The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

We are all exposed to leadership lessons throughout our lives, yet for most of the time we are unaware of them.  When we were children, we didn’t think about what it meant to be a leader. Adults were all seen as leaders and they seemed to be unassailable authority figures whom we had to obey. In sports, maybe we were selected as the captain of the team or maybe we weren’t, but either way we didn’t think too much about what it meant to be a successful leader. At University we might have taken on a leadership role in one of the varsity clubs, but we weren’t necessarily thinking about the intricacies of leadership.  We just went with what we had at that point.  The exception though were those students who had decided they wanted a life in politics and so they were very keen to exert their leadership muscles to pad out their resume for future requirements.   When we hit the workforce, we entered a hierarchical world of different pay levels and designated leadership positions.  As new entrants, we may have been gi

Covid driving us all to work from home has been good for the commuter.  For Tokyo, many people typically face three hours a day in lost commuting time, standing around in packed train carriages, waiting to get to their office or getting back home.  That three hours is now being spent sleeping, playing with the kids, enjoying hobbies or working.  One of the major dilemmas is what happens after Covid has gone or is contained?  Every public opinion survey you read, says that the troops like working from home and are in no hurry to pack that morning sardine can and truck down to the office.  What does that mean for leaders?   Will there be many days in a year when everyone is back in the office?  Will the office have been sized down to save rent money on the basis that people won’t require desks because they have their home desk instead. If there are only going to be a few days in the year for the whole team to gather, then what happens with their relationships with each other and with the boss?  Some issues are

Leadership encompasses many required skills and mind sets and it is always interesting to dissect the topic from fresh angles to shed some light on areas where we could be making a bigger effort.  Japan has hordes of managers, but no so many leaders.  The managers here are great at getting the operational side of things humming like a finely tuned engine.  They are brilliant on eliminating errors and avoiding defects.  Deadlines get met, things work well and the wheels of commerce turn as they were designed to do.  Leaders do all of these things, plus some important additions.  They build the people and they set the direction for the enterprise.   There are many levels of leadership and so many levels of strategy too.  The CEO nestled high on the Executive Floor works with the Division Heads and collaboratively they set the overall strategy for the organisation.  At each level below, the leaders should set their strategies to fit under the overall umbrella determined by the big bosses.  Except in Japan mostly

All guns blazing the new leader hits the ground running.  They are the new broom, sweeping all the detritus away from the old regime’s reign of terror.  “Embrace me as your saviour”, they say.  Well dressed, even natty, their hair is nice, they look the money.  They are the type of front man the organisation needs and a pleasing contrast to the previous incumbent.  Good looking, articulate, “hail fellow well met” and you think this is looking good.  They take on a much higher profile in the media, because they can carry it off and they can sustain the credibility needed for the public profile they are building.  They say all the right things and they have the right rhetoric for the zeitgeist.  Things are looking good, until they are not.   Covid does terrible things to companies.  It removes portions of the workforce from the front line, so the work isn’t getting done.  It causes the markets to change and the revenues to drop and drop quickly.  The way the leader responds says a lot about who they really are.

Covid-19 cases are skyrocketing every day.  Just when you thought we might be getting somewhere, the latest BA5 variant is spreading like wildfire.  For many businesses this will make no difference, but for many industries like mine, we are watching those numbers like hawks, praying they go down.  Why?  Because our buyers are making decisions not to buy, because of the danger factor of getting the virus.  If buyers reduce or stop buying, the next thing you have to worry about are cash flow prblems.  Can you make the rent and the salary bill every month?  These types of problems are like amoebas – they just keep multiplying.   Any hint of trouble in the business breeds fear in the staff.  Are we going to be okay?  Is this company going down?  Should I be the first rat to jump ship?  If you are not open with the numbers, then you run the risk of supposition, rumours and imaginations in overdrive.  You don’t tell them how bad it is, but they know things are bad and they presume they are actually a lot worse than

Over the last six months we have been getting a steady stream of enquiry for leadership training.  Covid induced working from home situations has revealed the gaps in the leadership abilities of people who are managers.  The two roles are actually different, but usually companies conflate them, to expect their managers to also be leading.  Did they give them any training to make this leap?  No. Yet they complain about their leaders are only managers and are not doing a good enough job.  There have also been cases where people have been elevated into supervisory roles or leadership roles from the ranks. Not only no training, there has been little or no OJT, the On the Job Training, which has been the core of all corporate training in Japan since the start of the post war period.  Onboarding and on the job training have been impacted by Covid because people are working from home.   Managers are focused on processes.  There are various interlocking processes within modern work which require one piece of work to

Things Leaders Should Be Doing   There are tons of things leaders should be doing, so it becomes a bit of a blizzard white out mentally, because we are overwhelmed by the volume.  It is a good thing to isolate out some key ideas and just remind ourselves of their importance.  Here we go.   Focus attention chiefly on results to be achieved rather than things to be done. Everything that is happening should lead to the desired results.  Sounds obvious except when we analyse our diary and look at what we are spending our time on, often we are shocked that so few items are actually directly propelling results.   Plan and organise effectively to achieve these desired results, then coordinate the efforts of everybody concerned with these results to do their best to achieve them. How good are our plans?  Do they need to be updated because the market has changed or circumstances have run over the top of us? Are we still organised properly to achieve the results we have set for ourselves?  Is the balance between in

The P&L, the Balance Sheet, Cash Flow Projections, revenues, profit, the list goes on regarding where we leaders place our attention.  There is nothing like a pandemic to have you focused on the numbers in the business.  It is easy to get caught up in the dynamics of survival and forget some of the subtleties needed to lead an organisation.  These usually revolve around our people and how we treat them and how we think about them.  Like a juggler keeping 5 balls in mid-air rotation or the artist who can keep many, many plates spinning at the same time, we have to be agile and be capable of concentrating on more than one thing at a time.    Here are four things we need to be aware of while we struggle through the day to day.   It is essential to influence others to cooperate toward achieving desired results: the leader only has value in relation to an organisation and the people who constitute it.  Basically, we know this, but often in straited times, our force of will, determination, grit and guts drive

In Part One we covered principles 1-7 and we continue looking at some fundamentals we all know but may have forgotten or may have neglected.   Truly respecting others is the bedrock of motivation. This idea of respecting staff by the boss makes sense except when we realise that 80% of the team, by definition, are either average or low performers. Maybe the boss is frustrated with some performance levels and maybe they are digging the hole deeper for themselves by applying the wrong motivation formula and not communicating to their 80% cohort that they are valued and respected too.   People work for money, but go the extra mile for recognition, praise and rewards. Frederick Herzberg’s research on motivation said that salary was only a “hygiene factor”. In other words, people expect to get paid fairly for their work, so money isn’t everything. Of course, major money does speak loudly to certain people, though most people are not getting paid the astronomic packages we see in the finance industry for example.

We pick up ideas on leadership from multiple sources – books, training, articles, blogs, guidance from mentors and personal observation.  What we usually fail to do is compile them or collect them in one place.  This sporadic approach is also completed over a long time span, so we forget more than we retain.  Here are sixteen principles of leadership which we all know, but which we will benefit from by reminding us of what we have forgotten and by collecting them in one place.   The first step toward success is identifying our own leadership strengths. This is not what we do though is it?  We usually focus on what we are doing poorly.  That is looking into the past. By concentrating on our strengths, we can build on those and keep growing, rather than beating ourselves up about being less than perfect.   Communication is built on trusting relationships. But what builds trust in relationships?  Being fair with staff, vendors and clients is an integral part of this.  Recently we had a case where there was so

Japan was decimated by the Pacific War and really struggled until they had the lucky break called the Korean War.  Suddenly the war required a lot of supplies and more importantly Japan was no longer seen as a pariah, but as a bulwark against communism. America began to pour money into the country to bolster its economic defences and keep it capitalist.  By 1960 things had improved to the point where Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda could make the doubling of the economy a realistic target.  The engine room of this turn around was the hard work of the Japanese people but it came at costs.  Fathers weren’t around because they were working all of the time and so the mothers had to take care of the kids in their absence.    Things have improved a lot since then.  Schools no longer operate on Saturdays and the same for most firms.  Fathers are more able to spend time with their children and more mothers are working too these days.  Karoshi – death from overwork is still a thing in Japan and “black companies” who explo

Internal meetings are held for worthy purposes such as reporting, planning and innovating.  Not everyone views these meetings the same way though and this is where we can face problems when we run meetings in Japan.   Let’s examine 8 sets of typical meeting issues we will be familiar with:   Expressions of desire. The range here runs from one group, who express their desires as a wish, all the way to the other end of the scale, where actual demands are being made.  We may prefer that those who are wishing for outcomes were more assertive and just come out and ask for what they want.  On the other hand, we may feel confronted by aggressive team members who start making demands on us during the meeting.    Winning at all costs or cooperating. Hard driving people get things done, they brook no interference and apply their energy, guile to bulldoze their way through the barriers.  They have tunnel vision, only see their interests and are oblivious to their impact on those around them.  Those at the opposite en

We have been toiling away long and hard, being accountable, going the extra mile, starting early and finishing late to get the numbers and hammering those KPIs.  Then we get promoted to become responsible for others as the team leader.  Usually, we get no formal leadership training for the new role and are left to work it out by ourselves.  How do we keep moving up the ladder of success?  There are a number of things we have to study, in order for this new role to become the catalyst we need to deliver our career aspirations.   Stop Doing and Start Leading This sounds easier than it is, because we are often player/managers and have our own clients or parts of the business we need to take care of.  The danger is we find getting productivity from others who are less smart, motivated, skillful and determined is so difficult, we concentrate on what we can control.  That means we keep doing our tasks, because we are very good at them and we wind up being a key result producer within the team.  The organisation h

When you mention the word “meetings” to people in business, their eyes often start to roll.  Why is that? Usually because they feel there are too many meetings and that the meetings they attend are not effective nor worth the time being spent.  Given meetings have been around forever, you have to wonder why we haven’t done a better job yet on arranging our meetings so that they are effective.  Not all meetings are created equally and I think this is where we get confused.  There are very simple information sharing meetings and then at the other end of the scale, we have heavy duty, world changing, strategic meetings which will determine the fate of the enterprise over the next decade or more.   The complexity of the meetings should reflect the scale of time required and the number of people needed to attend, but often it doesn’t.  Many times, we are allocating too much time and requiring too many people for meetings. These simple meetings could either be replaced with an email or could be severely truncated i

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

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

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

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

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

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