in their elevated position are pretty optimistic.  The tasks of the leader are different to those of the led, so either through personal study or company sponsored training, there must be the investment to grow their capabilities.  The mindset element is important, as that is the trigger for changing the required behaviors in order to grow in the new position.  So bosses, are you sufficiently investing in your newly promoted leaders.  So newly promoted leaders, are you taking responsibility for your own career and investing in yourself.  If the answer to either question is “no”, then whether you realise it or not, you have entered the dander zone.  Don't go there.  

We have seen Hollywood pumping out comic heroes as movie franchises to get the money flowing into the studios.  The premise is always the same.  The super hero comes to the rescue and saves everyone.  What about for leaders when coaching their team members?  Fortunately, we have four super heroes we can rely on to help us do a better job as the leader. They are Encourage, Focus, Elevate and Empower. Encouraging our team sounds pretty unheralded and straightforward. But do we actually do it?  Leaders are busy people and have tons of pressure on their shoulders.  Life is a whirlwind of meetings and pushing the plan's execution.  Expecting people to do what they are being paid to do, can easily supplant the encouragement vibe from the leader.  Telling people you recognise their strengths, means taking the time to audit and then communicate those strengths.  Being supportive means taking the time to be across what is happening at the individual level.  Do we do that?  Giving positive reinforcement means having the right conversations at the right time.  The word “time” keeps popping up, because that is the deadly enemy of good intentions. If we flipped open your calendar from last week and we added up how much one-on-one encouragement you gave to the members your team, would we be talking in terms of hours or milliseconds of conversation?  Time management is a key to people management.  You can't manage people if you are not in control of your time and if you have not made certain choices about where you will prioritise your time.  We see this in family time being sacrificed on the alter of getting the results.  The employees can easily be in the same group as the family, missing out on the leader's attention. The second super hero of leadership coaching is Focus.  Managers manage processes, budgets, timelines and the execution of results.  The machinery of the firm runs flawlessly.  There are no defects and no delays.  Leaders do all of that, plus they set the direction for the firm and they build the people.  The building the people part is where there has to be intentional focus on the individual.  All of the other components of executing and gaining results can means the focus is not on the people development. We need to track the assignments we have given people, to make sure that we are there for them, if they need help.  We need to offer up our undivided attention to listen to our people. No thoughts of what needs to be done scrambling around in our brain, while we sit there half listening to what we are being told.  Elevate is probably the most difficult of the super hero leader coaching efforts to pull off.  We can tell everyone what to do and how to it.  We can do it all by ourselves.  Neither of these choices develop our people though.  We must coach them by asking what they need to do. We need to push them to operate with the mindset of the leader.  We need them to self discover things that will guide them around what needs to be done and how they should be done. We have to challenge them in ways that inspire, as opposed to crushing them.  There is a fine line between applying the right dimension of push and crushing someone. We all get into a rut in our work. As the leader coach if we can have our people challenge typical ways of thinking or doing, then that potentially unleashes a tremendous opportunity for creativity.  It means we need to allocate the time to interact with our team and that time may not be very easy to find.  We can also suggest they do less of or more of something.  We can challenge them to consider doing the opposite of what they are currently doing. All of these “more”, “less”, “opposite” alternatives are there to get the team thinking in a different way about our business.  If we see an opportunity for improvement, we can push for immediate change.  This can become an issue though if we push too hard at the wrong time.  Getting the balance right is the equation we need to solve. Our fourth super hero is to Empower.  There is no word in Japanese which can easily capture this idea.  That makes the communication of the idea a bit tricky. We know that the Johari Window describes leadership blindspots.  We need to work on our high potential's awareness of what everyone knows, but they don't know about themselves.  Doing 360 surveys and educating them on how to get feedback are positive actions that will build the leadership bench.  Having an improved perspective enables them to make the changes necessary to become a more effective leader. Getting them to think about how to transfer experiences from one environment to another is a stretch that is needed.  We all tend to be trapped by the limitations of our previous experiences.  The issue becomes that, “to a hammer everything looks like a nail”.  We need to educate our people about not falling into that leadership trap.  Engaging emotions is a powerful driver of commitment and accountability.  Understanding what is important to each person is the necessary key to the door of change.  That means spending the time and making the communication effort to uncover the trigger emotions, the drivers for positive change.  We need to model it for them and then encourage them to do the same, when they have the responsibility of leadership. The four drivers of coaching composed of Encourage, Focus, Elevate and Empower make for powerful leadership precepts.  These take time and the best time to start using them was yesterday.  The second best time is today.  

The chain of command is a well established military leadership given.  I have three stripes, you have none, so do what I say or else.  In the post war period, this leadership idea was transposed across to Civvy street by returning soldiers.  This worked like a charm and only started to peter out with the pushback against the Vietnam War, when all authority began to be challenged.  Modern leaders are currently enamoured with concepts like the “servant leader”.  The leader serves the team as an enabler for staff success.  Dominant authority is out and a vague negotiated power equilibrium has replaced it.  Delegation, responsibility, accountability, mistake handling and punishment are all swirling around in this fog of the new order. Japan makes the whole construct even more interesting by having built up a legal perspective on staff issues that favours the worker against the company.  Judges, also do not see company staff non-performance of duties as necessarily career ending.  Add into the mix the fact that in the last 20 years, the number of people aged between 15 and 34 has halved.  The bad news is that it is going to halve again over the next forty years.  Young people will be in high demand, regardless of how useless they are.  We complain today about millennium entitlement.  That will be nothing compared to what is coming.  Smaller families means more single child households. The Boomer generation will be spoiling their grandchildren on an industrial scale.  Scarce resource spoilt brats will be entering society and business.  I can hardly wait. The Universities here in Japan will be taking anyone with a pulse, because they are going to be bleeding red ink all over the place.  Does anyone remember the Tandai system of two year colleges?  They have all disappeared or morphed into four year schools to survive.  Diabolical entrance exams will linger for the most elite schools in Japan, but for the rest it is a race to the bottom of academic standards to keep the doors open.  Passing academic classes at a Japanese University has been a joke.  If you turn up to class, the chances are pretty good you will be passed.  A rather low bar compared to what is happening at varsity in the rest of the advanced world. So dealing with undereducated, spoilt, entitled lay abouts are our collective future when hiring staff.  Even now, between 30%-35% of staff into their third to fourth year of employ are bailing out and heading for the exists, seeking supposed greener pastures.  Covid-19 may have put a temporary dampener on this exodus for the moment, but if that is your staff retention strategy, then the future looks bleak for you.  Business is so complex today.  The hero boss who can do every part of the business process has become a distant memory. Even if we could do it, should we?  The boss should be concentrating on those activities that only the boss can do and should be pushing everything else down to subordinates.  Now that is the theory.  The reality is most bosses in Japan are doing too much.  They don't trust the delegation system because they have been burnt before.  Actually, that is not quite true – they don't have a delegation system.  A dumping of the work system yes, but an intelligent, best practice delegation system, well no. Probably a good time to revisit how that works for all the bosses out there, because they are going to need it.  If we can't unleash hell as bosses and we have to gain willing cooperation to get the youth engaged, what do we need to do?  Communication skills are going to be at a premium.  The whole modern apparatus of leadership rests on persuasion power, rather than raw position power.  Do bosses know what these young people want?  That would be a good starting point.  “What is in it for me” is a tried and true motivator across time and geography.  Once upon a time that was focused on what the boss wanted but times have changed.  Bosses need to spend time with young people, individually, to understand them better.  Yes, they may be spoilt little brats, but these are the cards you are dealt, so learn how to play them.     

Japan has a wonderful year end tradition where the entire house is given a massive clean up. Dust is dispatched, junk is devolved and everything is made shipshape.  We need to do the same with our business and I don't mean cleaning up your desk.  We have two types of people working for us.  There are those who receive a salary of some dimension, be they full time or part-time and then there are those who get paid for their services.  Some of these services are delivered regularly throughout the year.  Others are intermittent, on a needs basis.  Regardless, we need to take a good look at these every year to make sure they are still fit for purpose. As a training company, we have some regular suppliers.  Our landlord charges us rent for the space we use and that lease pops up every two years.  Regardless of the economy, the office space vacancy rate, the consumer price index or any other intergalactic factors, the numbers always go up at renewal time.  It is no good finding ourselves at renewal time and thinking “maybe I should have investigated if there were more appropriately priced alternatives”.  Too late by that time, because it takes quite a while to find the size of space you need, in the location and configuration you require, at a number that makes sense.  Better to engage a real estate broker early to start telling you what the alternatives are so that when the time comes you can have some choices available.  That data is also a potential bargaining chip in the arm wrestle for the next two years of tenant penal servitude. Another key player is your accountant.  If you outsource your accounting to a firm, they will receive the data from your people and then get into a P&L and Balance Sheet format that you can come to terms with.  It also enables someone externally to see what are the patterns of spending and spot any anomalies.  Japanese staff are very honest.  However, like staff in other countries, they can find themselves in the newspaper for embezzling vast sums from their employers, sustained over breathtaking amounts of time. If you need an English speaking accountant, we are now fishing in a very small pond.  This tends to mean that we lock someone in to do the books and we just keep them forever.  We all seek an equilibrium comfort point.  We get the service, we are happy with it and we are generally too busy to investigate if we can better it.  Once a year, list up some accounting service delivery alternatives and have a conversation about what they offer.  Existing suppliers can become robotic in their delivery of their services and they have pruned their services down to the minimum necessary to maximise their return.   It might be a good time to see if you can maximise your return instead. In our case, we need things designed and printed, because we distribute flyers to clients and training manuals to class participants.  I am using the same printing company now which I have used for over ten years.  I know there are other companies who are slightly cheaper, but I need high quality service, delivered at speed. Being able to get things designed very quickly is something I value highly and will pay more for that service.  If that service was diminished then there would be a reason to change.  The point here though is, I need to keep track of the size of the disparity between what I pay and what they deliver.  I can't just go to sleep at the wheel and keep using the same folk because I am too busy to know the relative price, quality and scope of the service I am receiving. Labor lawyers do well here in Japan.  The regulations are changing, there is government pressure to not have unpaid overtime and numerous arcane labor rules abound.  Our labor lawyer is a pretty good businessman and signed my firm up on a monthly retainer.  I took my COO's advice on this retainer, though I had my doubts.   I reviewed that service need and that retainer and guess what?  After I cut it, there has been no difference in what we needed as a service.  Instead, we are saving that money every month  now.  Maybe at one point there was a point.  My point though is, don't let these things just drift along, without making a conscious decision to decide if the service is really what you still need or not.  End of the year clean up time is a good time to survey new potential providers and clean up unneeded service expenses too.      

I met the owner of a successful business recently.  He had bought the company twenty years ago and then pivoted it to a new and more successful direction.  So successful, that he employs over 230 staff and was recently listed on the local stock exchange.  It was a business meeting to discuss collaboration and I was expecting an entrepreneurial leader, charismatic and personally powerful.  Why was that my expectation?  Being raised in Australia, that is what successful entrepreneurs in the West are like, so I expected a Japanese equivalent.  He was totally different to what I expected. He had no personal power at all from what I could see.  One reason may be that we were speaking in Japanese. It is a subtle, circular language that masks and obfuscates like few others.  He had two senior staff members with him, his direct reports and they too were rather underwhelming.  It got me thinking about what does it take in Japan to become a successful leader?  Here were three of them in front of me and I wouldn't have crossed the road to meet any of them. Position rather than personal power counts for lot in Japan.  You meet a lot of people here with big titles and pretty much no personal firepower.  That is not to say there aren't charismatic, powerful leaders here.  Mr. Nambu who founded the massive Persona organisation is a very charismatic person, who has tons of personal power.  He has nearly 20,000 employees spread across his 67 subsidiaries and 11 affiliates.  I know him personally and he is very good at dealing with people, both high and low.  He started the company while he was still at university, so he is a rare bird in Japan, to take a start-up to serious stardom and himself to billionaire status. What is the difference between some of the successful Japanese I have met and the nobodies leading many firms.  When we teach leadership, we make a point of differentiating it from management.  Managers make sure the processes are running on time, cost and at the required quality.  Leaders do all of that, plus they set the direction and build the people.  By this definition most Japanese leaders we meet in business would be classified as “managers”.  Japan is a country of detail, long term planning, caution and perseverance.  You can go a long way on the back of that line-up and many do. My new acquaintance is a manager I would say.  I am guessing that he fell into the business he is in, rather than it being the product of strategic planning.  What a contrast with Jordan Wang.  Jordan is the Dale Carnegie franchisee in Sydney and took the business over two years ago from basically nothing growing it very quickly to a substantial size.  I was attending his talk to the Franchisee Association on how he runs his business.  His planning frameworks were very sophisticated.  Because they started with basically nothing, he said, he had to come up with a road map. He spent some serious time studying the various frameworks out there and then adjusted them to his reality.  Over the next two years he shaped and crafted those frameworks into a formidable machine, to help run his business.  One of the very experienced and successful American franchisees commented that “I am feeing less smart” after listening to Jordan.  I know exactly what he means, because I too was blown away by Jordan regarding his thinking, energy and that word – charisma. In Japan, trust is a key requirement for retaining staff, gaining clients and remaining successful.  This is the same everywhere, but somehow Japan just brings a much great intensity to the word.  If you can gain trust with others, you can build a business here. Over time you can build it, if you happen to have chosen a niche or a sector that is growing and profitable.  Being high on trust and low on charisma is no impediment to success here in Japan. So when you meet a Japanese leader and they are a fizzer in the charisma stakes, don't necessarily write them off.  Look at their numbers, particularly staff numbers as an indicator of how much credence you should attach to them.  In my experience, few Japanese excel individually, but put them together in a group and they are most formidable.  To keep the group together, their leaders need to have been able to build the trust.  The other question you need to ask is have they been able to sustain this over decades?   If they have, then you may have a business partner in front of you, even if they seem grey, dull and boring.

The ad on social media said, “we are looking for sales A players”.  I know the guy who put out the ad and he had recently moved to a new company, a new entrant into Japan and they were aggressively going after market share here.  I was thinking I would love to be able to recruit A players for sales as well, but I can't.  The simple reason is that A players in Japan are seriously expensive.  If you are a big company, with deep pockets in a highly profitable sector, then this is a no brainer.  Why would you bother with B or C players, if you can afford A players?  What do you do though, when you are running a small to medium sized company in a tough market, with thin margins and lots of competitors? Being a leader, able to recruit the best talent, isn't the same requirement as being at the sharp end of the stick, where you have to create something out of nothing on a daily basis.  We have to take D players and turn them into C players and take C players and turn them into B players. Maybe we can even create the odd A player, given enough time and consistency. In theory, this sounds all very plausible and straightforward.  Good so far, but how do you bring your talent alchemy to the forefront? Leaders are pretty busy, so who develops these D, C and B people?  It stands to reason that the sales section heads or sales department heads are not sales A players either, so their sales role modelling is a limiting factor.  The leader has to be highly selective where they put their time and effort.  Pumping a lot of work into someone, to see them walk out the door is heartbreaking, mind numbing, costly and depressing stuff.  Adjusting expectations is a big factor in leadership.  Trying to thread a camel through the eye of a needle takes time.  So we cannot expect new people to be producing results any time soon.  Having a really good record of salespeople results is a start.  Over time, you can build up averages, so that you can know what is a reasonable expectation, for a certain point in time.  I have a spreadsheet that tracks all the salespeople from ground zero.  This way I am comparing salesperson against salesperson, quarter by quarter.  I know what a first year average revenue result is and so forth, year by year. Knowing this is a big help, because I don't load up new people with too much pressure.  In fact, it gives me the ability to encourage them.  I can tell them that I am not expecting them to hit the moon straight out the gate. The first year is a giant learning curve and I want them to do their best and that will be fine.  By taking away the pressure, they can fit into the team, absorb the culture and begin their training.  A players are expensive, so bosses want results immediately, to justify the big bucks they are paying them.  Fair enough, but the rest of us need to tread a different path of patience and encouragement, to gradually mould the new people into performers. The other thing we need to do is inject ourselves into the mix and work on developing talent.  We cannot leave it all to our direct reports.  Even though we are super busy, we need to have some regular personal interaction with the new team members and need to keep close tabs on how they are going.  We need to create the time to coach them.  We cannot be there all of the time, but we have to select precise interventions to help them keep moving forward.  Maybe we can do thirty minutes early mornings, a couple of times a week, to work with them as a group.  We also have to scale for their ability to absorb pressure.  Some are robust and others are more delicate flowers.  We need to adjust our time expectations for how long it will take to get everyone up to speed to handle the pressure to perform.  A players are already forged in the furnace of high performance, so they are application ready.  The balance of getting cash in the door every month to pay the bills and being patient with people, is a high wire act that leaders have to learnt to walk. It is easy to get this wrong and fall to your demise and see the business go backwards or even down.  There is no road map here either, because every case is different, every group of individuals is different.  You have to play the cards you can afford and not spend any time wishing to be dealt a better hand. The country may be going to hell in a basket, but salespeople are in high demand. When hiring salespeople people, I am constantly astonished at the prices other companies will pay for a warm body.  Very challenged E players, with no experience, are getting offers that make you want to cry.  That is the market.  We are all going to be constantly faced with this struggle of how to develop people we can afford, in an already overheated hiring market, that will just get worse.  The demographics are not on the leader's side here, as the lack of young people coming into sales drives up the price.  This will become the sales era of the C player, with intermittent light showers of B players.  Get ready for it folks.  

Years ago I inverted the pyramid and promoted the best salespeople to become the branch leaders.  The existing branch leaders were shuffled around to new branches and they provided the grey hair and the credibility needed by the older rich clientele, but didn't have responsibility for driving revenues anymore.  They were moved because if they had stayed in the same branch, they would have undermined the authority of these “upstarts” recently promoted.  The revenue generation responsibility was shifted from guys in their 50s to a 60/40 mix of younger guys and gals, taking the average age down to 35 years of age.  It was a revolution in Japanese retail banking. Not all made the transition from selling to leading but most did.  This was the American Dream brought to Japan.  In this brave new world, a young woman could become a branch head at the age of 35.  That was previously unimaginable.  The impact on recruiting talented, bright kids out of the best universities was profound.  We were bringing on board young people who were incredible and they chose us over the bigger more powerful competition, because they saw a new future here in Japan for themselves that hadn't existed before. There were many reasons for instituting this revolutionary change, but one of them was the generational divide between the older male branch leaders and the younger people they were responsible for.  Like me, they had all grown up under the tough love school of boss supervision.  When this is how you were raised in business, it is extremely hard to break free of that and try something unfamiliar and different.  The intentions are always good and were to make the younger staff better.  The issue had become the style of communication to achieve that.  Straight talk, for many in my generation, means tons of critique, criticism and maybe even verbal abuse.  That is what we got from our bosses, so we are passing it on down the generations. The younger people today though have a lot more options than we had.  They have compliance systems, staff surveys of bosses and a fundamental change in societal attitudes working in their favour.  The demographic decline in the numbers of young people means there is a strident war for talent going on, as companies try their best to find enough young people to hire.  The young are a finite resource in a sea of strong demand.  That changes the power equation substantially from when I was a kid. We were all assured we were quite disposable.  In the modern era, criticism has to be replaced with words of encouragement.  Bosses have to adjust their expectations.   This sounds simple, but it is confronting.  I remember once calling one of my younger staff and I left a message to call me back. There had been some internal staffing changes and I wanted to assure them that everything would be fine.  I also wanted to gauge how they were was feeling about the changes.  No call back, but later I did see a text message to my phone that said they were “not mentally ready to speak with me yet”. I don't know about you, but for someone brought up on tough love, that statement seemed so soft, indulgent, entitled, namby-pamby, no guts and divorced from reality.  I tell you I had fire and sparks coming out of my ears and eyes immediately I read their message.  I was furious. I could never imagine I would say such a thing to the President of the company, if I were a junior employee.  If the President left a phone message saying “call me back” then I would drop everything and make that call as soon as I got that message.  We lead a different generation today.   In their mind, there was no problem with brushing off the President, because they weren't ready to have that conversation. I eventually spoke with the staff member and accommodated some concerns they had and all was good and resolved - for them. I wasn't resolved though.  Maybe I should have just left it, but I couldn't. I had to address their phone message to me.  This person was talented and I didn't want to lose them, so I knew I was walking on a tightrope.  My tough love upbringing had their “immature, naïve, stupid, unacceptable” comments stuck firmly in my craw.  I told them quietly, calmly but firmly, that if they ever got another message from me to call me back, then they should do so pronto.  If they couldn't manage that, then they should find another President to work for.  They could do that easily by the way, because they are in the zone of high talent demand.  Where do we draw the line today though?  I know the way I was raised in business wasn't the most ideal and that I am a hangover from a bygone era, but I am still here and still leading. How much crap do we have to put up with from this younger generation?  I would guess a whole lot more, certainly more than we anticipate or want.  There is no finite answer, but clearly our method of communication is going to have to change.  It has to  become much more nuanced than anything we ever experienced from our bosses.  I will try to keep Principle #17 in my mind, “Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view”.  Also, Principle #8, “Talk in terms of the other person's interests”.  And I will definitely follow Principle #1, “Don't criticise, condemn or complain”.  If I can keep the fire and sparks within me from burning the whole thing down, then there may be hope for me yet.  

Time is the enemy of good leadership.  It takes time to develop a team of individuals.  A common metaphor is the orchestra conductor.  Each instrument player has a specific role and it is the job of the leader to meld them together to work harmoniously and effectively.  The conductor takes a significant amount of time to get this working correctly.  That is their sole purpose.  They make the best of the talent in the team, get them working well together and develop the individual talents of those involved.  In business, we have to do all of these things and worry about the P&L, the Balance Sheet, the competition, quarterly earnings, changes in Government regulations, the media, shareholders, where the market is heading and the latest developments in technology.  We are kept pretty busy. Consequently we are time poor from the moment our eyes open until we drift off to into slumber at night.  There is a tension between the time needed to work with our team members to work effectively together and the time we have available to do just that. So we cut corners.  We start to lead from a macro perspective.  We are prone to broadcast emails to the whole team, mass Town Halls where we download what is going on, Zoom calls to the whole team where we pontificate on how things should be.  It is terribly efficient but is it particularly effective? We know from sports that all the modern coaches coach each individual based on who they are and what they are capable of doing.  The old style game half-time coach thunderous moments of inspired oratory are the thing of Hollywood movie celluloid relics of a past long passed.  Leaders need to focus on each person, one by one. Some players are easy going, amazingly talented athletes who can perform the most unexpected feats of spontaneous physical dexterity, that a coach can never teach.  They are Amiables who like people and are understated.  They don't speak in a loud voice, in fact they are laconic to the extreme.  Loud incandescent outbursts about the requirement for getting the numbers are lost on them.  We have people like that on our business teams.  They are the solid quiet performers, often the social glue inside the team, holding all the superstructure together. The opposite stye are the Drivers.  They are highly numbers and outcome oriented.  They want the big bucks which comes with producing results.  They don't need external motivation, because the fire burns deep inside them and it is permanently self-igniting.  They don't need public acclaim or affirmation, because they march to the beat of their own drummer.  They don't listen to any praise because they are sceptical and they don't feel any need of it. They can handle extreme pressure from above to perform. They have no problem with straight talk about getting the numbers or getting out of Dodge. They need to be strongly corralled to play as a team member, because they are oriented as an individual player and believe they rise or fall on their own efforts.  They have severe outcome focus, rather than people focus, so often they can be limited in application as the leader. That doesn't stop organisations putting them in charge though, because they produce results. Analyticals are data freaks.  They only react to proof and evidence. They suspect any opinions which cannot be backed up with the statistics, expert testimonials, key numbers or facts.  They are very well organised and thorough in their approach to everything.  You have to persuade them with the data.  They are not stirred by emotional calls to action.  “Do it for the Gipper” doesn't do anything for them.  Whether in sport or in the office, they need to be convinced by proof of the right course of action and once on board, they then knuckle down and get right behind the effort. The opposite style is the Expressive.  They are outgoing, like being with people and are very confident, often too confident.  They are usually the pranksters inside the team, making the jokes, geeing everyone up.  They are flamboyant and enjoy the accolades, public acclaim and attention.  Titles, prizes, trophies, incentives – bring them on they say. Inside the company they are the “hail fellow well met” crew, who work hard and play harder.  Pumping up their ego has no bounds.  The less fizzy, more sensible variety are often the most attractive leaders inside the organisation. As leaders we need to know which style we are and what are our own strengths and weaknesses.  We need to know the same detail about our team members.  We should spend time with them individually.  Time constraints push us away from doing this, but we have to fight against the unrelenting drive to harmonised mediocrity.  There is no point in being a macro leader in a modern micro world.  

I remember reading once about a President reflecting on the cost controls he had instituted inside his organisation.  The industry had emerged from a recession and even though the economy and the company had recovered, he had forgotten to ease the strict controls he had instituted to protect the company.  Covid-19 has forced many of us to institute strict controls in order to survive the business disruption caused by the virus.  When should we release some of those stringent controls? This is a tricky subject at any time, but it becomes more pungent when you are coming out of a long tunnel.  As Winston Churchill once remarked ,“If you are going through hell, keep going”.  Very clever and witty, but when we have come out the other side of Covid-19 hell exactly at what point do we need to ease off the vice like pressure we have been applying to expenses and investment? In any business there is always tension around a couple of staples.  Control and innovation can be in contradiction.  Compliance, regulations, controls are there to protect the business.  Systems have to work at scale, regardless of who is employed in the business.  There has to be consistency and production sequences need to work to make deadlines or to ensure the required quality.  When I worked in retail banking, there were so many regulations and audits, regarding what we were doing.  Every process had to be documented and followed according to the letter of the specified designation. People didn't get into trouble for varying from the procedures.  It was hiding the variation that proved to be career ending.  They were too scared to admit they had not followed the procedures and so tried to hide the fact away.  Unfortunately, that doesn't work and at some point it all comes rolling out and rolls right over the top of the individual and they are summarily fired for hiding the offence. On the other hand, we want people to be innovative.  We know the danger of groupthink and also of being left behind by more creative rivals.  Staff witnessing the career ending variances from the established tried and true methods, are not much induced to try new stuff. How do we get innovation, when we have the system tied down so tight there is no room for mistakes? There has to be a different mentality around mistakes.  Japan is a mistake free zone.  There have been decades of bosses very publicly screaming abuse at staff for screwing up.  This curtailed people's interest in doing anything new or better.  The boss has to now take the lead here.  The staff need to be told clearly what can't be played around with for compliance or regulatory purposes, but also what is up for grabs.  Mistakes can be said to be tolerated but if the talk isn't matched by the walk, the experiment in a “hundred flowers” blooming, dies on the spot. Sounds easy, but just where is the line?  How big a mistake are you personally, as the boss, prepared to tolerate?  When Lee Iacocca called in one of his marketing executives at Chrysler following a major failure on a new model launch, that executive was expecting to be fired.  To his amazement Iacocca said, “Fire you!  We just spent million educating you”.  Can you be like that? We set the temperature for innovation, by how much we celebrate the learnings from failures.  We might not be as big minded about losing millions like Lee baby was, but still there will be opportunities to demonstrate that we never fail, because we always learn.  We are going to come out of Covid-19 in 2021, so although we can't set a specific date to loosen the controls, we still need to set a date to remind ourselves that we need to reevaluate where we are in the business cycle.  Now is also the time to look for innovations which can be implemented, once the cash flow has been stabilised. Plan now and pour in the investment when the time is right, rather than waiting for the cash to be there first and then start the planning. We need systems and rules to protect the company and we need innovation to take the company forward.  It cannot be “either”, it has to be “and”.  Striking that balance has no road map and is difficult to get right, but if we can be directionally right and at the right scale, then we are going to be on the right track.  

Giving people orders is fine and fun, when you are the leader.  Not so great when you are on the receiving end though.  Collaboration and innovation are two seismic shifts in workstyle  that are fundamentally different from the way most leaders were educated.  Command and control were more the order of business back in the day.  Hierarchy was clear, bosses brooked no opposing ideas or opinions and everyone below knew their place.  Things have moved on, but have the bosses moved on with it? Basically, the people you see in your daily purview are arraigned against a similar team in another steel and glass, high rise monstrosity somewhere across town.  The quality of their teamwork and their ideas determines who wins in today's marketplace.  All the cogs have to intersect smoothly and the quality and speed of the output are the differentiators.  Are your salespeople better than the opposition, is the marketing department punching above its weight, are your mid level leaders really rocking it?  Clarity of purpose, inculcation into the cult of the WHY, dedication combined with smarts, make so much difference when competing with rival organisations. The leaders are what make the difference.  They are hiring the people, training them and promoting them.  There are so many deeper aspects to this.  Is the culture profound or anaemic?  Is talent recognised, rewarded and embraced as a competitive advantage or are we checking the age and seniority of the straps on the slave galley oars?  What is the communication mode?  Is this monologue boss city or are we engaging with a firestorm of vibrant, powerful ideas from below.  Is the boss the chief know-it-all or the orchestra conductor, moulding the raw untrained troops into a stellar team? Communication is at the center piece to all of this.  When the boss communication is focused on direct orders on the what and how all day long, we breed robots.  Why don't we push ourselves much higher and go for motivational leadership, where words capture souls and move mountains.  The key to this pivot is to dump the olde style locker room halftime rousing call for maximum blood and guts in the second half.  Today's sports coaches are geniuses of psychology.  They know their athletes' temperaments, aspirations, fears and hot buttons at such an intimate level, that it is simply breathtaking. Bosses have to be in the same mould.  Knowing each person thoroughly as an individual is the starting point.  On top of that is knowing what they are trying to achieve.  We become their cagy corner man in the ring, wiping away the blood and helping to focus their dizzy brains through the fog of the daily beatings going on in the marketplace.  When we tell someone what to do, all we do is trigger negativity.  Their cynical brains are burning with reasons why that is a bad idea. They feel the prime insult of being told what to do and consequently lack interest in executing a plan not of their own design, desire or creation.  The reason they are so sceptical is that the plan is unleashed in a finished format, with no context or background attached. We need to get to the point tangentially with a short story.  By the way, we don't say, “I am going to tell you a story from my glorious past”.  That would be amusing. I would love to see their reaction to that little doozy of an opener.  No, instead we go straight into a place in time, to a location they can identify, with people they probably will know and we spin a yarn, a true yarn, about what happened to us and what we learnt from it.  This whole narrative is short, under two minutes.  We certainly don't flag our conclusion MBA executive summary style at the start.  No, we are more crafty than that.  We are like Iga Ninja, luring the listener into our web of charm. We expose the background that led us to an experience and viewpoint on a topic.  At the very end, we give them the order, the action we want them to take and then we finish off with the benefit to doing it that way. Next comes the hard bit for olde style leaders like me.  We ask them if they can see a way of taking that idea or method further and bettering it.  The old ego can take a battering at this point, when they trot out their half baked and crappy ideas, with all the aplomb of tender, ignorant youth.  That is why we make an important intervention. We say, “Get together with others, you select them and then together think about what I have said and come back to me tomorrow with your best ideas”.  This momentum breaker is important, otherwise only first phase, shallow musings will spill out of their mouths. We have also forced them to collaborate with their peers, giving us a better chance to reap richer alternatives. In the end, they either adopt your suggestion as the best alternative or they adapt and improve on it.  Either way, they have been given ownership of the next steps and so are more likely to execute it with commitment and enthusiasm, compared to following your lofty commands.  This is a different way of leading. It is the methodology needed to match the future of work we are all facing.  

Harvard Business School, Stanford Business School and INSEAD Business School are all awesome institutions.  My previous employer shelled our serious cash to send me there for Executive education courses.  Classes of one hundred people from all around the world engaging in debate, idea and experience exchange.  One of my Indian classmates even wrote and performed a song at the final team dinner at Stanford, which was amazing and amazingly funny, as it captured many of the experiences of the two weeks we all shared together there.  When you get off the plane and head back to work, you realise that the plane wasn't the only thing flying at 30,000 feet.  The content of the course was just like that.  We were permanently at a very macro level.  The day to day didn't really get covered and the tactical pieces didn't really feature much.  This isn't a criticism because you need that big picture, but the things on your desk waiting for you are a million miles from where you have just been. Fortunately, there are some leadership principles which can cover off the day to day needs.  Principle #22 is “begin with praise and honest appreciation”.  Such an obvious thing, how could this even be mentioned as a principle?  It may be obvious, but are you a master of this principle?  We talk about providing psychological safety for our teams.  Well that is great and just how do you do that, when you have pressure to produce results from above and are feeling the stress of the current business disruption?  It is too easy to begin with an interrogation about the current state of play, the numbers, the revenues, the cash flows. How about if you started every interaction off with finding something real to praise about the team members.  Not fakery but something real, that shows you are paying close attention to what they are doing well. Mistakes happen.  Except in Japan.  In Japan mistakes are not allowed and the penalties to career advancement are large.  “Fail faster” might make you a legend in Silicon Valley but would see you cast out in Japan.  That is why the entire population here are all ninjas at concealing any errors, so that the boss never finds out.  How do we get innovation going if we can't tolerate mistakes?  That is one big reason why there is so little white collar work innovation in Japan.  Principle #23 says “call attention to people's mistakes indirectly”.  Rubbing in it some one's face that they screwed up is a pretty dumb, but universally adopted, idea by bosses. Principle #26, “let the other person save face” isn't an “oriental idea”.  It is a human idea and no one likes losing face in front of others and it doesn't increase people's engagement levels.  In fact, is has them thinking about leaving for greener pastures.  Principle #24 also helps, “talk about your own mistakes before criticising the other person”.  We want our team members to feel empowered to take responsibility, to step up and try stuff.  That is how we create an innovation hub inside the organisation.  If you have a hotbed of ideas from your team and the competition is still canning people who make mistakes, then you will win. Principle #25 is so powerful.  “Ask questions instead of giving direct orders”.  Bosses are staff super-visors, because we have super-vision.  Probably true once upon a time in the olde days, but no longer the case.  Business is too complex today, so we need to grow our people and to be able to rely on their ideas.  If I spend all my time telling you what I think, I haven't learnt anything.  Bosses need to think of questions which will push the team's thinking muscle hard and get people really engaged.  Instead of laying our your thoughts, chapter and verse and falling in love with the sound of your own voice, try asking questions instead. After asking the question, shut up and let your people answer without interruption. It may be killing you, but do it. Being asked for your opinion and ideas is empowering.  Maybe the boss has all the answers, great, but what if the staff have questions the boss hasn't even thought about.  In Japanese business, asking the right question is more valued, that having the right answer. All of these principles have things in common.  They are common sense, but not common practice.  They are super easy to understand, but devilish to execute consistently.  They are game changers in our relationship with our staff.  Having some leadership principles to live by just takes the action of thinking out of the equation.  These become the reflex actions we take because they have become a habit.  These are the types of habits we need to cultivate.        

Tokusan the scholar visited Ryutan the Zen Master to learn about Zen.  Tokusan was a very smart fellow and very confident in his knowledge and experience.  He was good at impressing others with his capabilities and many people looked to him for guidance and advice.  After about ten minutes of conversation, Ryutan invited Tokusan to enjoy some green tea.  As the Zen master poured the hot tea into the cup, the tea began to flood over the brim, but Ryutan kept pouring the tea.  Tokusan became agitated and said to stop pouring, because the cup was already full.  Ryutan then told Tokusan that he couldn't understand Zen until he emptied his own mental cup, to allow new ideas to enter. This is a famous zen story in Japan and we leaders are Tokusan.  We can be convinced of our ideas and become stubborn and inflexible about departing from them.  We have risen through the ranks based on our abilities, experience and results.  We had to work things out for ourselves and our decisions were correct.  Over time we came to believe in ourselves and our decisions and we would plough ahead regardless of what others might have thought. We have always had to overcome resistance.  We are now in the leader danger zone. There is tricky line between knowing what you are doing and actually being correct.  We became the boss because our previous ideas were proved correct and superior to what others were advocating. We have seen off the idiots, doubters, naysayers, critics and rivals.  We have climbed the greasy pole and they haven't. Everyone should listen to us and believe what we say, because we are right and they are wrong.  Case closed. This is the classic hero journey favoured by the independent, tough, driven, Type A, alpha mammals. For a very long time this worked just fine.  Business however has grown more enmeshed with technology changes.  More complex organisations have arisen and operate at hyper speed.  Also, a different animal has been entering our companies, coming in straight out of college. Are we actually able to deal with these unparalleled changes? Charles Darwin's theory of evolution put more importance of adaptability than strength or brains.  Are we maintaining our full cup and therefore not well placed to adapt?  Are we trying to do it all by ourselves?  Many bosses are unable to hire smart people, because they cost too much, relative to the size of the cash flow in the company.  Others won't hire smart people, because they are scared of becoming a victim of future corporate internecine struggles, where they can be replaced with someone younger and cheaper. How exactly can we work through others? Covid-19 has disrupted business globally and the future is uncertain.  How do leaders know what to do going forward?  How do you know if your strategy is the correct one or not?  Strong willed leaders see asking others for advice as a sign of timidity and weakness.  They have attached their personal inner resilience to always knowing the correct answer, to being right, to being smarter and more savvy than everyone else. Complexity today exceeds the capability of one person leading the team to have all the answers.  A superman or superwoman is no longer required.  What happens though if you, as the leader, have low self awareness and can't see that you need to empty your cup?  Exactly how do you empty your cup?  What should go inside the now empty cup?  Lack of self awareness is one of the biggest hurdles to overcome.  Once that is accomplished then the emptying and refilling of the cup can start to happen. We have to face ourselves and ask why do we think we are able to keep operating as we have always done, when the current situation is more difficult. There are no indications we are ever going back to how things used to be?  Emptying the cup requires humility, often in short supply with powerful leaders.  Running faster, pushing aside and overtaking the other lemmings to ultimately be sprinting off the cliff, is of no help.  This is the moment to stop and consider your own cup.  Is it full of your baloney, that you have convinced yourself is correct?  Have you surrounded yourself with “yes men” or the meek and compliant?  Have you bullied everyone into submission? Are there ways to tap into more ideas and solutions than you can possibly produce by yourself?  Are there people closer to the action on a daily basis, who will have greater and better insights than you can possibly have.  Your frontline experience is way out of date by now, as you have arisen through the ranks over these many years. This is scary.  Your self belief is what has driven you thus far and questioning it unravels a lot of your personal construct about your right to lead others.  That is the old model of leadership, so let it go.  The used by date has expired on that one.  Empty your cup and your ego and find ways of learning more from others, including those who work for you and may even be quite junior.  Tokusan thought he knew everything until Ryutan started pouring that tea.  I am pouring your tea for you right now and challenging whether your cup is going to stay full or will you make the effort to empty it?  

In Part One we looked at two broad categories of leadership competences around being Self-Aware and having Accountability.  In this next tranche, we will look at being Others-Focused and at being Strategic.  Others-Focused has many sub-points, but today we will investigate five key aspects Inspiring Through role modelling and communication skills, leaders can and should inspire followers.  The olde days of the boss having to know more than everyone else has gone.  The focus has shifted to developing followers, through personal interest and example.  Are you consciously, systematically doing this? Develops Others Once upon a time, certainly when I first started work,  there was no particular concept that it was the leader's role to develop others.  Individuals had to step up and do it by themselves. This is fundamentally what all leaders had done in the past.  Today however, business is more complex and fast moving, so everyone needs help.  One of the issues is the struggle between selfishly focusing on your own glorious career and the role of others in boosting that cause and your own efforts to selflessly boost the careers of your direct reports.   Companies need leader producing machines. The talented rise faster and higher by demonstrating they are that very elevating machine. Those who can demonstrate they can produce leaders are given a bigger remit to do that at scale.  Can you do it and are you doing it? Positively Influences Others Rabid rivalry and internecine warfare between competing thrusters amongst the leadership team permeate the wrong messages to those below.  Disciples pin their hopes to the banner of the thruster they think will go higher and take them with them. Everyone is grasping the greasy pole, trying to climb over each other to the top.  Politicians and sycophants abound inside companies and are a vicious form of poison, because they are playing all ends against the middle to feather their own nest.  The leader sets the tone.  Not whining about others in the company, not playing petty internal power games and keeping firmly focused on beating the external rivals is the correct path.  Are you and all of your colleagues on it? Effectively Communicates Personal capabilities and mastery of one's designated tasks are the usual path to promotion.  Being 100% responsible for oneself is different to being responsible for a team.  This is where leadership communication skills are soon shown to be frayed and tatty.  Speaking the lingua franca is frankly so what? Communicating key messages and inspiring and persuading others to your path are the required skills.  Few leaders do a great job because many are locked into the belief that all this communication stuff is fluff and hard skills are the only currency.  They are doomed to be low altitude flight path denizens, because companies are looking for people who can move the masses forward.  Is what you are doing every day moving them forward? Providing Direction This sounds so simple.  I mean how hard can this be?  What if it is the wrong direction though? What if we are all being urged to sprint faster off the cliff?  This is the VUCA world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. Setting the correct direction isn't the easiest thing for leaders these days.  We can't know if the direction is correct until we start down the path.  The clue is to adjust when confronted by unpleasant hints about the actual truth. We need to keep adjusting to the market realities and not become too convinced of our own genius and superiority.  Has your leader ego convinced you that you are always correct? Being strategic is one of those tropes of leadership, but what does it actually involve?  Let's look at couple of issues. Innovative This competency sounds obvious and easy except that very few companies, let alone people, are actually innovative.  Think of all the companies you have worked for and nominate how many came up with any significant innovations?  We are better off developing the innovation muscle of the entire team, than relying on our own scampy offerings. If you are substantially personally gifted in the innovation department then hats off to you.  How many people like you then have you ever worked with?  The answer is clear.  The collective team, if harnessed properly to the task of coming up with innovative ideas, can do it together.  The sticking point is, do you know how to marshal your team to do that? Solves Problems The is another obvious competency, except that are you the one running yourself ragged solving everything? Have you delegated tasks sufficiently so that others can share the burden?  Leaders should be involved with big strategic issues, not with every small fry decision.  If you are in the problem weeds and getting down and dirty with minor issues, it is time to rethink how you have positioned yourself as a leader.  Uses Authority Appropriately Does every decision have to run by you?  Are you in too many meetings?  Are you hooked on your own authority and feel the need to be on top of everything?  Developing staff means letting go and giving them some things to try and possibly fail with.  “There are no mistakes, only learning opportunities” is a good mental intervention, for when your staff screw things up.  Delegating your own power is a tough one for driven leaders.  However, if you want to rise, you have to breed successors like rabbits, so that there are plenty of people to take over so that you can rise up the ranks.  

The President of a company is a very powerful force.  They drive the direction, the strategy and the culture formation inside the enterprise.  In Western corporations, there are big salaries and big incentives tied to the leader's performance, especially around profit achievement and share price gains for shareholders.  We project this idea on to Japanese companies and imagine they are basically built in the same way.  This idea seems fine, until you ever have to get a decision from a Japanese company.  This is when you enter the twilight zone of differences about how things are really done here. Japan has some specific features which make the leadership terrain quite unique.  Mid-career hires are the norm in the West and the exception in Japan, as far as larger firms are concerned.  New graduates are malleable and the company leadership wants to install their group think, culture and conservative action methodologies in them.  Seniority is a respected Confucian attribute in Japan, which has little currency in the Darwinian, performance outcomes oriented West.  Age and stage make sense in Japan, when you spend your entire career with the one firm and are part of the fabric of that company, gradually being stitched in over decades.  The risk aversion predominance in Japanese business weighs against change and bolsters constancy.  We foreigners represent change.  To become a trusted partner with a Japanese firm means they have to make some internal changes to accommodate the new thing we bring to them or the old thing we are tweaking in a new way.  The question is, who inside the Japanese decision making hierarchy is going to take responsibility for the change.  In Western companies there is a big personal payoff to taking risks, but Japanese salaries and bonuses are not on the same planet as a country like America. So, the upside of taking a risk in Japan is far outweighed by the potential career damage if there is a failure. We have all grown up with a British Raj model of decision making.  Convert the leaders and you get the whole company to snap into gear and get with your programme.  It doesn't work like that here unless the President is the founder or the owner.  This is the “one man shacho” formula, the classic dictator President, who rules with an iron fist and drives everyone to do what ever they say.  Most big corporates though, have a structure where the President has P&L responsibility for the whole company, but the direct reports have P&L responsibility for their part of the business. The President can't force them to make expenditure allocations impacting their turf without their agreement.  Hence the reputation of Japan as the country of glacial decision making.  I find this is a bit boring, because the Raj approach is much faster and easier for me.  No one in Japan could care less what I want. I deal with a lot of Presidents, as I try my best “convert the Raj” techniques to get them to buy my training services.  Being the President of my firm, I can get access to the senior echelons of the client company and get a hearing.  This is where Western logic departs from Japanese best practice. The leaders I speak with won't personally do anything themselves.  The company has internal compliance methodologies to reduce risk and protect the firm.  The work to investigate my idea will get sent right down to the very bottom of the pile.  That lower level designated officer or tanto will start pulling together information on our company, our offer, our pricing, the market, the competitors, resources required and the prospective ROI.  The tanto will then present that report to their superior, the next up the line, who if they approve it, will place their hanko or personal seal on the document.  This is a public acknowledgment that it has passed their stringent evaluation process and they are willing to take responsibility and place it before their superior.  The hanko marks on the document will also include any divisions or sections that will be impacted by the buying decision. This is an internal harmonisation and communication process to provide checks and balances.  In this way, there are no surprises and no issues, when it comes to coordinating the execution piece.  This process is repeated all the way up to the President's direct reports who have P&L responsibility to fund the deal.  If it is a big enough decision, there may be a senior executive meeting required.  This is usually a formality to bless the decision, rather than make a decision. The plan executive sponsor will outline the idea at the meeting, there will be no questions and it is therefore agreed. Next item! The surprising thing is that the President isn't the final decision maker.  And I had such a good meeting with that President too and I thought I had the Raj technique working on steroids! Actually, the person I needed to meet was the tanto. I could either work with them directly or I could supply the information they required, for them to do their due diligence. When meeting with the President, I need to finish the meeting off, by asking to have my people get together with their tanto, to supply whatever information they need. Japan being such a polite culture, the President will happily make that introduction even if knowing that there is no chance of this deal going anywhere.  This is because it conveniently avoids anyone having to tell me a direct “no”.  If it has legs, then the tanto's job is to navigate the decision through the system. So in Japan, it is better to start at the bottom and work your way up, than try to go top down, as we are more familiar with in the West.  The tanto has to become a key messenger for us. If we can't win over a relatively junior, seemingly unimportant staff member to our cause, then the decision outcome will be remain vague and lifeless.  Now we don't want that do we.  

Leading is super easy.  You are given the title, the authority, the budget, the power and then you just tell people what they need to do.  How hard can that be?  As we know, leading is a snap, but getting others to follow you is the tricky bit. Our awesome power will certainly bludgeon compliance. Sadly, the troops turn off their commitment and engagement switch whenever they come into contact with kryptonite bosses.  We get promoted because we personally did a rather good job on our individual tasks.  That is a false flag though when it comes to being able to communicate, coach, set the direction and inspire others.  Few great athletes become great coaches. It is a totally different skill set.  There are four broad areas we will focus on to help us become successful leaders: Being Self-Aware, Accountable, Others-Focused and Strategic.  The possibilities are endless, but these four areas will serve us well to elevate our thinking about what is required to be a great leader. Under the umbrella of Self-Awareness we have four focus areas. Self-Directed There is a mental and physical requirement for leadership, driven by a strong desire to be successful. We explore inside ourselves to understand what we need to do and why we need to do it.  Someone who can only function on the basis of the advice of others is a follower not a leader.  Of course, taking advice is good, but leaders have their own sense of True North and keep moving forward, charting their own course Self-Regulated Being a self-regulator requires supreme discipline.  Knowing what not to do is as important as making action step choices.  Shiny objects abound, multiplying like amoeba, but time, money and resources are limited.  Be it business focus or our temper, we need to rein them both in and assert control. Develops Self Constant application of self-improvement sounds obvious, but many leaders are cruising.  The more diligent may be doing a good job working in the business, but they are too busy to be working on the business. Is that you? Technology, society, company culture and organisational development overtake some leaders and ultimately they are ejected from the firm.  Where is the locus of self-development to be found?  Good question and there are multiple options. Good choices will have a lasting impact on our longevity as leaders. Confident “We don't know what we don't know” is a big problem.  Before you become a leader there is that misplaced confidence that you know what to do in the role. As you rise through the ranks, you keep making new discoveries.  The more you learn, the less you find you really know.  Imposter syndrome is a big factor here after we step up into new responsibilities.  Constant self-development is the cure for this, as we grow into the job. Accountability covers four sub-topics. Competent This is often mistaken for technical knowledge or business content cover.  That capability within your old job is what thrust you into a leadership role.   What about your competency as the leader?  What do you really know about leading?  How persuasive are you?  How well do you understand the aspirations of the team?  Can you coach others who are just not like you?   Can you set the correct course in a raging sea? This requires study and doesn't happen by osmosis. Honest and Having Integrity Are you honest?  Would your people agree?  Seeing people as cogs in the machine elevating your brilliant career, jousting with rivals for the next job using the team resources for that purpose and being all about me, me, me is often the leader reality.  Think about some of your bosses up to this point. The crust on top of this reality is a false veneer disguising what is really going on.  Subterranean self-interest is often voiced over with pious pronouncements.  Being honest is about sincerely wanting to develop the team members and integrity is what you do or think when no one is observing you.  Manages Progress Towards Goals Obvious.  Yet are the goals clear to your team? Is there an intelligent plan? Are people engaged and bought in? Are you the pirate captain simply bellowing out orders and threatening the crew with the plank? Makes Effective Decisions When do you know a decision was effective?  Certainly never at the time of making it.  In that moment, we are working on hope rather than certainty.  Are the team convinced of the wisdom of the decision?  Was there any input opportunity for them?  Does our power of personality or position power just crush access to the diversity of opinions available?  When it isn't working, are we trapped by pride, ego and arrogance to keep running faster off the cliff?   In Part Two, we will investigate being Others Focused and Strategy for Leaders.  

Japan has some set pieces around leadership.  The Middle Manager boss sits at the head of an array of desks arranged in rows, so that everyone in the team can be seen.  This is important because this is how the boss knows who is working well in the team and who isn't.  They can be observed every day, all day long.  What time they arrive and what time they leave, who is late back from lunch – it is all there in front of the boss.  Meetings are easily arranged and follow up is a shout away – “Suzuki, what is happening with that report?”.  Now many of the team are at home, away from the constant surveillance of the boss.  The boss has little idea how they spend their days and our clients tell us many Middle Managers  are still struggling to supervise the diaspora. In many cases, the day would start with the chorei, the morning huddle, getting the team together to go through what is on for that day.  These meetups can continue even when everyone is at home. During Covid, we moved it online. Everyone had to be on camera at 9.00am, dressed for business, rather than in a T-shirt.  If they didn't come on camera that was a red flag.  There may have been some depression issues bubbling away in the background, as the isolation started to get to people. They began to withdraw.  One of my team didn't come on camera for three days in a row, saying there was an issue with the laptop webcam.  Was there really an issue?  How would I know that was the case, sitting in my study, at my home?  I immediately started organising another laptop to be sent out. I need to see everyone's face every day, to check how they are doing.  In the end, it was a technical issue around the privacy settings in Teams.  The point though is, I didn't really know what was going on.  I have to be continuously keeping an eye out for the emergence of any stress or depression in my team. At the chorei we would go through good news reports, the vision, mission, values, the Dale Carnegie Principle for that day, who we are visiting virtually or otherwise and who was visiting us, each person's top three priorities for the day and a motivational quote.  The whole thing took about ten minutes.  I usually spent another ten minutes talking about things like taking care of your health, standing up regularly because we tend to sit for too long, issues around coordination which have arisen, the latest news in our business, the cash flow situation and recognising good work.  We also had Coffee Time With Dale at 3.00pm every day for anyone who wants to just shoot the breeze and catch up with colleagues, they don't physically meet anymore.  It wasn't that popular so we dropped it. The meeting cadence with direct reports continued online but it was easy for this to fade or drift.  People's new work from home schedules seem to make it harder to connect.  Back in February 2020, when we started working from home, it had a temporary feel about it.  On reflection, I didn't immediately embed some processes I should have.  These direct report meetings were a discipline I found I had to really enforce, because many of my staff seem to possess ninja level skills at avoiding talking with boss. I usually want stuff from them, I want it yesterday and I am very demanding. Talking with me is probably a pain, so some are quite creative in escaping the supervision.  The biggest issue was coordination across the whole business, as we all descended into our little pockets of responsibility and started losing sight of the big picture.  I had to spend a lot more time making sure that key information was being shared and that I was also sharing key information, rather than hogging it to myself.  This was a time consuming activity, but we dropped the ball a couple of times because it wasn't done properly.  Before I knew it, timelines started to drift, activities dropped out of completion sequence and confusion was not far behind. This was when I discovered just how detail challenged some people in the team actually were.  In the office it got covered off somehow.  Being subterranean, it wasn't noticeable. In isolation from each other however, wrong data inputs have a horrendous impact.  They spark a lot of effort to clean up the mess created. It draws people away from what they should be doing, dragging them into the morass of re-work. We tried to get around these coordination and communication issues by creating one truth. There was a live document in Teams that everyone could access and all changes were noted there.  As a training company, we had training events scheduled LIVE On Line or in the Super Safe Classroom, so we could see which ones were being executed, which were postponed, who was involved, etc.  A limited number of people were allowed to feed into this document to enforce accountability and control.  Today, with people at home, you may need a similar live document that tells everyone what is going on, which is being updated continuously as things change. GIGO (garbage in garbage out) is an issue for any document, so the details have to be monitored carefully. To overcome the isolation, one on one meetings were being held more frequently than when we were in the office.  However, I found it even harder than normal to get hold of people because they are often holding online meetings or were on the phone.  In the office, I could just walk over to their desk and signal to them to see me after they finished their call or grab them when they came back from their meeting.    I find our younger people are not phone savvy.  They don't check their phones for incoming calls they have missed. This wastes a lot of time trying to get hold of people, so I had to be pretty bolshie with them, about checking their phones for missed messages and to check their voice mail regularly.  It is a real pain, but sending emails or text messages as well seems to be the way to get their attention. Many people are still working from home and are liberated from the daily grind of commuting in Tokyo which is good.  They are not necessarily pouring this extra time into their work though. As the boss, I have had to become a much more “supervising” leader than before, which I actually hate.  There are many more moving pieces now due to the residue of Covid-19, so whether I like it or not, I have become more interventionist to make sure it all hangs together.  How about you?  Has this been your experience too?  

Clients sometimes ask us to help their Japanese executives have more “presence”.  This is rather a vague concept with a broad range of applications. There is a relevant Japanese concept called zanshin ( 残心 ).  A rather difficult term to translate into English, but when you see it, you will recognise it.  In Karate we do the predetermined, specified forms called kata (型).  When someone is performing one of these kata, there are different points of emphasis and after the physical action is completed, there is a residual energy and intensity of commitment that continues.  It is the same in the kumite (組手) or free fighting.  After a powerful punch or kick is completed, the karateka keeps driving their energy, intensity and focus into their opponent.  In business, we call this intensity “executive presence” but usually without the concomitant violence. When the executive makes a comment, there is an energy that remains after they have stopped speaking and the audience feels that intensity.  We also call this having gravitas.  Emilio Bortin was the CEO of the Santander Bank, which was a shareholder in the Shinsei Bank, when I was an executive there.  He was visiting Japan to check on his investment and we were assembled to give him a presentation on what was happening with the Retail Bank.  He was a broad shouldered but not so tall man, but when he entered the meeting room, he was like a Spanish Bull entering the arena, looking for a matador to emasculate.  He completely filled that large room with his presence.  It was absolutely palpable.  He hadn't even said a word, yet you felt his energy, intensity, determination, passion, strength and confidence.  He was radiating zanshin - “presence” big time. “When I am a billionaire like Emilio baby, I will have presence too”, you might be thinking.  So, did he get presence when he became a billionaire or did he become a billionaire, because he had presence?  We know it was the latter.  Right, very good, but how do we aspirant billionaire punters get executive presence? The energy being pumped out is a big factor.  Low energy, low intensity people have zero zanshin and so zero presence.  Softly spoken people can have presence too I guess, but frankly, you just don't meet too many of those.  There is a vast difference though between being raucous and loud and having presence.  Being loud is basically just annoying.  To have presence, your vocal strength and your body language must both be engaged at a higher than normal level.  In casual conversation we speak at a certain level of intensity, usually fairly mild.  When we are in a meeting or presenting, we need to ramp that up by at least 20%.  When I am teaching participants in our classes to increase their vocal strength and speak more loudly, they struggle.  I say to them “double that energy” and they raise by 1%. They resist because they feel like they are screaming.  However, when they see themselves on video, it just seems confident and credible, not loud.  This is one element of having presence. Pauses, ma (間), are another critical element.  This space between the phrases or sentences, allows the audience to actually distill what you are saying.  When you rush the words together, each thought overwhelms the previous thought. Each successive idea canibalises its predecessor and so not much content is consumed in the end.  Our messages, in effect,  are competing with each other.  We speak at a good pace, so that the energy button has been pushed, but we need to break the content down to smaller brackets, which people can more easily digest.  We are not rushing, so it shows control and no pressure being felt.  This emanates confidence.  We hit key words for additional emphasis, rather than allotting equal importance to each word. This focuses the audience attention on what we want them to focus on, rather than trying to ask them to swallow the whole talk, in one gulp.  This communicates “I am confident”.  This level of control requires us to be very concise.  Too many words and the message becomes less clear, drowning in surplus words.  We need to trim the fluffy bits right back. Our eye contact is a powerful engagement tool.  Spraying the eye contact around the room is fake eye contact and meaningless.  We focus 100% of our attention on one person, look them in the eyes for 6 seconds and then repeat the same formula with each person, one by one.  They feel they are the only person in the room and we are speaking directly to them. Previous American President Bill Clinton was famous for his ability to engage strangers in crowds, when he was mixing with the masses.  He focused his eye contact completely on that person in front of him and engaged them at the highest level. Standing up straight or sitting up straight is super easy, but few can do it.  They kick out one hip when standing or sway around all over the place, while they are talking.  It distracts from their message and dissipates their strength and intensity.  When they are seated, they are sprawled out in their chair, looking way too casual to be taken seriously.  They don't use gestures and just talk, talk, talk.  Talking way too much means they are always taking the long way round to get to the point.  Little chance for zanshin in this case. Absolutely exude your belief, confidence and power from inside. Drive it into your audience.  Use your voice and eyes for powering up your messages.  Be concise, so you are distilling and focusing only on the key messages.  Break the rhythm with pauses and engage people with your power eye contact.  Strong posture says a lot about who you are. People believe body language, so ramp it up.  This is how to have zanshin, which is the key to having executive presence.  

In business we live in the world of shallow statements of opinion.  Imagine there is a topic for discussion amongst the leadership team.  People will let fly with their thoughts and this becomes the basis for decision making, based on people's statements on the matter.  Usually everyone is pretty busy, so the drill is to listen to what was said and then make the choice from amongst the various alternatives and move on.  There is a problem with this.  We are trapped in Phase One thinking if we continue in this way.  Phase One thinking is that first reaction level of contemplation on what you have just heard.  Instantly, you pour out your immediate thoughts on the issue.  The problem with this is, although it is quick and saves time, there is pretty light contemplation going on here. The famous Greek philosopher Socrates lived from 470-399 BC and was famous for his questioning techniques.  He used this method to help others dig deeper into their thinking.  We have to take inspiration from him and develop our own questioning techniques.  If we do, we will get to a deeper realm of understanding of the issues.  This is the platform we need to make the best decisions. I notice this issue in our training classes.  When we ask someone for their opinion on something, they will give us an immediate Phase One answer.  Because Dale Carnegie was a devotee of the Socratic method of asking questions, our teaching methods rely on us digging in a bit deeper.  We are trained to never take what someone says at the Phase One Level, but to always push further.  This applies to leadership and to sales.  In both disciplines, the students in the classes are encouraged to go further and question more deeply.   In sales, for example, imagine we were talking to a customer.  They tell us they need the widget in green.  We train our students to ask why they want it in green, as opposed to accepting the green option at face value.  This gets us to a Phase Two much deeper answer.  That is good information, but it isn't enough.  We need the client to go to Phase Three thinking and we do that through further questions. If they said they wanted green, because of XYZ reason, we don't stop there.  In Phase Three we ask, “what would be the impact on your business if your were able to get XYZ?”.  We have now elevated the discussion to the achievement of their strategic goals.  We have taken them to a much richer source of information to help them clarify what they are doing.  In sales, we have started to position ourselves as the customer's trusted advisor. In leadership it is the same thing.  Members of the executive team will give their opinions on an aspect of the business.   Normally we collect all of these various opinions and then we make a decision based on that discussion.  Often, we are influenced by the force of personality behind the opinion. This is only Phase One thinking though.  If we ask them to explain why they think that, we have now driven deeper down to Phase Two.  Once we hear everyone's Phase Two level of thinking, we could make a decision at this point.  We shouldn't stop there however, instead we should keep going.  Push them to go to Phase Three and tap into their ideas on how XYZ would strategically impact the business.  This is a tremendously simple process.  It does take slightly longer than just tapping Phase One thinking outcomes, but the harvest is so much richer.  We have all had the experience of having had a discussion with someone, often an argument and a couple of hours later, we are having a conversation with ourselves.  We are telling ourselves genius things such as, “I should have said this” and “I should have said that” etc.  This is because in the interval, our thinking has moved way beyond the simple Phase One responses we were applying in the conversation.  We have moved to Phase Two and Phase Three thinking, but we have missed the boat. Instead of having to wait a couple of hours to get a richer response in meetings, as the leader, we have to get our Socrates mojo working and go for Phase Two and Phase Three responses right there and then.  We have to guide our people to start thinking more strategically about the business. You will be surprised by the improved quality of thinking that you trigger.  This means the leadership group discussion and the decisions made will also be much better.  Let's all decamp to the Phase Three world and live there from now on.  

Kokorogamae is one of those Japanese concepts which are a bit tricky to translate.  Kokoro by itself as a word has a wide variety of meanings – mind, spirit, mentality, idea, thought, heart, feeling, sincerity, intention, will, true meaning, etc.  It is a radical in the Japanese kanji ideographic script and so appears in a large number of compound words.  Kamae comes from the verb kamaeru meaning take a posture, assume an attitude, be ready for, etc.  In Japanese, when the two words are combined, there is a phonetic shift of the “k” in kamae to a “g” sound. I first heard these two Japanese words in my karate dojo back in 1971, but never as a compound word.  Every class we were given the command “kamae”, meaning to take our fighting stance. For anyone doing Japanese martial arts, this is a very familiar word. The Kokorogamae concept is closely linked to Japanese ideas around perfectionism and mindset.  You cannot produce a perfect output, if your mind is not properly aligned with the action.  A great calligraphy master will establish their Kokorogame before they wield the brush, the ikebana master will do the same before they place the flowers, as will the master of tea ceremony before they begin to whisk the tea.  They perfect their mindset, to produce the perfect output. In my first book Japan Sales Mastery, I wrote about Kokorogamae in the context of sales.  What was your true intention as a salesperson.  Was it to secure a big commission, bonus or promotion for yourself or was it to help the client to succeed in their business?  The mindset is totally different and the output can be a single sale or a lifetime partnership with the client.  If you are a salesperson, which is your intention? Leaders also have their Kokorogame.  Hanging on many walls, protected behind glass, tastefully framed, clearly written is the Kokorogame of the organisation.  In English, we call it the Vision, Mission, Values of the firm.  Someone or a group of people, thought about where do we want to take the organisation in a perfect world, in other words what is the Vision going forward?  What we do that is the Mission?  Why we do that are the Values.  This is the Kokorogamae at the macro level. The culture of the organisation is there to police the individual adherence to the corporate Kokorogamae.  The leader's key role is to bring clarity to the Why of what we are all doing.  But where does that concept of the Why spring from?  Simon Sinik has more or less, become the owner of the Why since his YouTube video went viral.  The Kokorogamae concept starts up one step before what Simon is talking about.  He concentrates on concentrating on the importance of establishing the Why, but how do you determine the Why of the Why? Where does that come from? This is where Kokorogamae is useful.  It makes us reflect on what we believe and why we believe it.  As the leader, is my true intention to build up the people in my team and help them become the absolute best that they can be?  Or, are they there to serve me, to propel my rise through the corporate ranks, with them arrayed like worker bee slaves to me, the Queen bee.  Just as in sales, these goals are not mutually exclusive.  A famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar said, “you can have everything you want, if you just help other people get what they want”.  Your Kokorogamae can create your own success wrapped up inside the success of your client.  As a leader, you can rise through the ranks on the back of the results created by a highly engaged team, who feel you have their back and are focused on their success. The key point is where is the focus of your thoughts about the people in the business?  How do you really see them, when we strip away all the psychobabble?  To get better clarity on that, we can use the handy Japanese concept of tatemae and honne, meaning the superficial reality and the actual reality.  Are you leading based on a tatemae version of what you are supposed to say and do or is the real you, the honne, the one your people see everyday?  What is your true intention?  What is your Kokorogamae as a leader regarding your team members and the organisation?   

Leaders are now leading invisible people.  Their staff are no longer in sight or at best are only visible in person a couple of days a week.  What are their people doing at home?  How are they spending their time, how motivated are they, how engaged?  Being in the office brings a certain level of discipline with it.  You can see if people are goofing off.  In an open office environment, you can hear the phone conversations with clients to gauge what is going on.  When people are at home though, there is no way to be sure the team are using their time effectively. Time is life.  Time management is life management.  The key tool to controlling time is the schedule, daily, weekly, monthly and annually. The temptation is to just imagine that time management is only about work time management.  We are holistic beings, multifaceted, with multiple responsibilities.  We play different roles in our lives and the work role is only one of those.  Concentrating all of our time on work throws our lives out of balance. The schedule is the key tool, so what goes into that schedule determines the life we lead.  We have parents or children or siblings or partners or friends.  Devoting all of our tine to work means that these key personal relationships are starved of the time needed to be allocated to them, in order for us to have a more rounded life.  If we are late for lodging our personal taxes, unfocused about our finances because we are too busy working, then we will suffer both now and in the future.  Getting our financial lives in order needs time and that time is in our schedule.  We either allocate the time for that purpose or it gets allocated for something else. Our health is the same.  If we just work all of the time and don't schedule time for exercise or relaxation, then we will encounter health issues.   It is like running the machines 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  The production numbers are initially impressive until the whole enterprise has shut down to spend time repairing the broken machines. We start by nominating the key roles we play in life.  Work is certainly one of them, but not the only thing.  After we establish the roles we play, we can now attach some goals for each of those roles.  This becomes important, because the schedule prioritisation process will be run off the achievement of these goals.  When we consider the competing goals, we have to make a choice about which goals have a higher priority than others and then time is allocated for the attainment of each of those goals.  It sounds so simple and it is.  The surprising thing is that you realise you are a multifaceted person and not just someone who works all the time.  You need to allocate time to call your mother, to see the kids sports fixture, to go to the dentist, to check your bank accounts, to go for a run, etc. As the leader, this is the concept of time usage we need to be teaching to our team members.  If you are running in the wrong direction, going faster doesn't help.  If you rapidly climb the ladder and find it is on the wrong wall, that doesn't help.  What do we want to have, do and be?  We need to think about these aspects first, then set the direction, the goals to support that effort and the scheduling, based on priorities, to make it all a reality.  Teaching people how to get more done each day at work is fine, but the modern leader needs to see their people in holistic terms.  If they become sick or experience family breakups or financial instability because they only concentrated on time allocation for work, then they will not be able to fully contribute to the organisation.  What's more they will be very unhappy and unmotivated and that doesn't produce the culture that breeds the quality of professionalism we need.  The machine will break and require extended downtime.  Having a key person in the business experience illness, which takes them out of the picture, can be devastating to the firm.  We want our clients served by happy, engaged, healthy, satisfied and motivated staff.  The leader's job is to educate the team about proper holistic time management.  If we do that, we will have a much more successful and sustained business.  We all spend a lot of our time working, so making that a happy, fulfilling experience rests on getting all these aspects of people's lives to be in alignment.  For that, they need time and we teach them how to allocate that time in their schedules.  Are you doing it?  

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, but interestingly our rivals took that as a sign of weakness not strength. Japan loves secrets and rumours.  With everyone living on top of each other for centuries, keeping secrets is almost impossible and salacious talk and spreading rumours are up there with dining out and shopping as national sports. It was made to look as if we were in chaos and there was high turnover in the ranks.  Our customers began to ask probing questions about our stability. No doubt they were doing this after they had been briefed by our competitors on what a mess we were and how we were not a suitable supplier anymore. That negative fallout from the ads never occurred to me in a million years because I was upbeat, focused on the positive, the expansion, the growth. After that near death experience with our customers, I made sure that every ad thereafter had the explanation that we were hiring because we were expanding.  What was the additional costs of including those few vital words in the ads – nothing.  It was only my ignorance and single focus that allowed our rivals to seek a way in. The same issues can arise from within.  Whenever there is an organisational change, do people start high fiving each other, celebrating the new structure as a way to steal a march on the competitors?  No, they are concerned about losing their jobs, or having someone invade their turf, lose face, or being dragged kicking and screaming out of their comfort zone. This is a great breeding ground for rumours.  The formal explanation of what and why this is happening never seems to outpace the rumours.  The top executives are all on board with the changes, because they thought of them, but for everyone else, this is new.  In the vacuum, the rumour mill kicks into high gear.  The impact is that everyone forgets about the customer, the competitors and concerns themselves with their own best interests and imagining all the bad things that are about to unfold. We have to make sure that every person  is spoken to directly and so quash the rumours and misinformation before THEY can gain momentum.  Yes, this takes time.  But the focus on the customer and the competitor is where we want people concentrating, rather than on what is going on inside the firm.  They need to get back to work and the sooner their fears and concerns can be addressed, the faster they can do that. When people quit, the assumption is there is something wrong in the company.  Key people departing is especially unnerving for a lot of people, who immediately jump to all sorts of misconceptions about what this means for their own security or the stability of the enterprise.   Sending out a blanket email heaping praise on the departing is guaranteed to set up the vacuum, allowing it to weave its magic spell of impending doom for the survivors. We need to tell each person, one by one, what is really going on and assure them that everything will be okay.  We will find a great replacement, we can carry on in the departing person's absence, it is not the end of the world.  This is time consuming, but it is the best way to ensure that the official version is the only version floating around. Action Steps When you have turnover whether it is positive or negative, be aware of external perceptions about the change – that perception will always be a negative one, so prepare to counter it Whenever a vacuum in information appears, it will be filled with rumours and misinformation, so you have to grab hold of the narrative and control it Internally, make sure every single person is spoken to directly and don't imagine for one second that a blanket email will do the trick –it won't

The usual advice is to get off the tools and concentrate on being the leader and focus your energies getting leverage from the team who work for you. This makes a lot of sense because as the leader we are supremely busy these days and the pace of business in only speeding up and growing more complex.  It also depends on how big your company is.  When you get large numbers of people working for you, then the chance of doing anything other than attending meetings basically dries up. And this is exactly the problem. Without noticing it we have been consumed by the beast and we now live in its belly. We are surrounded on all sides by our own team members.  We might meet clients, but usually they are not our client and belong to one of the troops.  We are there for ceremonial purposes and not to seal the deal. We live at the margins of the business and we are gradually separated from knowing what is really going on. Some leaders may protest and tell me they know what is going on because their Division Heads, their direct reports, tell them.  I would answer that what your Division Heads are telling you is what they want you know and that may not necessarily be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It may be difficult, but where possible I would recommend keeping a couple of clients for yourself.  That way you keep your hand in with the market, the issues, the problems, the ups and downs of the flow of business.  You are getting this news unfiltered and your clients are telling you like it is, with no sugar coating.  More than couple of clients will be logistically very hard. We can all probably manage a couple and the intelligence we hear from these sources will be very valuable. We can also evaluate more effectively what our own staff are telling us. There is no doubt that the boss hears the bad news last, because everyone is hell bent on covering it up for as long as possible.  But as the boss we operate on a different plane.  We know we have the power, money and resources to fix problems and the faster we find out about the issue the less costly it is for us to fix it.  So we have staff motivations and our own going in different directions. There is nothing worse than thinking our systems are certainly correct, to only find out that is not the case.  We assume things are being put in place as part of the overall ecosystem, but actually there can be gaps.  We don't discover these gaps fast enough when we rely on others to tell us about the gap. In fact, think back to the last time someone on the team told you about the gap compared to when you unearthed it yourself?  I am struggling to remember when that happened because it is so rare.  The snapper there is if no one is volunteering this information then how do  we discover it? This is where keeping your hand in the game comes in handy.  We are more likely to see problems or imperfections is we remain part of the process.  I was reminded of this recently.  I had been teaching our High Impact Presentations Course which has two days in the classroom, then a follow-up half day, a twenty eight week self-paced programme so that the class participants don't forget what they learned and a monthly Professional Ongoing Education class. As I was talking about these things at the very end of the class, I saw some blank faces. That set off a warning siren in my head to check how we keep people informed about the follow-up programme.  And not just for this programme, but for all of them.  If I hadn't been teaching that class, I may not have found this gap at all or for many months.  We try to really work on providing added value beyond the class content, but all of this effort is wasted if people don't know about it.  I think I have systems in place to make sure the communication is working smoothly, but sometimes it isn't and I have to fix it.  The scary part is I only ever fix the gaps I know about and what happens to all the gaps I don't know about?  There is a cost to being on the tools but also some clear benefits. So take a look at your work and see where you can keep a hand it without the work devouring you.      

Large organisations have many willing hands.  Often, the quality of the people employed is very high, and the firm has the deep pockets sufficient to attract and retain them. Leading smaller firms is more challenging. There is a large degree of multi-tasking going on, as the workload gets spread across the troops.  Everyone is busy, busy, busy and that especially applies to the boss.  Time is in short supply, so corners are cut, elements are skipped and the quality of work produced can be an issue. The temptation is for the boss to concentrate on their meetings with their direct reports, as individual one-on-one get togethers.  The time left over for regular meetings of the leadership team can be compromised quite easily.  It is never blatant.  The direct reports don't rise up and storm the barricades chanting “death to more meetings”.  Instead, the scheduling process becomes the enemy of progress, as trying to get a number of busy people together to coordinate availability can be the death knell of the meeting.  The boss is usually the one with the worst schedule openings. You might have tried to circumvent the issue by not over scheduling the number or frequency of the meetings.  Maybe they are held fortnightly, in the belief that getting everyone together will be easier. Often, though, this proves to be a false hope and something always comes up to ensure not everyone can make it.  When you have a small leadership team, the point of the meeting becomes compromised. The purpose of the leadership team meeting all together is to make sure information is being shared and that alignment of purpose and execution of the business is going on in an effective manner.  I belong to Tokyo Rotary Club and Rotary itself was founded to connect disparate industry representatives together, so that we wouldn't be locked into our Guilds and become insular.  The leadership team meeting has the same objective, to get people together to talk and share what is going on in their sections with everyone else.  It is so easy to become wrapped up in what you are doing and to forget to let others know what is going on with your area of responsibility. The boss has to drive this process, and this is where we meet the first big hurdle.  The boss is always the busiest person and the one who most often cancels the meeting because their schedule changes so frequently.  In a small company, the boss will not only be liaising with the Mothership back home, leading the team locally, talking to their direct reports one-on-one, checking on the company finances, tracking the revenue achievement and keeping a close eye on HR issues, they will also be dealing directly with clients. As we all know, that meeting with the client will take priority over a meeting of the section heads. This is why the boss is the hardest one to pin down for the meeting.  When the boss is also the scheduler and driver to hold the meeting, things drift very easily. Before you know it, the leadership team hasn't met for weeks.  Time flies at the best of times and unless this leadership team meeting is made a priority, then there will never be a regular cadence for the get together of the section heads. It is always a good practice to look for a day and a time when things are less frantic.  I know that for many of us, that would be a very good question: “just precisely when is it not frantic around here?”.  Everything is relative, so look for a fortnightly cadence which will give the meeting enough regularity to make it relevant, without the time drifting too much.  Next pick a time of the day when it will work best.  This might even be a bento lunch together, because lunch times are usually a less scheduled time during the day for most of us.  Because of the morning rush hour phenomenon, breakfasts are a lot more complex to pull off.  Getting the kids off to school, fighting for space on the train to get to work, exhausts everyone too, so early is rarely good.  Evenings are difficult too because people want to get home and they are tired after a hard day at work, so the collective brainpower available is down. There is never an easy time to hold these meetings, but unless a strong will is enlisted, they just won't happen.  Make them over lunch, make them every fortnight, and make them a high priority.  Will this work perfectly every month?  I severely doubt it, but at least the strike rate will improve and better coordination and team building will occur compared to the usual chaos. .  

  Teams don't build themselves. They are delicate, fragile and unstable. They need constant care and attention from the leader. Despite the sexiness, a team of stars is not what we want either. They will always lose to a star team, a united front of uncompromising commitment to each other and to winning. Here are some things to think about when building and maintaining the team. 1.        The Role Of the Leader One of the better metaphors for leaders is the orchestra conductor.  They are uniting and harmonising a group of stars to work together.  Each person brings their specialist role, talent and commitment. The leader is the one to glue the team together.  The leader creates the environment where the team can coalesce around the tone, direction, culture, values, vision and mission. Central to achieving this cooperation is the leader's communication and people skills. The trust won't be created by a bumbling, disorganised, incoherent, selfish, small minded person claiming the glory for themselves and basing their leadership mantle on their received status power. 2.        Identifying Strengths One of the follies of leadership, and I speak from deep experience here, is trying to fix the gaps and weaknesses of the people in the team. We can easily find our time is tied up in resuscitation efforts for people who are struggling or underperforming. We are better to have a mix of people, with a variety of skills, talent and abilities and work across the sum of the whole, rather than trying to put band aids on their weaknesses.  By definition, 80% of the team are producing 20% of the results.  We need to get more out of the 20% producing 80% of the outputs. This is the true alchemy through informed division of labour. 3.        Clarity Around Responsibilities The worst part of being a leader is thinking people are clear on what they need to do. You have told them right? Then you find they are not doing what you expected or need.  Part of this is the fact that a single communication is never sufficient. We cannot just bark out orders and then wander off.  We need to manage the people and their work, without micro-managing and pulverising them into submission.  We need to keep abreast of progress. If things are not working, then we need to know about it early and intervene to right the ship. 4.        Encouraging Collaboration Teams are usually small affairs, even in big corporations, because people are divided into sections. In this modern high-tech era, that invariably means people are doing a lot and are super busy.  This doesn't lend itself to having excess bandwidth to help others in the team or even more vitally, helping people in other sections. We also have the danger of the leader trying to unite their tribe by making the other section's tribes the enemy.  This is a disaster. The true enemy are the opposition team in the rival company. We need to make them the bad guys, not our own colleagues.  That doesn't stop ambitious leaders from trying to gain advantage internally, by using their team as a weapon for supremacy, domination and relentless ladder climbing. The leader's job is to contribute to the entire enterprise effort and make sure the firm wins in the marketplace. 5.        Proactive Team Building The leader has to create the opportunities for the team to get together.  These could be Town Halls, brainstorming sessions, team lunches and dinners or any other excuse to get the group together.  With work from home so prevalent, the team members don't see each other every day, as they usually did before Covid.  Team projects are a good tool for getting people from different sections together who normally may not have a chance to work with each other. It introduces diversity into the creative process and creates the human bonds needed to keep everyone together.  I am such a business genius and guru.  I hired four new people in January 2020, seconds before the pandemic wrecked the training industry. One of them drew her secure salary happily every month through the devastation and simply up and quit at the end of Covid.  Ouch. She was in her late twenties when she joined the firm and spent the pandemic working for us from her room in her parent's house in Shinjuku.  I realised later that she didn't have any close friends inside the company and so it was easy for her to depart.  Yes we had meetups online, but it wasn't enough and not the same as being together in-person.  This was my first pandemic, so I made a number of leader mistakes during Covid as a result. This is not a comprehensive list of items on the subject of team building, but there is plenty of food for thought to get to work on.  The leader is the driver here. We go for role clarity and keep reviewing what is working and not working.  Retaining our talent is the name of  the game for the modern leader in population declining Japan and if we make a mess of it, the penalties are potentially fatal. Team building never goes out of fashion or relevance.  The problem is we are never properly trained for this part of the role and we bumble along through trial and error. We all need to do a better job of educating ourselves in this regard. The best time to start was yesterday and the second best time is today.

When I first got to Tokyo in 1979, there was a very well established corporate educational system in Japan.  Unlike Universities in Australia where you studied a subject and expected to work in a closely related field, Japan was concentrating on producing generalists.  It didn't matter what you had studied at University, because the company would educate you on what you needed to know. I also discovered that the tertiary educational system was broken, so companies couldn't rely on Universities to educate the young. I was so surprised to realise that except for those entering professions like law, medicine, architecture, etc., and needing to pass national exams, most students were living their best life (at their parents' expense). Think a four-year sojourn at Club Med and you get the flavour of spending most of your time engaging in club activities and working part-time jobs, rather than studying. The principal education tool for companies wasn't formal training.  There were a few weeks at the start as new grads were onboarded, where you learnt about the firm, systems and the basic etiquette of business. After that, your sempai or seniors and your boss would teach you the ropes. As everyone joined the firm for life, there was a logic in the boss spending their valuable time grooming the next generation. In 1978, the first Japanese language word processor was developed, which allowed everyone to type in Japanese more easily.  There were still secretarial pools in those days, so the boss didn't have to get their hands dirty playing around with this tech. In November 1995 Windows 95 was launched in Japan, which made it easy for anyone to access the internet.  With the take up of email, the boss was now required to write their own emails and gradually the secretarial pool went the way of the Dodo. The upshot is that this change meant the boss and the sempai were now much busier than before, doing their own emails and their own typing. The amount of time available to train the next generation on the job went down and has been down ever since. There was no supplementation with formal training, because the OJT system was so accepted as all that was needed.  These changes are glacial, so they didn't attract much attention on the way through, but things did change. Where are we today?  During Covid, we found a not very amusing contradiction with Japanese corporate training.  Those domestic Japanese companies who had already come to the realisation that corporate training was required just stopped in their tracks.  They cancelled set classes because of Covid and were worried about the safety aspects of people gathering together.  Dale Carnegie in the US had started online training delivery in 2010, so fortunately, we had specialized manuals for online delivery and certification systems in place for trainers and producers when Covid hit.  We could teach them global best practice techniques accumulated over the previous decade. We ran our first online class in March 2020, free for our clients and covering Stress Management.  We quickly found that WebEx at that time had a 100 person limit and we crashed the system.  We regrouped and completed the training session. We proved to ourselves that using the Dale Carnegie approach of highly interactive training also in the online training environment was a viable option. Unfortunately, many domestic Japanese companies didn't think so and refused the online option, believing that it couldn't provide sufficient delivery quality compared to face-to-face. That actually wasn't true, but nobody in Japan ever gets fired for foregoing opportunities to embrace change and do something new. They didn't want to return to the classroom, and they didn't want to do it online, so with this Catch 22, they did nothing. Some of these companies are slowly coming back to face-to-face training.  What Covid revealed though, was that the Middle Manager level of capability wasn't well developed, having relied only on OJT and they needed to fix this problem.  We have been doing a lot of leadership training as a result.  The gaps we notice are that the managers are totally undereducated on what is required to be a leader. They have spent time on the job so they can run the machine.  They can see that it runs on time, to cost and at the required quality, but these managerial attributes do not make them a leader. The difference between a manager and a leader is that the leader does all of those things a manager does, plus sets the direction for the team, builds the culture and develops the people. The upshot is that those companies who invest in their people and give their Middle Managers leadership training will do better in the zero sum game for retaining staff. People leave bosses, not companies. With the declining population and permanent shortage of people, replacing staff can be extremely difficult and potentially fatal to companies.  I believe the continued reliance on the broken OJT system for training leaders is a nonsense and a suicidal choice.  Get your people trained if you want to survive this war for talent. Young people are much more mobile and one in three are departing their companies after three or four years and joining the competitors. This is very expensive after they have been trained and they are hard to replace. With properly educated Middle Managers, the retention rates will be much higher and will yield a competitive advantage against rivals who have only been trained through OJT. This is no joke and the consequences of getting the equation wrong are deadly serious. OJT is dead. Companies should stop relying on it and should instead get professional leadership training for their Middle Managers before it is too late.    

The blow torch has never been applied more ferociously to how leaders lead than what we see today.  Once upon a time, there were resumes pilling up to consider who we would hire.  We had the whip hand, and the applicants felt the lash.  Now the roles have been reversed and the applicants are interviewing us, rather than the other way around.  I have done my weekly podcast Japan's Top Business Interviews now for over five years, talking to CEOs here about one topic – leading in Japan.  It was never intended for this when I started five years ago, but many of the leaders tell me it is having a positive impact on getting people they want to hire to join the company, in preference to another firm.  The reason is that my style of interviewing allows the leader to be authentic and talk in their natural voice.  There is no corporate propaganda being issued or false flags being flown. This is what employees want from their companies and, in particular, from their supervisors.  It is easy to proclaim your superior values when times are good.  When times get tough, that is when you discover if what you have been told by your boss is real or fake.  I had this experience, and it was very disappointing.  I heard all about the importance of our customer, but when the economy went off the rails, the customer was instantly propelled overboard and everything was about the sole interests of the firm.  Short-termism took over, and many bridges were burnt to the ground.  Promises were retracted and customer collateral damage was waved away as “unfortunate”.  Any faith I had in the senior leadership and their commitment to the stated values of the firm evaporated. As the boss, we have to be very careful about the congruency between what we say and what we do.  If we talk about wellness, but we expect people to drive themselves to ill health, then we are revealed for who we were really are.  Our interests are the real priority. Over the years, when looking through people's resumes, I would ask about some blank spaces. They would tell me they had to quit the company because the horrendous overtime had made them ill. As an Aussie, I always thought to myself “how ridiculous”, but that was the norm in Japan back in those dark days. If we talk about work/non-work balance, but we push people to work long hours, we are hypocrites and, even worse, obviously stupid hypocrites to boot. If we talk about work ethic, but we are cruising along as the boss, while whipping the troops along, it is clear to everyone that we are applying an indulgent, different set of rules to ourselves.  We can be clever and come up with all sorts of justifications and corporate double speak, but nobody is fooled by our deceit.  Treat others how you want to be treated is the most basic level required for boss-subordinate interactions.  This is commonly called the “golden rule”. The actual true target level should be to treat subordinates how they want to be treated and is called the “platinum rule”.  Let's go for the platinum rule, shall we? This sounds easy enough, but there is no necessary uniform idea on this and every person can have quite different expectations.  As the boss, we need to keep enquiring about what our people want.  We may have had that conversation once before, but a lot can happen in the space of a few years, and these desires are not stagnant.  Changes can include getting married, having children, taking care of aged parents, buying a home, paying for the kid's education, etc.  The list of changes are long and we need to appreciate that our subordinates' needs change. Taking the view that it doesn't matter because we pay them is an antiquated idea stuck back in the day when resumes were numerous and boss choices were many.  Money is important, of course, but as life speeds up time becomes in short supply.  Flexibility can create the time our people need and we can help them achieve things they need.  If we are dogmatic about the rules and procedures, that may make us feel powerful, but it will be counterproductive inside the culture.  Our research has clearly shown that the key to getting teams engaged is that they feel the boss cares about them.  The way they know that is actually the case is through the way the boss communicates and the boss's capacity to be flexible and supportive of the needs of the staff. As the boss, you can't fake this stuff.  You are either supportive or you are not.  The basic posture has to be an inside out job, where the natural instinct is there to support our staff in every way we can. Prancing around as if you are supportive and using sweet words and pleasant smiles isn't going to cut it if just fluff.  When the decisions get attached to real money, this is when we all see if what the leader says and does is the same thing or not.  People are not stupid.  They can tell what is smoke and mirrors and what they can trust and rely upon, so let's not insult anyone's intelligence.  

We recently completed an in-house Leadership Training for Managers programme for a local Japanese firm. The President founded the firm as a spin-out from a well-established international accounting company many years ago and has successfully grown the organisation. He is now considering succession planning and aims to develop his senior leadership team. He had an internal survey conducted on the training programme, which he then shared with the trainer who delivered the course and myself. Survey results on training can sometimes be challenging, and this case was no different. Some participants felt the training was too long, while others thought it was too short. Some found the content very challenging, and others not challenging enough. As is often the case, the majority were neutral, while we mainly received strong feedback from the outliers. However, there were some particularly intriguing comments. A few participants mentioned that they found the training exhausting, claiming it impacted their ability to perform their work after the sessions. The core training involved weekly 3.5-hour sessions over seven weeks. Concentrating on new content, which differs from daily tasks, can certainly be demanding. Several participants also noted that the programme contained a lot of content, which is true – it is a course with substantial material. However, I wouldn't describe any of the content as particularly complex. Dale Carnegie training is highly practical and addresses real-world needs rather than being theoretical. New concepts require the brain to engage, which some participants found challenging. We also employ the Socratic method, encouraging self-discovery through questioning. This approach differs from the standard Japanese educational method, which still leans on Confucian principles of memorisation and rote learning. Our approach often surprises new participants, who arrive prepared to take notes on whatever the instructor says. Instead, we plant seeds of information, prompting participants to reflect on their beliefs, experiences, and ideas. When they share their thoughts, we ask them to explain their reasoning. This is much more demanding than simply reproducing what the teacher says, so it's no surprise it can be tiring. Some participants also mentioned fatigue from needing to speak up during the sessions. We incorporate extensive group discussions, often in small groups where there is nowhere to hide; everyone has to actively share their ideas and experiences. They can't be passive, sitting silently – they need to think on their feet and articulate their ideas. This can be mentally taxing, as there is pressure to communicate clearly without appearing unprepared. Many also discover they are not naturally succinct, logical, or well-organised communicators, which can add a level of stress. They may observe peers expressing themselves well and feel a gap in their own skills, creating additional pressure. They also realise they haven't engaged their minds this way in some time, so it can feel like dusting off mental cobwebs. When I go to the gym, I push my muscles to lift heavier weights and increase repetitions. This is tiring and sometimes even painful. Challenging the brain is similar – it can be tough if you're not doing it regularly. Many leaders in this team have been performing routine tasks that they have already mastered, so they haven't faced much challenge in their work so far. Their focus has been on managing their teams, and the broader aspects of leadership have been outside their experience. This training has been an eye-opener, revealing what leadership should entail. The idea that training should not be mentally taxing is interesting. Growth requires stepping out of your Comfort Zone and engaging with challenging content and new methodologies. This is how we grow. Expecting to progress without stepping beyond what's familiar is a quaint notion. If we continue to do what we have always done, in the same way we have always done it, we will achieve the same results we have always achieved. Stepping up means trying new things or taking on different tasks – both of which are challenging and tiring. And that's exactly how it should be.    

Are you sitting too much and for too long at your desk every day?  Are you eating too much every meal because your mother told you when you were a kid to finish everything on your plate.  Are you hitting the booze after work with your mates or at home to rid yourself of your stress?  Are your kidneys and liver in good shape? Are you carrying around too much meat and making your muscles and organs work much harder than they should? Is your blood pressure elevated and too high every day?   Are you constantly thinking about all of your troubles at work?  Are you having trouble getting good quality consistent sleep?  Are you promising yourself to get to the gym, but don't make it as often as you need to in order to make any progress? Well, I have pretty much described myself here.  Knowing about it and doing something to fix it are two universes separated by infinite space.  Intellectually I know what I should do, but practically I struggle with a lifetime of negative habits which all need work.  I do a lot of pontificating in my content about what to do and how to do it, so I can imagine I can come across as Mr. Goody Two Shoes pseudo perfect. This time I will use myself and my failings as the mirror for you to think about yourself and what you are doing if you share these same attributes.  Ironically, as I sit here writing this, I have been sitting at my home desk writing my weekly blogs for the last three hours and haven't once stood up.  I know just sitting is bad, but I get into a concentration zone and I forget to stand up. Right, I am going to use a timer with an alarm and set it so that I stop what I am doing and stand up and walk around at set intervals, a bit like the pomodoro method of twenty-five minutes work, five-minute break and then after four pomodoros take fifteen minute break. Eating less is a choice.  Leaving parts of the meal unconsumed is a choice. Another irony.  I am sitting here in Tokyo writing this blog and we have the “hara hachibu” tradition here in Japan of only eating until 80% full. This idea originally came from Okinawa and they are one of the longest lived peoples in the world. I have to break that habit driven deep into my mind by my Mum and not feel compelled to eat everything on the plate.  I had lunch the other day with my mate Tak and I noted he left most of his chicken uneaten, which was quite a feat, as the main meal was chicken.  Growing up in Japan, maybe he didn't have to break free of the gravitational pull of “finish everything on your plate”. Roughly once a week, over a meal with my wife, I like to drink Australian wine at home on Fridays after my hard toil at the Dale Carnegie Siberian Salt Mines.  I used to finish a bottle between us, but actually I was drinking most of it.  Today, I am down to a single glass to give my blood pressure, kidneys and liver a rest.  This is extremely hard because I want to keep drinking.  It is a weekly battle with myself to stop at one glass. At one point back in the 1990s, when I was working in Nagoya, after many months of wining and dining and being wined and dined, my weight blew up to 90kilos.  I didn't notice it, because it was gradual.  After one event where we were having a meal sitting on tatami, some kind soul sent me a photo from the evening.  It was taken from the side, so I got a full appraisal of the profile of my massive girth.  I was so shocked.   Today, my weight floats around 82-83 kilos at the moment and I need to get it floating around 80—81, and those last couple of kilos seem so hard to evaporate.  For reference purposes, when I was competing in karate competitions, I was fighting in the 75-80 kilo weight division, so getting close to my fighting weight is a good goal for me to have. Switching off from work is a pain.  I think about my problems at work all day and night, and that black monster is always sitting there in the darkened corner of my mind.  Lately, I am also adding to my woes by not getting good quality sleep.  I am not sure why that is, but I think part of it is not enough exercise.  I need to be more tired at night so that I drift off to sleep quickly and smoothly.  I was walking every morning, then I caught a cold with the change of the seasons, so I took a break.  Then I tripped on the stairs at home, smashed my toe into the stair rise and it is a miracle I didn't fracture it, but boy has it been sore.  Consequently, no walking in the morning. I need to get back to that routine of awakening at 5.50am, get out the door, walk for an hour while listening to podcasts and then get off to work.  Getting to the gym regularly is a difficulty because I am often at networking events at night, but I know I can do better.  What about going to the gym on the weekends?  I can do better. One item you may note that is prominent by its absence is smoking and the quitting thereof.  Both my parents died of lung cancer and my father at age 51, so I have never smoked.  If you are a smoker, then I haven't got much to say from any personal experience.  I have read that as soon as you quit, the body starts to rebuild and you can repair the damage you have been doing to your lungs and broader health.  Apparently, after a year since you quit, your risk of heart disease is halved and after five years, your chances of a stroke and cervical cancer are the same as a nonsmoker.  Worthwhile thinking about I would say. Everything I have talked about today is within my grasp, if I choose to grasp it.   I don't need a Life Coach, a Personal Trainer, Ozempic or anything else but will, determination, consistency and making some decisions and sticking to them. How about you?  

We know that AI has gone from the domain of geeky people in white lab coats to the mainstream of business in a nanosecond. Such speed is difficult to keep up with and the roll out of new options continues unabated. As the leader how do we surf this tech wave and prepare our people for this AI enabled future/  Making data backed decisions is always preferred in leadership and AI has the power to crunch large amounts of data and provide answers very quickly.  As long as it isn't lying to us with so-called hallucinations about the results, then it is a big help.  Direction on using AI in our businesses is not going to bubble up from down below and we leaders need to get to work to harness this beast. 1.        Audit We can start with an audit of where we think AI can bring savings in terms of time, money, effort and quality.  Doing this process with the team is required because we want them to own the process and the results.  There may be fears that certain jobs will disappear because of AI and we need to face that reality head on.  It doesn't necessarily mean the person leaves the firm because finding staff in Japan is at a premium, but it may mean their job content changes.  There will be flow on effects about required retraining and thought has to be put into the feasibility of doing that with the resources we have available.   2.        Strategy & Innovation Having completed the audit we now have some insight into the opportunities and difficulties working with AI will bring, rather than relying on our imaginings of the future.  Where is the intersection of AI capabilities and the goals we have set for the firm?  The goals are usually revenue related and these won't change much, but the way we deliver the results could.   People will have to work with AI, there is no escaping that fact, so what is the strategy to determine how this happens?  We don't want to leave everyone to their own devices to wander off and somehow work it out by themselves.  Which AI platforms do we need, how much should we budget for them and who will take care of what, are leading questions we need to find answers for?   For some staff, AI may never be an immediate part of their world at this point, although that may also change.  We need to do an analysis of who needs it the most and who needs it first.  Which jobs will benefit the most from applying AI's capabilities to the work?  That simple question may be difficult to answer because we have to explore the possibilities AI introduces. We may need to appoint champions to drive the usage of AI inside the company, so that we can break the task up into smaller pieces. The scale of AI can be overwhelming.  How can we find ways of having AI help us with becoming more innovative or at least set out some frameworks for us to explore by ourselves?   3.        Staff Training A lot of the training for the use of AI will be internal with people dedicating time to play with it.  If we think of AI as external to our work, then we won't nominate the time for people to experiment and learn on the job.  The explosion of AI means that no one can keep up with the latest developments as functionalities are superseded by new alternatives.   There is also the issue of the broad range of platform variations and upgrades which are emerging every month.  How can we navigate this breadth and speed?  We can't but we shouldn't be so overwhelmed we don't start.   We should select a few platforms which seem to have the greatest application for what we do and start there, realising we may need to jump on to the back of faster racehorse, once the gun has sounded and we are off barrelling down the track.    We should block out a certain number of hours per week for our team members to play with AI and see where they can apply its power to the business.  If the leader nominates 4 hours a week, for example, then that gives people permission and time from within their work day to experiment.    4.        Reporting Naturally, we want to have reports and updates on the progress and learnings these hours experimenting are yielding.  This requires some time scheduling changes for everyone and for the boss too.  These ideas are all difficult in an already busy life, but we have to grant AI the priority or it will all just be hot air from the boss and there will be no follow through.  We are all touching different parts of the machine, so getting together to share makes a lot of sense and the boss can nominate a couple hours in a month to make sure that happens.   5.        Data We will unearth and collect a host of data, but what do we do with it?  This seeking data for data's sake is tremendous fun for some, but it all has to connect back to driving the firm forward.   There will be financial data we can use to try and pick up trends or patterns which will aid us in trying to set budgets and allocations for spending.  There will be customer data which can reveal aspects of our service we need to work on or areas where we need greater investment.  There will be market and buyer data we can get access to which may not have been available before, which can better inform the strategies we develop and the decisions we take. Can we find data which will help us maximise our efficiencies and drive the effectiveness of the business?   6.        Clients Can we get deeper insights into our client's situation?  Obviously clients don't share everything with us and often we are working blind to the realities they are facing.  How can AI help us to better understand the buyer's sector of the industry, what is happening with their competitors, government regulations, currency fluctuations, etc.   AI is here to stay and we are all riding the wave whether we like it or not.  Have we decided yet to deal with it intelligently or are we going to keep doing things in a sporadic fashion?  It is time for the leader to lead the firm's AI revolution.

Recently, I was teaching a class of APAC executives on how to handle pushback to their ideas. Some participants were senior legal counsels, who frequently had to say "no" to their salespeople. As a salesperson myself, being told "no" is something that comes with the territory and is not intimidating at all. In fact, we often hear "no" most of the time. We're tough and have learned to persist until we achieve a "yes." These executives spoke about how challenging it was to get the other side to accept their advice or point of view, which made a lot of sense. Think back to your school days—was there ever a course, or even a fragment of one, that taught you how to argue with someone to get them to agree with you? Academic debating is different; it's an arbitrated intellectual exercise. But the dynamics within a company are entirely different, and most of us aren't trained for these real-world, practical needs, even through corporate education. Here are some key steps to successfully navigate resistance and disagreement, especially when you're battling over ideas, policies, direction, or decisions. 1. Truly Listen to the Other Side We often think we are listening, but when we hear the word "no," it looms large in our minds. We become preoccupied with crafting our counterargument and, as a result, stop fully listening to what's being said. People often make a statement we dislike and then provide their reasoning. If we've already stopped listening after the part we didn't like, we can't fully appreciate their logic. 2. Pause Before Responding Before blurting out our disagreement, we need to pause and think. There are a few ways to do this. We can remain silent and think before speaking, although this can be tricky, as silence may prompt the other party to press harder and add more information. Another method is to use a "cushion"—a neutral, non-committal statement that neither agrees nor disagrees. This buys us valuable thinking time. Even a brief pause of five or six seconds can significantly improve the quality of what we say. Without that pause, we risk saying something we regret because we haven't had enough time to formulate a proper response. 3. Reflect Briefly Use this pause to have a brief internal conversation about the topic. Ask yourself: What do I believe? And why do I believe it? Usually, our opinions are formed based on some personal experience, or something we've read, heard, or seen. Recalling the origin of our belief helps us structure our response. 4. Share Your Story Once you've reflected, tell your story. It doesn't have to be long, but it should clearly outline what happened, where, when, and who was involved. This method reminds me of Japanese grammar, where the verb comes at the end of the sentence, determining whether the action is positive, negative, past, present, or future. You can't interrupt someone in Japanese until they finish their sentence because you don't know where they're going with it. In English, listeners often anticipate the conclusion and jump in or finish the sentence for the speaker. You can't do that in Japanese. By telling your story, you provide background and context. While the listener can disagree with your conclusions, they can't argue with your background or experience. Given the same context, they might reach the same conclusion. If you tell your story well, they might even reach your conclusion before you do. By holding off on the "punch line" until the very end, you prevent interruptions and ensure they hear you out. Even if they still disagree, they'll have a clear understanding of why you hold your views. By following these four steps, you can persuade others to consider your ideas and ensure you're heard and understood. In the worst-case scenario, even if they still disagree, at least they will fully understand your reasoning. This allows for a civil discussion without heightened emotions, preserving relationships and enabling you to agree to disagree.  

Pulling rank on people is clearly the fastest and easiest way to get people to fly straight and do what we want. It is also a very dangerous choice in Japan in an era when the demand for people is so strong and the supply so limited. Mobility today means people have choices. If you are not interested in what they have to say or their ideas, they will jump ship to somewhere they think they will be better appreciated. The problem is their ideas are rarely much chop.  They don't have the experience, sufficient information, enough understanding of the context or the weight of responsibility on their shoulders if it doesn't work. In a busy boss life, the simplest thing is to tell them “that won't work” and just keep moving forward because there is so much to do. Here are some human relations principles we can  employ to do a better job in our communication with our people. 1.        The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.  This sounds a bit counterintuitive.  Does it mean I just fold and let them have their way? Not at all.  However we know that people rarely yield once they get into an argument and graciously accept our viewpoint.  Rather they have their ego wrapped up in what they are saying and they won't let go, so they just keep arguing with us.  Our best response is to not respond in kind and try a different track. 2.        Show respect for the other person's opinion – never say you are wrong.  This is a red flag to a bull.  One of my trigger words is to be told “no” and another is “you are wrong”, which is basically the same answer. We have to learn to disagree in a way which maintains the relationship.  Telling people they are wrong isn't going to help with that aim. Whenever the urge seizes you to tell others they are wrong resist the temptation. 3.        If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.  Leaders have ego, position power, pride and status and admitting we are not perfect is not easy for us. If we admit it won't we be eroding our power?  That fear is fair enough, but what we will find is that by giving up the God mantle and admitting we are human makes it easier for our team to emphasise with what we are trying to do.  The secret is all in the communication of how we admit we are wrong. 4.        Begin in a friendly way.  This sounds easy except when we are busy, harassed, pressured and under the gun we forget this part.  We bring our businesslike self to the conversation rather than stepping back and thinking about first impressions for this conversation. 5.        Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.  Manipulation was the first thing which sprang into my mind when I heard this Principle.  That obviously is a losing proposition.  What is meant here is that our communication skill is operating at a very high level.  We package up the idea and do it in such a way that the other person finds themselves in agreement.  This is a high level of communication skill and takes a lot of practice, but it works well when done correctly. 6.        Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.  Leaders love to talk.  They love to hog the limelight and dominate the conversation because they are such amazing individuals. Rather by giving the floor to others they in turn will feel appreciated and valued.  We already know what we know, so this also invites the opportunity for us to learn things we actually don't know and broaden our perspectives. 7.        Let the other person feel the idea is his or hers.  Sounds like more manipulation, but it isn't.  We remember that Socrates was famous for getting people to go deeper in their thinking by asking a series of questions which drove the quality of their understanding.  This is the same idea.  We communicate in such a way that the other person self-discovers the same thinking that we came up with and now we are in perfect agreement. As the leader we can always do better and usually, it is our poor communication ability which leads us into trouble. By changing our approach and how we express ourselves we will have much more impact on getting others to follow us.  Brute force is not going to work in Japan anymore, so we need better tools. 

Have you ever had the experience of leaving a job and seeing your successor screw it up?  We spend so many hours at work and we are trying hard to lift the bar through our leadership.  However, if we do well, we get promoted or we join another company seeking a bigger job.  It is very disheartening to leave and see the place go backwards under your replacement.  You wonder what all those weekends spent working and long hours were al about.  We expect that we add to the cause and the firm progresses and moves forward, improving over time.  We expect those who come after us to be doing the same thing. So it was very confronting to read some statistics recently about how short the term at the top is these days and thinking about what does that mean for the leader's legacy?  According to data analysis firm Equilar, the median term for a CEO in the 500 largest US companies, is now down to 4.7 years, having dropped twenty percent over the last ten years.  Russell Reynolds says globally, for CFOs, the tenure is down to a five year low of 5.7 years. If you are sent from Headquarters to Japan to run the local operation you don't have much time.  If you realise this and decide to go gung-ho from Day One and drive change to get the results faster, then you will probably blow up the firm.  On the other hand, if you wait to understand the market, customers, the staff and the culture, then years of study will be required.  By the time you get it, it is time to pack for the next assignment or another job change. The analogy I like is leading in Japan is like swimming in warm lake.  You land here from headquarters and you are immediately placed in a warm, nice lake, but the surface is covered in a heavy fog.  You can hear voices and vaguely make out shapes.  Over time, the fog lifts a little as you understand Japan better and you can make out the shoreline and some islands.  After about three years the fog lifts and it is now time to leave for your next post. What did you get done, what legacy have you left? If we go too fast the Japanese team cannot keep up and we have new internal troubles.  This might include staff writing to the Chairman anonymously informing headquarters that you are ruining the business in Japan and destroying the firm here.  It might mean key staff conclude you are an idiot and they vote with their feet and join the opposition. In today's society in Japan, job mobility has changed an enormous amount and shifting firms doesn't have the same stigma it once had which used to ensure lifetime employment with the one company.  It might mean you decide to become “efficient” with customer relationships and after overcoming stubborn staff resistance, you force you will on everyone only to see your buyers depart and not come back. On the other hand, headquarters are contacting you because they are not seeing the spike in revenue numbers they sent you out there for.  The staff engagement survey results are a disaster. Your bosses are not happy with your performance as a leader. You try to explain the subtleties and nuances of the Japanese market and how business is done here, but it all falls on deaf ears.  They are fully preoccupied with themselves and nobody cares about your problems. There are no simple answers unfortunately.  Listening is a good idea at the initial six month stage, especially listening to customers.  Finding allies within the staff of firm who can get behind your changes is going to be vital.  You can pontificate and shoot out orders, to only find those below are sabotaging your efforts and are not doing anything to carry out your commands. This country has a lot of informal lobbying going on underground and the big meetings are there to rubber stamp what has already been negotiated prior with the relevant parties. That means we have to persuade, rather than order, to coalesce rather the remonstrate.  Sadly, none of this is fast and your bosses want fast. We are fighting two fires on two fronts at the same time. We are pushing headquarters to get behind what we are trying to do and we are persuading the team to do the same thing, but at a faster pace than what they are used to.  Staff are terrific at telling us what won't work and why, if they are involved.  They are less help in coming up with creative solutions to overcome problems.  Often, we are the one to think differently and be prepared to try something new.  Bite sized experimentation suits Japan, given the general fear of failure and risk aversion. Change takes time in Japan, lots of time and maybe it just isn't possible in one rotation of your term here and you have to rely on your successor to pick up the gauntlet and keep pushing the strategy through the changes.  If you don't get headquarters to sign on for it and therefore get them to engage your successor to keep going, then there will be lots of effort exuded by you and none of your legacy to show for it in Japan.  You leave the county feeling unfulfilled and ashamed you didn't make a difference.  Something you have been known for in your previous positions and one of the reason your were selected to go to Japan in the first place.  Your mouth is full of the bitter ashes of years wasted, as you head for the boarding lounge to catch your flight out of Japan. Or you approach it differently and get a better outcome.  Trust me,  it won't happen by itself, so you have to box smart while you are here.    

You really appreciate the importance of brand, when you see it being trashed.  Companies spend millions over decades constructing the right brand image with clients.  Brands are there to decrease the buyer's sense of risk.  A brand carries a promise of consistent service at a certain level.  Now that level can be set very low, like some low cost airlines, where “cheap and cheerful” is the brand promise.  Another little gem from some industries is “all care and no responsibility”.  At the opposite end are the major Hotel chains.  They have global footprints and they want clients to use them where ever they are in the world. They want to be trusted that they can deliver the same level of high quality.  There are plenty of competitors around, so the pressure is on to protect the brand. When you encounter a trusted brand trash their brand promise, it makes you sit up and take notice.  When I arrived at the Taipei WestIn Hotel check-in I was told there were no rooms ready. I asked when a room will become available.  The young lady checking me in, tells me she doesn't know.    I ask her for the name of the General Manager.  This is where it gets very interesting.  Her response - stone motherless silence.  Not one word in reply.  Nothing!   So I asked again.  More total silence.  I elevated the volume of my request to try and illicit a response.  More pure silence.  This low level of client service has now morphed across to the ridiculous zone. Finally I get a whispered “Andrew Zou”.   So what am I thinking now?  Wow, this Andrew Zou character is a lousy General Manager, because his staff are so poorly trained.  There is no room ready for me and no indication of when it will be ready, so in that great Aussie tradition, I head for the bar and wait.   Any number of things can go wrong with the delivery of a product or service.  We all understand that.  The problems arise when our client facing team members are not properly trained in how to deal with these issues.  Hotels have guest complaints all the time, so they should be absolute gold medal winning, total geniuses at dealing with them.  This would have to be a key area of training in that industry.  The poor training is a direct result of poor leadership.  If the leaders are working well, then the staff service levels will be working well.    The Westin brand is global and I have stayed in a number of their properties in Asia.  The Taipei property was killing their global brand and that is an expensive thing in the world of cut-throat competition amongst leading Hotels.  From this experience, I realized that I need to be very vigilant about the service levels in my own company.  Are we fully geared up for trouble, should it arise?  How do we protect the brand across 220 locations worldwide?  Can people get to me easily if there is a problem?  Are we doing enough training in client complaint handling?  The Westin Taipei leadership did a poor job.  We should go back a take a long hard look at our own operations.  We may be incorrectly assuming things are working, when they may not be functioning properly.  We have to protect the brand at every touch point with the clients.  That is the job of the leadership team, starting with the boss.

Is change good or bad?  When I was promoted or received a big bonus, I liked the change from my previous situation.  When the big boss changed at the very top, the person who hired me got fired the negative ramifications ultimately cascaded down the line. Eventually I had to look for another job and I didn't like that change much. Often organisations go through major internal changes and the middle level leaders are expected to rally the troops behind the change.  How do you do that if you don't agree with the change or don't like the change yourself?  If you buck the system and refuse to follow the changes, then you are automatically identifying yourself as someone who has to leave the organisation and the machine will crush you. Change is such a tricky area for everyone, but it is so common in business.  Markets change, clients change, supply chains change, currency rates change – the list is long.  You would think that with all of these “normal” changes in business, we would all be excellent in adjusting to change.  However, that is not true, is it? The status quo is so attractive to most of us because it is known and safe.  We have been doing the same thing for quite a while and we are good at it. We are doing skilled work in the current formation and suddenly we are being asked to change and are being pushed out of our Comfort Zone. Japan, in particular loves continuity and no change, because all the risk has been shaken out of the system and what we are left with is the lowest risk alternative. As leaders we have to make a decision.  If we fundamentally disagree with the new approach then we should find another place to work, where we can be happy and in agreement with the direction.  The chances of us doing our best work there dramatically improve, compared to if we stay and conduct an underground personal resistance to the changes.  Ultimately, we will be outed by an ambitious rival or subordinate and probably fired. If we are not willing to move companies, then we have to be willing to go with the new direction.  Here is the issue – a half-hearted compliance isn't going to work well.  Our team members will feel the lack of commitment and enthusiasm to the cause. They in turn, will not rally around us as the leader and charge into the fire together.  How can we make this change work within our small cog in the machine?  The big bosses set the direction back at headquarters, but they can never get their hands dirty with the daily minutiae at our section level.  That application piece is within our control.  We may be buffeted by the winds of macro change, but the micro where we deliver the change is within our grasp. We have almost total control over how we do it. What we are feeling about the changes is no doubt being felt by the team members as well.  Turning up one Monday morning as some mealy mouthed, apparatchik mouthpiece of the machine isn't going to go down well.  Cynicism is already rampart in modern society and this will push some people over the edge, as we try to order them about what they need to do.  All we can expect is resistance if we take this road. How can we approach this to get everyone behind us and the changes? Rather than being definitive about how to make the needed changes, we need to have the “change” discussion with the team.  In Stage One we need people to be able to air their concerns and fears and be taken seriously.  Stage Two is where we move on to how we as a team can implement the change in our world.  Getting from Stage One to Stage Two is no easy feat, because many will remain unconvinced and unmoved. They will want to keep going with the old way of doing things. For the “never changers”, we need to have private one-on-one discussions and have them make a decision about stay or go.  If it is “stay”, then they need to be part of the team decision-making process and contribute to practical solutions to make this work in a way we can all live with the changes.  Just telling them to “suck it up and get back to work” is always a bad idea. It communicates you are not important. We are saying, “I have three stripes on my sleeve and so you have to do what I say, because I am pulling rank on you”. They may in fact stay, but they will join the underground guerrilla movement against the changes. We will wind up fighting each other internally when we need to form a united front against our competitors in the market. We need converts not resisters. So as the leader we need to get the discussion out in the open and get team ownership of the way forward.  Maybe we all have to hold our noses against the stench of the changes, but we will hold them together and find a way through.

This Japanese expression “Ichi-Go, Ichi-E” (一期一会), linked to Zen, focuses on transience and can be translated as “one time, one meeting” or “treasure an unrepeatable moment”.  It is often closely associated with the Japanese tea ceremony, which is certainly never a hurried affair and the devil is definitely in the details of how the ceremony is conducted.  Contrast that with our modern leader life in business.  We are constantly in motion, always time poor and harassed for 24 hours a day by an avalanche of emails.  We migrate from one meeting room to another, confronting an endless assortment of meeting details. We have many agendas in our minds when we meet people and our shrinking concentration spans make a lot of what we do a blur, bereft of reflection. This is a poor contextual background for dealing with people. Being so time challenged, we are constantly cutting corners and shaving off minutes to try and get it all done.  Being “efficient” with people is a bad idea for leaders, but often once we are on a roll, that efficiency bug takes us over.  The Ichi-Go, Ichi-E idea is that we treat each moment of interaction as special rather than just serial. If our team members felt that we were treating them individually as “special”, their engagement levels would be at very high levels, in what is increasingly becoming a tech driven, impersonal world.  But often we are galloping too fast on horseback to smell the flowers, as we fly by.  If we break each staff interaction down to a single defining unit, we will change the pace we interact with people from busy and tormented, to calm and caring. I remember a terrific example of Ichi-Go, Ichi-E by Ian Mackie, my old boss at Jones Lang Wootten In Brisbane.  It was after 6.00pm one evening and I was sitting in his office having a discussion about a deal, when one of the secretaries was walking past on her way home and she popped her head in the door to say something to him.  In those days Directors were like Gods compared to humble secretaries in that hierarchy.  Yet Ian stopped what he was doing and he gave her his complete and entire attention for that one moment.  He was showing his respect for her as a person, and it was a powerful experience for me to see how he handled that encounter. Often, as the boss, we don't show enough respect because we are rushing, preoccupied with what we need to get done and our people can become cogs in the fly wheels of our business.  Like Ian, we need to slow it down to a stop.  Focus on the person to the exclusion of everything else, stop our brain for racing ahead and give that person our full attention.  It sounds easy to say, but actually doing it is very difficult. We are usually caught up in the moment of what we want and what is important to us. We are perpetually rearranging things to suit what we need, when we need it. I am the first one to raise his hand as guilty of trying to do too much, in too short a time and just constantly cramming stuff into my day, such that my interactions are very “businesslike”. That is not a great idea when we are dealing with people.  Ichi-Go, Ichi-E as a concept, reminds me to stop doing that and instead treat every staff interaction like a treasure.  Once I switch my mindset to that “treasure” construct, then everything changes, especially around my time allocation.  Just mentally slowing down while I am speaking to my team member, allows me to be more considerate, less selfish and self-centered.  Instead of being “me focused”, I can switch to being “them focused”.  I can ask about things that are important to them, rather than making sure that brief conversation is all about what is important to me at that moment. I have learnt to stand my keyboard up, so I can't use it, when one of my team comes to me to talk and this helps me to focus my eye contact on  them.  I was reminded of how important this is when I visited a doctor here recently.  The head of the clinic was sitting slumped in front of his screen and typing when I entered his office, he didn't greet me, didn't even look up at me and kept his face toward his computer keyboard and screen.  Frankly, it was unbelievable, especially in this modern age. It made me feel unimportant and irrelevant.  This is how we make our team members feel when we don't stop what we are doing and don't focus on that one moment with them.  So, from now on, remember Ichi-Go, Ichi-E and practice treasuring every interaction with the team members and build their engagement and commitment one meeting at a time, one person at a time.  Do this instead of rushing through life in an often meaningless and unfulfilling scramble.  People do make the difference and how we treat them is what stands us apart as the leader and how successful we are in that role.  

Recently, my social media has been full of short videos of various politicians and supporters giving talks at the Democratic National Convention.  It always begs the question for me about what are we doing as leaders in business?  We have the same goals.  We want our message to be heard and to be convincing.  The difference is, I am sure, all of these speakers have been well coached and have been practicing hard for their moment in the spotlight, given a global audience of massive proportions.  In business, we have our own team at our Town Hall or perhaps an audience at a business conference or maybe a small Chamber of Commerce gathering.  Actually, it doesn't matter about the venue, because skill is skill, image is image and credibility is credibility. I was reminded of this when one of my son's friends complained about the organisation's leader, when he has just joined the firm after graduating from varsity.  Being at the very bottom of the pile, young people are there to stay quiet and listen to their elders and betters.  The issue though is, they are not stupid. In this case, the top person was a poor speaker and so the new entrants first thought is, “have I made a mistake?”.  They worry that this company isn't as good as they imagined it was.  If the top dog, the “face” of the organisation is a dud, then maybe the whole artifice is a problem too. As business leaders, it would be rare that there is a lot of effort put into the talk preparation beforehand.  Smart, successful, assured people are confident about winging it.  The problem is we can become excessively confident over time and neglect the basics.  Here are seven points to reflect on when giving your next business talk to ensure you do a much better and more credible job. 1.         Rehearse.  This step is always the victim of tight schedules, but the downside of neglecting it serious because our personal and professional brands suffer.  Even if it is a minimalist approach on the prep front, at least do a run through before you launch forth in front of your listeners.  Remember they are judging you and your firm, on what they see you do. 2.        Eyes.  Make eye contact with your audience.  I don't mean the usual fake eye contact, where the speaker dramatically scans the crowd but in fact doesn't look at any one person.  I mean hard core, full on, six seconds of riveting eye contact, with as many people as possible, but delivered one by one,  maintained over the entire course of the talk.  Our listeners need to feel we are speaking directly to them and that we want their 100% attention.  Six seconds is enough to engage them without pulverising the audience into submission and coming across as being too intrusive.  3.        Face.  We make the mistake of thinking that our slides are the most powerful visual tool in our armoury.  Not true.  Our face shines through much more brilliantly and powerfully.  Our facial expressions are absolute commanders of nuance, meaning and impression.  Many business speakers remind me of Noh masks, which are frozen in carved wood with only a single countenance.  Don't be like that.  We need to use our face to amplify the emotions – belief, sincerity,  empathy, care, humanity - behind our message. 4.        Voice.  I noticed that many speakers at the Convention were loud, loud, loud  all the way through in their speech.  They were trying to speak powerfully, to inspire, to motivate.  That is all very well but modulation is a critical piece for really being heard. It allows us to amplify certain words and phrases, such that they stand above the other words placed around them.  Dropping to a whisper, after bellowing away in your talk, is the ultra power play in messaging.  That contrast pinpoints everyone's attention to what we say next during the whisper and that is what we want to have happen for the key points in our talk. 5.        Gestures.  They are another amplifier.  Fifteen seconds is the maximum length for holding any gesture, before it becomes stale, dull and lifeless.  Eye power combined with voice power, combined with a powerful gesture is an unbeatable combo when speaking.  I see so many CEOs speaking with a vice like grip on the podium and thereby denying themselves the opportunity to use gestures to strengthen their key points.  It is a big mistake.  When I have a podium, I purposely stand back from it, so that my hands are not tempted to touch it.  Be careful with podiums, because there seems to be a magnetic facility drawing our hands to grab it and hold on to it, so it won't escape. 6.        Pause.  We saw many good examples at the Convention of the better speakers employing pauses. These allow us to differentiate between what we have just said and what we are about to say. We create a small break, before we say the next thing.  That small gap allows the words to be heard clearly and gives the audience enough time to digest the previous content.  Pauses also create anticipation of what we are about to say, which is a great way of drawing the audience into us and our message.  7.        Posture.  Stand up straight, don't slouch, don't kick one hip out and don't look casual. A tall, straight back emanates authority and credibility.  It shows confidence and commitment to what we are saying.  These are subtle physical signals. We are all finely tuned into these signals, because that is how we have learnt to survive dangers over the centuries.  Our eyes spot some physical action in front of us, we then anticipate what comes next, as well as making a judgement about what we are seeing.  Slouching signals “unprofessional”, “casual”, “not serious”, “lazy”.  By going in the other direction and thinking to carefully control our posture, we can determine the signal the audience receives and make it a winner for us. These seven elements are not difficult or beyond mastery. By the way, the bar for public speakers in Japan is super low.  Just by mastering these simple elements, we can catapult ourselves into the top 5% of speakers.

Twelve Steps To A Win-Win Conflict Resolution Part Two We have looked at some of the steps in Part One, so let's continue with the last six elements.  7. Deal with facts, not emotions In sports, as I have noted earlier, we say “play the ball, not the man” and in business we need to look at problems, not personalities. This sounds fair enough, but it is not easy to do. We may find we are attacking the person, their ideas and opinions rather than looking at solving the problem. Maybe we don't like them, their manner, their attitude, their values, their style of speech, their rivalry. That situation is unlikely to change in a hurry. They won't become our best buddy any time soon or ever. Nevertheless, we have to work with them and overcome this conflict. We need to switch over to “outcome focus” and logic. This will take the personalities component out of the equation and help us get to an agreed solution faster. We bite our tongue, swallow our bile, gird our loins and get on with it, regardless of how irritating they are. In these situations, I keep telling myself, “Greg - big picture, big picture”. 8. Be honest Politicking, game playing, one upping are all well known in business, but stay away from these pursuits. Focus on the reason everyone is working hard in the company. Remind yourself what we are we trying to achieve relative to our competitors. We need to come back to the basics of the vision, mission, and values. Dale Carnegie's human relations Principle Number Seventeen is useful here: “Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view”.  Strip out the emotion and be objective about their viewpoint. We also need to see our own perspective equally in an honest way.  Why do we hold our view?  What is really driving our position? 9. Present alternatives and provide evidence Compromise is the assembly of other means of solving an issue. Things that make sense and are workable are very hard to argue against.   Concessions in non-core areas should be made to build trust and the cooperation muscle. Look at options in terms of the other side's interests. When promoting your own ideas, make sure these are backed up with strong evidence, so that they are easy to agree with and hard to argue against. Opinion is terrific, but it is just an opinion.  Data can contradict opinion in a way which is more acceptable than simply arguing the toss. Storytelling is the most effective way to introduce data.  Wrap the numbers up in a story and you will be heard. 10. Be an expert communicator Communication skills are essential to finding resolution to points of difference and can be done in a way that the relationship is maintained. Really listen to the other side. We often think we are listening, but actually inside our brain, we are formulating what we will say next and so are not really taking in the other side's points. If you find yourself jumping in, finishing their sentences, or cutting them off when they are speaking, stop doing that.  Hear them out. Hold your points instead of being in a rush.  We are rarely short of time for the discussion. Often our counterparty in the conflict feels they are not being listened to, treated fairly or taken seriously. We can do all of those things by just remaining silent and letting them talk. After they stop, feeding back that we have understood them is a good habit to develop. By letting them talk, we may find out some additional information or angle we didn't have, which can change our perspective on the situation and lead to a resolution.  Just bullying the other person with our opinion doesn't lead to this type of win-win outcome. 11. End on a good note Win-win means feeling like we all did well. Shake on it, agree the next action steps and milestones. Nominate who is responsible for what and how progress and success will be measured. Also decide how further disputes which may arise during the execution phase will be handled. 12. Enjoy the process Companies benefit from having a range of views and diverse experiences when it comes to solving problems. The process of resolving disputes educates us on how to see things differently and to entertain other ways of doing things. We can often build stronger relationships having gone through this type of dispute resolution because we have come to know and understand each other much better than we would have otherwise. Resolving conflicts is not easy, but most people pour their energy into winning the conflict rather than trying to find the win-win. The latter is the better option every time if you want to win in the market. Fighting amongst ourselves makes no sense, and we can do better than that. These 12 steps will get us pointed in the right direction.    

 “Remember that other people may be totally wrong, but they don't think so”. This quote from Dale Carnegie sums up the problem. All those other people we have trouble with had better fly straight. All they need is a better understanding of why they are wrong and we are right. By force of will, strenuous, sustained argument and politicking, we will win the day. Or will we? Actually, getting a clear win in internal conflict situations is rarely the result. Battles may be won, but wars are lost. Energy that should be directed at the competitors is instead turned loose on our own team members, to no good outcome. We need to be able to deal with internal conflicts in a way that resolves the issues in a positive way. Not so easy! Conflict is with us everywhere, every day. That is the nature of the human condition. We have different desires and thinking. Some conflicts can be very low level and minor and we continue to cruise through the day. In other cases, however, it becomes a lot more problematic. In any organisation, when the machine is fighting against itself, progress becomes suspended. Instead of concentrating on beating the other guy, we have suddenly become locked into an internal battle against ourselves. In large firms, these can be driven by powerful personalities thrusting themselves forward to get to the top. They bring their divisions with them into the fight and a lot of energy and time is wasted dropping large rocks on our own feet!  We need to see the bigger picture here and look for how we can marshal our strength, access the diversity in our ranks and maximise the creative possibilities rather than concentrating on the battling ourselves. People tend to gravitate toward extremes. They either fold and don't stand up for what they feel is right or they try to bulldoze everyone else and make them bend to their will. If we want progress, we need a better way forward, achieved through compromise and collaboration. In Part One we are going to cover six fo the twelve Win-Win steps we can take to turn things around. 1. Have a positive attitude Our attitude is a big factor. If we shift our thinking to how this conflict situation can be converted into a learning and growth opportunity, we will have more success. Easy to say, but not so easy to do!  We have to step back from the fray and think about the bigger picture.  Our rivals are not dead, the market ignores our internecine feuds, and clients don't care.  How can we afford to be focused inwards when there is so much happening on the outside of the organisation?  We have to become positive we can put the conflict into context and deal with it on that basis. 2.    Meet on mutual ground Find a neutral location to remove all the residue of the past from the front of your mind. Meeting rooms are rarely the best choice for a meeting when we are in conflict with someone.  There is a formality about the situation, which can hinder gaining the flexibility we need to resolve this disagreement.  Go outside to a coffee shop or meet over lunch and try to “change the air”. Find a mutually agreeable time when you won't have interruptions. Turn the phones off and give each other the time to be understood. Don't try to deal with complex conflicts over the phone, online or by email warfare – always, where possible, do it face to face. 3. Clearly define and agree on the issue We might be arguing at cross purposes, so let's clarify precisely what the real issue is and concentrate on that. If it has many facets and is complex, let's break it up into component parts. Attach priorities and start with the most pressing core issues. Misunderstandings based on language usage happen all the time.  We need to agree on the thing at stake in a way which both sides understand.  You meet people who are hard to understand.  Their way of expressing their thoughts is unclear to us and we struggle to get their point. We need to get clarity on what we both mean and what we are worried about. 4. Do your homework Think about the issue from the other side's perspective, as well as from your own. Normally, we don't do this because we are fully focused on ourselves, what we want and why we want it. Some points are must haves and some are nice to haves – let's be very clear about which is which. Also, at the very start, define your BATNA or Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement – basically your walk away position. There may be no way to resolve the conflict and we have to push it up the hierarchy for resolution. This is usually not appreciated by the big bosses. They expect us to thrash it out amongst ourselves and let them concentrate on their own work. 5. Take an honest inventory of yourself You know yourself. You know your own “hot buttons” that need to be reined in. Are your feelings leading the charge or is your brain determining how this should progress?  Being told “no” is usually a powerful trigger for the adrenaline to hit the bloodstream, as we go into fight mode.  It always works with me!  I know that, so I have to control myself and calm down before I say something on the spot which I will regret at leisure. 6. Look for shared interests Conflict pulls you to the extremes and compromise meets in the middle. To get agreement, we need to emphasise where we are similar, have shared interests and objectives. Move the discussion to the future, rather than raking over the coals of the past disputes, crimes and misdemeanors.  Usually there is a small percentage of the issue which is the real sticking point.  Rather than butting heads on that difference immediately, we can isolate out the areas where we agree or where we can compromise.  This builds up a positive energy of cooperation and it is no longer an all-or-nothing conversation. We will continue with points Seven through Twelve in Part Two.

Business is more fast-paced that ever before in human history. Technology boasting massive computing and communication power is held in our palm. It accompanies us on life's journey, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, everywhere we go. We are working in the flattest organisations ever designed, often in noisy, distracting open plan environments. We are also increasing thrust into matrix relationships with bosses, subordinates and colleagues residing in distant climes. We rarely meet them face to face, so communication becomes more strained.  Milestones, timelines, targets, revenues, KPIs are all screaming for blood. We are under the pressure of instant response and a growing culture of impatience. If our computer is slow to boot up, or if a file takes time to download, we are severely irritated. Twenty years ago, we were amazed you could instantly send a document file by email from one location to another. Oh, the revolution of rising expectations! Imagine our forebears who, when working internationally, had to wait for the mail from headquarters to arrive by boat and then would wait months for the reply to arrive there and then more months for the subsequent answer to come back. Super slow snail mail ping-pong. Life was a wee bit more leisurely then and people had a lot more independence through necessity. Not today. We want it all and we want it now baby and look out anyone who gets in our way. We have unconsciously designed a system guaranteed to produce more conflict in the workplace. We can break the conflict touch point issues into five categories for attention.  1. Process Conflict. Is this what we are dealing with? Processes are required by managers to do their job and by Compliance to protect everyone. Sometimes the process can be very directive, constrained, and inflexible. When times get tough, a lot of processes get screwed down very hard. When things improve, they are still left like that even though they should be loosened off. They no longer fit the circumstances we are facing at the coal face. Let's calculate how much process control we have in this particular case we are facing? We need to analyse the root cause of the problem and talk to the process owner. They may not be aware this is causing problems for others down the food chain. We need to diplomatically raise it with them, get agreement it needs to be resolved and to get their ownership, come up with a joint action plan to fix it. 2. Role Conflicts. These easily arise in flat organisations. Turf wars can be legendary, as ambitious individuals duke it out internally for promotions, power, and control. Where are the boundaries of authority, accountability, and responsibility?  Besuited corporate pirates try to board us and have to be seen off. What is our perception of our own role in relation to others involved in this issue? We can't expect others to be making the effort to clarify our role, so we have to take the lead. This is hard, but we have to be prepared to change our perception of what our actual role is. We should take the macro view and see where we need to be flexible around our perception of our own role, to make sure the organisation is moving forward. Role clarity is critical and must be clarified, or confusion can reign. This fix may require some changes and we have to see change as an opportunity for growth and improvement (easily said!!!). 3. Interpersonal Conflicts.  These are the tough ones. We are confronted by the actual actions, behaviours, words as well as the reported versions from others around us.   There may be some prior negative history there clouding our vision. We need to take a step back and ask, “to what degree are my personal biases and prejudices affecting this relationship”. Also, are people around me telling me things to suit their own agenda and stirring me up for no good reason?  Sycophants and corporate politicians see internal conflict as an opportunity and a ladder for themselves. They are keen to create trouble for us and a leg up for them.  There are key things we can do to improve the situation and we usually know exactly what they are, but actually we don't want to do them. However, we have to commit to making those changes, as difficult and painful as that may be. Don't hold your breath waiting for the other person to change – take action yourself. This may mean having a direct conversation with your counterpart on the issues. Before you do that, though, forget about what you want for the moment and put yourself in their shoes. Reflect on how you would see the issue from their perspective. This will make it easier to have a successful one-on-one conversation. 4. Direction Conflicts.  These arise when the path forward is unclear. Companies are not always excellent in informing everyone, at the same time, about what needs to happen. Working at cross purposes is both expensive and damaging. Check that you are, in fact, clear yourself on the organisation's current direction or vision. Bring up the discrepancy between you and the other party in respectful terms, in a neutral way. This is not about establishing blame (although we often like doing that!), but about getting joint clarity about what is the aim and how it should be delivered together. 5. External Conflicts. These are tough because, by definition, you lack power and control. Ask yourself whether you have a dog in this fight or not? Choose your battles carefully and concentrate on what you can do to improve things, rather than wasting energy and effort whining about what you cannot control. As a general rule, if you find yourself complaining about anything outside of your control, stop! Instead, re-set your mind around how the situation can be improved. Ask yourself, “in what way can we continue to move the organisation forward?”. In the words of the self-appointed “hardest working man in show business”, Mr. James Brown, “get on the good foot”! We need to move our psychology to positive mode.  We should start making adjustments to cope with the degree of control we can bring to this external process or situation which is inhibiting us. Conflict is part and parcel of corporate life, but usually we are not strategic about how to deal with it.  We get locked into a stimulus-response loop, which means a constant flow of tactical solutions rather than looking for strategic solutions. We are also rarely trained on how to deal with conflict, so we are usually making it up as we go along.  Analyse the situation and decide which one of these factors is the main one at play and then start working on solutions from there.  Sometimes there may be more than one factor we have to consider, so we have to prioritise where we should start, but we must start.  Getting overwhelmed or paralysed doesn't fix the problem.  Focus on the key problem and get to work on that. Momentum will work in your favour.      

I saw a video recently from Rampley and Co in the UK featuring Caryn Franklin, a Fashion and Identity Commentator, talking about something called “enclothed cognition”.  When I saw her work title - Fashion and Identity Commentator - and the reference to psychology, I was dubious.  I was thinking, “here we go, more psychobabble”.  She referenced a psychology study by Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky, published in the journal of Experimental Social Psychology in July 2012. They looked at the “diverse impact that clothes can have on the wearer by proposing that enclothed cognition involves the co-occurrence of two independent factors - the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the physical experience of wearing them”.  In short, the influence of clothes depends on wearing them and their symbolic meaning. For the leader, this means to me that what I choose to wear impacts how I feel about myself and how I am perceived by those around me.  For men in business in Japan, if you are a white-collar worker, that means wearing a suit.  If the choice of suit and all the other accoutrements like shirts, ties, pocket squares, cufflinks, watches, shoes, etc., are important, how much thought do we normally put into it? We all know old sayings like “dress for success” and intrinsically, we get it.  Wearing a suit like a slob, with food stains on the tie and down at heel, scuffed shoes, is sending a message about our own self-worth and our professional brand to the public.  On the other hand, if we wear a well-cut suit, with an overall smart appearance, we feel more confident and more capable and the research bears this out. If this is the case, then should we be better educated about what we are wearing?  When I moved from being a Griffith University Modern Asian Studies Ph.D. candidate to graduating and getting my first real corporate job, I had no idea what to wear.  I never saw my father wear a suit to work and I didn't grow up with any concepts about men's classic clothing.  Brisbane is a hot and humid climate, so generally, everyone dressed for the weather and I did too.  One small blessing was that I had the self-awareness to know I was clueless.  I went to see Mitchell Ogilvie, who at that time, had his men's clothing store in upper Edward Street in Brisbane and it had the dark wood panelling, leather chairs and was very swish.  I explained that I was about the start work at Jones, Lang, Wootton, but had no appropriate clothing to suit the work.  Mitch assured me he was dressing many of the Directors there, so he knew exactly what I needed to buy, to blend in.  He did a good job (thanks Mitch) and I always felt I was one of the better dressed employees there and this helped my confidence and how I was regarded. Around that time, the Prime Minister of Australia became Paul Keating from the Labor Party.  He, like me, grew up in modest circumstances and yet he managed to get the highest position in the land.  I read somewhere that unlike his predecessors, he didn't wear suits made in Australia, but wore Italian suits by Ermenegildo Zegna.  When I would see him on television, in the Parliament, giving speeches, he always looked very sharp and better dressed than his Tory political opponents. I decided I would wear Zegna suits too and have been a client for thirty years and their size 52 fits me like it was designed for my body. It gave me confidence, even when I was out of my depth, that at least I looked like I knew what I was doing. Had I ever planned my wardrobe with my personal brand in mind?  Not really.  I had just accumulated suits over the years, especially when travelling to Italy on holiday.  I would wear them out and simply buy a replacement. Over the last decade, I have started to add more custom suits and have started to think more about what I am wearing and why. I wish I had done this much earlier, given the psychology of how you feel based on what you are wearing and how people regard you professionally, regarding your public brand. I often get compliments about how well I am dressed and earlier this year I started a blog on social media called “Fare Bella Figura – Master First Impressions, Be A Sharp Dressed Man”.  I was highly hesitant to launch it, because I had never seen a businessman like myself, completely unrelated to the clothing business, talking about what he was wearing and why.  The premise was that people make snap judgments about us, based on how we look, before we even get a chance to open our mouths, so why not do more to control that first impression?  At that time, I wasn't aware of this research by Adam and Galinsky, but instinctively felt what I would choose to wear was impacting my confidence and my image with others before I had a chance to speak with them. If it makes a difference, as leaders, we need to make the most of this opportunity to increase our strength internally and externally, vis-à-vis our business rivals.  It requires study and dough to do it, but if we take the long-term view, it is doable.  Don't be like me and work all of this out too lethargically.  Instead, work on assembling your classic men's clothing armour in Japan and wade into battle, duking it out with your competition and win!  

I meet a lot of CEOs in Japan.  I am always out there networking and looking for clients.  If they cannot become a client, then I try to encourage them to be a guest on my podcast Japan's Top Business Interviews.  I get two groups in particular who will refuse the offer – women and Scandinavians.  They say that women are more reticent about putting themselves forward than men and my own unscientific survey would seem to bear that out.  If a man only has 60% of the qualifications for a job, he will raise his hand whereas a woman will only do so, if she has 90%.  This is what I guess is happening with my invitation to come on the podcast and talk about one topic - leading in Japan.  The women are lacking in confidence to talk about the subject, because they are not feeling they are perfect enough. The Scandinavians I know here tell me that their culture is to not push yourself forward and to stay in the background.  Their podcast guest refusal rate stands out, so I guess this is what is happening with their thinking.  So far, 213 leaders have managed to spend an hour with me talking about leading in Japan for the weekly podcast, so I am finding enough of those in agreement.  It isn't as if I cannot get guests, because no one wants to join me on video and audio to talk about leadership. I think both groups reflect a misunderstanding of what their leader role is in Japan.  The leader here is the face of the business and particularly in this social media age, we need to be masters of this new universe.  I get it.  Taking your photo or even worse – video – is not something we all welcome.  We are very self-conscious about how lacking we are in terms of being photogenic or how awkward we look on video and when we hear our own voice, we shudder.  In life, I have found I am particularly unable to be photogenic, so I totally sympathise.  You know when you take that group shot and when you get it back you look for yourself – it is always a disappointment for me. In this modern world of work, however, we are all in a life and death struggle to attract a declining demographic of young people and mid-careers hires to join us.  We must be competitive, and that means we need to be getting some clear messages out into the world about who we are and what are our values. We need to be good communicators and also add our image to go with the words.  If we can speak the words on video and audio even better. I have been told by numerous guests on my podcast that they found that they were successful in attracting new staff who had checked them and seen the video interview.  I can believe that, because the nature of the interview is very authentic and no one so far has succeeded in pushing forth a fake version of themselves to fool the masses.  I don't say much during the interview and just let the guests talk. Occasionally, I will dig down on a point to go a bit deeper, but the bulk of the time is theirs.  People watching the interview get a very clear picture of the boss and then can decide if this is the type of place where they want to work. Clients also check us out and they are making decisions about us too in terms of do they want to have a relationship with our company.  They want to know who we are and what we stand for.  This is an important chance for the CEO to become active and provide the content the buyers are looking for.  They want to know who the boss is and what they are like. Hiding in the background is not a clever option.  It is much better to work on mastering the medium.  Looking straight down the barrel of the camera lens is not that easy and for many people, it is a formidable obstacle.  Video is difficult to come across naturally, I find.  Using teleprompters is not easy either and getting the right rhythm is a challenge for me. I always have trouble with photo shoots because I manage to look like a dork more often than not.  I was watching something on TikTok where a male model was demonstrating how to move and stand, to get the right shot and I realised I have no ability to do that. Fortunately, Tia Haygood, who is my local photographer here, manages to make me look presentable enough to squeak by. What I have found is that the more you do it, the better you become, and refusing to participate is a guarantee that you will never master the medium.  The CEO shouldn't be hiding. Instead, they should be pushing their message forward at every opportunity.  So find Tia if you are in Tokyo and work on your official portrait shots to use on social media and on your website.  Get a videographer like Rionne McAvoy, who I use from Japan Media Services, involved to help you with creating quality videos.  I have been using Tia and Rionne for years and I trust their work, which is why I am mentioning them if you are looking for help locally here in Japan. The point is the leader has to lead from the front and be the face of the business.  We need to break down any potential barriers to getting staff or clients.  Get the photos, the video, the audio, go on podcasts, do the interviews – do every possible thing you can to control the image you are projecting.  If you can't speak confidently or coherently, then come and do some training with us and we will fix that for you.  There are no excuses anymore because there are plenty of people around to help. Be honest – are you a great leader or are you a mediocre leader? How can you become a leader people actually want to follow? How can you be the leader whose team gets results? Do it yourself trial and error wastes time and resources.There is a perfect solution for you- To LEARN MORE click here (https://bit.ly/43sQHxV ) To get your free guide “How To Stop Wasting Money On Training” click here ( https://bit.ly/4agbvLj ) To get your free “Goal Setting Blueprint 2.0” click here (https://bit.ly/43o5FVK) If you enjoy our content then head over to www.dale-carnegie.co.jp and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. About The Author Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training Contact me at greg.story@dalecarnegie.com Bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery” (the Japanese translation is "The Eigyo" (The営業), “Japan Business Mastery” and "Japan Presentations Mastery".  He has also written "How To Stop Wasting Money On Training" and the translation "Toreningu De Okane Wo Muda Ni Suru No Wa Yamemashoo" (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのは止めましょう) and his brand new book is “Japan Leadership Mastery”. Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. He leads the Dale Carnegie Franchise in Tokyo which traces its roots straight back to the very establishment of Dale Carnegie in Japan in 1963 by Mr. Frank Mochizuki. He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter Has 6 weekly podcasts: 1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series, 2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え 3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト 5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show 6.    Saturdays – Japan's Top Business Interviews Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube: 1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV 2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery 3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development. Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 39 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan. Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.      

Being an Aussie I don't have the right to select the next US President or get involved in American politics.  I will steer clear of this minefield and concentrate on what we can all learn from the Biden train wreck. One moment he is a contender and in an instant he is struggling to hold on to power.  Why?  Because he gave a rambling speech in his debate with Donald Trump, viewed by over 50 million Americans. He was prepped for this debate by his handlers and yet it was a debacle. What happens in business?  If you are the CEO of a listed company, there is a lot of public scrutiny of what you say and how well you say it.  If the company is not listed, then the internal team are studying the CEO to gauge how the firm is faring and if their jobs safe or what are the chances to do well within this company.  One of the young people I know who has just finished university and has entered his company mentioned how shocked he was to hear the President speak in public for the first time.  Usually new entrants are vetted by HR and their initial supervisor, so their opportunities to hear the big boss are few and far between, until they have joined up. His feedback was an instant concern that he had chosen the wrong firm.  The President's inability to make a competent professional speech was a coffee stain moment.  We all know that old saw about if the tray you pull down on your flight has coffee stains left there from a previous flight, it means this airline can't be trusted and they are probably not maintaining the engines properly.  We judge firms by what we see. If the leader is a shambles on their feet speaking to the troops, then doubts light up immediately. What is remarkable, though, is how few CEOs are excellent speakers.  I attend a lot of public speeches by corporate leaders here, covering a range of nationalities, and it is rare to hear a leader acquit themselves professionally.  Recently, I was shocked to see a local leader of a major global firm have to read his self-introduction to convince the voting audience to elect him to the organisation's committee. This gentleman wasn't some fresh faced kid.  I am guessing early fifties.  That means he has been in business for around thirty years and yet he can't even get up and promote himself for selection to a prestigious position on the committee.  I doubt he is anymore effective in rallying the staff around his vision for the future of the organisation. He was bad, but the other contenders weren't impressive either. All of us in Japan face a growing nightmare of Darwinian proportions as we compete for a diminishing resource of capable staff, in particular those who can speak English.  Being able to rally the team is only going to become more critical as the recruiters start hitting our people like sharks in a feeding frenzy.  They will be luring people way and picking up 40% placement fees of first year salaries on the way through. The substantial financial rewards for this very average group of individuals is way out of proportion to their actual business competencies and abilities.  That doesn't matter though, because all they have to do is be a better siren to your people than you are and lure them across to greener pastures. Most CEOs are in that position because they were technical people who made it to the top or they have been in management positions and have shown capabilities to get things done in their previous postings.  Japan is different and a track record overseas is not a real currency here.  The ability to adapt yourself to how things are done here and to be effective with a Japanese workforce are the critical make or break skills. Communication skills are at a premium and it is more difficult here because the number of people who can understand English at a high level is limited.  Few of these foreign CEOs have sufficient Japanese skills to be effective.  To get a combo of Japanese fluency and high level speaking skills is an even more demanding recipe for local success.  I know plenty of foreigners here who are fluent in Japanese, but I don't know so many who can carry a crowd, who can be persuasive and effective in Japanese. Nevertheless, as Joe Biden has demonstrated, if you can't make it as an effective communicator, your whole claim to the crown is in doubt.  What do I do about the unfortunate CEO who had to read his own self-introduction?  I would like to suggest that he do High Impact Presentations with us and learn how to give a talk and be a success.  This is a sensitive conversation, because I am saying he is a dud and we all have ego.  The key for CEOs is to realise that there is no point in letting your ego restrain your ability to become better as a presenter.  Communication skills are only going to get more important, particularly storytelling. None of us want to be on the wrong side of the demarcation line between competency and longevity and train wreck and removal.  

I am a maniac.  A less charged descriptor might be an “enthusiast”.  Now Japan is a country chock full of enthusiasts.  They win best pizza maker, best sommelier, best hula dancer, best shoe maker awards, etc., out gunning the Westerners who supposedly should be winning these home town advantage awards.   This is a country where work is taken very seriously.  Growing up in laid back Brisbane, we didn't live to work, we worked to live.  At 5.30pm most people were in the pub, the gym, the ocean, or at home getting ready for dinner. Japan took a different track. Back in the day, working late wasn't about productivity, because it was all about devotion, being part of the team, pulling your weight, in order to be taken seriously. In the late 1970s, I taught English at night while I was a student here at Jochi University, usually from 6.30pm – 9.30pm. I was always amazed to finish the classes and walking out see all of these people still there working.  Many of them, though, I observed, were seemingly engrossed in reading the sports newspapers or magazines, rather than doing anything productive.  But they were there, waiting for the boss to go home so that they could do the same thing, demonstrating their solidarity with the others, also in wait to depart. Thirteen years later, I was going through piles of resumes for salespeople here in Japan looking to join our organisation.  This resume review process of mine has been going on for the last thirty-two years now. I noticed people would have blank periods in their employ.  Job mobility today is better, but that is a fairly recent phenomenon after the collapse of Yamaichi Securities (1999), the Lehman Shock (2008) and the pandemic (2020) had all thrown people out on to the street and over time, allowed the mid-career hire to become acceptable.  Back in the day, leaving a job meant a steady spiral down in socio-economic terms and so most people hung in there, no matter how bad it was. When I would ask about these blanks in their resumes, a surprising number of people, particularly women, said they got physically sick from working until the last train every night and had to quit to recover their health. These were not isolated cases and many of the blanks were for months at a time, which made me really wonder about the cost of getting a salary and holding down a job in Japan. We have made a lot of progress since then and I think that there is much higher awareness about getting the work done in less time and allowing people to have a life outside of work.  Young people are now all the equivalent of baseball free agents and can sell their services to the highest bidder, including demanding and getting, better work/life balance.  We should all be throwing rose petals in front of them and waving palm fronds above them, to thank them for allowing the rest of us to be more clever about how we work. The problem we face now is not externally induced pressure for working long hours, but the internally driven ambition to get ahead and in the process work like Trojans.  Thanks to technology, there is now no longer a clear “work/non-work” break in the day, because we are checking our emails all day and night.  We are addicted to being in constant contact with our work demands.  I mentioned I am a maniac and this constant checking of emails is what I am doing, too.  I could try to manufacture the justification that because we are a global organisation, email is arriving all the time and I need to be on top of what is happening in other time zones, but is that really true?  Would a few hours delay really make that big a difference?  Are there actually real fires occurring which require me to don my big coat and grab the fire hose? What is happening is habit formation and combined with screen addiction, creating a toxic cocktail for all of us.  One of Dale Carnegie's stress management principes is “rest before you get tired”.  On first blush, it sounds ridiculous.  What are we wimps?  Do we lack ambition, the guts to pay the price for success? No, we have to push through the pain barrier and keep driving. Allow no indulgence, no mercy, no regrets, no stopping. If we hit the pause button though and consider how much more we know today about psychosomatic illnesses than he did back in his day, we can see the prescient wisdom of his advice. It doesn't mean goofing off; it doesn't mean delinquent behaviour and work avoidance.  He was talking about monitoring our condition to always aim for maximum productivity, and that means sustained productivity. I think I have improved now, but I would work like crazy and drive myself hard, get sick, then be off work for days and once recovered, rinse and repeat. What if I had taken his advice and rested before I got tired?  Now I have broken that cycle and placed myself in a better position to have sustained productivity, rather than manic bursts followed by zero. Japan keeps us busy, the tech is making us even busier and these issues won't go away.  We have to play the long game, not the blame game. If you are a fellow manic like me, then stop the noise for a moment and seriously contemplate what “rest before you get tired” actually means for your life.  

They are not making as many Japanese as they used to.  Every year we get these headlines about the new lows in numbers of births in Japan.  The demographic trend is obvious to everyone.  What is not obvious is how this is going to force a change in the way we lead.  Until now, we have all applied the like it or lump philosophy to staff working for us.  They were infinitely replaceable – lose one and go get another one.  Not anymore. It is hard to understand, really.  The economy is not doing remarkably well.  The prospects for future growth are also not looking great, so why is it we are not seeing a parallel step down in business needs which translates into less need for staff?  I am not sure and I will let the economists duke that one out, but it is an interesting question to ponder. We are certainly seeing an uptick in demand for people and a corresponding downturn in their availability.  That translates into higher costs, which is only starting to happen now and increased competition for people.  This isn't only related to the hiring, it also covers the retaining bit as well.  The recruiters are having a field day with the revenues being generated from us for hiring staff and there isn't much we can do about that in a staff bull market.  What we can control is the retaining piece of the puzzle.  Delegating work to staff is a critical part of that effort.  Young people want to advance in their careers and they want to be given responsibility for their work.  Delegation serves both purposes well.  The issue with delegation is that when done poorly, it can lead to problems. The biggest failure is selling the delegation to the person receiving it.  This sounds simple, but so often this is not done at all or not done very professionally.  Usually, the delegation process is a series of orders – do this and do that type of thing.  The person on the receiving end already has a job and may be thinking, “wait a minute, I am already busy and why do I need to do your job as well?”.  That would be a legitimate and logical conclusion of having your boss dump their work on your desk. The selling component is making clear the benefit to the person receiving the delegation.  There is usually a selection process for internal promotions and the people making the decision want to know the new person can handle the tasks and are not going to blow anything up.  If we are changing companies, when we get to the interview stage, they will ask about our experience.  We are trying to step up and being able to reference completion of work at a level above where we are now is an advantage.  When it is put like this, people can understand how they can leverage these tasks at a future point and make it an advantage to themselves. The other negative aspect of delegation is boss abandonment.  You are handed a bunch of tasks by your superior and that is the last you hear about it until the completion deadline.  This is very dangerous because if the person takes the project off on an incorrect tangent and you hit the deadline, then there is little which can be done to salvage the wreckage.  Now there is a balance between the boss interfering and micro-managing the delegated project and keeping an eye on how things are going.  The latter is obviously the way to go, but where is the line between them?  One good idea is to discuss how they are going to approach the task.  Get them to tell us what they think about running this part of the work. We want their ideas because that is where the ownership is located.  We still need to monitor progress, though. Agreeing a regular check in is a good practice.  All the boss is looking for is whether the project is on track.  There are many ways to the top of the mountain and we have to let the delegated person find that out for themselves, as part of the learning process, rather than being proscriptive about how to get there. If we get both the sell the delegation part and the shepherding component right, then the delegation will be successful and help us to retain staff.  The team member will feel empowered, trusted, and valuable. These are all brilliant and required elements to keep people with us and not straying off to greener pastures.  We must deny the siren call of ravenous recruiters trying to lift our people out of our companies.  If we don't start delegating, we will lose staff, find it hard to get new staff and gradually shrink in size. In turn, this will make us less attractive as a work destination, as we become too flat to be able to accommodate ambitious people.  It is a cycle which ultimately leads to oblivion.    

Tough Love Or Fake Praise To Motivate Staff In Japan This tough love or fake praise alternative is a dubious construct. Are these two alternatives really the only options?  For some leaders they may feel that the staff are getting paid to do a professional job and their corresponding need is to get on with it.  The boss doesn't need to be pandering to their needs.  This is especially the case toward these self-indulgent, coddled, spoiled brats who are now entering the workforce.  Giving this lot praise is fake and not needed, is the view. I certainly grew up in the “tough love” era of business leadership.  Praise wasn't heard, and all you got was a hard time about not doing things well enough or fast enough.  They weren't singling me out for a hard time, because this is what we all got.  In that sense, it was very democratic.  When you are raised that way in business, you think that is normal and how things are done, because the most experienced leaders in the company all operated that way. Today, the problems arise thick and fast when you take this as your own operating standard and start handing out tough love to your own people.  Combining this mindset with youthful ambition is a powerful and potentially highly toxic cocktail which can end in disaster.  Today, Japanese young people are in short supply and they are not interested in tough love or fake praise. It sounds silly to raise the question about “how to praise people”, but if you are not raised that way in business, it is not natural to you.  The danger is you try too hard and it comes across as completely fake. Flattery is instantly dismissed.  Your standing goes down the drain too, as you are perceived to be an idiot. There are many opportunities where we can look to praise our staff.  One is “things” and although it looks easy, it is actually the most tricky.  Frankly, I would avoid this one altogether, even though it looks like the simplest thing to do. They may have in their possession something very impressive or nice.  Today, men commenting on how women are dressed or do their hair or whatever is bound to be seen the wrong way from what you intend. The next thing you know HR is involved concerned about your “sexual harassment” of the female staff. You might comment on your staff's watch or pen or briefcase or some object they have chosen.  This is definitely on the cusp of fake praise, so it has to be handled very delicately.  For example, I am not particularly into watches, so me praising someone for their watch may easily be revealed for what it is – desperation to find something to be positive about.  Better to find something you are knowledgeable about and recognise they have done well with acquiring an object you can recognise. Praise it and be able to back it up with some insider knowledge. Recognising people's achievements is safer ground and more relevant in the workplace.  The point is “good job” is highly dubious, as praise and reeks of flattery and insincerity.  You might think this passes muster, but believe me, it does not.  Every person has multiple projects underway, and their job content is incredibly various. “Good job” is by no means specific enough to get anyone excited about receiving that style of praise.  Exactly what was it they did that you want to recognise?   Call out the precise achievement, such as a report they prepared or a contribution in the meeting or anything solid and concrete. Personal strengths and characteristics are powerful fodder for praise, but again, be very careful about wandering into what sounds like flattery.  “You are very intelligent” will set off alarm bells immediately in the recipient.  It is like “good job” and so is broad and fuzzy.  No one has a clue regarding what you are talking about.  We have to link the praise to the action.  They may have come up with an insight in the meeting and it may have been a very intelligent observation.  When you connect the dots like that, then the praise will land. If you say, “you are resilient” that again is tremendously vague.  What did they do which demonstrated their resilience?  How did this come to your attention?  Why do you know they are resilient?  Bring the evidence and paste it to the praise. Otherwise, the whole effort will be tossed out as fake.  In fact, you wind up creating more problems for yourself than if you had just kept your head down and concentrated on doing your own work and praised no one. In all of these cases, we need to relate the recognition to something we have witnessed, describe it and then encourage them to keep doing it.  Tough love won't fly anymore and trying to replace it with “praise light and fluffy” will be a train wreck.  We need to be very careful to make sure we do praise our people and be particularly careful about how we do that.  

APAC always ranks low in global engagement surveys. At the very bottom of the APAC calculation sits Japan. Part of the reasons are language and cultural. The translations from English can sometimes be off the mark and lead the Japanese to score lower.  I always recommend carefully checking the translations to try to tighten them up and make the meanings clearer. Other hurdles can be cultural.  One question often asked is “would you recommend the company to your family and friends as a place to work”.  This is a straightforward question in most countries, but not in Japan.  The sense of responsibility and accountability here is high and those taking the survey will answer this question with a low score.  It isn't because they don't like the company, but they are risk averse.  They worry if they recommend the company, their family or friends may complain to them and quit the company because it is not a match.  Alternatively, they worry the company will complain to them about the person they recommended.  They see no upside here and so the best course of action is to score low on this question. There is hope, though, to see those scores go up.  They may never reach the zenith of your Brazilian or Indian colleagues, who always seem to shoot the lights out when answering these engagement surveys. There are three leverage points for gaining greater engagement amongst employees.  1.        Relationship With the Supervisor This is obvious as it covers one of the most high contact relationships inside the company and, as we say, we don't quit companies – we quit bosses.  Has the leader made clear the purpose of the business?  This is often assumed to be understood, so there is no conversation on this point.  Let's not assume anything and make it clear.  The goals and objectives are critical to the organisation's success, so let's make sure we keep repeating what they are. The leader's job is to understand how the staff feel about their work and the company, and the only way to do that is through conversation.  Sounds simple except that time is so limited and we are all cutting corners and being “efficient” with our time, which means not a lot of opportunity to ask staff about how they are feeling. Taking orders from the boss makes for a dull day and a dull work environment.  Not many people want to be micro-managed that way.  As the leader, we need to give people direction and the freedom to decide how to achieve the goals. 2.         Confidence In Senior Leadership Business is a cutthroat struggle for survival.  In the days of sail, everyone entrusted their lives to the skill, knowledge and experience of the captain to deliver them safely to their destination.  In 1834, my ancestors sailed for months across the raging seas from Bristol to Tasmania. Luckily they made it or I wouldn't be here writing this blog.  Today, our sailing ships have been replaced with company formats to make sure our job security and therefore our livelihoods are protected and made safe. Do the big bosses walk the talk about the values they promulgate?  Are they communicating changes and constantly reinforcing the purpose?  Do we feel like cogs in the wheel as the organisation grinds out shareholder value and enriches the bosses?  Or do we feel valued as a priority in the success of the enterprise? Are they competent enough to make sure the company can survive and even better prosper so that we have career opportunities to grow and flourish?  If the answers to these fundamental questions are not positive, then our people will not be engaged and, in fact, may be actively seeking greener pastures. 3.        Pride in the Organisation In Japan, when people think about joining a company or changing companies, their spouse, parents, in-laws and grandparents will all have opinions about the decision.  This becomes even more important as a consideration when we are talking about foreign enterprises.  The gold standard are the biggest, safest Japanese companies, then comes the less big, but still safe middle size Japanese companies and bringing up the rear are the foreign companies. Knowing this, as leaders we have to work hard to make sure everyone is motivated and proud to work in our organisation. Purpose has to be stressed over and over to smooth out the bumps which confront every company.  The public persona pf the company has to be one of a good citizen adding value to Japan.  Japanese staff are very focused on their relationship with customers and the company has to respect that. Foreign based CFOs come up with crazy ideas which destroy that trust.  A common idea is that if we have a 100% no defect rate, we will make less profit than if we tolerated a 3% defect rate, so let's go for the money.  This is abhorrent to Japanese staff and is a huge demotivator.  The MVP (Minimum Viable Product) idea may be popular in Silicon Valley ,but it doesn't have a place in Japan because the buyers expect it to work perfectly and completely from the get go. Japan is different in many ways and engagement of employees is certainly one area of prominence.  We can improve the engagement scores, if we know what we are doing and can consistently execute on the basics.