Podcasts about Adjunct professor

"The most important thing for a leader, in my view, is integrity." "You need to be hands-on, but then you need to delegate." "If this fails, ultimately, the accountability sits with me." "Culture is something that all of us jointly develop and nurture." "At the end of the day, you have to own your decisions, so you cannot just let AI make   Noriko Sasaki is Country Head of Checkout.com Japan, leading the UK-based payment service provider's expansion in the Japanese market. Checkout.com helps online merchants, gaming companies and digital platforms process payments, improve acceptance rates, receive settlement funds and use payments as a driver of growth and profitability. Sasaki was born in Saitama and spent part of her childhood in Los Angeles when her father was assigned to American Honda. Returning to Japan as a teenager, she rebuilt her Japanese literacy, entered a leading Tokyo high school through a returnee pathway and later studied political science at Waseda University. She began her career in international consulting, working on business-process reengineering and SAP implementation, before earning an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. After returning to Japan, she worked at Walt Disney and then spent close to twenty years at Citibank, where she led major sales operations and participated in the historic transfer of Citi's Japanese retail-banking business into SMBC Trust Bank. She later held roles at Accenture, PwC and a Japanese consulting start-up before joining Checkout.com in November 2024. Her career combines consulting discipline, financial-services leadership, operational transformation, bicultural communication and a long-standing commitment to advancing women in leadership.   Noriko Sasaki's leadership journey has been shaped by repeated transitions across cultures, industries and organisational models. Born in Japan and raised partly in Los Angeles, she returned at fifteen with strong spoken Japanese but limited reading ability. Re-entering the Japanese education system required intensive study, adaptability and resilience. That bicultural experience later became a professional advantage, allowing her to move between Japanese context and international corporate expectations. After studying political science at Waseda University, Sasaki entered international consulting, where she worked on business-process reengineering, operational standardisation and SAP implementation. She eventually questioned whether advice based mainly on frameworks was enough without experience inside a company. An MBA at Carnegie Mellon gave her a broader business foundation, after which she returned to Japan, joined Walt Disney and then moved into banking through a major Citi integration project. Her first substantive people-management role came at Citi. The team was small and entirely female, and one early challenge was managing someone older, more experienced and more knowledgeable about banking. Sasaki responded with humility and respect rather than relying on title. She clarified that both people had different responsibilities, maintained a continuous dialogue and focused the team on a shared goal. That approach became a recurring leadership principle: alignment requires over-communication, clear accountability and respect for expertise at every level. Sasaki later led Citi's branch sales organisation and became closely involved in the transfer of the Japanese retail bank into SMBC Trust Bank. The experience taught her how to translate vision into strategy, strategy into action and action into clearly assigned responsibility. She also learned that senior leaders cannot remain distant from operations. At times, she worked directly on front-line tasks and took customer calls to understand the real issues. The challenge is to remain sufficiently hands-on to retain credibility while delegating enough to expand the organisation's capacity. Her delegation model is structured rather than passive. Before assigning work, she checks the timeline, capacity, assumptions and direction. She asks for interim updates well before completion so that course corrections do not arrive at the final moment and destroy motivation. The employee retains room to execute, but Sasaki remains accountable for the outcome. That air cover matters in a Japanese environment where fear of mistakes can discourage initiative. Innovation similarly depends on lowering the barrier to contribution. Sasaki uses brainstorming rules that give everyone an equal opportunity to speak and explicitly reject the idea of a stupid suggestion. She reminds teams that improvement does not always require a dramatic zero-to-one breakthrough. A small change from 1.0 to 1.1 can still create meaningful value. This framing is especially useful in Japan, where perfectionism, hierarchy, seniority and concern about losing face can suppress ideas before they are voiced. Trust, in Sasaki's view, is built through the smallest commitments. If she casually promises dinner, she records it and follows through. Technology helps her remember birthdays, promises and relationship milestones, but the principle is behavioural consistency. Blaming someone when something goes wrong can destroy trust immediately. Leaders therefore need to own consequences, support people through difficulties and demonstrate that accountability flows upward as well as downward. At Checkout.com, Sasaki works within global operating principles while adapting them to Japan. A principle such as 'talk straight' cannot simply be imported as blunt communication. Honesty must remain, but the method should fit the individual and the high-context Japanese environment. She rejects the notion of building a personal empire around the country head. Culture should survive the leader and be jointly developed by everyone, because engagement is a shared responsibility. Her advice to expatriate leaders is to be patient, recognise the depth of context behind Japanese communication and keep searching for channels through which people can contribute. She also urges them to enjoy Japan beyond the office. For women seeking leadership, she stresses sponsors, internal and external networks, authentic behaviour and the willingness to accept promotion as a means of influencing change for others, not merely pursuing personal ambition. Sasaki's leadership definition rests on four pillars: integrity, vision, communication and accountability. AI can strengthen decision intelligence by processing more information and highlighting options, but leaders must still judge relevance and own the final decision. AI also creates a human-capital challenge: when routine work collapses from 100 hours to ten, leaders need a vision for the capacity released. People should be treated as capital and sources of ideas, not simply as costs to eliminate. Q&A Summary What makes leadership in Japan unique? Leadership in Japan operates inside a high-context culture where a spoken sentence rarely contains the entire message. Sasaki advises leaders to consider background relationships, informal communication and the time people need to digest information before responding. Silence does not necessarily indicate disengagement, and an immediate answer may not be realistic when employees are trying to avoid mistakes. Hierarchy, age, tenure and gender can also influence who feels entitled to speak. Effective leaders create equal opportunities for contribution, clarify expectations and adapt the communication method to the individual without compromising honesty. Why do global executives struggle? Global executives often struggle because they import behavioural principles without local adaptation. A global instruction to 'talk straight', for example, can be interpreted as permission for bluntness, even though direct confrontation may shut down dialogue in Japan. Leaders also underestimate how much patience, explanation and relationship-building are required. Sasaki recommends resisting the urge to judge delayed responses as resistance. Foreign executives should search for different communication channels and recognise that Japanese colleagues often have valuable ideas but may lack confidence in English or fear offering unverified information. Is Japan truly risk-averse? Japan's reluctance to take risk is closely connected to perfectionism, accountability and fear of public error. Sasaki lowers this barrier by making delegation explicit, requesting early updates and accepting ultimate accountability when an initiative fails. She also reframes innovation as incremental improvement rather than demanding a revolutionary breakthrough. An idea that improves a process from 1.0 to 1.1 is still worthwhile. When leaders demonstrate that there are no stupid ideas and that people will be supported rather than blamed, employees become more willing to test improvements and leave the safety of established routines. What leadership style actually works? Sasaki's style balances humility, structure and hands-on credibility. When managing people with greater age or technical experience, she respects what they know while remaining clear about her own role. She aligns people around mission, breaks vision into strategy and action, and specifies responsibility, including her own. She will enter the operation to understand reality, but she does not remain there permanently. Delegation succeeds when people know the direction, assumptions, deadline and escalation points. The leader provides support, receives interim updates and owns the consequence without micromanaging every step. How can technology help? Technology supports both Checkout.com's payment business and Sasaki's leadership practices. Payments data can help merchants improve profitability and growth, while productivity tools help leaders keep promises and maintain relationships through reminders and accurate follow-up. AI extends this further by processing a much larger volume of information and supporting decision intelligence, scenario development and contingency planning. Sasaki nevertheless draws a clear boundary: AI can provide evidence and insights, but leaders must determine what is relevant and own the decision. Technology should strengthen judgement rather than replace responsibility. Does language proficiency matter? Language proficiency matters because Japanese is a high-context language and much meaning sits in nuance, implication and relationship history. At the same time, Sasaki believes communication is possible even when English proficiency is limited, provided there is patience and genuine will on both sides. Leaders should use multiple channels, allow preparation and avoid assuming that difficulty expressing an idea means the person has nothing to contribute. Her own bicultural background demonstrates the value of moving between languages and contexts, but the deeper skill is creating enough psychological safety for people to keep trying. What's the ultimate leadership lesson? The ultimate leadership lesson is to act with integrity and accept accountability. Sasaki believes leaders must consistently do what is right for the company, customers, society and other people. Vision gives direction; communication enables others to understand it; accountability assures employees that the leader has their back. Culture should not become a personality cult or depend on one country head. It should be jointly developed, durable and grounded in shared behavioural principles. Leadership is therefore not personal dominance, but consistent stewardship that allows others to act, learn and contribute. Author Credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Too many senior executives treat presentations as an unavoidable corporate ritual rather than a high-stakes opportunity to build trust, strengthen the brand and move an audience to action. A weak presentation does more than waste time. It can damage the speaker's professional reputation, reduce confidence in the company and squander a story that people might otherwise remember for years. Why are so many executive presentations underwhelming? Many executive presentations are underwhelming because the speaker relies on information instead of communication. A slide deck full of data may be accurate, but accuracy alone does not create interest, emotion or conviction. In Japan, where audiences are often polite and unlikely to interrupt, a dull presentation can continue without visible resistance. That silence is dangerous. The audience may look attentive while mentally checking out. Senior leaders sometimes assume their title, subject expertise or corporate brand will carry the message. It will not. A presentation needs a clear narrative, vocal energy, purposeful body language and a reason for the audience to care. This is especially important when the organisation has faced public criticism, market setbacks or a reputational crisis. Those experiences contain drama, tension and lessons, yet many leaders flatten them into timelines and bullet points. The result is technically correct but emotionally empty. Do now: Audit whether your presentation gives the audience a compelling reason to listen, not merely information they could read elsewhere. How does a poor presentation damage a company's brand? Every executive presentation is a live demonstration of both the leader's personal brand and the organisation's corporate brand. When the speaker appears tired, monotone or disengaged, the audience often transfers that impression to the company itself. Brand building is not limited to advertising, public relations or digital marketing. A president, country manager or senior executive standing in front of an audience is the brand in human form. If the delivery is wooden, the company can appear complacent, bureaucratic or uninspiring. This effect is amplified when the business has already endured negative publicity. A strong recovery story can rebuild confidence, but a weak retelling may confirm old doubts. Global companies in Japan spend heavily on reputation, employer branding and stakeholder engagement, yet one poorly prepared speech can undermine that investment. The audience may forget the financial statistics, but they will remember whether the leader seemed credible, passionate and worth following. Do now: Treat each speaking opportunity as a brand-building event with the same seriousness as a major client meeting or media interview. Why are stories more persuasive than slide data? Stories are more persuasive because they help audiences experience change, conflict and resolution rather than merely observe facts. Data explains what happened; a well-told story shows why it mattered. A business recovery offers natural narrative structure: the initial success, the crisis, the pressure, the characters involved, the decisions made, the lessons learned and the comeback. This is far more memorable than a series of charts. Cognitive research consistently shows that people organise information through narrative, while experienced presenters know that emotion helps ideas stick. In a Japanese business context, stories can also make difficult lessons easier to discuss without sounding accusatory. The speaker can reveal mistakes, humility and resilience while protecting individual dignity. Slides should support the journey, not replace it. A single photograph, timeline or before-and-after chart can reinforce the story, but the speaker must remain the main event. Do now: Convert one important set of statistics into a story with a beginning, turning point, struggle, decision and result. How can speakers use their voice to keep an audience engaged? An engaging voice uses contrast: stronger and softer volume, faster and slower pace, deliberate pauses and emphasis on key words. A monotone delivery makes every idea sound equally unimportant. Executives often concentrate so heavily on remembering content that their delivery becomes flat. They speak in one gear from start to finish, depriving the audience of signals about what matters most. Strategic pauses create anticipation. Lowering the voice can draw listeners in, while greater vocal strength can mark a decisive moment. Keyword emphasis makes the central message easier to recall. This does not require theatrical exaggeration. The aim is controlled variation that matches the meaning of the story. In multilingual or cross-cultural settings, vocal clarity becomes even more important because some listeners may be processing the message in a second language. A speaker who sounds energised also gives the audience permission to become interested. Do now: Mark your script for pauses, emphasis and changes of pace, then rehearse aloud rather than silently. What role does body language play in executive presentations? Body language makes the speaker's conviction visible. Facial expression, posture, eye contact and gestures should reinforce the emotional highs and lows of the message. A blank face paired with rigid posture creates distance, even when the content is important. Audiences look for consistency between words and behaviour. If the speaker describes a crisis without concern, or a breakthrough without energy, the message feels inauthentic. Effective executive presence does not mean constant movement or oversized gestures. It means standing with balance, looking directly at different parts of the audience, using gestures that illustrate scale or direction, and allowing the face to reflect the story. Japanese audiences may prefer a more controlled style than some Western audiences, but controlled does not mean lifeless. Calm authority and visible commitment can coexist. Do now: Record a rehearsal on video with the sound off first. Check whether your physical delivery communicates the message without words. How can leaders make a presentation memorable for the right reasons? Leaders become memorable when they combine a clear message, an energising story and credible delivery. The goal is not entertainment for its own sake, but an experience that helps the audience understand, feel and remember the point. Most listeners will not retain every statistic, slide or supporting detail. They will remember the central story, the emotional impression and whether the speaker appeared authentic. That is why preparation should begin with one question: what should the audience think, feel and do after this presentation? Every example, slide and story should support that outcome. A presentation about corporate recovery should leave people with confidence in the organisation's resilience. A leadership speech should make the future feel possible. A client presentation should make the value of action clear. The speaker's energy must be appropriate to the stakes. When leaders present with passion, precision and humanity, they strengthen trust in themselves and in the company they represent. Do now: Define the one sentence you want the audience to repeat after the presentation, then build the entire talk around it. What should leaders do now? Substandard presentations are not harmless. They consume attention, weaken credibility and can damage brands that took years and significant investment to build. Leaders should stop treating speaking as a transfer of information and start treating it as a moment of influence. Use stories to bring business experience to life, vary the voice to create contrast, align body language with meaning and make the audience feel the journey. Every presentation is an opportunity either to build the brand or to erode it. There is no neutral option. Replace one data-heavy section with a short business story. Rehearse vocal emphasis, pauses and pace before presenting. Record a practice delivery and review facial expression and body language. Reduce slide content so the audience focuses on the speaker. End with one clear message and one specific action for the audience. Author bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie One Carnegie Award (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes, including Leadership Training for Results. Greg has written several books, including three best-sellers - Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery - along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyo (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Toreningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemasho (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban Hito o Ugokasu Rida (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Felix Dodds is Adjunct Professor at the University of North Carolina.  Felix chaired the 2011 UN conference that proposed the first set of indicative Sustainable Development Goals.  From 1992 to 2012, he served as the Executive Director of the Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future. He established the Network for Regional Government for Sustainable Development in 2002, the Water and Climate Coalition in 2007, and the Communitas Coalition for the UN's SDG 11 in 2013. His most recent books are both with Chris Spence: last year's Environmental Lobbying at the United Nations and the 2023 book Heroes of Environmental Diplomacy: Profiles in Courage.  The United Nations, through its international conferences, research studies, agency programs, and collaboration with civil society, has been one of the most significant proponents of discussions on the climate crisis and clean energy. Many countries have bypassed the USA in achieving energy independence and environmental enhancement.                     

12 - It's Friday on The Dom Show and Dom has a lot to discuss to kick off the program today. 1210 - Side - all time mottos 1220 - More side question answers. Why are some washed up pundits and former Eagles executives mad at Defensive Coordinator ?Vic Fangio? 1230 - “The Angriest Black Man in America”, Attorney, Radio & TV Host, and Columnist Michael Coard joins us here today. Does everyone hate the Philadelphia Parking Authority? How bad is it that the PPA is stringent and incompetent? Why does Michael consider them to be “street things”? Why are “red light” and speed cameras unlawful? How do they act like a mafia? How can you beat tickets? 1250 - Your calls to round out the hour.

Prof. John Fitzgerald, Adjunct Professor in Economics at Trinity College Dublin

Dr. Piya Sorcar, PhD, CEO TeachAids, Adjunct Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford School of Medicine talks to Lauren and Nick about concussion education and TeachAids. Leveraging her wealth of experience, including her previous program tackling HIV/AIDS education, Dr. Sorcar discuss the importance of genuine concussion education, free concussion education from TeachAids. Not simply telling athletes to not do something, or to remind them of the dangers, Piya and TeachAids, use the power of technology and peer messaging to really get through. Whether it's a fun game amongst friends or a more competitive official school or university league, TeachAids CrashCourse Concussion Education has become an increasingly important part of educating the public in the US, Canada, UK and globally. Did I mention it's free?!Check out all the free products that TeachAids CrashCourse has to offer and get started with your league!Concussion CrashCourse: https://teachaids.org/for-concussions/crashcourse/Concussion Story Wall: https://concussionstorywall.org/If you use VR, take advantage of the excellent interactive experience! If you don't have a VR set (like yours truly) the YouTube and 2D educational experiences are great as well!PLEASE SHARE, LIKE, SUBSCRIBE! WHATEVER THOSE OTHER PODCASTS AND YOUTUBE CHANNELS ASK YOU TO DO FOR THEM, DO FOR US TOO!Check us out on Youtube, Instagram and Facebook! @concussiontalk & @lziaksThank you!Subscribe and leave a review!Visit https://www.concussiontalk.com/ for more!Follow and subscribe! @concussiontalk on YouTube, Instagram & Facebook 2014 e-book, Detour: https://leanpub.com/detourFollow Lauren on Instagram @lziaksConcussion Talk Podcast discusses traumatic brain injury (TBI) by featuring interviews with experts (physiotherapists, doctors, researchers, athletes, community leaders, etc.) and people who have experienced TBI first-hand.Chronically dives deeper into concussions and brain injury as I team up with Lauren Ziaks; a DPT, ATC, and wealth of knowledge of chronic health conditions post-concussion. Join us as we interview more experts, spread awareness of brain injury and more! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Workplaces are awash with acronyms. We can sometimes hold an entire meeting using apparently impenetrable collections of letters and numbers. Acronyms are handy, though, when they make an important idea easier to remember and apply. R.E.A.L. leadership describes four practical attributes of effective leaders: Reliable, Empathetic, Aspirational and Learning. None of these qualities is revolutionary. The challenge is demonstrating them consistently when deadlines are tight, pressure is high and everyone is busy. What does R.E.A.L. leadership mean? R.E.A.L. leadership means being Reliable, Empathetic, Aspirational and committed to Learning. Together, these four attributes create trust, engagement, direction and adaptability. Leadership frameworks only matter when they influence daily behaviour. A beautifully designed company value printed on the wall is not much use when the boss repeatedly breaks promises, ignores employee concerns, communicates no compelling future and refuses to reconsider outdated ideas. The R.E.A.L. model gives executives, managers and team leaders a practical leadership checklist. Reliability creates credibility. Empathy helps leaders understand what people are experiencing. Aspiration connects everyday work to a bigger purpose. Learning prevents the leader and the organisation from becoming trapped by yesterday's success. This model applies across Japanese companies, multinational corporations, small and medium-sized enterprises and fast-growing startups. The balance may differ, but the underlying leadership expectations remain remarkably similar. Do now: Ask yourself which of the four R.E.A.L. qualities your people experience most strongly—and which one they rarely see. Why is reliability essential for leadership trust? Reliable leaders build trust by doing what they say they will do, keeping their promises and showing consistent interest in the development of their people. Reliability sounds obvious, but it frequently breaks down in practice. Leaders make commitments during meetings, become distracted by the next emergency and quietly forget what they promised. Employees do not forget. They watch whether the leader's words and actions match. Trust is not built by position, title or a magnificent name card. It develops when people see a predictable pattern of follow-through. This includes delivering decisions on time, providing promised resources, giving feedback and supporting an employee's professional growth. Leaders also need to connect organisational objectives with individual goals. Employees naturally wonder, "What is in this for me?" That is not necessarily selfishness. They want to understand how their effort affects their career, skills, reputation and future opportunities. When company and individual interests are aligned, leaders usually gain stronger commitment, greater loyalty and better execution. Do now: Review the promises you have made to your team during the past month. Close the loop on every outstanding commitment. How does empathy improve leadership performance? Empathetic leadership improves performance because leaders make better decisions when they understand the experiences, concerns and viewpoints of their people. Empathy is closely connected to listening. It is difficult to see a situation from another person's perspective when we have never taken the time to discover what that perspective actually is. Busy bosses often see the calm surface of the workplace but miss what is happening underneath. Employees may appear cooperative while privately dealing with confusion, frustration, excessive workloads or concerns about organisational change. Leaders who only demand the numbers may achieve short-term compliance, but they can lose ideas, initiative and discretionary effort. Position power works up to a point. Employees will often do what the boss commands because they have little choice. However, authority alone rarely unlocks creativity, honest feedback or intelligent disagreement. Empathetic leaders do not abandon standards or avoid difficult conversations. They combine accountability with curiosity. They listen carefully, ask thoughtful questions and communicate that they genuinely care about the people producing the results. Do now: In your next one-to-one conversation, spend more time asking and listening than explaining and directing. What makes an aspirational leader effective? Aspirational leaders help people see beyond immediate targets by connecting individual responsibilities to a meaningful and achievable future. Most organisations are consumed by the urgent. Teams concentrate on this month's sales, this quarter's costs, the latest customer complaint or the next internal deadline. These issues matter, but leadership also requires the ability to hover above the everyday melee and see the destination on the far horizon. An aspirational leader explains where the organisation is going, why the destination matters and how each person contributes to reaching it. A generic vision statement is not enough. The message must resonate with employees working in different functions, locations and career stages. A finance professional, salesperson, engineer and frontline manager may all contribute to the same strategic objective, but each needs to understand the goal in language connected to their own work. Leaders must repeatedly translate strategy into relevance. When employees can see the connection between today's tasks and tomorrow's achievement, routine work gains greater meaning. Do now: Explain your organisation's larger goal in one clear sentence, then show every team member how their role contributes to it. Why must leaders continue learning? Leaders must continue learning because experience only creates value when they examine it, challenge their assumptions and adapt their decisions. Many executives claim to have thirty years of experience. In reality, some have had one year of experience thirty times. They repeat familiar methods, defend favoured opinions and rely on approaches that worked in a different competitive environment. Their thinking becomes locked inside a mental vault, and somewhere along the way they lose the key. Senior people are especially vulnerable because previous success can make their judgement appear unchallengeable. They also become extremely busy working in the business rather than working on the business. Reflection, reading, coaching and experimentation are treated as optional luxuries. Learning leaders remain willing to permanently kill their favourite ideas when the evidence changes. They invite alternative viewpoints, study failures and test new approaches. This does not mean chasing every management fashion. It means remaining intellectually flexible enough to recognise when customers, employees, technology or competitors have moved on. Do now: Identify one long-held assumption about your business that deserves to be questioned rather than automatically defended. How can leaders apply the R.E.A.L. model every day? Leaders apply the R.E.A.L. model by turning each attribute into an observable behaviour rather than treating leadership as an abstract philosophy. For reliability, maintain a visible record of commitments and report back when actions are completed. For empathy, schedule regular conversations in which employees can discuss concerns, ideas and ambitions without being immediately interrupted or judged. For aspiration, connect team objectives to the organisation's larger purpose. Do not assume people can automatically see the connection. Repeat it, personalise it and illustrate it with concrete examples. For learning, build reflection into the working rhythm. After an important project, client meeting or decision, ask what worked, what failed and what should change next time. R.E.A.L. leadership does not require a dramatic personality. Introverted and extroverted leaders can both demonstrate these qualities. Nor does it depend on hierarchy. A project leader, new manager or experienced executive can all become more reliable, empathetic, aspirational and committed to learning. Do now: Choose one visible R.E.A.L. behaviour to practise consistently for the next thirty days. How can organisations develop more R.E.A.L. leaders? Organisations develop R.E.A.L. leaders by reinforcing these behaviours through selection, development, performance management and senior-level role modelling. Leadership expectations cannot live only in a training programme. Recruitment and promotion decisions should examine whether candidates keep commitments, listen effectively, communicate a larger direction and learn from experience. Performance discussions should also assess how results were achieved. A manager who reaches the target while exhausting the team, withholding information or damaging trust may create larger costs later. Senior executives have an especially important role. Employees study what powerful people do far more carefully than what corporate values say. When executives admit mistakes, seek feedback and honour promises, they make learning and reliability safer for everyone else. Leadership development should give managers opportunities to practise difficult conversations, coaching, strategic communication and decision-making. Knowledge alone is insufficient. People need feedback, repetition and accountability until the new behaviour becomes natural. Do now: Include at least one R.E.A.L. behaviour in every leadership development and performance conversation. Conclusion R.E.A.L. leadership is easy to remember, which is at least a useful beginning. Reliable leaders build trust. Empathetic leaders understand the people behind the performance. Aspirational leaders connect everyday work to a bigger future. Learning leaders keep adapting rather than becoming prisoners of their previous success. We already know that these qualities matter. The problem is that pressure, deadlines and constant activity make us forget—or convince us that we are too busy to practise them. Leadership does not become real because we understand a framework intellectually. It becomes real when our people repeatedly experience the behaviour. Let's change what they experience. Author bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the bestsellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, as well as Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His books have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Recorded at the PSE-CEPR Policy Forum, Paris School of Economics.Tariffs move trade around, but so does economic power. When one economy dominates, other countries fall into step with it. They trade with the dominant economy, and also with each other. Alberto Martin (Barcelona School of Economics, CEPR) is one of a team that has tracked the influence of hegemons, large dominant economies, on trade from the start of the 19th century. In  our latest VoxTalk he tells Tim Phillips about how they used treaties (not necessarily about trade) as a proxy for alignment, and built a database of 77,000 of them signed between 1800 and 2020 to test their theory.Hegemons sign a disproportionate share of these international agreements. After treaty-signing, trade links become stronger. But treaty-signing has fallen sharply over the past 15 years, as much as it did during the two world wars. If we are heading towards a multipolar world, might what will the absence of a global hegemony do to trade?The research behind this episode:Broner, Fernando, Alberto Martin, Josefin Meyer, and Christoph Trebesch. 2025. "Hegemonic Globalization." CEPR Discussion Paper 20339 (gated).To cite this episode:Phillips, Tim, and Alberto Martin. 2025. "How superpowers shape trade." VoxTalks Economics (podcast).About the guestAlberto Martin is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Research in International Economics (CREI), an Adjunct Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, a Research Professor at the Barcelona School of Economics, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, where he directs the International Macroeconomics and Finance programme. His research spans macroeconomics, finance, and international economics, including asset bubbles, credit cycles, sovereign debt, and the political economy of trade.Research cited in this episodeGlobal Treaty Database. The dataset at the heart of the paper, assembled by the authors from the United Nations Treaty Collection, the League of Nations archive, and country-specific historical sources. It records roughly 77,000 international agreements signed between 1800 and 2020, most of them bilateral, sorted into economic and non-economic categories such as trade, taxation, migration, borders, and military cooperation.Hegemonic stability. The idea, introduced by Charles Kindleberger in 1973, that an open and stable world economy needs a single dominant power to underwrite it. This paper builds a formal model of the mechanism Kindleberger described, and asks what happens to openness when dominance is contested.Alignment and UN voting. The most common existing proxy for how closely two countries are aligned is whether they vote together at the United Nations. The authors' treaty measure correlates with UN voting in some periods and less in others, partly because many UN votes turn on narrow questions; treaties cover more policy areas and reach back 200 years, which UN voting cannot.The recent decline in treaty-signing. Since 1800 treaty-signing has trended upward, interrupted by three sharp falls: the First World War, the Second World War, and a decline over the last 15 years that is proportionally comparable to the first two. The authors checked large-country sources directly to rule out a reporting lag, and the fall appears real.More VoxTalks Economics episodesThe safety paradox. Isabelle Méjean on how, when countries impose trade restriction to protect themselves, it also makes conflict more likely. Related reading on VoxEU.orgWhy globalisation needs a leader: Hegemons, alignment, and trade, the authors' own VoxEU column setting out the theory of hegemonic globalisation and what a shift from a unipolar to a multipolar world might mean for trade.From bilateralism to a system: Europe's early trade treaties and lessons for EU trade policy in a contested world, a VoxEU column by Laura Panza and Maria Ptashkina drawing on nearly 900 commercial treaties from 1815 to 1919 to argue for expanding networks of agreements even without universal multilateralism.

Leadership principles are rarely complicated. The difficulty is remembering to practise them consistently when targets are missed, markets become unstable, staff disappoint us and the pressure keeps building. In Part One, we examined the first seven guiding principles of leadership. Here are principles eight to sixteen: practical reminders about respect, recognition, accountability, goal-setting, focus, resilience, work-life balance, worry and enthusiasm. They may sound familiar, but familiarity is not the same as application. How does showing respect improve employee motivation? Genuine respect is the foundation of sustainable employee motivation because people are more willing to contribute when they feel valued as human beings. This applies not only to star performers but also to the large middle of the workforce whose performance may be average or inconsistent. Many bosses naturally respect their top 20% because those people deliver results. The real leadership test is how they treat everyone else. Frustration can leak into the boss's voice, facial expression and daily interactions. Staff quickly recognise when they are being tolerated rather than respected. Leaders do not have to accept poor performance. They do, however, need to separate the individual's worth from the current quality of the work. Clear coaching, fair expectations and honest feedback can coexist with dignity. Do now: Check whether every team member receives the same basic level of courtesy, attention and respect, regardless of performance. Why are recognition and praise sometimes more powerful than money? People work for money, but they often go the extra mile because they receive recognition, praise and meaningful rewards. Fair pay matters, but salary alone rarely creates emotional engagement, loyalty or discretionary effort. Frederick Herzberg described salary as a "hygiene factor". When pay is unfair, it causes dissatisfaction. When it is fair, employees generally treat it as an expected part of the employment relationship. The stronger motivational effect often comes from achievement, responsibility, progress and recognition. Our Dale Carnegie research has repeatedly identified feeling valued by one's immediate manager as an important emotional driver of engagement. Employees cannot read the boss's mind. They know they are valued because the leader communicates it through specific praise, appreciation and acknowledgement. A vague "good job" is better than silence, but precise recognition is stronger: explain what the person did, why it mattered and who benefited. Do now: Recognise one specific contribution today and connect it directly to its positive impact. Should leaders admit their mistakes? Strong leaders admit mistakes quickly because accountability builds credibility rather than diminishing authority.A boss who pretends to be infallible creates defensiveness, fear and political behaviour throughout the organisation. Ego, face, pride and professional image can make an admission difficult, particularly in hierarchical business cultures. Some managers worry that saying "I was wrong" will weaken their position. Usually, the opposite happens. Employees already know the mistake occurred. The only unresolved question is whether the leader has enough confidence and integrity to acknowledge it. Admitting an error does not mean accepting chronic incompetence. Leaders and employees must still meet professional standards. The principle is to be quick to acknowledge genuine mistakes, slow to criticise others and constructive when correcting performance. A leader who accepts personal imperfection is also more capable of responding calmly when a team member makes an occasional error. Do now: Admit the mistake, explain the correction and focus the team on preventing a recurrence. How should leaders set challenging but realistic goals? Effective goals should stretch performance without becoming so unrealistic that employees stop believing effort will make any difference. Clear, challenging and attainable targets generate more commitment than numbers based on guesswork, hope or executive wishful thinking. Throughout my career, I have encountered targets that appeared to have no scientific, commercial or logical foundation. A wet finger held up to the breeze seemed to be the methodology. These goals did not motivate anyone. They encouraged cynicism, sandbagging and creative explanations for failure. Today, I use a spreadsheet to track each salesperson's results from the date they joined the company. This allows comparisons based on experience, historical performance, conversion patterns and realistic productivity expectations. Large corporations, SMEs and startups may use different metrics, but the principle remains the same: base targets on evidence, explain the rationale and confirm that employees can influence the outcome. Do now: Review whether your team's goals are evidence-based, clearly explained and difficult but genuinely obtainable. How can leaders maintain focus on the big picture? Leaders maintain strategic focus by protecting time for important long-term work, even while urgent problems compete for attention. Markets, currency movements, wars, technological disruption and economic downturns can easily pull leaders into permanent crisis management. Employees are often understandably focused on today's workload, career, compensation and immediate problems. Senior leaders must operate across a longer horizon. They need to keep reminding the organisation where it is going, why that destination matters and what must be protected during periods of disruption. The familiar advice is to work on the business, not only in the business. Stephen Covey's Quadrant Two—important but not urgent—is where strategic planning, relationship building, capability development and risk prevention normally sit. Unfortunately, these activities are easily postponed because they are not yet emergencies. The big picture does not maintain itself. Leaders have to schedule time to think. Do now: Block regular Quadrant Two time for strategy, people development and prevention before urgent work consumes the calendar. Does work-life balance improve leadership performance? Consistently high performance requires recovery because health, reflection and leisure support better judgement, creativity and endurance. Leadership is a marathon, even though ambitious executives sometimes behave as if every month is the final sprint. "I will outwork, out-sacrifice and out-commit everyone" can sound admirable. It becomes dangerous when exhaustion damages decision quality, relationships or physical health. Many of our strongest ideas appear while walking, running, swimming, exercising or gardening—not while staring at another spreadsheet late at night. My father established his own company at the age of 49 and achieved rapid financial success. He died from lung cancer at 51 and was not there to enjoy the rewards. That experience permanently shaped my view of success. Winning in business is meaningless if leaders destroy their health, family life and capacity to enjoy what they have built. Do now: Treat sleep, exercise, relationships and recovery as performance disciplines rather than optional rewards. How can leaders remain positive during severe setbacks? Resilient leaders take strength from what remains possible instead of allowing past failures and present negativity to consume their energy. Positivity is not pretending that serious problems do not exist. It is maintaining the ability to act despite them. The movie reel inside our minds repeatedly shows mistakes, humiliations, losses and disasters. News media amplify the effect because negative stories attract attention. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the training industry suffered extraordinary disruption. Remaining optimistic while facing losses, uncertainty and upheaval was not easy. My mantra was TINA: There Is No Alternative. Quitting mentally would not improve the situation, so the only productive option was to keep adapting and fighting. Japan's well-known saying, "Fall down seven times, get up eight," captures the required mindset. Resilience does not remove the wound. It gets us moving again. Do now: Identify what remains within your control and take one constructive action before reviewing the problem again. What practical method helps leaders control worry? Leaders can reduce worry by converting vague fear into a clearly defined problem followed by practical solution choices. Worry thrives when the mind circles endlessly around uncertainty without moving toward a decision. Questions such as "Can we make payroll?", "Will we run out of cash?" and "How much longer can we survive?" became genuine concerns for many business owners during the pandemic, supply-chain disruption, market instability and geopolitical conflict. A simple four-part process can interrupt paralysis: What is the problem? Why is it a problem? What could I do to alleviate the problem? Which solution is best? This structure moves the mind away from emotional repetition and into analysis, options and action. The selected solution may not be perfect, but purposeful movement is generally healthier than passive anxiety. Do now: Write down the worry, answer the four questions and choose the next specific action. Why is enthusiasm essential for leadership? Enthusiasm gives leaders the emotional energy to influence others, sustain momentum and keep hope alive when circumstances are grim. It can move people, but it must also be protected from persistent negativity. Negative colleagues, commentators and acquaintances can act like kryptonite. Their pessimism gradually drains confidence and makes every idea appear impossible. Leaders cannot always avoid difficult people, particularly when the negative person is a colleague, client or family member. They can, however, control how much authority that person's outlook is allowed to have. Enthusiasm is not constant excitement. It is a renewable commitment to possibility. Leaders should identify the activities, people, purposes and achievements that reignite their energy. A small spark can become the blue flame that helps a team believe there is a worthwhile future ahead. Your emotional state is contagious, whether you intend it to be or not. Do now: Protect your enthusiasm, reduce unnecessary exposure to habitual negativity and reconnect with what gives the work meaning. Conclusion: How can leaders turn familiar principles into daily habits? The sixteen principles covered across Parts One and Two are not new, glamorous or technologically advanced. Most leaders have heard similar advice before. The problem is not a lack of knowledge. The problem is inconsistent execution. Respect, recognition, humility, constructive feedback, realistic goals, strategic focus, personal health, resilience, practical problem-solving and enthusiasm only create value when they become visible behaviours. Choose one principle each day and deliberately practise it. Treat the principles like daily business health supplements. One small leadership behaviour repeated consistently can improve trust, engagement, judgement and organisational performance. The obvious principles are often the ones we neglect. Leadership improves when we stop admiring the ideas and start living them. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the bestsellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His books have also been published in Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Why Your Best People Want You to Leave Them Alone   There is a pattern Nathan Jamail has seen across hundreds of organizations, in every industry, at every level. Ask employees what their professional goal is, and most will eventually tell you: to be so good their boss leaves them alone. That is not apathy. That is a signal about how leadership is being experienced. In this episode, Nathan and Rocky go deep on why coaching cultures fail not because leaders lack intention, but because they spend their attention on exactly the wrong people.   In This Episode: Why 90% of employees at every level aim to be left alone by their manager, and what that reveals about leadership The distinction between coaching those who need attention and those who deserve it Why the leader in the middle is the most powerful and most overlooked force in any organization How AI will eliminate the leader who manages through process and amplify the one who leads through genuine connection Why promoting the best salesperson into management is often the most costly mistake a company makes What "serve up, coach down" actually requires at every layer of an organization Why accountability and mandating behavior are acts of belief, not control   Key Insights: Leaders default to spending time with struggling employees while leaving high performers alone. The consequence: high performers learn that good performance means less coaching, and they plateau. The goal is not buy-in. Buy-in is compliance. The goal is belief, and belief is built through alignment from the very top down. AI will not replace the leader. It will replace the manager who adds no human value. Connection, trust, and accountability cannot be automated. The leader in the middle (the director, the senior manager) holds more organizational power than anyone above or below them. They make or break alignment. Accountability is not control. It is the highest form of belief in another person's capacity.   About Nathan Jamail: Nathan Jamail is a record-setting performer, CEO, Adjunct Professor in the MBA program at SMU's Cox School of Business, where he has earned more than 18 Teacher Excellence Awards, and a bestselling author of leadership and sales books. During his tenure as an Executive Director at a Fortune 100 company, Nathan built and led seven #1 producing teams across five states and Puerto Rico. He has also built, scaled, and sold multiple small businesses, bringing real-world corporate and entrepreneurial leadership experience to everything he teaches. For more than two decades, Nathan has coached and developed leaders on three continents and thousands around the world. His leadership principles now serve as the backbone for organizations across manufacturing, finance, technology, communications, hospitality, and more. In a business climate shaped by AI acceleration and constant disruption, Nathan helps organizations leverage technology without losing their human edge, building teams that win through clarity, discipline, accountability, and trust.   Links: www.NathanJamail.com Email: info@nathanjamail.com LinkedIn: @nathanjamail https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanjamail/ Facebook: @jdgroup https://www.facebook.com/jdgroup Instagram: @nathan_jamail https://www.instagram.com/nathan_jamail   Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@richersoul Richer Soul Life Beyond Money. You got rich, now what? Let's talk about your journey to purposeful, intentional, amazing life. Where are you going to go and how are you going to get there? Let's figure that out together. At the core is the financial well being to be able to do what you want, when you want, how you want. It's about personal freedom! Thanks for listening! Show Sponsor: http://profitcomesfirst.com/ Schedule your free no obligation call: https://bookme.name/rockyl/lite/intro appointment 15 minutes If you like the show please leave a review on iTunes: http://bit.do/richersoul https://www.facebook.com/richersoul http://richersoul.com/ rocky@richersoul.com Some music provided by Junan from Junan Podcast Any financial advice is for educational purposes only and you should consult with an expert for your specific needs.

Competitors can damage your margins, poach your best people, outspend you, undercut your prices and introduce technology that makes your current offer irrelevant. Worrying about them, however, is not a strategy. The better response is to build a competitive moat before you desperately need one. That means creating distinctive value, stronger client relationships, better delivery systems and advantages that rivals cannot easily or cheaply reproduce. How Much Attention Should We Pay to Our Competitors? Leaders should understand their competitors clearly, but they should not allow competitors to dictate every business decision. The objective is informed awareness rather than corporate paranoia. The intensity of competition depends on the market. In a commodity sector, price and supply capacity may determine almost everything. In a narrow market with only a few suppliers, gaining market share may be extremely difficult. Currency movements, technological disruption, regulatory changes, capital availability and the loss of key employees can also alter the competitive balance overnight. A rival with hundreds of salespeople may reach far more potential buyers than your team of twenty. A heavily funded newcomer may willingly destroy industry pricing to purchase market share. These threats are real, but constantly reacting to them can pull your organisation away from its own strategy. Do now: Identify the three competitor actions that could most seriously affect your revenue, margins or client retention. Why Is Competing on Price So Dangerous? Price competition is dangerous because a rival with deeper pockets can sustain losses for longer than you can. Once buyers become accustomed to discounted pricing, restoring the previous market rate can be painfully difficult. Many companies spend years building their prices to a sustainable level. Then a new entrant arrives and offers a similar product for substantially less. The newcomer may not need to make an immediate profit. It may be funded by a parent company, private equity, venture capital or profits from another division. This creates a zero-sum battle of winners and losers. Smaller firms often cannot match the discount without destroying their own margins. The answer is not always to become cheaper. It is to make direct price comparison harder by changing the value equation. Instead of allowing an apple-to-apple comparison, create a musk-melon-to-apple comparison. In Japan, premium musk melons command extraordinary prices because buyers perceive them as a completely different category of value. Do now: List the services, expertise, guarantees or outcomes that could move your offer beyond a direct price comparison. What Is a Competitive Moat in Business? A competitive moat is an advantage that protects your clients, revenue and market position from attack by rivals.Strong moats are valuable to buyers and difficult, expensive or time-consuming for competitors to copy. A moat might consist of proprietary technology, trusted relationships, specialist expertise, exclusive distribution, superior service, faster delivery, a powerful brand or a deeply embedded client ecosystem. In business-to-business markets, the moat may be the accumulated trust created through years of reliable execution. The irony is that companies usually need to build these defences while business is going well. Unfortunately, good times create complacency. Leaders are busy serving current demand, employees are fully occupied and there appears to be no urgent reason to invest in protection. That is precisely when the work should begin. Once the crisis arrives, the organisation may lack the time, cash or management attention required to respond properly. Do now: Ask what clients would genuinely miss if your company disappeared tomorrow. Their answers reveal the foundations of your moat. Why Do Companies Wait Until a Crisis to Innovate? Companies delay innovation because the cost and inconvenience are immediate, while the danger of doing nothing appears distant. A crisis suddenly reverses that calculation. Our experience at Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training illustrates the problem. Business was surging during 2018 and 2019. Revenue was strong, demand was high and the organisation was occupied with delivering training. Everything looked pretty peachy. Then Japan confirmed its first COVID-19 case in January 2020. Clients began cancelling scheduled programmes, and the outlook changed dramatically. We had no sufficiently developed moat against the disappearance of face-to-face delivery. Dale Carnegie had conducted virtual training internationally since 2010, but introducing it properly in Japan required curriculum translation, instructor development, producer training and financial investment. Before the pandemic, those barriers encouraged us to dawdle. Once survival was at stake, we found the money, time and determination remarkably quickly. In retrospect, the capability should have been built before the crisis. Do now: Identify one strategic capability your organisation keeps postponing because there is no immediate urgency. How Can a Business Create Value Competitors Cannot Copy? Distinctive value comes from solving client problems more completely, conveniently or reliably than the alternatives. The strongest advantages often combine several modest benefits into one difficult-to-replicate system. Leaders frequently believe they already provide sufficient value. The more useful question is: what additional impact could we create for the buyer? A manufacturer might attach consulting, installation, training or maintenance services to a physical product. A professional services company might add diagnostics, benchmarking, follow-up coaching, digital resources or implementation support. A software provider might reduce risk through stronger onboarding, integration assistance and user education. Some additions will cost money without producing an immediate, separate fee. That does not automatically make them a bad investment. Real moats are expensive. If an advantage is cheap and simple to introduce, competitors will reproduce it quickly. The goal is to provide musk-melon value at an apple price—or at a price only slightly above the apple. Do now: Brainstorm ten ways to save clients time, reduce their costs, lower their risk or improve the quality of their results. Should We Build a Competitive Moat When Business Is Strong? The best time to build a competitive moat is when revenue is healthy, clients are buying and the company still has strategic choices. Waiting until sales collapse removes many of those choices. Good times always feel as though they will continue. They do not. Economic downturns, geopolitical shocks, technological change, new regulations, shifts in buyer behaviour and unexpected competitors can all expose weaknesses that were invisible during periods of growth. This does not mean leaders should become pessimistic or divert unlimited resources into defensive projects. It means allocating regular time and budget to resilience, differentiation and innovation. Executives should examine which revenue streams depend on one client, one delivery method, one salesperson, one supplier or one technology platform. They should also test whether their supposed advantages are truly valuable to clients or merely internal beliefs. Moat building should become part of normal strategy, not an emergency activity launched after the castle is already under attack. Do now: Review your strategic plan and assign an owner, budget and deadline to one moat-building initiative. What Should Leaders Do About Competitors Now? Competitors deserve attention, but obsessing over them will not protect your business. The strongest defence is to become more valuable, more distinctive and more difficult to replace. Study the market, understand emerging threats and watch for changes in price, technology, regulation, talent and client expectations. Then turn the attention back to your own organisation. Ask what you can provide that buyers value and competitors struggle to reproduce. Look for ways to combine products with services, expertise with technology and quality with greater speed or convenience. Most importantly, do not wait for the next crisis. Build the moat while the business is healthy, because the moment when you urgently need protection is usually the worst possible moment to begin constructing it. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and an Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His Japanese-language works include Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

The final five minutes of a presentation often determine what the audience remembers about the entire talk. This is the principle of recency at work. People tend to remember most clearly what they heard last. Yet many speakers invest enormous effort in their opening, content and slides, only to allow their conclusion to collapse through poor time management, weak planning or a final sentence that quietly trails off into oblivion. A powerful presentation ending does not happen by accident. It must be designed, rehearsed and delivered with conviction. Why are the final five minutes of a presentation so important? The final five minutes are important because they shape the audience's lasting impression of the speaker and the message. Audience members may forget many of the statistics, examples and explanations they heard during the main body of the presentation. However, they are much more likely to remember the conclusion, especially when it clearly restates the central message and connects it to something relevant in their work or lives. This is particularly important for executives presenting in Japan, where audiences often expect preparation, professionalism and respect for the allotted time. A frantic ending suggests the speaker has not rehearsed properly. A controlled ending signals confidence and credibility. Whether you are addressing a board meeting, delivering a sales presentation or speaking at an industry conference, the conclusion is the final evidence the audience receives about your competence. Do now: Decide what you want the audience to remember after everything else has faded. Build the final five minutes around that one message. What causes so many presentation endings to fail? Most presentation endings fail because speakers include too much content and do not rehearse against the actual time limit. The familiar disaster begins when a presenter suddenly realises there are ten slides remaining and only three minutes left. They apologise, skip important material and race through the deck at a speed no audience can follow. The audience feels cheated. Some of the most useful slides may be abandoned completely, even though those ideas were part of the reason people attended. This problem appears in large multinational companies, small and medium-sized enterprises, startups and professional-services firms. It happens in Tokyo boardrooms, online webinars and international conferences. The technology may change, but poor preparation produces the same result. The solution is painful but simple: trim the presentation. Remove anything that does not directly support the key message. Present the richest residue rather than every fact you discovered during your preparation. Do now: Rehearse with a timer and cut enough material to finish comfortably, not merely technically, within the allocated time. How should a speaker plan the conclusion? A strong conclusion should restate the key message, explain its relevance and direct the audience towards a specific action. The key message must be decided near the beginning of the planning process. It becomes the frame around which the presentation is constructed. The stories, data, examples and visual aids should all strengthen that central idea. During the conclusion, return to the key message using clear and deliberate language. Do not introduce a completely new argument. Instead, help listeners understand why the message matters to them. A leadership audience may need to reconsider how it makes decisions. A sales team may need to change how it approaches buyers. A client may need to approve a proposal or agree to a next meeting. The final call to action should be realistic and specific. "Think about this" is weak. "Review your current presentation and rewrite the final five minutes before Friday" is actionable. Do now: Complete this sentence: "After my presentation, I want the audience to…" Use the answer to shape your conclusion. What should happen after the question-and-answer session? The speaker should reclaim the presentation after the Q&A and deliver a prepared final message. Question-and-answer sessions are unpredictable. An audience member may introduce an unrelated issue, challenge a minor detail or drag the discussion away from the presentation's main purpose. If the event ends immediately after that exchange, the final impression may be shaped by someone else's question rather than by the speaker's message. This is why professional presenters do not allow the Q&A to become the conclusion. They finish the formal content, invite questions and then return to the stage, centre of the room or camera for a brief closing statement. That statement should reconnect the audience to the original theme, summarise the principal benefit and repeat the desired action. In executive and client-facing presentations, this also demonstrates leadership. The speaker remains responsible for the direction of the communication rather than surrendering control to the room. Do now: Prepare a 30- to 60-second post-Q&A close that restores your key message and reinforces the next step. How should the pace and voice change during the conclusion? The conclusion should initially slow the audience down and then build towards a controlled crescendo. Many nervous presenters do the opposite. They rush because they are watching the clock, breathe poorly and allow their words to blur together. Their final sentence loses volume and energy until nobody is certain whether the presentation has actually finished. A professional speaker slows the pace, uses pauses and gives listeners time to process the message. Silence is not the enemy. A well-placed pause creates emphasis and signals confidence. As the presentation approaches its final lines, the speaker can gradually increase vocal energy, conviction and physical presence. Voice, posture, gestures, facial expression and eye contact should combine to strengthen the message. For online presentations, the same principle applies. Look into the camera, sit or stand upright, use purposeful gestures within the frame and finish with a firm vocal landing. Do now: Mark pauses, emphasis and changes of pace directly into your script, then rehearse them until they feel natural. How can a speaker make the ending memorable without sounding rehearsed? The ending becomes natural when the speaker rehearses the structure thoroughly but delivers the words with genuine belief. Some presenters avoid rehearsal because they fear sounding canned. In reality, under-rehearsed speakers are more likely to stare at their slides, search for words and become trapped by their notes. Preparation creates freedom. Once the speaker knows the sequence of ideas, the key phrases and the final line, they can concentrate on the audience rather than on remembering what comes next. Dale Carnegie presentation principles emphasise communicating ideas with enthusiasm, clarity and audience relevance. The aim is not theatrical performance for its own sake. The purpose is to transfer belief, confidence and commitment from the speaker to the audience. The final line deserves particular attention. It should be concise, powerful and easy to deliver. After saying it, stop. Maintain eye contact for a moment and allow the message to land. Do not weaken it with "So, yes, that's about it." Do now: Memorise the final sentence exactly, deliver it with conviction and resist the temptation to add anything afterwards. How to finish a presentation professionally The last five minutes should never become a desperate race against the clock. They are the point where the speaker gathers the argument together, reconnects it to the audience and creates the lasting impression. Plan the conclusion before completing the rest of the presentation. Rehearse the entire talk under realistic conditions. Remove material until you have enough time to slow down, pause and finish with control. After the Q&A, return to the key message. Tell the audience what matters, why it matters and what they should do next. Then increase your energy, bring your voice and body together and deliver a final sentence that sounds like the natural culmination of everything that came before it. Your audience does not merely buy information. They buy your belief, confidence and commitment. Finish strongly and they will remember both your message and you. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, he is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, together with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His Japanese-language books include Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

What kind of leadership does the next chapter demand? In environments of heightened scrutiny and institutional fragility, leadership requires moral clarity and disciplined restraint. Through a Defence or national service lens, this episode explores how leaders remain anchored in purpose when obligations are formal, stakes are high and public legitimacy must be protected. The series concludes by examining leadership as guardianship — holding authority on behalf of others and sustaining institutional trust in times of uncertainty. Key Themes: Duty and obligation Ethical reasoning in high-stakes environments Institutional legitimacy under pressure Leadership as guardianship Brigadier John Fenwick (Retd), Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra in the faculty of Business, Government and Law, and a moderator/facilitator with the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership  

In our fifth Hoops Biz podcast we look at a subject that's critical to all of us, we're looking at the data held by sports, associations, state and national bodies on registered players, volunteers, referees and other participants.In an increasingly technology driven environment across sports, adequate governance and community understanding around data privacy is lagging.After an incident where video recording of minors took place without informed consent we dived into the issue of privacy, data security and how your information is being treated, and the more fundamental question of who truly benefits.Data is increasingly central to sports and our look into the current state of how it is collected, used, secured and protected made it clear there are very real issues with legal implications that need to be addressed. In a nuanced discussion covering grassroots, to minors and professional athletes we explore the legal and moral landscape of sports data and privacy.On this pod we are joined by Dr. David Watts, formerly Commissioner for Privacy and Data Protection, a researcher at the University of Melbourne's Centre For Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics and an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University.Dr. Paul Bowell lectures at Swinburne University of Technology and is a member of the Sport Innovation Research Group. His work spans sociology, organisational practice, sport sociology, and sport management. He has engaged in various research and consulting activities across professional sports organisations and teams.Mikhaela Cann has spent over 15 years in elite sport, her career has taken her from the Australian Institute of Sport and Australian representative pathways to becoming a WNBL Champion, NBL1 Champion and professional athlete across Australia and New Zealand. Captain of NBL1 Norths 2026 Minor Premiers, Logan Thunder, she created Assist Athlete Services to challenge the traditional athlete development model, to support athletes from grassroots to professional levels to develop the mental skills, confidence, self-awareness and tools needed to succeed in sport and life.We're grateful for the knowledge and expertise provided by our panelists in this episode, sharing different points of view and perspectives.Enjoy!Don't forget to like, share and leave a review so we can get more Hoops content to you!Join Shooting The Breeze on socials -Bio.site: Shooting The Breeze Bio SiteX/Twitter: Shooting The Breeze on TwitterIG: Shooting The Breeze on InstaThreads: Shooting The Breeze on Threadsand LinkedIn: Shooting The Breeze on LinkedIn

Visionary leadership does not begin with a corporate slogan, a strategy deck or an inspiring town hall. It begins with the leader. Before executives can credibly ask others to commit to a future, they need a clear picture of the future they are building for themselves, the values that will guide them and the goals that will turn aspiration into reality. In Japan, where employees often watch leaders closely for consistency between words and behaviour, that personal clarity matters even more. What is visionary leadership? Visionary leadership is the ability to describe a compelling future and help people see how their work connects to it. It is not vague optimism. It combines direction, meaning and practical movement. A visionary leader explains where the organisation is going, why the destination matters and what people must do next. Leaders at companies such as Toyota, Sony and Rakuten are judged not only by the ambition of their ideas, but also by whether they can translate those ideas into decisions, priorities and behaviour. In Japan, employees may be cautious about openly challenging a senior leader, so the vision must be especially clear. If the message is fuzzy, people will wait, interpret it differently or continue doing what they have always done. Vision becomes credible when it gives people a usable picture of the future and a reason to move toward it. Do now: Describe the future in one clear paragraph, then identify the three behaviours people must change to make it real. Why must visionary leadership start with the leader's own life? A leader cannot convincingly guide others toward a better future while living without direction personally. Employees quickly detect inconsistency between what leaders preach and how they actually operate. A leader who urges discipline but is chronically disorganised, or speaks about long-term thinking while constantly reacting to short-term pressure, loses credibility. Personal vision creates internal alignment. It forces leaders to decide what kind of person they want to become, how they want to treat others, what relationships matter, what standards they will live by and what experiences they want to create. This is not self-indulgence. It is leadership preparation. In Japanese organisations, where trust often develops through observation over time, consistency between private discipline and public leadership is a major source of authority. The leader's own life becomes evidence that intentional progress is possible. Do now: Write a personal vision covering character, relationships, health, finances, learning, lifestyle and contribution. How should leaders create a personal vision? A personal vision becomes powerful when it is concrete enough to see, feel and test against daily choices. General wishes such as "I want a good life" or "I want to be successful" are too vague to guide behaviour. Leaders should picture where they will live, who will be around them, how they will spend their time, what work they will be doing, how they will be regarded and what they will contribute. A written description can be strengthened with photographs, images, sketches or a vision book. This is similar to how companies develop a brand concept for a new business: the more specific the desired future state, the easier it becomes to make choices that support it. The point is not to create a fantasy. The point is to turn an abstract future into a practical reference point for decisions. Do now: Create a one-page future-state description and add visual images that make the desired life specific and memorable. How do goals turn vision into reality? Vision provides direction, but goals provide movement. Without goals, even an inspiring future remains a pleasant idea. Effective leaders break the vision into measurable outcomes, milestones and timeframes. They also avoid focusing only on corporate achievement. A complete leadership life includes professional, family, financial, health, friendship, personal-development and lifestyle goals. These areas influence one another. A leader who achieves business success while damaging health or relationships may eventually undermine the very leadership capacity the organisation depends on. Goals should therefore be linked back to the larger vision and reviewed regularly. A ten-year vision may require annual priorities, quarterly milestones and weekly actions. This creates a visible path from today's behaviour to tomorrow's desired state. It also gives leaders a practical model they can later use when helping employees develop their own goals. Do now: Convert the vision into annual goals, quarterly milestones and one action for the coming week. How does personal vision strengthen corporate leadership? Personal vision strengthens corporate leadership because it improves focus, judgement and credibility. Leaders who know what matters to them are less likely to be pulled in every direction by urgent requests, internal politics or short-term noise. They can make clearer trade-offs because they have defined priorities and standards. This discipline carries directly into strategic leadership. A leader who has learned to connect long-term vision with milestones, resources and behaviour in personal life can apply the same logic to a business. In Japan, this is particularly important when organisations are navigating demographic pressure, digital transformation, global competition and slower consensus-based decision processes. Employees need leaders who can hold a long-term direction while still moving the organisation forward step by step. Personal clarity does not replace corporate strategy, but it makes the leader more capable of creating and sustaining it. Do now: Identify where your daily calendar contradicts your stated priorities, then remove or delegate one low-value activity. How can visionary leaders help team members achieve their goals? Visionary leaders gain willing cooperation when they help people connect organisational success with personal progress. Employees do not commit deeply to a vision merely because it appears in a presentation. They engage when they can see how the future will help them grow, contribute, gain skills, build confidence or achieve goals that matter to them. This requires leaders to ask questions, listen carefully and understand individual aspirations. Zig Ziglar's famous idea that we can get what we want by helping others get what they want captures the principle. In Japan, where employees may not immediately state personal ambitions to a senior leader, trust and patient conversation are essential. The leader's role is not to promise every outcome, but to create development opportunities, provide coaching and show how individual effort connects to a meaningful future. Do now: Ask each direct report what they want to become better at over the next year and agree on one concrete development opportunity. Conclusion Visionary leadership is not a performance. It is the disciplined practice of seeing a better future, defining it clearly and helping others move toward it. The starting point is personal: leaders must clarify who they want to become and how they intend to live. Goals then turn that vision into milestones and action. Once leaders have created alignment in their own lives, they are better equipped to establish direction for the organisation, earn trust and help team members achieve meaningful progress. The strongest vision is not simply announced. It is modelled, translated into decisions and reinforced through daily behaviour. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers—Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery—along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including ザ営業, プレゼンの達人, トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう and 現代版「人を動かす」リーダー. Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X, hosts six weekly podcasts, and produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews on YouTube.

"Everything starts with trust." "Start with listening." "Culture is nothing different from the collective behaviour of people." "Dare to do things differently." "Leadership is giving direction and inspiration to bring out the best possible for the organisation." Brief Bio Karl Deppen is President and Chief Executive Officer of ARCHION Corporation, the new holding company bringing together Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation and Hino Motors. ARCHION began operations on 1 April 2026, combining two major Japanese commercial-vehicle brands to strengthen scale, competitiveness and investment in decarbonised transport, autonomous driving and digital mobility solutions. Deppen began his career more than 35 years ago with the former Daimler-Benz Group in procurement and supply-chain management. His international assignments have included Portland, Istanbul, Beijing, Stuttgart, Brazil and Japan. He has held roles spanning procurement, logistics, product management, leadership development, finance and general management, including Regional CFO for Daimler's China operations, responsibility for finance across Mercedes-Benz assembly plants and R&D operations, leadership of the South American truck business, membership of the Daimler Truck Board of Management with responsibility for Asia, and President and CEO of Mitsubishi Fuso. His first Japan assignment began in 2002, when he became one of the earliest Daimler employees to join Mitsubishi Fuso after Daimler acquired a stake. That experience, followed by a return to Japan two decades later, shaped his conviction that adaptability in Japan begins with patient listening, understanding context and resisting the urge to impose pre-formed answers. Narrative Summary Karl Deppen's leadership journey is unusually broad, even by the standards of a global automotive executive. Over more than three decades, he has moved across functions, continents and cultures, building experience in procurement, supply chains, product management, human resources, finance and operational leadership. That range now matters enormously. As President and CEO of ARCHION Corporation, he is leading the integration of Mitsubishi Fuso and Hino at a time when the commercial-vehicle industry is being reshaped by decarbonisation, autonomous driving, digitalisation and intensifying Asian competition. His first encounter with Japan came in 2002. He arrived without Japanese language ability or previous exposure to the country and entered a highly operational environment at Mitsubishi Fuso. The language barrier sharpened his ability to observe, draw, use numbers and read what people were trying to communicate. More importantly, it taught him patience. Trust was not created through positional authority or a perfectly delivered executive message. It emerged through repeated interaction, careful listening and a visible effort to understand. That lesson became central to his approach when he returned to Japan roughly twenty years later. Rather than assuming that earlier experience gave him a complete map, he deliberately treated the country and company as changed environments. Japan is a high-context culture, and effective leadership requires understanding the operating system beneath visible processes. What can initially look slow, complicated or overly cautious may reflect customer requirements, stakeholder commitments, quality expectations or prior experience. Deppen's practical response is to ask why repeatedly, suspend judgement and speak directly with employees, customers, suppliers, banks and other stakeholders before changing the system. He also sees genuine strength in Japanese decision-making. Consensus building through nemawashi and formal approval mechanisms such as the ringi-sho can extend the front end of a decision, but once the team is aligned, execution can be exceptionally fast. The leadership opportunity is therefore not to discard consensus, but to shorten decision cycles while preserving commitment and execution discipline. This is decision intelligence in practice: understanding not only what decision should be made, but how the organisation must be engaged so that the decision becomes real. Trust, transparency, empowerment and accountability form the backbone of Deppen's leadership philosophy. Employees need enough information to understand direction, freedom to act within clear expectations and accountability for outcomes. Difficult moments are decisive proof points. Leaders either build trust by listening to bad news and solving problems, or destroy it by shooting the messenger. In a zero-defect culture, fear can drive mistakes underground. Psychological safety is therefore not softness; it is an operating requirement that allows risks, missed targets and errors to surface early enough to be corrected. Innovation follows the same logic. Deppen supports structured improvement circles, skip-level dialogue, pilots and repeated lessons-learned reviews. The goal is not reckless experimentation, but controlled learning: try something on a limited scale, assess what worked, identify root causes when it did not, refine the process and then scale. For artificial intelligence, he argues that simply digitising an existing paper workflow rarely changes the needle. Companies need end-to-end redesign at the data layer, potentially supported by tools such as digital twins, automation and integrated decision systems. Ultimately, Deppen defines culture as collective behaviour. Purpose, vision and values matter only when translated into visible practices: what people do, what they refuse to tolerate, how they respond to mistakes and how they treat one another. His advice to leaders arriving in Japan is therefore disciplined and practical: start with listening, understand the context, assume there is a reason behind existing behaviour, learn enough language to widen access to the culture, and build the trust that makes change possible. Q&A Summary What makes leadership in Japan unique? Japan combines a high-context communication environment with strong expectations around quality, detail and collective commitment. Decisions are rarely just agreements between two senior people. They are embedded in a wider network of stakeholders, informal nemawashi and formal mechanisms such as the ringi-sho. This can make the decision phase appear slow, particularly to executives from low-context cultures. The advantage is that once consensus is genuine, implementation can move with impressive speed because the people responsible for execution understand the rationale and are already committed. Effective leadership therefore respects the social architecture of the decision while working to reduce unnecessary delay. Why do global executives struggle? Global executives often arrive with a strong track record and an assumption that proven headquarters practices should be transferred quickly. The visible process may look inefficient, bureaucratic or resistant to change. Deppen cautions that there is usually a good reason for why people do things the way they do. The reason may sit with a Japanese customer, a regulatory expectation, a quality requirement or an unspoken stakeholder agreement. Leaders struggle when they judge before they investigate. Direct engagement with employees, customers, suppliers, banks and partners helps reveal the operating context and prevents premature restructuring based on incomplete information. Is Japan truly risk-averse? Japan often displays high uncertainty avoidance, especially where mistakes can damage reputation, customer trust or career security. However, Deppen distinguishes caution from an unwillingness to improve. The greater danger is a zero-error aspiration that encourages people to conceal problems. Leaders must create psychological safety for employees to raise a flag, admit that a target may be missed and request help. Innovation becomes possible when experiments are bounded through pilots, resources and review points. A failed pilot should produce a structured lesson, not a search for someone to blame. What leadership style actually works? Deppen's approach begins with active listening and develops through communication, transparency, empowerment and accountability. He argues that people quickly sense whether a leader is genuinely trying to understand them. Trust grows through meaningful dialogue and is tested when conditions become difficult. Leaders must clarify expectations, provide freedom to operate and hold people accountable without turning accountability into punishment. He summarises his model as TEAM: trust, empowerment, accountability and mutual ambition. Shared ambition matters because a large, team-dependent organisation cannot succeed if the CEO's targets are not believed or owned by the wider workforce. How can technology help? Technology can accelerate transformation, but only when leaders redesign work rather than automate yesterday's process. Applying artificial intelligence to an existing paper flow may produce marginal efficiency without changing the business outcome. A stronger approach examines the process end to end, starts with the data layer and asks how the workflow would be designed if digital capability were native from the beginning. AI, automation, decision intelligence and digital twins can improve speed, visibility and scenario testing, but the human organisation still needs the trust and learning discipline required to adopt them. Does language proficiency matter? Japanese proficiency helps because language opens a window into culture, relationships and assumptions that may not be stated directly. Deppen also notes that Japan contains substantial English capability, although employees may hesitate to speak when they fear exposure or embarrassment. Leaders can lower that barrier through patience, written follow-up, visual explanation and an environment in which imperfect language is accepted. Language should improve communication, not become an excuse to avoid it. What's the ultimate leadership lesson? The central lesson is to start with listening. A leader entering Japan should temporarily set aside fixed ideas about what is right or wrong and first understand the existing operating system. Culture is the collective behaviour of people, so change depends on the practices that leaders repeatedly model and reinforce. Purpose and values provide direction, but trust turns them into action. Leadership succeeds when people understand the direction, feel empowered to contribute, accept accountability and share the ambition to achieve something together. Author Credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

With growing evidence about concussion, repetitive head impacts and long-term brain disease, have we underestimated the risks of sport all along? How did we get here, what do we really know about head injuries and given the risks, is it time to rethink children's participation in sport?In this episode, we chat to Alan Pearce, a neuroscientist and Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne who has been researching sports-related concussions for more than two decades.This episode was written and produced by Isabella Podwinski. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. You can sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

Send us Fan MailKeven Rinaman is the Director of Innovation and Educational Technology at Calvert Catholic Schools and an Adjunct Professor at Tiffin University in Ohio. He is also the author of 3DU: A Guide to 3D Printing in Every Classroom (and talked about 3d printing on Ep 218)He recently wrote the book Tinker Kid & the Case of the Wobbly Desks with his 10 year old son Cooper. "When the students at St. Michael Elementary start complaining about wobbly desks, Tim Kooper knows it's time for action. As his superhero alter ego, Tinker Kid, Tim teams up with his friends Sara and John to investigate the problem. Using creativity, problem-solving, and a little 3D printing magic, the trio designs clever solutions that not only fix the desks but also bring the class closer together. Packed with humor, teamwork, and hands-on STEM adventures, this story shows how curiosity and ingenuity can turn even small challenges into big victories."As a Director of Technology, Keven enjoys facilitating Professional Development for his staff and at conferences. His extensive background in both education and technology has given him an understanding on how to meaningfully integrate technology, while knowing how to present to a group of learners.Connect with Keven:LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/keven-rinaman-ed-s-7a714666/Keven's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/keven.rinaman3DU Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61582255271581Tinker Kid & the Case of the Wobbly Desks: amazon.com/Tinker-Kid-Case-Wobbly-Desks/dp/B0GDKWT4CQ3DU Book: amazon.com/3DU-Printing-Classroom-Affordable-Content/dp/B09HPS7Y23Chris Woods is the host of the STEM Everyday Podcast... Connect with him:Website: dailystem.comTwitter/X: @dailystemInstagram: @dailystemYouTube: @dailystemGet Chris's book Daily STEM on AmazonSupport the show

An interview with Kelly Alvarez DoranWhy do our building codes encourage carbon pollution? How have we landed in a "progress paradox," where older buildings often outperform new ones in both operational and embodied energy? In this episode, we sit down with Kelly Alvarez Doran, co-founder of Ha/f Climate Design, to unpack the hidden impacts of the built environment—a sector responsible for nearly 40% of global emissions.The good news is that architects and planners can use their agency to stop these "right now" pollutants. Meaningful decarbonization doesn't have to cost a premium: Kelly shares how simple material swaps recently slashed a UK project's carbon by 26% (800 tonnes) with zero impact on the budget or schedule.Kelly Alvarez DoranKelly is a father, architect and educator. His holistic approach to the design of the built environment has been shaped by his experiences working across the world - first in the resource development sector, and later as MASS Design Group's East African Director where he led the design and implementation of several of MASS's projects, notably the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture–winner of several international awards for sustainable design and construction. Working in these contexts brought about a profound sense of the scales of social and environmental impacts inherent to the built environment. Kelly is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto, a Senior Fellow of Architecture 2030, a founding member of the Bio-based Materials Collective, a winner of the Canada Council's Prix de Rome for Emerging Practitioners, and a member of the RAIC's Committee on Regenerative Environments.TeamHosted by Kristof IrwinEdited by Nico MignardiProduced by M. Walker

Our reporters Cathal Dowd and Alex Redmond were in Dun Laoghaire in Co Dublin to see what people would like to see in October's budget announcement. We also got analysis from Prof. John Fitzgerald, Adjunct Professor in Economics at Trinity College Dublin.

We collect leadership ideas from everywhere: books, training courses, articles, mentors, bosses, colleagues and the occasional painful lesson delivered by experience. The problem is that we rarely collect these ideas in one place. They arrive randomly over many years, and we forget more than we retain. We may recognise a useful principle when we hear it, nod wisely and then promptly return to doing exactly what we were doing before. Here are seven leadership principles we already know but probably need to remember. In Part Two, we will continue with principles eight through sixteen. Should Leaders Focus on Strengths or Weaknesses? The first step towards leadership success is identifying your strengths and deliberately building on them. That is not what most of us do, though, is it? We usually focus on what we are doing badly. We replay mistakes, analyse weaknesses and beat ourselves up because we are not perfect. All of that keeps us looking backwards. Naturally, leaders cannot ignore weaknesses that are hurting the team or damaging results. However, leadership development should not become an endless repair job. We also need to ask where we already perform well and how we can create even more value from those capabilities. Perhaps you are good at setting direction, developing people, winning trust, communicating through uncertainty or making tough decisions. These strengths are leadership assets. Use them consciously rather than treating them as accidental. Do now: Write down your three strongest leadership capabilities and decide where you will apply each one more deliberately. What Really Builds Trust in Leadership? Trust is built when leaders are fair, keep their promises and do the right thing even when nobody would blame them for taking the easier option. Communication is built on trusting relationships, but what actually creates that trust? Fairness is a major part of it. Employees, vendors and clients are always watching how we behave when pressure, money and competing interests enter the picture. During the COVID period, we had access to international pricing for one of our training programmes. That price was higher than what we normally charged locally. We could easily have taken the extra money, and in those very straitened times, the cash would have been welcome. But where is the trust if we do that? Trust also means doing what you say you will do, when you say you will do it and in the way you promised. That sounds easy. It is not. Busy schedules, shifting priorities and unexpected problems all get in the way. Regardless, leaders have to keep their eyes on integrity and follow their true-north values. Do now: Review the commitments you have made recently. Is there anything you promised but have not yet delivered? Can a Leader Force Employees to Be Motivated? Motivation cannot be forced. People have to want to do a good job, and the leader's role is to help create the conditions for that motivation. Imagine a cartoon boss screaming, "Be motivated! Be motivated! Be motivated!" so loudly that the employees' hair is blowing backwards. Ridiculous, obviously. Yet many managers are not doing anything much more sophisticated. They push harder, repeat the target, add pressure and wonder why people are not suddenly overflowing with enthusiasm. A better starting point is alignment. What does the individual value? What does the enterprise value? Where can those interests connect? One employee may want advancement. Another may want recognition, professional mastery, security, flexibility or the chance to work on something meaningful. Leaders need to understand those individual motivations and help employees see how strong performance can move them towards their own goals. Here is the million-dollar question: do you know the goals and values of each staff member? And do you keep checking? Goals change. Do now: Ask each person what they most want to achieve professionally over the next twelve months. Why Must a Leader's Interest in People Be Genuine? Genuine interest strengthens relationships because people can quickly detect the difference between real curiosity and fake friendliness. The key word is "genuine". This is not about pretending to care because you want something. It is not a technique to secure cooperation, win a sale or encourage someone to work harder. We have all seen the opposite. Someone is charming while they expect a generous tip and then looks visibly disappointed when the amount is not sufficient. In Japan, there is also the eigyo smile—the fake "sales smile" used to help win business. The mouth is smiling, but the rest of the person is not involved. Leaders make the same mistake when they ask polite questions while clearly waiting for their turn to talk. People are fascinating. When we show pure curiosity, we learn far more about their experiences, concerns, motivations and ambitions. They also sense that the interaction is genuine. As leaders, let's be curious. Do now: Ask someone a question today simply because you are interested in the answer, not because you need anything from them. Why Is Empathy Essential for Modern Leaders? Empathy helps leaders understand the world affecting another person instead of judging everything from inside their own world. Deadlines, targets, quotas, emails, bills and endless meetings—the rough and tumble of business is relentless. It is easy to become completely consumed by our own pressures. When that happens, we forget that everyone around us is dealing with a different set of circumstances. I once watched a company owner networking vigorously at an event. Another guest made a snide comment about what the owner was doing. Maybe that guest sailed through the pandemic completely unscathed. The company owner, however, had been clinging on by the fingernails. The networking was not vanity or attention-seeking. It was an attempt to keep the business alive. That is what happens when we focus entirely on ourselves. We judge visible behaviour without understanding the invisible circumstances behind it. For leaders, that is a disaster. This is especially true when talented employees can easily jump ship if they do not feel they are being understood or looked after. Empathy is not an occasional activity. As leaders, we had better become empathetic if we want to succeed in modern business. Do now: Before criticising someone's attitude or performance, ask what may be happening that you do not yet understand. Why Are Good Listeners So Persuasive? Nobody is more persuasive than a good listener because people are far more open to someone who makes them feel heard and valued. This sounds counterintuitive, doesn't it? We often imagine persuasion as having the gift of the gab, controlling the conversation, steering the content and driving forward through sheer force of will. In practice, this often means finishing other people's sentences, cutting them off or jumping in with our genius contribution before they have completed their point. This behaviour is so common that when someone actually shuts up and lets us talk, we feel liberated. We feel energised. We feel valued. We like that person. We also become more positive about who they are, what they have to say and what they want us to consider. Introverts, in particular, often respond well when they are given enough space to think and speak without being steamrolled. So, if you want people to listen to you as a leader, first let them do the talking. Do now: In your next conversation, do not interrupt. Let the person finish, pause and then ask a follow-up question. Why Are Team Players the Leaders of Tomorrow? Tomorrow's leaders will succeed through creativity, critical thinking and collaboration rather than trying to dominate everything through personal force of will. The three Cs—creativity, critical thinking and collaboration—are becoming increasingly important. Collaboration is the relatively new arrival. When I was growing up in business, Jack Welch was the dominant leadership role model. The popular image was of a tough leader driving results through force of personality, pushing subordinates hard and casting overboard anyone who did not measure up. It was a Darwinian struggle producing zero-sum outcomes. Today's business environment is different. No leader can personally master every market, technology, customer expectation, regulatory risk and operational problem. The winning formula is the ability to tap into the collective intellect, energy and commitment of the whole team. I can see this weakness in myself. I now tell my son he should not think he has to do everything alone, as I did. He should seek support, mentors and collaborators. I wish I had been smarter about this rather than following the path of the hairy-chested individual trying to do everything independently. I have been a notoriously slow learner. Do now: Choose one important problem you are carrying alone and bring other capable people into the discussion. Which Leadership Principles Matter Most? Leadership improves when we consistently apply familiar principles rather than endlessly searching for fashionable new theories. Know your strengths and build on them. Be fair and protect trust. Understand what motivates each individual rather than attempting to force motivation upon them. Take a genuine interest in people. Step outside your own world and practise empathy. Listen before trying to persuade. Finally, stop believing that strong leadership means doing everything alone. Collaboration is not a sign of weakness. It is how leaders gain access to the full intelligence and commitment of the team. We know these principles. The real challenge is remembering to apply them when we are busy, under pressure and tempted to return to old habits. In Part Two, we will continue with principles eight through sixteen. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, as well as Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His Japanese-language books include Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Once upon a time, salespeople could live several different lives. There was the polished professional who met clients during the day. Then there was the private version who could enjoy a heroic night out, behave like a complete goose and assume nobody important would ever hear about it. Those days are gone. Today, buyers can search your name before you meet. They can inspect your LinkedIn profile, read your comments, watch your videos, examine your photographs and decide whether you look credible—or dangerous—from the comfort of their office. You are already being judged. The only question is whether you are helping to shape the verdict. Why Does a Salesperson's Public Image Matter? Your public image matters because buyers are deciding whether they trust you before you have even shaken hands. In the old days, a potential client might know your company name, your job title and whatever gossip was circulating within a fairly small business circle. Your family life, weekend behaviour and questionable karaoke performances usually remained safely separated from your professional reputation. Social media blew that arrangement to pieces. Now buyers can discover professional articles, recommendations and client advice. They can also discover angry political rants, embarrassing photographs, customer complaints and evidence that you occasionally lose all adult supervision after 10:00 p.m. That online material becomes part of your sales presentation whether you intended it to or not. A strong public image creates familiarity and confidence. A careless one can kill the deal before the meeting invitation is even sent. Do now: Search your own name as though you were a suspicious buyer with a large budget and a low tolerance for nonsense. Do Buyers Really Research Salespeople Before Meeting Them? Of course they do. Buyers investigate us in exactly the same way we investigate them. Before meeting a prospect, salespeople check LinkedIn, company websites, press releases and industry news. We want to know who we are meeting, what they care about and whether there is any useful common ground. Buyers are not sitting around waiting helplessly for us to arrive. They are doing their own research. They look at our employment history, qualifications, recommendations, connections, articles and public comments. They want reassurance that we are credible. They are also hunting for red flags. I have seen candidates listen to executive interviews before attending job interviews. Potential employees research the leaders they may work for. Prospective clients consume podcasts, videos and articles before contacting a training provider or professional adviser. The first sales conversation may therefore begin long before you enter the room—and you may not even be present. Do now: Assume every prospect has already inspected your LinkedIn profile and prepare it accordingly. What Should Buyers Find When They Search for You? They should find useful proof that you know what you are talking about—not a digital graveyard or an endless stream of self-congratulation. A polished profile is helpful, but anybody can write that they are "passionate," "dynamic" and "results-driven." LinkedIn is bursting with passionate, dynamic, results-driven people. Evidence is much more persuasive. Publish original ideas. Explain a customer problem. Share a useful framework. Record a short video. Write an article. Join a podcast. Analyse a trend in your industry. You do not need six podcasts, three television shows and thousands of articles. That level of content production is clearly the behaviour of someone who needs a hobby. You do, however, need enough current, relevant material to show buyers that you understand their world. Your content should help them conclude, "This person knows something useful," rather than, "This person appears to enjoy posting motivational quotations over photographs of mountains." Do now: Select one client problem and publish one practical, original response to it this month. What Online Content Can Damage a Salesperson's Reputation? Anything that makes buyers question your judgement can damage your reputation faster than you can say, "That photograph was taken out of context." Photographs of you completely smashed at the local boozer may be hilarious to your mates. They are less amusing to a risk-conscious buyer considering a major contract. The same applies to abusive comments, offensive humour, public arguments and extreme opinions. You are entitled to have personal views, but you are not entitled to control how every client reacts to them. Politics and religion are especially effective ways to divide an audience. Unless either subject is central to your professional work, entering those battles publicly may deliver plenty of emotional excitement and absolutely no revenue. Other people make this more complicated. You can control what you upload, but you cannot completely control what your colleagues post. If everyone in the group photograph is clearly off their face, try to be the calm, demure one holding a glass of water and wondering how your life came to this. Do now: Review old posts, public comments, tagged photographs and privacy settings before a buyer does it for you. Is Having No Online Presence Also a Problem? Yes. Finding nothing can be almost as damaging as finding the wrong thing. A buyer who searches your name and discovers no professional evidence may wonder whether you are experienced, relevant or even still active in your field. This does not mean you need to become an online celebrity. Nobody is demanding that you dance on TikTok while explaining procurement strategy. Start with the basics. Use a professional photograph. Write a clear headline. Explain who you help and what problems you solve. Make sure your employment history is accurate and your recent activity supports your professional positioning. Then create a small library of original content. One useful article a month is better than daily drivel. A thoughtful two-minute video is more persuasive than repeatedly hijacking somebody else's content, adding a three-line introduction and pretending you have become a thought leader. Original work gives buyers something important: evidence. Do now: Build a credible minimum presence with a complete profile and at least three pieces of useful original content. How Can Salespeople Build a Strong Personal Brand? A strong personal brand comes from being useful, consistent and recognisable—not from endlessly announcing how magnificent you are. Choose a few subjects connected to the problems you solve for clients. If you sell cybersecurity, discuss business risk. If you work in leadership development, talk about engagement, accountability and difficult conversations. If you sell complex technology, explain it in language a normal human being can understand. Stay consistent. Buyers should gradually associate your name with a particular area of expertise. Professional production also matters. Clear writing, decent sound, sharp photographs and well-prepared videos tell the audience that you take your work seriously. The material does not need Hollywood production values, but it should not look as though it was recorded inside a cupboard during an earthquake. Avoid turning every post into propaganda. Constant selling becomes tiresome. Teach something useful and let buyers reach the conclusion that you may be worth speaking with. Do now: Decide which three business topics you want buyers to associate with your name and keep producing around them. Conclusion Your digital reputation is now part of your sales kit. Buyers will search for you. They will examine what you have published, what others have said about you and how you behave in public. They may reach a conclusion before you have the chance to deliver your perfectly rehearsed opening question. Conduct a forensic investigation of your online presence. Search your name. Examine old accounts. Review tagged photographs. Remove unsuitable material where possible and strengthen the professional evidence attached to your name. Publish original, useful and current content. Show buyers that you understand their challenges. Give them reasons to trust your judgement. You cannot stop buyers from judging you before they meet you. What you can do is make sure they find the person you deliberately chose to put in front of them—not the accidental digital version created by years of careless posting. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, as well as Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His Japanese-language books include Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Dr. William David Yates has taught for more than 51 years and continues to view teaching as a creative act. He serves as Adjunct Professor, Instructional Designer, and Technology Coach in SUNY Buffalo State's Department of Creativity Studies and Change Leadership, where he explores how AI and emerging technologies can deepen creative learning. Named an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2007, David holds an EdD in Education Leadership with a specialization in educational technology.In this episode, David traces his path to deliberate creativity and examines how AI is reshaping education. He shares the instructional design frameworks that guide his work, describes how he coaches educators to drive real change, and explains why human creativity remains essential as AI evolves. Five decades in the classroom ground every idea in practice.This conversation places creativity and human ingenuity at the heart of teaching in an AI-driven world. If you want to think more clearly about technology's role in education and leave with practical tools you can use right away, follow Creative Flow and listen now.

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.In the world's most dangerous working environments it can seem like everything is out to kill you. The equipment you use. The materials you work with. The very air you breathe. Stored energy is a coiled viper waiting for the right moment to lash out. Owners, manufacturers, contractors, and beyond have developed safety protocols to combat STCKY, that is, Stuff That Can Kill You. Gravity, Motion, Mechanical, Electrical, Pressure, Sound, Radiation, Biological, Chemical, Temperature. This season is all about the means of murder as authors put our STCKY detective skills to the test. This is Season 9, Stuff That Can Kill You.This is Episode 14, where heat, pressure, chemical, and mechanical are our STCKY means of death. This is The Rendering of Truth by Chuck BrownmanDELIBERATIONAlone, neither Lena nor Mercer have what it takes to crack the case. But together, and with our help, we can figure out what happened to Eddie Weller and Dale Curtis. Here's the suspect list, in the order we met them:Junior Lattimore, rendering techJohn Reese, plant managerTanya Lowell, accounting clerk and office mateFrank Jackson, rendering foremanDale Curtis, plant foremanHere are the facts that Lena and Mercer have uncovered:• Eddie Weller, newly promoted to Operations Reviewer, went into the rendering pit. The pit was activated and Eddie died from a lethal combination of heat, oxygen deprivation, and mechanical grinding.Eddie was formerly an operating tech and, in his new role, signed off on the maintenance documentation. He knew the paperwork or safety protections he knew was needed to enter the confined space.No one offered an explanation of why Eddie would have entered the pit.Junior Lattimore did not look into the pit before he turned it on. He had no reason to think anyone was in it.A search of Eddie's desk found evidence of falsified invoices for filters. The invoices were signed by Reese. He added a note to check with DC, interpreted as Dale Curtis.Tanya prepares the invoices for Reese's signature. She said he directed her to process the invoices for his approval, saying they were a rush job from a new vendor.Reese said he signs the invoices Tanya prepares, implying he did not scrutinize or even read the documents.A torn piece of bank statement found in the trash in the office Eddie and Tanya shared had a sizable balance but no nameCurtis later heard Eddie in his office talking to someone about stealing, but couldn't see who as the door was closed.Mercer recognized Steam Line #4 was tampered with. The line then failed catastrophically killing Dale Curtis. He was found with a pipe wrench in the vicinity.A drawing of the plant found in Eddie's apartment also highlighted Steam Line #4 as out of compliance on maintenance inspection.Lena and Mercer speculate the person or persons behind the “accidents” had to have an understanding of the plant to orchestrate both deaths.Tanya had knowledge and access to the invoice, but does not have knowledge of the plant. Tanya and Eddie shared an office and were friends. Eddie spent time with her son.Junior had knowledge of the rendering area, but did not have access to accounting. Junior lost out on the promotion to Eddie and was bitter.Junior had no apparent problem with Dale Curtis.Jackson had knowledge of the rendering area. Recently separated, he and Tanya were dating. He often when to her office, and even helped straighten Tanya's desk for her. He was there in the office when Eddie died.Reese claims his knowledge of the plant isn't detailed. He signed off on plant expenditures.Whose greed was paid for with the lives of Eddie Weller and Dale Curtis?MEMBERSHIPS!Mysteries to Die For now has memberships! Three tiers – The Grave Digger's Union (free), The Cadaver Collective ($4 / month) and The Preservationist Society ($8 / month). We are starting memberships to help pay for our real live human authors, to keep the software working and the power flowing, and avoid the dreaded use of ads. If you want to show you love but aren't ready for a commitment, you can now tip us and leave a witting, punny note for us. Links are in the show notes and on our website M2D4podcast.com.ABOUT Chuck BrownmanA mostly-retired (and hopefully recovering) attorney, Chuck Brownman now enjoys writing noir fiction, concentrating on short fiction. His work has been published in several anthologies and on multiple websites, including those listed at the top of this episode. He has also served various times as a judge for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards. When not writing fiction, Chuck continues to advise some of the country's most entrepreneurial energy and natural resource companies. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law, and has spoken at legal seminars for many years. He lives with his wife in Colorado, the peaceful vistas offering a counterbalance to his suspenseful and often bloody crime fiction. A full list of his published fiction can be found at his website, www.chuckbrownman.comWRAP UPThat wraps this episode of Mysteries to Die For. Support our show by subscribing, telling a mystery lover about us, or joining a membership. Check out our website m2d4podcast.com for links to this season's authors and membership options.Mysteries to Die For is hosted by TG Wolff and Jack Wolff. The Rendering of Truth was written by Chuck Brownman. Music and production are by Jack Wolff. Episode art is by TG Wolff. Join us next week for a Toe Tag, which is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, or thriller genre. Then come back in two weeks for our next original story where chemical is our STCKY means of murder. It's Gen X by Melinda Di Lorenzo

A strong business presentation should sound and feel as though it could only have been delivered by you. That does not mean ignoring presentation fundamentals or simply behaving on stage exactly as you behave in everyday life. It means combining professional presentation skills with your natural personality, communication style and personal brand. Too many presenters concentrate exclusively on clarity, structure, slides and timing. These elements matter, but technical competence alone rarely makes a speaker memorable. The most effective presenters are authentic, appropriately energetic and confident enough to let the audience see something of the person behind the presentation. What does it mean to make a presentation your own? Making a presentation your own means delivering the content through your professional personality rather than performing an artificial presenter role. Authenticity is frequently discussed in relation to leadership, yet it receives much less attention in presentation training. Speakers are told to be concise, convincing, understandable and memorable, but they are not always encouraged to sound like themselves. This creates a strange situation. A normally engaging executive steps onto a stage and suddenly adopts a stiff voice, unnatural vocabulary and overly formal manner. The audience no longer encounters the person they know. They encounter someone acting as "the presenter". The answer is not to become casual or unprepared. A presentation still requires structure, rehearsal, audience analysis and purposeful delivery. The goal is to combine those disciplines with your own character, convictions and communication strengths. Do now: Identify three qualities people value in your everyday communication and consciously bring those qualities into your next presentation. Does being authentic mean behaving exactly as you normally do? No. Authenticity in a presentation means being your professional self, not bringing every everyday habit onto the stage. Speaking with a friend over coffee and addressing an audience involve different responsibilities. In casual conversation, you can speak quietly, pause without purpose, use unfinished sentences and rely on the other person to ask questions. A formal presentation demands greater discipline. The audience must be able to hear you clearly. Your ideas must be organised. Your energy must reach the back of the room. Even when a microphone is available, you need to know how to hold and use it correctly. Technology cannot compensate for weak projection, poor posture or a lack of engagement. This distinction matters for executives in Japan, where modesty and restraint are often valued. Professional energy does not require shouting, exaggeration or adopting an American-style performance. It means adjusting your delivery sufficiently to meet the needs of the audience. Do now: Think of your stage persona as your best professional self operating at a higher level of concentration, clarity and energy. How much energy should a business presenter use? A presenter needs enough energy to communicate confidence, enthusiasm and belief in the message without becoming theatrical or unnatural. Audiences often judge the importance of a message by the energy with which it is delivered. When a speaker appears uninterested in the content, listeners naturally wonder why they should care. When the speaker projects conviction, the audience becomes more willing to pay attention. This is especially important for presidents, CEOs, senior executives and sales leaders. They are not merely transferring information. They are representing the organisation, strengthening its reputation and giving people confidence in its direction. A naturally quiet person does not need to become a motivational speaker. However, saying "I am naturally low energy" is not a complete excuse. Presentation delivery is a professional skill. Just as leaders learn financial analysis, negotiation or risk management, they can learn vocal variety, purposeful pausing, eye contact and physical presence. Do now: During rehearsal, record one minute of your presentation and assess whether your visible energy matches the importance of your message. Why do technically correct presentations still feel boring? Presentations become boring when speakers deliver every sentence with the same pace, tone, volume and emotional temperature. A presenter can have attractive slides, a clear voice, good grooming and perfectly logical content and still lose the audience. The problem is often vocal monotony. A calm voice can establish credibility, but unchanging calm quickly becomes a "Johnny One Note" performance. Important ideas should sound important. A warning should sound different from an opportunity. A customer success story should carry more warmth than a technical explanation. The conclusion should possess more conviction than a routine transition between slides. Senior leaders face particular risk here. Strong market demand or organisational status may make them believe they do not need to persuade. Markets change, however, and executive reputations travel with the individual. Every presentation contributes to—or detracts from—the speaker's professional brand. Do now: Mark your script for changes in pace, emphasis, volume and pauses instead of delivering every paragraph in exactly the same manner. How can personality make a presenter more memorable? Personality makes a presentation memorable when it is layered onto solid professional skills rather than used as a substitute for preparation. Some speakers bring clarity, logical slides and strong content, but they also allow their natural idiosyncrasies to appear. Their turns of phrase, facial expressions, observations and reactions make the presentation recognisably theirs. This creates a powerful connection between competence and personal brand. The audience remembers not only the information but also the person who delivered it. That is valuable for executives, consultants, salespeople and thought leaders whose credibility influences whether others adopt their ideas. The key is controlled individuality. A speaker can use a personal story, an unexpected analogy, a strong opinion or a distinctive delivery rhythm. None of these requires abandoning professionalism. In fact, audiences are often more receptive when the presentation feels human rather than manufactured by a corporate committee. Do now: Add one relevant story, observation or phrase that reflects how you naturally think and speak. Do business presenters need to be entertaining? Business presenters do not need to become comedians, but they do need to hold attention and create an engaging audience experience. Humour is one of the most difficult presentation tools to use well. Professional comedians devote their careers to timing, phrasing, audience response and delivery. Businesspeople who casually attempt stand-up comedy can quickly discover how unforgiving silence feels. The safer approach is not to force jokes. Allow your natural personality to create moments of warmth, surprise or amusement. A candid observation, a self-aware comment or a well-chosen story can be entertaining without turning the presentation into a comedy routine. Different speakers will achieve engagement differently. Some are naturally humorous. Others are analytical, passionate, calm, provocative or highly energetic. My own authentic presentation style is not built around comedy. It is built around energy, confidence and power. The objective is not to copy another speaker but to find the strongest professional expression of yourself. Do now: Choose an engagement style that matches your personality rather than borrowing a performance style that does not belong to you. How can presenters balance authenticity, skill and professionalism? The best presenters combine disciplined presentation technique with a delivery style that feels natural, credible and personally distinctive. Start with the fundamentals: understand the audience, organise the message, simplify the slides, rehearse the timing and prepare for questions. Then decide how your personality will appear through your voice, stories, gestures, examples and language. Ask yourself: Does this sound like something I would actually say? Does my energy demonstrate belief in the message? Have I varied my delivery enough to maintain attention? Can the audience see something of my personality? Will people remember both the message and the messenger? Authenticity without skill can look unprepared. Skill without authenticity can feel mechanical. The ideal is professional authenticity: presenting at a high level while allowing the qualities that make you distinctive to shine through. Do now: Rehearse until the structure is secure enough that you can stop "performing the script" and start communicating directly with the audience. Conclusion Making the presentation yours is not about ignoring professional standards. It is about mastering those standards so thoroughly that your personality can emerge without damaging the clarity or credibility of the message. Do not fade into the wallpaper by delivering a technically acceptable but completely forgettable presentation. Bring sufficient energy, vocal variety, conviction and individuality to the stage. Be authentic, but be your skilled professional self. The audience should leave with a clear understanding of your message and a strong impression of the person who delivered it. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the best-sellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His books have also been published in Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

For this episode, we're joined by Prosanta Chakrabarty, Director of Louisiana State University's Museum of Natural Science, where he is also the Fish Curator and a professor. Also joining us is Bruno Soares, Scientist and Adjunct Professor at the University of Regina in Canada. Dr. Soares holds a Collaborator-Professor appointment at the Federal University of Rio De Janeiro, in Brazil. They were here to talk about their recent publication in BioScience on the concept of type localities, and how their use can help make taxonomic research more equitable and efficient. 

"Listen more than you talk." "Try to be as inclusive as possible." "Transparency at all times, especially in bad times." "The founder is the mood maker." "Leadership is all about providing clarity, providing direction, but also letting the individual get to that endpoint themselves."   Sean Travers is the Founder and Representative Director of MESHD, a Tokyo-based executive search firm specialising in deep technology. The company works extensively with Japanese corporations operating in robotics, industrial automation, mobility, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other advanced engineering fields. Born in the United Kingdom and raised in Perth, Western Australia, Travers began his career selling large-scale capital equipment to the mining and resources sector. The work involved multimillion-dollar transactions, extensive travel to remote mining sites and direct negotiations with tough, highly practical decision-makers. This environment shaped his early commercial instincts, resilience and results-oriented leadership style. After marrying his Japanese wife and starting a family, Travers moved to Tokyo more than 20 years ago. With limited Japanese-language ability and few obvious career options for a foreign professional at the time, he entered recruitment. He subsequently built a career in specialist executive search, including establishing the Japan operation of a global energy recruitment company. The 2015 oil and gas downturn became a defining moment. Despite the Japan business performing well, Travers was instructed by overseas headquarters to decide within 24 hours which employees should be terminated. The experience convinced him that even a successful local leader remained vulnerable to decisions made by distant executives. He eventually launched his own company with several long-standing colleagues. Over the following decade, Travers expanded beyond conventional executive search. His businesses have helped establish and incubate specialist recruitment ventures, including firms focused on software, chemicals and hospitality. His leadership journey in Japan has required him to move from a highly directive, perfectionist management style towards a more inclusive approach built on listening, transparency, autonomy, trust and cultural adaptability.   Sean Travers' leadership journey in Japan began far from Tokyo's corporate offices. Raised in Western Australia, he learned to sell multimillion-dollar capital equipment in the mining and resources industry. Success depended on abandoning formal appearances, visiting remote worksites and earning credibility with blunt, experienced equipment operators. It was a demanding commercial education that rewarded toughness, directness and persistence. Those qualities later helped Travers succeed in executive recruitment, but they also created leadership challenges. After moving to Japan more than 20 years ago, he entered the recruitment industry and eventually took responsibility for teams and entire business operations. His initial approach was highly prescriptive. As a perfectionist, he expected employees to follow the methods that had worked for him. Team members with similar personalities often performed well, but many others struggled. Feedback from his manager and trusted friends forced Travers to reconsider his assumptions. Leadership could not be based on expecting everyone to respond to the same instructions, pressure or communication style. He gradually became more attentive to individual differences, emotional reactions and the need to adapt his expectations. This remained compatible with accountability, but it required him to separate high performance standards from unnecessarily militant behaviour. Leading Japanese employees created another layer of complexity. In meetings, employees might nod, indicate understanding and appear to agree, only for Travers to discover later that they did not understand, support or trust the direction. He learned that setting a clear objective was not enough. Leaders must ask questions that confirm understanding, create alternative channels for feedback and consult trusted internal colleagues who can explain how a message was actually received. This awareness also influenced the way he recruited people into his own company. Joining a new boutique recruitment firm involves considerable perceived risk, especially in Japan, where candidates may consult family members and carefully assess a company's stability. Travers found that trust could not be created through a single persuasive interview. Some candidates required regular discussions over 18 to 24 months before they were ready to join. Rather than continually selling the opportunity, he shared honest updates about clients, target industries, business progress and organisational challenges. His commitment to the team was tested during COVID-19. When revenues fell, Travers and his leadership group chose salary deferments rather than headcount reductions. Travers personally went without a salary for approximately two and a half years. The decision reflected both loyalty and commercial logic. Experienced recruiters require considerable time and investment before becoming productive, and rebuilding the team after the recovery would have been expensive and disruptive. Transparency became central to maintaining engagement. However, Travers does not interpret transparency as disclosing every concern to every employee. Leaders must judge which information should be shared across the organisation and which should remain within the leadership team. The purpose is to provide enough truth for employees to understand decisions without creating unnecessary fear or instability. As the company grew, Travers also had to create opportunities for quieter employees to contribute. Weekly all-hands meetings were useful, but the same confident people tended to speak. He therefore began arranging individual lunches and conversations with team members who were less likely to contribute publicly. Anonymous surveys and live digital voting also provided safer channels for candid feedback. The company's culture evolved with its needs. Its early atmosphere was highly sales-driven and dominated by aggressive dealmaking. Travers recognised that a business composed only of competitive "hunters" would struggle to attract the broader mix of people needed for sustainable growth. Team lunches, off-sites, greater financial visibility and discussions about employees' backgrounds and ambitions helped create a more balanced environment. Travers believes the founder's behaviour has a disproportionate impact in a smaller company. The founder becomes the organisation's "mood maker". A leader who arrives visibly discouraged or negative can lower the energy of the entire workplace. Leadership therefore includes the discipline to demonstrate constructive energy even during difficult periods. His advice to new foreign leaders in Japan is grounded in this experience: listen more than they talk, include people without placing them under uncomfortable pressure and remain transparent, particularly when circumstances deteriorate. Japanese-language ability helps, but it does not guarantee success. Character, attitude, discipline and the willingness to understand people matter more. Ultimately, Travers defines leadership as establishing the destination and providing the emotional support, clarity and guardrails that allow others to reach it. Leaders should give employees autonomy, trust them to perform and provide direct feedback when they deviate. The leader sets the endpoint, but the individual must have room to determine the route. Q&A Summary What makes leadership in Japan unique? Leadership in Japan requires close attention to what is not stated directly. Travers discovered that apparent agreement in a meeting may not represent genuine understanding, commitment or trust. Japanese employees may nod, acknowledge an instruction and avoid openly challenging a senior leader, while privately remaining uncertain or unconvinced. This makes confirmation essential. A leader cannot simply deliver a clear message and assume it has landed. Questions must be used to test understanding without creating embarrassment. Trusted internal supporters can also provide valuable insight into how particular employees interpreted the discussion. Indirect feedback is especially important. Travers has used respected colleagues to speak privately with employees and uncover concerns that might never be raised in a formal meeting. This resembles a practical form of nemawashi: gathering reactions, identifying resistance and building alignment through quieter conversations before expecting visible consensus. Trust also takes time. Employees and candidates may evaluate not only the leader but also the organisation's long-term stability. Consistent behaviour, repeated contact, honest business updates and a willingness to acknowledge mistakes are more persuasive than a polished recruitment pitch or inspirational speech. Why do global executives struggle? Global executives often struggle because they transfer a leadership formula that succeeded elsewhere without adapting it to the people or context in Japan. Travers initially relied on the direct, forceful style he had developed in Western Australia. He assumed that employees would succeed by following the same methods that had produced his own results. This approach worked with a minority of employees who shared his temperament, but it was ineffective for many others. The experience demonstrated that leadership success is not automatically transferable. The leader must adjust communication, coaching and expectations according to the individual. Foreign executives may also misinterpret politeness as commitment. A meeting can appear successful because no one objects, yet employees may leave without believing in the decision. Executives who dominate discussions, speak too quickly or fail to invite quieter voices may unknowingly suppress the information they need. Another common mistake is treating Japanese-language proficiency as the primary solution. Language is useful, but a fluent executive who lacks humility, emotional intelligence or cultural awareness can still fail. Attitude and behaviour determine whether language becomes a bridge or merely another tool for issuing instructions. Is Japan truly risk-averse? Travers' experience suggests that caution in Japan is often rational rather than inherently risk-averse. A candidate considering a boutique recruitment company must evaluate whether the organisation will survive the next economic downturn. Recruitment is cyclical and frequently acts as a canary in the coal mine: hiring freezes arrive early when an industry begins to weaken. Employees may also seek advice from parents, grandparents, former colleagues or trusted senpai before changing jobs. From a Western perspective, this can look excessively conservative. From the candidate's perspective, however, employment decisions affect family stability, professional reputation and long-term security. Travers responded by extending the courtship process. Some potential hires remained in conversation with the company for 18 to 24 months. During that period, he did not merely sell the role. He provided evidence about the company's clients, industries, performance, challenges and direction. The COVID-19 response also demonstrated how leadership can reduce uncertainty. Rather than cutting employees immediately, the company introduced salary deferments and preserved the team. This decision created risk for the founder, who received no salary for approximately two and a half years, but it provided greater security for employees and positioned the organisation to recover without rebuilding its workforce. What leadership style actually works? Travers advocates an adaptive style that combines direction, accountability, empathy and autonomy. His early top-down approach was too rigid. Over time, he learned that empathy does not require abandoning standards and accountability does not require brutality. The leader must first clarify the endpoint. Employees need to understand where the organisation is today, where it intends to be in the future and which outcomes define success. The leader then provides guardrails and emotional support while allowing individuals to determine how they will reach the destination. Inclusion is also essential. Leaders should actively invite participation from people who do not naturally dominate meetings. Travers uses individual lunches, direct questions, anonymous surveys and live voting to gather ideas from a wider cross-section of the company. He also believes that leaders should explain the reasoning behind decisions, especially when acknowledging mistakes. Employees may disagree with the conclusion, but understanding the decision-making process increases respect and trust. Admitting an error does not necessarily diminish authority. When combined with ownership and a credible explanation, it can strengthen leadership credibility. How can technology help? Technology can create safer and more democratic channels for employee input. In traditional meetings, seniority, confidence and communication style can determine whose ideas are heard. The same employees may repeatedly raise their hands, while quieter people remain invisible. MESHD has used anonymous post-event surveys and real-time digital voting to overcome this limitation. Employees can express support or opposition without being identified publicly. This allows the organisation to measure sentiment more accurately and reduces the pressure to follow the most senior or outspoken person. Technology does not replace personal leadership. Travers still values one-to-one lunches, informal conversations and feedback gathered through trusted colleagues. Digital tools are most effective when they complement human relationships and provide additional routes for honest communication. The broader lesson is that decision intelligence improves when leaders diversify their information sources. Formal meetings, private conversations, anonymous data and operational results each reveal different aspects of organisational reality. Leaders who rely on only one channel risk making decisions from incomplete information. Does language proficiency matter? Japanese-language ability helps foreign leaders communicate, form relationships and understand more of what is happening around them. Travers speaks Japanese and considers it an advantage. However, he does not believe that language proficiency guarantees leadership success. Character, attitude and discipline matter more. Employees observe how a leader responds under pressure, whether commitments are honoured, whether mistakes are acknowledged and whether the leader listens sincerely. These behaviours build or destroy trust regardless of vocabulary level. A leader who speaks imperfect Japanese but demonstrates respect, curiosity and consistency may be more effective than a fluent speaker who assumes language ability provides complete cultural understanding. Fluency can help a leader access information, but it cannot substitute for humility or good judgement. Foreign executives should therefore study Japanese while also developing deeper listening skills. They need to notice hesitation, indirect disagreement and the absence of expected follow-through. Communication success should be measured by shared understanding and action, not by the leader's ability to complete a conversation in Japanese. What's the ultimate leadership lesson? Travers' central leadership lesson is that the leader provides clarity and direction without controlling every step. The organisation may be at point A today and aiming for point Z in two years. The leader must define Z, explain why it matters and create the conditions in which employees can move towards it. Those conditions include emotional support, trust, autonomy and honest feedback. Employees should know the guardrails and performance measures, but they should also have room to use their judgement. When they make mistakes, the leader must respond directly and constructively rather than taking back all control. Leadership also requires personal accountability. Travers learned to admit when decisions had produced negative consequences and to explain the reasoning that led to them. Employees generally responded with greater understanding than he expected. Finally, leadership is visible. In a smaller organisation, the founder's energy affects everyone. The leader becomes the mood maker, particularly during uncertainty. Listening, inclusion, transparency and constructive energy are therefore not occasional techniques. They are daily responsibilities that shape whether people trust the direction and choose to follow. Author Credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Austin Campbell draws a parallel between the AI data center backlash and the decades-long collapse of US nuclear power, then Sam Lyman of the Bitcoin Policy Institute puts real odds on whether the Clarity Act passes the Senate before August recess. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Sam Lyman - Head of Research at the Bitcoin Policy Institute This clip is from a longer conversation on foreign funded opposition to AI data centers and the odds of the Clarity Act passing. Full episode here: https://youtu.be/-xbSniveaQU  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained  (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters:

Leadership success is usually measured through revenue, market share, promotions, productivity and team performance. Those indicators matter, but they do not tell us whether a leader is succeeding in life. A leader can deliver excellent corporate results while gradually damaging their marriage, weakening their relationship with their children, neglecting their health, mishandling their finances and losing touch with their friends. That is not genuine success. It is professional achievement purchased at an unnecessarily high personal price. This risk is especially relevant in Japan, where long working hours, loyalty to the organisation and the demands placed on player-managers can make work the dominant force in a leader's life. The Wheel of Life provides a useful way to examine whether leaders are achieving balanced and sustainable success. Why do Japanese leaders struggle with work-life balance? Many Japanese leaders still operate within a deeply established culture that rewards commitment, endurance and long working hours. Even when official working practices change, the expectation of total dedication can remain. Japan's post-war economic recovery was driven partly by extraordinary levels of personal sacrifice. During the rapid-growth era, many fathers spent most of their waking hours working, commuting or socialising with colleagues. Mothers frequently carried most of the responsibility for raising children and managing the household. Conditions have changed. Most schools and companies no longer operate every Saturday, dual-income households are increasingly common and younger employees often expect more control over their personal lives. However, the old attitudes have not completely disappeared. Middle-management positions have been reduced in many organisations, technology has transferred administrative work back to managers and leaders are often expected to manage teams while delivering their own individual results. These player-managers may supervise people, handle clients, prepare reports and complete routine administration themselves. Do now: Examine whether your working hours reflect genuine strategic necessity or simply an inherited organisational habit. What is the Wheel of Life for leaders? The Wheel of Life is a self-assessment tool that helps leaders evaluate several important areas of life rather than judging success through career achievement alone. The tool is normally presented as a circle divided into categories. The centre represents a score of zero and the outer edge represents ten. Leaders score their level of satisfaction in areas such as career, finances, family, health, friendships, community, personal interests and spirituality or personal meaning. When the points are connected, the resulting shape shows whether life is relatively balanced or heavily distorted. A leader may score nine in career but only three in health, two in family relationships and one in social life. That person may look successful in the office while experiencing a personal life that is increasingly difficult to sustain. The objective is not to achieve a perfect ten in every category. That is unrealistic. The purpose is to identify serious imbalances before they become crises. Do now: Score each area honestly from zero to ten and identify the two categories that require your immediate attention. Can career success damage a leader's family life? Yes. When work consistently receives the leader's best time, energy and attention, the family may be left with whatever is remaining. Over time, this can create distance, resentment and damaged relationships. Many leaders say they are working hard for their families. The intention may be genuine, but the outcome does not always match the explanation. A leader may provide financial security while rarely being emotionally or physically available. For male leaders in Japan, the traditional model of the absent salaryman father can still influence behaviour. He leaves early, returns late and assumes that providing income is his main family responsibility. However, spouses and children may need time, conversation, support and shared experiences more than another late-night meeting or client dinner. As more women develop independent careers and incomes, they may also be less willing to tolerate relationships in which responsibility and emotional connection are consistently one-sided. Working for the family while gradually losing the family does not make sense. Do now: Schedule protected family time with the same seriousness you apply to an executive meeting or major client appointment. Why should leaders take more responsibility for their finances? High income does not automatically create long-term financial security. Leaders still need to manage savings, investment, retirement planning, insurance and household risk. Many people in Japan have traditionally held a large proportion of their wealth in bank deposits. During long periods of deflation and low inflation, holding cash appeared relatively safe. In a more inflationary environment, however, cash can gradually lose purchasing power. Busy leaders often delay financial planning because it does not feel urgent. Retirement seems distant, investment appears complicated and the company pension may seem sufficient. The problem is that financial preparation benefits enormously from time. Delaying ten or twenty years can make the eventual task considerably harder. Japan's ageing population also places continuing pressure on public pension and social security systems. Leaders should not assume that future government benefits alone will provide the lifestyle they expect. This does not mean making reckless investments. It means becoming financially literate, seeking qualified advice where appropriate and preparing rather than hoping. Do now: Review your savings, investments, retirement plan, insurance and household obligations at least once each year. Why do busy leaders lose their friends? Friendships weaken when leaders repeatedly sacrifice social relationships to work. Connection requires time, effort and genuine interest, not occasional promises to catch up later. Social life is often one of the first casualties of overtime. Leaders postpone dinners, cancel weekend plans and stop calling people because the next deadline always seems more important. Remote and hybrid work have also blurred the boundary between professional and personal life. Without a physical commute to mark the end of the day, some leaders continue responding to emails, checking reports and attending online meetings well into the evening. Corporate entertaining should not be confused with friendship. Taking reluctant junior staff out for drinks or attending obligatory client functions may fill the calendar, but it does not necessarily create meaningful social support. Strong relationships are a form of wealth. Friends provide perspective, humour, honesty and support that cannot be replaced by job titles or business contacts. Do now: Contact one person you value but have neglected and arrange a specific time to meet rather than saying, "We should catch up sometime." Why do leaders need interests outside work? Hobbies and personal interests protect leaders from allowing their job to become their entire identity. They provide creativity, renewal and a sense of progress that is independent of corporate performance. Some leaders view personal interests as indulgent or unproductive. They believe every available hour should be used to advance the business. That approach may produce short-term output, but it can also make life increasingly narrow. Personal pursuits can include music, writing, painting, gardening, travel, sport, reading, cooking or learning a language. The activity does not need to generate income, improve a résumé or create a new business opportunity. For me, writing and recording articles on Saturdays can look like another form of work. In practice, writing also serves as a creative outlet. I cannot play a musical instrument, paint or draw particularly well, so writing gives me a way to create something and explore ideas beyond operational business tasks. Leaders need something they enjoy simply because it makes life richer. Do now: Protect regular time for one activity that has no connection to your targets, clients or corporate status. Why is health a leadership responsibility? Health is not separate from leadership performance. Energy, concentration, emotional control and decision-making all become harder when leaders neglect exercise, sleep, nutrition and medical care. Leaders often say they are too busy to exercise, but many of the same people can find time for long client dinners, alcohol and late-night work. The issue is usually not a complete absence of time. It is the priority assigned to health. Weight gain can happen gradually through business meals, entertaining and inactivity. I experienced this myself while working in Nagoya. After attending a work-related geisha party, someone gave me a commemorative photograph. The side-profile image revealed how much weight I had gained. It was an uncomfortable but useful moment of recognition. Losing weight and improving fitness require sustained lifestyle changes, not a few weeks of enthusiasm with a personal trainer. Leaders need systems they can maintain, including realistic exercise routines, better food choices and limits around alcohol. Do now: Choose one measurable health behaviour to improve for the next ninety days and track it consistently. Why should leaders contribute to their communities? Community involvement helps leaders develop perspective, strengthen relationships and contribute beyond the boundaries of their company. It also prevents professional status from becoming their only source of identity. Japan has a strong tradition of community responsibility shaped by cooperation, shared spaces and collective expectations. This could be seen during the pandemic, when many people voluntarily changed their behaviour to reduce risk to others. However, senior leaders can become disconnected from the communities around them. Work absorbs their attention and they spend most of their time with colleagues, clients and people from similar professional backgrounds. Communities need people who can organise, mentor, listen and solve problems. Leaders have useful experience that can support schools, local groups, professional associations, charities and younger generations. Community activity also benefits the leader. It exposes them to different experiences and reminds them that the world is larger than the company's latest spreadsheet, quarterly target or restructuring plan. Do now: Select one community, educational or professional group where your experience could make a practical contribution. What role does reflection or spirituality play in leadership? Leaders need time to consider who they are, what they value and what they intend to do with their lives. Without reflection, they may become highly efficient at pursuing goals they have never consciously chosen. Spirituality is deeply personal and does not need to refer to a particular religion. It can involve faith, philosophy, meditation, service, nature or simply quiet reflection. The underlying questions are universal. Why am I here? What kind of person am I becoming? What will matter when my career is over? What impact am I having on other people? Busy leaders often avoid these questions because financial reports, customer issues and operational problems feel more immediate. Yet a life filled only with targets, meetings and performance reviews can eventually feel empty, regardless of professional success. Reflection helps leaders reconnect daily actions with personal values. It can also expose uncomfortable contradictions between what they say matters and where they actually spend their time. Do now: Create a regular period without screens, meetings or work and use it to reflect on how you are investing your life. Conclusion Leaders have many roles. They are executives, managers, parents, spouses, friends, community members and individuals with physical, emotional and financial needs. Work is one important part of life, but it is not the whole of life. The Wheel of Life is useful because it reveals where professional ambition has created unhealthy imbalance. A leader who produces revenue while losing their family, health, friendships and financial security should not automatically be considered successful. Sustainable leadership means producing strong organisational outcomes without destroying the other areas that give life meaning. As a friend of mine says, "Time is life." The real question for every leader is simple: what are you doing with yours? Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three bestsellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.

Conversation #360:  The Story, Journey and Passion of Shannon Herbert, PhD, RD, CDNToday's conversation is with Shannon Herbert,  a registered dietitian and yoga instructor with Laura Cipullo Whole Nutrition + Yoga, as well an Adjunct Professor at New York University Steinhardt School. Her work focuses on eating disorders and hormonal health, blending nutrition science with mind-body approaches. She's the co-host of the Eat Kale & Cupcakes podcast, she is a life long learner and such a lovely guest on the podcast today. Please enjoy my conversation with Shannon. Connect with Shannon:Instagram: @shannonherbertrdWebsite: https://lauracipullo.com/registered-dietitians/shannon-herbert/Podcast: Eat Kale and Cupcakeswww.anneelizabethrd.comCopyright © 2026 AEHC & OPISong: One Of These DaysArtist: The Geminiwww.thegeminimusic.comMusic used by permission. All rights received.© ASCAP OrtmanMusic

People form an initial impression of you remarkably quickly. Whether the precise time is three seconds, seven seconds or slightly longer, the practical lesson for salespeople, executives and client-facing professionals is the same: your first impression begins before you start explaining your credentials, company or solution. In Japan, where professionalism, preparation and attention to detail carry considerable weight, leaving that impression to chance is risky. Your appearance, facial expression, eye contact, voice and opening question all influence whether a buyer initially sees you as credible, trustworthy and worth listening to. Here is how to intentionally engineer a strong first impression when meeting a client. How quickly do clients form a first impression? Clients begin evaluating you almost immediately, often before either person has spoken. Your appearance, posture, facial expression and general composure provide the first available evidence about your professionalism. The exact number of seconds will vary according to the person, situation and research method. However, buyers do make rapid judgements when meeting a salesperson, consultant or executive for the first time. They are subconsciously asking: Does this person look prepared? Are they confident? Can I trust them? Will meeting them be a good use of my time? This matters in both Japanese and international business. A buyer in Tokyo may pay particular attention to formality, punctuality and courtesy, while a buyer in Sydney or New York may respond more strongly to energy and directness. In every market, inconsistency creates doubt. If you claim to offer precision but appear disorganised, the buyer notices the contradiction. Do now: Decide what three qualities you want the client to recognise immediately, and make sure your appearance and behaviour communicate them before the meeting begins. How should a salesperson dress for a first client meeting? Dress so that nothing about your appearance distracts the buyer from your message. Cleanliness, fit, coordination and attention to detail are more important than wearing expensive clothing. Scuffed shoes, food stains, poorly fitting clothes, untidy hair or a worn belt may seem like minor matters. Unfortunately, buyers can interpret these signals as evidence of carelessness. It is difficult to promote a high-quality solution while looking as though quality control does not apply to you. For men wearing business attire, the belt should normally coordinate with the shoes, the tie knot should sit neatly against the collar and the jacket and trousers should fit properly. Women and men should both consider whether their clothing is suitable for the client, industry and level of formality. A technology startup may accept a more relaxed style than a Japanese bank, insurance company or government organisation. The goal is not flamboyance. The goal is visual credibility. Do now: Before leaving for the meeting, check your shoes, clothing, hair, accessories, bag and business materials from the buyer's point of view. Should you smile and bow when meeting a Japanese client? Yes. A natural smile followed by an appropriate bow communicates confidence, warmth and respect before the business conversation begins. Some salespeople become so focused on being formal that their expression becomes severe. Others rush through the greeting because they are nervous or worried about what to say next. A calm smile helps remove tension and tells the client that you are pleased to meet them. In Japan, the bow remains an important part of professional etiquette. The depth and duration will depend on the situation, but a controlled, respectful bow is generally more effective than an exaggerated performance. When exchanging business cards, handle the card carefully, look at it and avoid immediately stuffing it into a pocket. International professionals should adapt without becoming artificial. Japanese buyers do not expect every visitor to behave exactly like a Japanese executive, but they do notice sincere preparation and respect for local business customs. Do now: Practise a simple sequence: make eye contact, smile naturally, greet the person clearly and bow without rushing. How much eye contact is appropriate in Japanese business? Make clear initial eye contact to establish confidence, but avoid staring continuously. In Japan, balanced eye contact is usually more comfortable and culturally appropriate than an unbroken gaze. Eye contact tells the buyer that you are present, composed and interested. At the beginning of the meeting, several seconds of direct eye contact can help establish a connection. After that, allow your gaze to move naturally rather than trying to maintain constant visual contact. Cultural expectations differ. Western sales training often emphasises strong eye contact, while Japanese communication may involve more intermittent eye contact, particularly when showing respect to someone senior. Personality also matters. An assertive buyer may be comfortable with more direct engagement, whereas a quieter or more reflective client may find prolonged eye contact intrusive. The objective is not to follow a mechanical formula. It is to observe the buyer's reaction and adjust. Confident communication should make the other person comfortable, not force them to conform to your preferred style. Do now: Establish eye contact at the greeting, then use relaxed and periodic eye contact throughout the conversation. What should your voice sound like during the first meeting? Your opening voice should sound friendly, clear and confident rather than stiff, rushed or overly rehearsed. The buyer is listening to how you speak as well as what you say. Many salespeople accidentally adopt a cold "business voice". They become formal, lower their energy and sound as though they are reading a corporate announcement. Others mumble, speak too softly, talk too loudly or use a lifeless tone because they are nervous. A professional voice has warmth, clarity and variation. Speak slowly enough to be understood, especially when working across languages or communicating with non-native speakers. Use the buyer's name naturally near the beginning of the conversation. People generally respond positively to hearing their name, but repeating it in every sentence quickly sounds manipulative. Your visual, vocal and verbal messages should support one another. Confidence does not mean volume, and professionalism does not require emotional flatness. Do now: Record your opening greeting and listen for pace, volume, clarity, warmth and whether you sound genuinely pleased to meet the client. What is the best opening question for a sales meeting? The best opening question gets the buyer talking about their business, priorities or recent changes. Your first objective is to understand the client, not to deliver a long explanation about yourself. Instead of beginning with an extended company history, offer a brief, relevant observation and ask an intelligent question. For example: "I noticed your company has been expanding its regional operations. How has that affected the priorities of your team in Japan?" When something has changed in the client's office, organisation or market, do not merely point out the obvious. Ask about the impact. Has the change affected employees, customers, productivity, costs or growth plans? An effective initial sales conversation should normally give the buyer more speaking time than the salesperson. An 80–20 balance will not suit every meeting, but it is a useful reminder to stop talking and start listening. The buyer has the information you need to diagnose the problem and determine whether your solution is relevant. Do now: Prepare three open questions about the client's business, market and current priorities before entering the meeting. How can salespeople read the buyer's communication style? Listen to both the buyer's answers and the way they deliver them. Their pace, level of detail and degree of assertiveness reveal how you should communicate with them. Some buyers want the big picture first. They are interested in outcomes, strategic impact and the future. Others want facts, evidence, implementation details and risk controls before considering a recommendation. Some speak quickly and make decisions decisively, while others pause, reflect and avoid being pressured. A salesperson who ignores these differences may create unnecessary resistance. Giving twenty slides of operational detail to a big-picture executive can lose their attention. Presenting only broad promises to a highly analytical procurement or finance leader can damage credibility. Use the first part of the meeting to observe. Ask questions, listen without interrupting and notice which topics generate interest. Then adapt your language, evidence and pace while remaining authentic. Do now: Identify whether the buyer is primarily big-picture or detail-oriented, and whether they communicate assertively or quietly. Adjust your approach accordingly. Conclusion A strong first impression is not created by one clever phrase. It is the combined effect of your preparation, clothing, expression, eye contact, voice, questions and listening ability. Do not simply walk into a client meeting and hope that everything works out. Decide in advance how you want to be perceived and align every visible and audible signal with that objective. The first few seconds may not determine the entire business relationship, but they can determine how hard you will have to work to earn the buyer's confidence afterward. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" in 2018 and 2021 and received the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award in 2012. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver leadership, communication, sales and presentation programmes globally, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including the bestsellers Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery, as well as Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His Japanese-language books include Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and X and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews for executives and professionals seeking practical strategies for succeeding in Japan.  

Andy Roszak, JD, MPA, EMT-Paramedic, is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Institute for Childhood Preparedness (ICP), where he equips early childhood professionals and child-centered organizations nationwide with practical emergency preparedness training, tools, and resilience strategies. He is also the Founder of Head Start East, a nonprofit organization founded in 2025 to provide high-quality professional development, technical assistance, and events for the early childhood education field. Since 2018, Andy has supported the Region II Head Start Association in advancing preparedness, health, safety, and environmental health initiatives across New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. That work will conclude this year after a strong and impactful run. A trusted advisor to leading organizations including Sesame Street in Communities and the U.S. Marine Corps, Andy has delivered training to early childhood professionals in all 50 states and 35 Native American Tribal Nations. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor in the School of Community and Environmental Health at Old Dominion University. Andy is the author of the award-winning Preparing for the Unexpected book series, developed specifically for early childhood professionals: Preschool Preparedness for an Active Shooter, winner of the 2020 Independent Author Network Book of the Year Award in two categories; Preschool Preparedness for an Emergency; and Recovering and Reopening after a Disaster. With more than twenty years of experience in emergency preparedness across local, regional, state, federal, and nonprofit levels, Andy's previous roles include Senior Director of Emergency Preparedness at Child Care Aware of America, Senior Preparedness Advisor for Super Bowl XLVI, Senior Public Health Advisor at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Senior Director of Environmental Health, Pandemic Preparedness, and Catastrophic Response at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), where he worked closely with the CDC and 3,100 local health departments to strengthen community preparedness for pandemics, disasters, and public health emergencies. Andy began his career in the Chicago area as a firefighter, paramedic, and certified hazardous materials technician. He holds a Juris Doctor and Master of Public Administration from Southern Illinois University, a bachelor's degree in Fire Science Management, and is a graduate of Harvard University's Early Education Leadership Program. He is admitted to practice law in Illinois, the District of Columbia, and before the U.S. Supreme Court. Andy is the proud father of two young daughters and lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his family.

Foreign executives often ask whether they should copy the Japanese presentation style when selling to Japanese companies. The short answer is no. Do not become a weak imitation of a Japanese presenter. Instead, deliver a professional, global-standard presentation and support it with a mountain of detailed data. Japanese buyers often want far more information than Western sellers expect. A clean pitch deck may look polished in New York, London, Sydney or Singapore, but in Tokyo it can feel underfed. The solution is not to clutter the main slides. The solution is to separate the performance deck from the due-diligence data pack. Should foreigners copy Japanese presentation style in Japan? Foreign presenters should not copy the weaker habits of Japanese business presentations; they should stay professional, clear and energetic while adapting to Japanese information needs. Copying monotone delivery, dense slides and screen-reading will not make the presentation more persuasive. The old "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" idea sounds logical, but it breaks down here. Japanese business audiences may be used to data-heavy decks, yet that does not mean they love poor delivery. A speaker who maintains eye contact, uses voice variety, gestures well and keeps slides visually clear will stand out. In Japan, being respectful does not require becoming boring. Do now: Keep your delivery global-standard, but adapt your preparation to Japanese buyers' appetite for detail. Why are many Japanese business slides so dense? Japanese business slides are often dense because buyers and internal stakeholders want extensive detail for review, comparison and risk reduction. The deck becomes both a presentation tool and a due-diligence document. Western pitch decks often prize simplicity: one idea per slide, strong visuals and minimal text. In Japan, however, slides may contain multiple fonts, colours, graphs, spreadsheets and large blocks of text. To Western eyes, this can look like Baroque chaos rather than Zen simplicity. The deeper issue is not design taste alone. Japanese companies often need detailed materials to circulate internally through layers of managers, technical specialists, finance teams and decision influencers. Do now: Do not mistake dense slides for best practice. Understand the information hunger behind them and satisfy it separately. Why do Japanese buyers want so much data? Japanese buyers want extensive data because business culture in Japan is highly risk-aware and decision-making depends on careful internal consensus. They are not just listening for interest; they are searching for problems. In Japan, the people attending the presentation may not be the final decision-makers. They may be responsible for gathering evidence, identifying risk and preparing internal recommendations. This is why a slim proposal can leave the buyer feeling hungry. They want specifications, implementation details, costs, risks, case studies, timelines, compliance points and proof. In B2B sales, IT solutions, professional services, manufacturing and training, this data-devouring behaviour is normal. Do now: Prepare for forensic due diligence. Give buyers enough evidence to defend the decision internally. What should the main presentation deck look like? The main deck should follow global best practice: clear, simple slides that can be understood in about two seconds.If the audience has to decode the slide, the speaker has already lost momentum. The presentation deck is for persuasion, not data storage. Use clean headlines, strong visuals, limited text and a logical flow. Then deliver with eye contact, vocal variety, gestures and confidence. This approach works in Tokyo, Osaka, Singapore, London and New York because audiences everywhere appreciate clarity. The difference in Japan is that the simple deck alone will rarely be enough. It must be paired with deep supporting material. Do now: Build one concise presentation deck for the room and one detailed data pack for the decision process. What supporting materials should sellers bring to Japanese clients? Sellers should bring a comprehensive supporting compendium packed with the detailed information Japanese clients need after the meeting. Think of it as the evidence vault behind the pitch. This compendium can include case studies, technical specifications, pricing assumptions, project timelines, risk controls, client references, implementation steps, FAQs, comparison tables and relevant compliance information. After the presentation, someone on the Japanese side may be assigned to comb through every page looking for concerns. That is not hostility. That is risk management. The better prepared you are, the easier you make their internal approval process. Do now: Bring the thick supporting pack. No one in a Japanese buying team will complain that you gave them too much useful detail. How can foreign companies win trust in Japanese presentations? Foreign companies win trust by combining professional delivery with deep preparation, cultural sensitivity and abundant evidence. Be yourself, but be smart, organised and fully loaded with data. Japanese buyers do not need you to pretend to be Japanese. They need you to understand the conversation happening inside their organisation: "Is this safe? Can we justify it? What could go wrong? Do we have enough proof?" When you answer those questions before they are asked, you reduce anxiety and build trust. The best approach is global presentation quality plus Japan-specific due-diligence support. Do now: Present simply, speak professionally and come packing heavy with data, lots and lots of data. Final Summary Foreign presenters should not copy poor Japanese presentation habits when doing business in Japan. Do not read dense slides, speak in a monotone or bury the audience under spreadsheets during the live presentation. That reduces your impact and wastes the chance to persuade. Instead, use two tools. First, deliver a clean, professional, global-standard presentation that highlights the key message. Second, provide a detailed supporting compendium that satisfies the Japanese buyer's need for data, proof and risk reduction. In Japan, the winning formula is clarity in the room and depth after the room. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.

My friend Alisha Anderson (graduate degrees in Environmental Humanities and Masters of Fine Arts, Artist, Writer, Adjunct Professor, mid-30s), joins us to share her queer story center around four main themes: Love is easy when it's based on sameness. The true test of love is difference. Time is one of God's greatest tools. I've come to believe in a God who does not wish to sacrifice me, but grow me. We need each other—in both our suffering and our joy. As part of these themes, Alisha shares unique and powerful insights are deeply moving—and even after 900+ episodes are unique. Insights that I believe will help other queer Latter-day Saints find hope as they bravely move forward—and insights that help allies/parents better support/love our queer friends. Thank you, Alisha, for being on the podcast. I learned so much from you! You are so emotional/spiritual/intellectually mature and thoughtful. You are a gift to our community. Honored to have you on the podcast! Links: Instagram: @_a_anderson Website: alishaanderson.org

Beijing has unveiled a sweeping new package of measures to strengthen Hong Kong's role as the world's leading offshore renminbi hub and an international financial center. But why now? From expanding Bond Connect and offshore RMB liquidity to developing gold trading and new risk-management tools, are these measures simply deepening Hong Kong's financial markets or redefining its role in the global financial system? Host TU Yun joins Dr. Sean Chang, Academic Assessor, HKU SPACE, the University of Hong Kong, Dr. Zhou Mi, a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, and Dr. Warwick Powell, Adjunct Professor, Queensland University of Technology to unpack what's new, why it matters, and whether Hong Kong is on track to become a global pricing center for RMB-denominated assets.

"I'm here to be part of the team." "The longer you are somewhere, the more you realise you know nothing." "If your intention is positive, people will support you." "We want to be an international company in Japan." "It really starts by asking what is my impact? What can I do?" Jasper Westerink is the CEO of Philips Japan and a Dutch executive whose career has been shaped by international leadership, adaptability, and a deep commitment to learning from local cultures. After completing university in the Netherlands, where he studied marketing, management, and business, he joined Philips with the initial idea of building a career in the Netherlands. Instead, an early opportunity to work in Thailand opened the door to a global career that would take him and his family across Thailand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Greece, Indonesia, South Africa again, and ultimately Japan. Over many years with Philips, Westerink built a broad leadership perspective across emerging markets, developed markets, complex organisations, and highly diverse cultural environments. His Japan assignment brought together his global Philips experience, his interest in Japanese culture, and the company's need to connect Japan more closely with global Philips capabilities. In Japan, he has focused on trust-building, engagement, accountability, recognition, and helping Japanese teams share their world-class ideas more confidently with the global organisation. Jasper Westerink's leadership story in Japan begins with a global career that gave him both confidence and humility. As CEO of Philips Japan, he arrived not as someone assuming he already understood the market, but as a guest who needed to listen, observe, and learn. Having worked across Thailand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Greece, Indonesia, and other markets, he brought a rare breadth of experience to Japan. Yet his most important leadership insight is that the more time one spends in a country, the more one realises how much remains beneath the surface. Japan struck Westerink as extraordinarily organised, harmonious, and safe. He noticed this first in daily life, from the punctuality of trains to the quiet consideration shown by people in public spaces. These visible behaviours pointed to deeper cultural systems. In business, he observed a strong preference for harmony, pre-alignment, and consensus. Unlike more confrontational management cultures, where executives may debate passionately in the room and make decisions on the spot, Japan often relies on nemawashi, informal pre-discussion, careful preparation, and the quiet work that happens before the formal meeting. By the time a decision reaches the table, much of the ringi-sho-style alignment has already occurred. For a foreign CEO, this can feel slow or even passive at first. Westerink admits that he likes visible passion and energetic debate, but he came to understand that Japanese passion often sits below the surface. It may not appear in a formal meeting, yet it emerges in trusted settings, peer groups, customer discussions, informal conversations, and carefully structured opportunities to contribute. One of his strongest methods for drawing out ideas is friendly peer competition. Philips Japan encourages doctors, physicians, and internal teams to share ideas around quality, AI, better patient outcomes, reduced workload, and operational improvement. Rather than making innovation a top-down CEO initiative, Westerink has found that peer recognition, team-based contribution, and "Made in Japan" pride help unlock ideas. Japanese employees may be modest, but many of their solutions are globally competitive. His job is to create safe structures that make it easier for them to speak up. Trust-building has been central. Westerink made it clear from the beginning that he was not above the team, but part of it. He visited teams at different levels, spent time with people outside the office, joined informal social and sports activities, asked questions, listened carefully, and showed genuine curiosity about how work was done. He also recognised his own physical presence and high-energy style. As a very tall foreign CEO with a serious face when concentrating, he learned to smile more, keep appropriate distance, use humour, and turn his height into an icebreaker rather than a barrier. His leadership philosophy also centres on accountability. Using the Japanese concept of jiseki, or starting with oneself, he encourages people to ask, "What can I do? What did I do wrong? What can I improve?" In a culture where fear of failure and loss of face can be strong, he tries to create an environment where mistakes are not hidden but owned, discussed, and learned from. Ultimately, Westerink's Japan leadership lesson is not about importing a foreign management model. It is about combining Philips' global culture with Japanese strengths and his own leadership character. He wants Philips Japan to remain deeply Japanese while also becoming more confident internationally. That balance — respect for local culture, openness to global standards, and the courage to ask better questions — defines his approach. Q&A Summary What makes leadership in Japan unique? Leadership in Japan is unique because much of the real work happens before the meeting. Westerink observes that Japanese business culture places a high value on harmony, preparation, respect, and careful pre-alignment. In many Western or international contexts, management meetings can be lively, direct, and even confrontational. People interrupt, challenge, debate, show visible passion, and make decisions in the room. In Japan, the formal meeting is often the final stage of a longer process. Nemawashi, consensus-building, and quiet coordination help protect relationships and reduce open conflict. This does not mean people lack passion. It means passion is expressed differently, often in smaller groups, trusted settings, or after the formal meeting has ended. Why do global executives struggle? Global executives often struggle because they misread the absence of visible debate as a lack of engagement. Westerink initially missed the open passion he had seen in other markets. He had to learn that Japanese colleagues may be deeply committed but less likely to challenge publicly until trust has been built. Foreign executives can also underestimate the importance of timing, silence, hierarchy, and indirect communication. They may become impatient when progress appears slow, not realising that a great deal is happening behind the scenes. Japan requires leaders to develop patience, curiosity, and the ability to read context rather than relying only on explicit statements. Is Japan truly risk-averse? Japan is often described as risk-averse, but Westerink's experience suggests a more nuanced picture. The issue is not that Japanese people lack ideas or ambition. Rather, there is strong uncertainty avoidance around failure, loss of face, and public mistakes. People want to deliver perfect work, and that can slow action when speed and learning are required. Westerink addresses this by making failure discussable. He calls out mistakes, but not to punish people. Instead, he asks what can be learned, what will be done differently, and whether others can benefit from the lesson. This reframes risk from personal embarrassment into collective improvement. What leadership style actually works? The leadership style that works in Japan is humble, consistent, curious, and relationship-based. Westerink emphasises that he is a guest in Japan and part of the team. He asks many questions, visits people where the work happens, joins informal activities, and spends time with employees outside formal meetings. He also leads by example. If budgets are tight, he stays in the same type of hotel as others. If the company expects people to be accountable, he models accountability himself. He also adapts recognition to the culture. Instead of always singling out one heroic individual, he recognises the importance of team contribution, because public individual praise can sometimes create discomfort in Japan. How can technology help? Technology helps when it is connected to real clinical, operational, and customer value. Philips Japan works in health technology, including advanced medical equipment such as MRI systems. Westerink describes initiatives where doctors and physicians submit research on how to improve procedures, increase accuracy, reduce workload, and create better outcomes. Internally, Philips Japan also invites teams to explore AI, quality improvement, billing processes, service efficiency, and better patient outcomes. This reflects a form of decision intelligence: using data, expertise, frontline insight, and structured evaluation to improve decisions. In health care, technologies such as AI, digital twins, and advanced imaging can only create value when leaders understand the clinical reality, the customer's challenge, and the human workflow around the technology. Does language proficiency matter? Language matters, but Westerink's experience shows that leadership in Japan is not only about speaking Japanese. He uses translators when needed, allows questions in Japanese, and encourages teams to prepare and present in English when appropriate for an international company. The key is not linguistic perfection, but communication design.  Leaders must create channels where people can speak safely, ask questions, and contribute. Westerink sometimes asks for critical questions and waits until the team provides them. At first, this was uncomfortable. Over time, people learned that constructive challenge was expected and welcome. What's the ultimate leadership lesson?The ultimate lesson is that positive intent, humility, and connection matter most. Westerink advises new leaders in Japan to find trusted people who will tell them when things are going well and when their behaviour may not be landing as intended. They should be transparent about why they are in Japan, what they hope to contribute, and what they hope to learn. They should connect with people through work, food, informal time, customer visits, and genuine curiosity. His advice is simple but profound: the longer leaders are in a place, the more they realise they know nothing. That mindset keeps them learning. Author Credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results.He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

For years, Michael Saylor's Strategy was the market's most dependable Bitcoin buyer. Recently, it has done the opposite. Strategy just sold 3,588 Bitcoin for roughly $216 million, its largest single tranche yet, deepening the question of whether Michael Saylor has become a structural seller instead of a buyer. Ram Ahluwalia, Austin Campbell, and Chris Perkins break down the STRC dividend mechanics behind the sale, the bull case for a catch-up trade, and the bear case if Bitcoin never rallies back. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto This clip is from a longer conversation on Strategy's Bitcoin sale, the stablecoin wars, and the token versus equity debate. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/H3z68SYty0k  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET. Subscribe to catch it live. Sponsor:

Dr. Janelle K. St. Louis is a pharmacist, educator, ministry leader, community advocate, and candidate for Chesapeake City Council who is passionate about serving God by serving people. She currently serves as a Clinical Pharmacist serving our active duty, veterans, and their families. She is also an Adjunct Professor, helping to educate and mentor the next generation of healthcare professionals.Beyond her professional career, Dr. St. Louis has dedicated her life to community service and faith-based leadership. She serves as Director of the Health and Wellness Ministry at The Mount Chesapeake, where she helps advance the church's mission to Care, Connect, and Cover God's people through health education, outreach, and advocacy. Under her leadership, the ministry has expanded its impact through community health fairs, wellness initiatives, health screenings, and partnerships that address health disparities throughout Hampton Roads.In 2026, Dr. St. Louis answered the call to public service by running for Chesapeake City Council. Her campaign is rooted in the belief that leadership is stewardship and that elected officials should put people before politics. Guided by her experience as a healthcare professional, educator, and woman of faith, she is committed to improving public health, supporting small businesses, strengthening neighborhoods, addressing flooding and environmental challenges, and ensuring every resident has a voice in local government.Above all, Dr. St. Louis is a woman of faith who believes her purpose is found in serving others and glorifying God through her work. Her life verse, Philippians 4:13, reminds her daily that “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Whether caring for patients, mentoring young leaders, serving her church, or advocating for her community, Dr. St. Louis strives to live out the words of Matthew 5:16: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see yourgood works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”Her mission is simple: to use her gifts, knowledge, and faith to make a lasting difference in the lives of others and to leave every community she serves better than she found it.

Amy Oraefo is an entertainment lawyer, founder, and influential speaker. She is dedicated to education and empowerment of entrepreneurs and creatives. As the Principal Attorney and Founder of Amy Oraefo, P.C., a boutique law firm, Amy serves as legal counsel for high performing musicians, music producers, podcasters, media and tech companies, content creators, entrepreneurs, and cultural innovators such as Earn Your Leisure, Invest Fest, Kel-P Vibes, Kevin Ross, and Renee Montgomery. She has negotiated and closed over $80 million dollars in client deals in connection with brands such as iHeart Media, Kobalt Music, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Revolt, Empire, United Masters, Meta, SpringHill Entertainment, Viacom, Square, Puma, L'Oreal, and NFLPA to name a few. Amy is dedicated to advocating for her clients both nationally and internationally and she has a passion to assist in the growth and protection of their respective brands. In addition to devoting time to skillfully manage her law firm and serve as an Adjunct Professor, Amy is a member of the Recording Academy and she has served as a member of the Reggae and Global Membership Committee of the Recording Academy, and she also previously served on the Board of Governors for the organization. As the previous co-founder and CEO of a music publishing company, Amy has served as legal counsel and an advocate for music artists, songwriters, music producers, podcasters, and content creators in the United States and Nigeria for over thirteen (13) years. As a result of her commitment and passion to educate creatives and entrepreneurs, Amy has launched Creative Passport, www.creativepassport.co, a platform to empower emerging musicians, music producers, podcasters, and content creators globally and she is also a global consultant, lawyer, and advisor for artists within the United States, Nigeria, and in various countries throughout the continent of Africa. Amy has gifted our listeners to this freebie: Free Own It & Scale It Starter Guide A concise, actionable framework covering IP ownership, distribution strategy, and the first steps toward building a scale-ready business — built specifically for educators and knowledge professionals. Your community can grab it here: https://www.ownitandscaleit.com Free Access to the Own It & Scale It Masterclass — July 15 Creative Passport is hosting a free live virtual masterclass on Wednesday, July 15 from 12–2 PM ET. It's a working session designed to help educators identify their ownable IP and map a real path to monetizing their expertise. We'd love for your community to join as our guests. Registration link: https://www.ownandscalemasterclass.com. ______________________________________________________________________ The Edupreneur: Your Blueprint To Jumpstart And Scale Your Education BusinessYou've spent years in the classroom, leading PD, designing curriculum, and transforming how students learn. Now, it's time to leverage that experience and build something for yourself. The Edupreneur isn't just another book; it's the playbook for educators who want to take their knowledge beyond the school walls and into a thriving business.I wrote this book because I've been where you are. I know what it's like to have the skills, the passion, and the drive but not know where to start. I break it all down: the mindset shifts, the business models, the pricing strategies, and the branding moves that will help you position yourself as a leader in this space.Inside, you'll learn how to:✅ Turn your expertise into income streams, without feeling like a sellout✅ Build a personal brand that commands respect (and top dollar)✅ Market your work in a way that feels natural and impactful✅ Navigate the business side of edupreneurship, from pricing to partnershipsWhether you want to consult, create courses, write books, or launch a podcast, this book will help you get there. Stop waiting for permission. Start building your own table.Grab your copy today and take control of your future.Buy it from EduMatch Publishing https://edumatch-publishing.myshopify.com/collections/new-releases/products/the-edupreneur-by-dr-will

Western and Japanese meetings often look similar on the calendar, but they operate on very different assumptions. Both may involve reporting, planning, problem-solving and innovation, yet the real work happens in different places. In many Western companies, the meeting room is where people debate, confront, push, defend and decide. In Japan, the meeting is often only one stage in a broader process. Much of the real alignment happens before the meeting through nemawashi, the groundwork that smooths disagreement and builds consensus. Leaders who miss this difference can become frustrated, confused and ineffective when running meetings in Japan. Why do Western and Japanese meetings feel different? Western meetings often treat the room as the decision arena, while Japanese meetings often treat the room as a confirmation stage. The difference is not cosmetic; it changes how leaders should prepare, participate and follow up. In the West, especially in US, Australian and European business cultures, people may expect direct debate during the meeting. They "duke it out," test ideas, challenge assumptions and make decisions in the room. In Japan, open conflict inside the meeting can feel disruptive or embarrassing. The Japanese approach often relies on conversations before the meeting to understand concerns, reduce friction and avoid public confrontation. Do now: Do not assume silence in a Japanese meeting means agreement. Check views privately before and after the meeting. What communication problems appear in Western-style meetings? Western-style meetings often expose communication extremes: passive wishing, aggressive demands, direct debate, hidden stress and power plays. Leaders need a toolbox to manage these behaviours. Some people express desires as vague wishes, while others make blunt demands. Some bulldoze through barriers, while others read the air, or kuki wo yomu, to avoid offending anyone. Stress can show up as aggression, silence or controlled professionalism. In cross-cultural teams, direct communicators may dominate while quieter or more indirect contributors self-censor. This can rob the meeting of valuable perspectives and distort the quality of the decision. Do now: Watch for both over-speaking and under-speaking. The loudest voice is not always the best insight. How do power and accountability affect meetings? Meetings become dysfunctional when people use them to elevate themselves, deflate others or dodge accountability.The leader's job is to stop meetings becoming internal combat arenas. Strong individuals may jockey for position by depressing the status of others. A salesperson belittling an administration colleague as a "cost centre" versus a "profit centre" is a classic example of destructive status play. Accountability can also become uneven. Dominant people may hold everyone else to strict standards while granting themselves a free pass because they are "major producers." In Japanese organisations, these tensions may be less visible in the room, but they still exist under the surface. Do now: Make accountability universal. No one gets a special exemption because of title, ego or results. Why is confrontation handled differently in Japan? Confrontation is handled differently in Japan because preserving harmony, face and decorum often matters more than winning a public argument. Directness is acceptable only when it remains polite, considerate and relationship-aware. In many Western environments, confrontation can be seen as honest, passionate or necessary. In Japan, blunt confrontation may shut people down, damage trust or push disagreement underground. Some people will hide valid concerns rather than risk tension. Others may communicate indirectly, expecting the leader to read between the lines. This does not mean Japanese meetings lack conflict. It means conflict is often managed through timing, setting and private discussion. Do now: Move sensitive disagreement out of the public meeting and into respectful one-on-one conversations. What is nemawashi and why does it matter? Nemawashi is the Japanese practice of doing groundwork before a decision so disagreement can be handled privately and consensus can form before the meeting. It files down the rough edges before everyone gathers. The word originally comes from preparing tree roots before transplanting, and in business it means consulting stakeholders, testing reactions, lobbying for support and solving objections early. Loud people, quiet people, supporters and sceptics should all be contacted before the formal meeting. By the time the meeting occurs, the decision may already be broadly agreed. To Western leaders, this can look slow or overly political. In Japan, it often creates smoother implementation. Do now: Before the meeting, identify stakeholders, consult them privately and resolve objections early. How should Western leaders run meetings in Japan? Western leaders should adapt by combining their meeting discipline with Japanese-style groundwork. Keep clarity, accountability and timing, but do not rely on public debate alone to reveal the truth. Use pre-meeting consultation to uncover hidden concerns. Invite quieter team members to share views privately before the group session. Clarify who supports the proposal, who is worried and what must change before approval. Then use the meeting to confirm direction, summarise commitments and maintain decorum. This approach works well in Japan-based multinationals, local subsidiaries, joint ventures and cross-cultural leadership teams. Do now: Build the meeting before the meeting. Then use the formal meeting to align, confirm and assign action. Final Summary Western and Japanese meetings differ because they place the centre of gravity in different locations. Western leaders often expect debate and decision-making to happen inside the meeting room. Japanese organisations often use the meeting as one step in a broader consensus-building process, with nemawashi doing much of the heavy lifting beforehand. Leaders in Japan should not abandon all Western meeting tools. Clear purpose, participation, accountability and follow-up still matter. But they must add pre-meeting groundwork, private consultation and sensitivity to indirect communication. Do that and many of the usual meeting problems are circumvented before they can explode in public. Author Bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, which are widely followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.

Salespeople in Japan often face a delicate balancing act. Push too little and they become passive farmers who protect the client but fail to grow the business. Push too hard and they risk looking aggressive, annoying, or culturally tone-deaf. The real answer sits in the middle: become a trusted partner who helps the buyer succeed while still representing your own company's commercial interests. In Japan, professional selling is not about being timid. It is about being appropriately persistent, value-focused, and visibly committed to helping the client improve. When is sales persistence too much in Japan? Sales persistence becomes too much in Japan when the buyer feels pressured, disrespected, or treated like a target rather than a partner. The goal is not to copy an American-style hard sell; the goal is to build trust while still moving the business forward. Japanese buyers often value patience, relationship continuity, risk reduction, and internal consensus. That does not mean salespeople should collapse at the first sign of hesitation. It means they need to read the room, ask better questions, and keep the conversation focused on value. In B2B sales, professional services, training, technology, and recruitment, the best salesperson is not passive and not pushy. They are persistent with purpose. Do now: Push for clarity, not pressure. Keep advancing the conversation, but make every follow-up useful to the buyer. Why are some Japanese sales teams too passive? Many Japanese sales teams become too passive because they prioritise keeping the buyer happy over creating value for both sides. They are good farmers, but weak hunters. Clients often tell sales leaders that their teams bend over backwards for customers and behave almost as if they work for the buyer. That sounds noble, but it can damage revenue, margins, account growth, and new business development. Farming existing accounts matters, but hunting for new buyers and expanding current relationships matter too. Post-pandemic Japan has made prospecting harder, with fewer spontaneous networking opportunities and more digital gatekeeping. Passive salespeople cannot simply wait for the phone to ring. Do now: Train salespeople to protect relationships while still asking for introductions, proposing next steps, and expanding the account. Why is discounting dangerous in Japanese sales? Discounting is dangerous in Japanese sales because a low opening price often becomes the ceiling, not the floor.Once buyers secure a discount, they may expect that price as the new baseline. Weak salespeople discount because they cannot explain value. They would rather win the client at a painful price than risk losing the deal and having to find a new buyer. The problem is that Japan's B2B buyers, procurement teams, and corporate decision-makers remember concessions. A "special one-time price" may not be treated as special next time. It becomes the anchor for future negotiations. Australian, American, and European suppliers entering Japan often make this mistake by offering their "best price" too early and then spending the rest of the negotiation defending it. Do now: Sell value before price. Explain outcomes, risk reduction, implementation support, and long-term impact before discussing concessions. How should salespeople network without damaging their reputation? Salespeople should network with energy and discipline, but never with desperation, deception, or disrespect. In Japan's close business community, especially among foreign executives in Tokyo, reputation travels fast. Networking at chambers of commerce, industry associations, embassy events, trade groups, and professional gatherings can produce valuable leads. It can also produce bruising moments. Some people reject business cards, complain about follow-up emails, or accuse active networkers of being too visible. Salespeople need thick skin. Most critics are not responsible for finding new clients and may not understand how difficult prospecting really is. Still, there is a line. Integrity, relevance, and respect must guide every approach. Do now: Network consistently, but make it buyer-centred. Follow up with relevance, not spam. Be memorable for value, not volume. Should sales leaders personally prospect? Sales leaders should personally prospect because they cannot credibly demand hunting behaviour from their team if they refuse to do it themselves. Leading from the front builds trust, accountability, and standards. A sales leader who attends events, starts conversations, asks for meetings, follows up, and handles rejection demonstrates the behaviour expected from the team. This matters in Japan, where hierarchy and role modelling influence organisational behaviour. If the boss hides behind dashboards and only lectures the sales team about pipeline, credibility collapses. When the leader shows grit, the team has fewer excuses. Prospecting is hard. Rejection stings. But nothing happens until someone sells something. Do now: Model the behaviour. Make calls, attend events, ask for introductions, and show your team what professional persistence looks like. How can salespeople protect the brand while being persistent? Salespeople protect the brand by operating with integrity, helping clients succeed, and avoiding patterns of behaviour that many people would describe as aggressive or annoying. One critic is noise; repeated complaints are a warning signal. In Japan, bad news moves quickly. Among multinational executives in Tokyo, the community can feel like a small village. A damaged reputation can follow a person, company, or sales team for years. That is why persistence must be anchored in values. If the market sees you as passionate, helpful, and commercially serious, occasional criticism will bounce off. If many people describe you as pushy, rude, or unreasonable, the brand has a problem. The difference is intent and behaviour. Do now: Track market feedback. Stay bold, but watch for repeated complaints about tone, pressure, or follow-up frequency. Conclusion: what is the right level of sales pressure? The right level of sales pressure in Japan is professional persistence built on trust. Too little pressure produces passive account managers who avoid difficult conversations, discount too quickly, and fail to grow business. Too much pressure damages the relationship, reputation, and brand. The sweet spot is disciplined, value-based selling. Salespeople should be proud to hunt for new buyers, expand existing accounts, and keep the wheels of industry turning. The key is to do it with integrity. Help the buyer succeed, protect your company's commercial interests, and keep showing up. Critics will always exist. Clients who value your work are the audience that matters most. FAQs Is hard selling effective in Japan? Hard selling is rarely effective in Japan because it can damage trust and create resistance. Japanese buyers usually prefer professional persistence, clear value, patience, and relationship-building. Are Japanese salespeople too passive? Some salespeople in Japan can become too passive when they over-focus on keeping the client happy. Good salespeople protect the relationship while still asking for growth, next steps, and decisions. Why should salespeople avoid heavy discounting? Heavy discounting weakens value perception and can reset the buyer's expected price permanently. In Japan, a low price can become the ceiling for future negotiations. How do I know if my prospecting is too aggressive? Your prospecting may be too aggressive if multiple people complain about your tone, frequency, or lack of relevance. One critic may not matter; repeated feedback deserves attention. What should sales leaders do to encourage hunting? Sales leaders should model hunting behaviour themselves. Attend events, prospect visibly, follow up professionally, and show the team how to be persistent without being pushy. Author bio Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award. As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programmes, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō（ザ営業）, Purezen no Tatsujin（プレゼンの達人）, Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō（トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう）, and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā（現代版「人を動かす」リーダー）. Greg also publishes daily business insights on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, and hosts six weekly podcasts. On YouTube, he produces The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews, followed by executives seeking success strategies in Japan.

Welcome to Mysteries to Die For.I am TG Wolff and am here with Jack, my piano player and producer. This is a podcast where we combine storytelling with original music to put you in the heart of a mystery. All stories are structured to challenge you to beat the detective to the solution. Jack and I perform these live, front to back, no breaks, no fakes, no retakes.In the world's most dangerous working environments it can seem like everything is out to kill you. The equipment you use. The materials you work with. The very air you breathe. Stored energy is a coiled viper waiting for the right moment to lash out. Owners, manufacturers, contractors, and beyond have developed safety protocols to combat STCKY, that is, Stuff That Can Kill You. Gravity, Motion, Mechanical, Electrical, Pressure, Sound, Radiation, Biological, Chemical, Temperature. This season is all about the means of murder as authors put our STCKY detective skills to the test. This is Season 9, Stuff That Can Kill You.This is Episode 13, where chemical is our STCKY means of death. This is Speed Kills by Chuck Brownman, a re-broadcast of the Season 5 episode first dropped on February 3, 2023MEMBERSHIPS!Mysteries to Die For now has memberships! Three tiers – The Grave Digger's Union (free), The Cadaver Collective ($4 / month) and The Preservationist Society ($8 / month). We are starting memberships to help pay for our real live human authors, to keep the software working and the power flowing, and avoid the dreaded use of ads. If you want to show you love but aren't ready for a commitment, you can now tip us and leave a witting, punny note for us. Links are in the show notes and on our website M2D4podcast.com.Today's author, Chuck Brownman, is certainly racking up the body count. First Alastair Stubbins and Quentin Ballinger are gassed, then Sergei Ivanov gets singed. Here is a list of everything with a heartbeat in the house…• Alastair Stubbins, a victim, but also an inventor who controlled the world from his little corner. He liked making people dance to his tune. He had a great vision for QN-7 but needed a financial partner to make it reality.• Quentin Ballinger, a victim, the chosen financial partner but a man who had money issues. Living in Monaco didn't stop his company from being on the brink of bankruptcy. He had a reputation for building cheaply.• Sergei Ivanov, an almost victim, but a man who wouldn't accept coming in second. He had a reputation for top quality.• Mrs. Ashley Stubbins, a trophy wife with a pre-nup who loved her hubby. Really, she did.• Regan Stubbins, the mechanical engineering daughter and heir apparent who didn't like the deal her father was rigging.• Paul Stubbins, the artist in residence who didn't like anything about his father except his moneyNow that we have the heartbeats straight…here's a summary of what we know.• Quentin Ballinger and Sergei Ivanov were staying at the Stubbins' estate, one of them would close on a deal with Alastair Stubbins to complete the design and produce the QN-7.• The QN-7 was outfitted with next generation artificial intelligence that would let it learn to the point of making its own decisions. It was a top-secret operation. Only two key fobs existed. One Stubbins had and the other he gave to his wife.• Security information showed the door to the garage opened at eleven fifty at night. This is assumed to be Stubbins and Ballinger.• Stubbins and Ballinger died of carbon dioxide poisoning that came from the QN-7. There are signs of some sort of struggle, but there was no damage to either body and both were found next to the QN-7. The times of death was pinned between eleven pm and 2 am.• Security information showed the door to the garage opened again at twelve forty-seven. This is assumed to be the killer.• All the doors were closed – man doors and garage doors. There is no explanation for why the two able-bodied men didn't open a door and walk out.• Sergei Ivanov reports being in his bedroom all night. This was neither confirmed nor denied.• Ashley Stebbins was in her bedroom all night. This was neither confirmed nor denied.• Paul Stebbins was alone in his room in the carriage house all night. This was confirmed only by Regan.• Regan Stebbins was alone in her room in the carriage house all night. Only Paul confirmed this.ABOUT Chuck BrownmanA mostly-retired (and hopefully recovering) attorney, Chuck Brownman now enjoys writing noir fiction, concentrating on short fiction. His work has been published in several anthologies and on multiple websites, including those listed at the top of this episode. He has also served various times as a judge for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Awards. When not writing fiction, Chuck continues to advise some of the country's most entrepreneurial energy and natural resource companies. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Law, and has spoken at legal seminars for many years. He lives with his wife in Colorado, the peaceful vistas offering a counterbalance to his suspenseful and often bloody crime fiction. A full list of his published fiction can be found at his website, www.chuckbrownman.comWRAP UPThat wraps this episode of Mysteries to Die For. Support our show by subscribing, telling a mystery lover about us, or joining our membership. Check out our website m2d4podcast.com for links to this season's authors.Mysteries to Die For is hosted by TG Wolff and Jack Wolff. Speed Kills was written by Chuck Brownman. Music and production are by Jack Wolff. Episode art is by TG Wolff. Join us next week for a Toe Tag, which is the first chapter from a fresh release in the mystery, crime, or thriller genre. Then come back in for our next original story, also by Chuck Brownman where chemical, mechanical, heat, pretty much everything is our STCKY means of murder in Rendering the Truth.

Laura Shin has reported on crypto scams since the early days and wrote one of the first stories on sim swaps. That did not stop a spear-phishing attempt from getting her to download software and run a terminal command before she caught it. Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins turn her near miss into a practical defense playbook, then debate whether self-custody still makes sense for anyone with a public crypto profile. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto Guest: Laura Shin - Founder and Host of Unchained This clip is from a longer conversation on crypto security and social engineering. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/yKHaE6xMZsE  We go live every Monday - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsors:

Today, on Karl and Crew, we wrapped up our weekly theme, "Temptation," by discussing various temptations with experts in their fields and how they overcome them. Dr. Winfred Neely joined us to discuss the temptation to manage worry in our own strength. He explained the difference between worry and concern and how believers can experience God’s peace by drawing near to Him in faith. Dr. Neely is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament, Biblical Interpretation, and Preaching at Moody Bible Institute and author of "How to Overcome Worry – Experiencing the Peace of God in Every Situation." Dr. Michael Rydelnik also joined us to talk about spiritual conflict in the Middle East, the danger of remaining silent in the face of evil, and how believers can stand firm by reading, meditating on, and speaking the Word of God. Dr. Rydelnik is Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Bible and an Adjunct Professor in the undergraduate program at Moody Bible Institute. He is the author of "How Should Christians Think About Israel?" Omer Eshel joined us from Israel to discuss the reported protests in Gaza against Hamas. He explained how many Palestinian civilians are seeking freedom from Hamas’ control, urging believers to pray for peace, protection, and the people caught in the middle. Omer is the CEO and Co-founder of The Bible Comes to Life Travel and Educational Center. We then opened the phone lines to hear from our listeners and posed the question, “What temptation has God given you victory over?” You can catch the highlights of today’s program on the Karl and Crew Showcast If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps:Dr. Winfred Neely [ 44:34 ]Dr. Michael Rydelnik [ 13:38 ]Omer Eshel [ 7:04 ]Caller Segment [ 32:27 ]Donate to Moody Radio: http://moodyradio.org/donateto/morningshowSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three years ago, Chris Perkins sat across from Terry Duffy in Congress and made the case for perpetuals. Duffy pushed back — hard. Now Duffy's CME is suing the very regulator that finally allowed them. The CME argues Bitcoin perpetual futures are really swaps and should carry far more collateral. Chris traces the Dodd-Frank history that created the swap-versus-future divide, and Austin Campbell lays out why picking this fight in a post-Chevron court could backfire on the incumbent. Is a perpetual a swap or a future, and who gets to decide? Hosts: Austin Campbell - Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Group, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern Ram Ahluwalia - Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida Chris Perkins - Co-host of Bits + Bips and Head of Franklin Crypto This clip is from a longer conversation on tokenization, the AI trade, and the CME's lawsuit against the CFTC. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/oSiOeWq_pKE  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET - subscribe to catch it live.  Sponsor Cape: Your biggest crypto vulnerability isn't your wallet, it's your phone number. Cape is America's privacy-first mobile carrier that rotates your SIM identity daily and blocks SIM swaps before they happen. Get 33% off your first six months at https://cape.co/unchained (use code: UNCHAINED). Chapters ⚖️ 00:00 The incumbent sues its own regulator: what the CME is actually claiming

In this conversation, John Anderson sits down with Prof. Simon Haines and Dr. Fiona Mueller to examine how Australia's schools and universities stopped teaching children how to think, and what a genuine restoration of education would look like. The results are measurable in falling literacy, rising school refusal, and a curriculum that has prioritised ideological formation at the expense of knowledge.From the classical roots of Western education and the Trivium to the ideological capture of teacher training and university management, Haines and Mueller expose the ideas driving the decline and the institutions already proving a better model is possible. What is at stake is not just educational outcomes, but the capacity of the next generation to reason clearly, to govern themselves wisely, and to pass on what they have inherited.Prof. Simon Haines is the Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Campion College Australia, Adjunct Professor at the Australian Catholic University, and a founding Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. He previously served as the inaugural CEO of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation and is a Director of Humanities for Life.Dr. Fiona Mueller served as Head of ANU College at the Australian National University and as Director of Curriculum at the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), and was named among the five most influential people in Australian education by the Australian Financial Review in 2019. She is an Adjunct Fellow with the Centre for Independent Studies, a Senior Fellow with Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy), and currently serves as Director of Research at the Page Research Centre.

The US government issued a Friday-night export control directive against Anthropic's Fable 5, citing a jailbreak that could expose advanced cyber capabilities built into the underlying Mythos model. No statutory authority was publicly disclosed. No comment period was given. Sam Enzer, Partner and CahillNXT Co-Chair at Cahill Gordon & Reindel, joins Austin Campbell, Ram Ahluwalia, and Chris Perkins to assess the directive's legal standing. Enzer draws a parallel to Gensler-era regulation by enforcement: familiar government power applied to new technology, with no transparent framework. His central question: if export controls can reach an AI model's API, can the same authority reach a US-based DeFi protocol serving foreign nationals? Austin raises the Choke Point parallel and asks where the limiting principle actually is. Ram argues that restricting software is restricting speech under the First Amendment. Chris warns that national security will always be the trump card unless the industry makes a credible counter-argument. Hosts: Austin Campbell, Host of Bits + Bips, Founder of Zero Knowledge Consulting, and Adjunct Professor at NYU Stern - https://x.com/austincampbell Ram Ahluwalia, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of Lumida - https://x.com/ramahluwalia Chris Perkins, Co-host of Bits + Bips and CEO of 250 Digital Asset Management - https://x.com/perkinscr97 Guest: Sam Enzer, Partner and CahillNXT Co-Chair at Cahill Gordon & Reindel This clip is from a longer conversation on AI export controls, national security, and the First Amendment. Full episode here: https://youtube.com/live/pEh1zr1pj90  We go live every Monday at 4:30pm ET - subscribe to catch it live. Sponsors