Podcast
The Leadership Japan Series
Hosted by Dale Carnegie Japan · EN
Leading in Japan is distinct and different from other countries. The language, culture and size of the economy make sure of that. We can learn by trial and error or we can draw on real world practical experience and save ourselves a lot of friction, wear and tear. This podcasts offers hundreds of episodes packed with value, insights and perspectives on leading here. The only other podcast on Japan which can match the depth and breadth of this Leadership Japan Series podcast is the Japan's Top Business interviews podcast.
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Four Superheroes Of Coaching For Leaders
May 14, 2025Tap to summarizeWe have seen Hollywood pumping out comic heroes as movie franchises to get the money flowing into the studios. The premise is always the same. The super hero comes to the rescue and saves everyone. What about for leaders when coaching their team members? Fortunately, we have four super heroes we can rely on to help us do a better job as the leader. They are Encourage, Focus, Elevate and Empower. Encouraging our team sounds pretty unheralded and straightforward. But do we actually do it? Leaders are busy people and have tons of pressure on their shoulders. Life is a whirlwind of meetings and pushing the plan's execution. Expecting people to do what they are being paid to do, can easily supplant the encouragement vibe from the leader. Telling people you recognise their strengths, means taking the time to audit and then communicate those strengths. Being supportive means taking the time to be across what is happening at the individual level. Do we do that? Giving positive reinforcement means having the right conversations at the right time. The word "time" keeps popping up, because that is the deadly enemy of good intentions. If we flipped open your calendar from last week and we added up how much one-on-one encouragement you gave to the members your team, would we be talking in terms of hours or milliseconds of conversation? Time management is a key to people management. You can't manage people if you are not in control of your time and if you have not made certain choices about where you will prioritise your time. We see this in family time being sacrificed on the alter of getting the results. The employees can easily be in the same group as the family, missing out on the leader's attention. The second super hero of leadership coaching is Focus. Managers manage processes, budgets, timelines and the execution of results. The machinery of the firm runs flawlessly. There are no defects and no delays. Leaders do all of that, plus they set the direction for the firm and they build the people. The building the people part is where there has to be intentional focus on the individual. All of the other components of executing and gaining results can means the focus is not on the people development. We need to track the assignments we have given people, to make sure that we are there for them, if they need help. We need to offer up our undivided attention to listen to our people. No thoughts of what needs to be done scrambling around in our brain, while we sit there half listening to what we are being told. Elevate is probably the most difficult of the super hero leader coaching efforts to pull off. We can tell everyone what to do and how to it. We can do it all by ourselves. Neither of these choices develop our people though. We must coach them by asking what they need to do. We need to push them to operate with the mindset of the leader. We need them to self discover things that will guide them around what needs to be done and how they should be done. We have to challenge them in ways that inspire, as opposed to crushing them. There is a fine line between applying the right dimension of push and crushing someone. We all get into a rut in our work. As the leader coach if we can have our people challenge typical ways of thinking or doing, then that potentially unleashes a tremendous opportunity for creativity. It means we need to allocate the time to interact with our team and that time may not be very easy to find. We can also suggest they do less of or more of something. We can challenge them to consider doing the opposite of what they are currently doing. All of these "more", "less", "opposite" alternatives are there to get the team thinking in a different way about our business. If we see an opportunity for improvement, we can push for immediate change. This can become an issue though if we push too hard at the wrong time. Getting the balance right is the equation we need to solve. Our fourth super hero is to Empower. There is no word in Japanese which can easily capture this idea. That makes the communication of the idea a bit tricky. We know that the Johari Window describes leadership blindspots. We need to work on our high potential's awareness of what everyone knows, but they don't know about themselves. Doing 360 surveys and educating them on how to get feedback are positive actions that will build the leadership bench. Having an improved perspective enables them to make the changes necessary to become a more effective leader. Getting them to think about how to transfer experiences from one environment to another is a stretch that is needed. We all tend to be trapped by the limitations of our previous experiences. The issue becomes that, "to a hammer everything looks like a nail". We need to educate our people about not falling into that leadership trap. Engaging emotions is a powerful driver of commitment and accountability. Understanding what is important to each person is the necessary key to the door of change. That means spending the time and making the communication effort to uncover the trigger emotions, the drivers for positive change. We need to model it for them and then encourage them to do the same, when they have the responsibility of leadership. The four drivers of coaching composed of Encourage, Focus, Elevate and Empower make for powerful leadership precepts. These take time and the best time to start using them was yesterday. The second best time is today.
Transcribe →How Decisions Are Really Made Inside Japanese Companies
Feb 16, 202500:13:54Tap to summarizeThe President of a company is a very powerful force. They drive the direction, the strategy and the culture formation inside the enterprise. In Western corporations, there are big salaries and big incentives tied to the leader’s performance, especially around profit achievement and share price gains for shareholders. We project this idea on to Japanese companies and imagine they are basically built in the same way. This idea seems fine, until you ever have to get a decision from a Japanese company. This is when you enter the twilight zone of differences about how things are really done here. Japan has some specific features which make the leadership terrain quite unique. Mid-career hires are the norm in the West and the exception in Japan, as far as larger firms are concerned. New graduates are malleable and the company leadership wants to install their group think, culture and conservative action methodologies in them. Seniority is a respected Confucian attribute in Japan, which has little currency in the Darwinian, performance outcomes oriented West. Age and stage make sense in Japan, when you spend your entire career with the one firm and are part of the fabric of that company, gradually being stitched in over decades. The risk aversion predominance in Japanese business weighs against change and bolsters constancy. We foreigners represent change. To become a trusted partner with a Japanese firm means they have to make some internal changes to accommodate the new thing we bring to them or the old thing we are tweaking in a new way. The question is, who inside the Japanese decision making hierarchy is going to take responsibility for the change. In Western companies there is a big personal payoff to taking risks, but Japanese salaries and bonuses are not on the same planet as a country like America. So, the upside of taking a risk in Japan is far outweighed by the potential career damage if there is a failure. We have all grown up with a British Raj model of decision making. Convert the leaders and you get the whole company to snap into gear and get with your programme. It doesn’t work like that here unless the President is the founder or the owner. This is the “one man shacho” formula, the classic dictator President, who rules with an iron fist and drives everyone to do what ever they say. Most big corporates though, have a structure where the President has P&L responsibility for the whole company, but the direct reports have P&L responsibility for their part of the business. The President can’t force them to make expenditure allocations impacting their turf without their agreement. Hence the reputation of Japan as the country of glacial decision making. I find this is a bit boring, because the Raj approach is much faster and easier for me. No one in Japan could care less what I want. I deal with a lot of Presidents, as I try my best “convert the Raj” techniques to get them to buy my training services. Being the President of my firm, I can get access to the senior echelons of the client company and get a hearing. This is where Western logic departs from Japanese best practice. The leaders I speak with won’t personally do anything themselves. The company has internal compliance methodologies to reduce risk and protect the firm. The work to investigate my idea will get sent right down to the very bottom of the pile. That lower level designated officer or tanto will start pulling together information on our company, our offer, our pricing, the market, the competitors, resources required and the prospective ROI. The tanto will then present that report to their superior, the next up the line, who if they approve it, will place their hanko or personal seal on the document. This is a public acknowledgment that it has passed their stringent evaluation process and they are willing to take responsibility and place it before their superior. The hanko marks on the document will also include any divisions or sections that will be impacted by the buying decision. This is an internal harmonisation and communication process to provide checks and balances. In this way, there are no surprises and no issues, when it comes to coordinating the execution piece. This process is repeated all the way up to the President’s direct reports who have P&L responsibility to fund the deal. If it is a big enough decision, there may be a senior executive meeting required. This is usually a formality to bless the decision, rather than make a decision. The plan executive sponsor will outline the idea at the meeting, there will be no questions and it is therefore agreed. Next item! The surprising thing is that the President isn’t the final decision maker. And I had such a good meeting with that President too and I thought I had the Raj technique working on steroids! Actually, the person I needed to meet was the tanto. I could either work with them directly or I could supply the information they required, for them to do their due diligence. When meeting with the President, I need to finish the meeting off, by asking to have my people get together with their tanto, to supply whatever information they need. Japan being such a polite culture, the President will happily make that introduction even if knowing that there is no chance of this deal going anywhere. This is because it conveniently avoids anyone having to tell me a direct “no”. If it has legs, then the tanto’s job is to navigate the decision through the system. So in Japan, it is better to start at the bottom and work your way up, than try to go top down, as we are more familiar with in the West. The tanto has to become a key messenger for us. If we can’t win over a relatively junior, seemingly unimportant staff member to our cause, then the decision outcome will be remain vague and lifeless. Now we don’t want that do we.
Transcribe →Leadership-Key Competencies Needed To Lead Others-Part One
Feb 12, 202500:14:11Tap to summarizeLeading is super easy. You are given the title, the authority, the budget, the power and then you just tell people what they need to do. How hard can that be? As we know, leading is a snap, but getting others to follow you is the tricky bit. Our awesome power will certainly bludgeon compliance. Sadly, the troops turn off their commitment and engagement switch whenever they come into contact with kryptonite bosses. We get promoted because we personally did a rather good job on our individual tasks. That is a false flag though when it comes to being able to communicate, coach, set the direction and inspire others. Few great athletes become great coaches. It is a totally different skill set. There are four broad areas we will focus on to help us become successful leaders: Being Self-Aware, Accountable, Others-Focused and Strategic. The possibilities are endless, but these four areas will serve us well to elevate our thinking about what is required to be a great leader. Under the umbrella of Self-Awareness we have four focus areas. Self-Directed There is a mental and physical requirement for leadership, driven by a strong desire to be successful. We explore inside ourselves to understand what we need to do and why we need to do it. Someone who can only function on the basis of the advice of others is a follower not a leader. Of course, taking advice is good, but leaders have their own sense of True North and keep moving forward, charting their own course Self-Regulated Being a self-regulator requires supreme discipline. Knowing what not to do is as important as making action step choices. Shiny objects abound, multiplying like amoeba, but time, money and resources are limited. Be it business focus or our temper, we need to rein them both in and assert control. Develops Self Constant application of self-improvement sounds obvious, but many leaders are cruising. The more diligent may be doing a good job working in the business, but they are too busy to be working on the business. Is that you? Technology, society, company culture and organisational development overtake some leaders and ultimately they are ejected from the firm. Where is the locus of self-development to be found? Good question and there are multiple options. Good choices will have a lasting impact on our longevity as leaders. Confident “We don’t know what we don’t know” is a big problem. Before you become a leader there is that misplaced confidence that you know what to do in the role. As you rise through the ranks, you keep making new discoveries. The more you learn, the less you find you really know. Imposter syndrome is a big factor here after we step up into new responsibilities. Constant self-development is the cure for this, as we grow into the job. Accountability covers four sub-topics. Competent This is often mistaken for technical knowledge or business content cover. That capability within your old job is what thrust you into a leadership role. What about your competency as the leader? What do you really know about leading? How persuasive are you? How well do you understand the aspirations of the team? Can you coach others who are just not like you? Can you set the correct course in a raging sea? This requires study and doesn’t happen by osmosis. Honest and Having Integrity Are you honest? Would your people agree? Seeing people as cogs in the machine elevating your brilliant career, jousting with rivals for the next job using the team resources for that purpose and being all about me, me, me is often the leader reality. Think about some of your bosses up to this point. The crust on top of this reality is a false veneer disguising what is really going on. Subterranean self-interest is often voiced over with pious pronouncements. Being honest is about sincerely wanting to develop the team members and integrity is what you do or think when no one is observing you. Manages Progress Towards Goals Obvious. Yet are the goals clear to your team? Is there an intelligent plan? Are people engaged and bought in? Are you the pirate captain simply bellowing out orders and threatening the crew with the plank? Makes Effective Decisions When do you know a decision was effective? Certainly never at the time of making it. In that moment, we are working on hope rather than certainty. Are the team convinced of the wisdom of the decision? Was there any input opportunity for them? Does our power of personality or position power just crush access to the diversity of opinions available? When it isn’t working, are we trapped by pride, ego and arrogance to keep running faster off the cliff? In Part Two, we will investigate being Others Focused and Strategy for Leaders.
Transcribe →The Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Fortune Running A Virtual Team
Feb 5, 202500:14:06Tap to summarizeJapan has some set pieces around leadership. The Middle Manager boss sits at the head of an array of desks arranged in rows, so that everyone in the team can be seen. This is important because this is how the boss knows who is working well in the team and who isn’t. They can be observed every day, all day long. What time they arrive and what time they leave, who is late back from lunch – it is all there in front of the boss. Meetings are easily arranged and follow up is a shout away – “Suzuki, what is happening with that report?”. Now many of the team are at home, away from the constant surveillance of the boss. The boss has little idea how they spend their days and our clients tell us many Middle Managers are still struggling to supervise the diaspora. In many cases, the day would start with the chorei, the morning huddle, getting the team together to go through what is on for that day. These meetups can continue even when everyone is at home. During Covid, we moved it online. Everyone had to be on camera at 9.00am, dressed for business, rather than in a T-shirt. If they didn’t come on camera that was a red flag. There may have been some depression issues bubbling away in the background, as the isolation started to get to people. They began to withdraw. One of my team didn’t come on camera for three days in a row, saying there was an issue with the laptop webcam. Was there really an issue? How would I know that was the case, sitting in my study, at my home? I immediately started organising another laptop to be sent out. I need to see everyone’s face every day, to check how they are doing. In the end, it was a technical issue around the privacy settings in Teams. The point though is, I didn’t really know what was going on. I have to be continuously keeping an eye out for the emergence of any stress or depression in my team. At the chorei we would go through good news reports, the vision, mission, values, the Dale Carnegie Principle for that day, who we are visiting virtually or otherwise and who was visiting us, each person’s top three priorities for the day and a motivational quote. The whole thing took about ten minutes. I usually spent another ten minutes talking about things like taking care of your health, standing up regularly because we tend to sit for too long, issues around coordination which have arisen, the latest news in our business, the cash flow situation and recognising good work. We also had Coffee Time With Dale at 3.00pm every day for anyone who wants to just shoot the breeze and catch up with colleagues, they don’t physically meet anymore. It wasn’t that popular so we dropped it. The meeting cadence with direct reports continued online but it was easy for this to fade or drift. People’s new work from home schedules seem to make it harder to connect. Back in February 2020, when we started working from home, it had a temporary feel about it. On reflection, I didn’t immediately embed some processes I should have. These direct report meetings were a discipline I found I had to really enforce, because many of my staff seem to possess ninja level skills at avoiding talking with boss. I usually want stuff from them, I want it yesterday and I am very demanding. Talking with me is probably a pain, so some are quite creative in escaping the supervision. The biggest issue was coordination across the whole business, as we all descended into our little pockets of responsibility and started losing sight of the big picture. I had to spend a lot more time making sure that key information was being shared and that I was also sharing key information, rather than hogging it to myself. This was a time consuming activity, but we dropped the ball a couple of times because it wasn’t done properly. Before I knew it, timelines started to drift, activities dropped out of completion sequence and confusion was not far behind. This was when I discovered just how detail challenged some people in the team actually were. In the office it got covered off somehow. Being subterranean, it wasn’t noticeable. In isolation from each other however, wrong data inputs have a horrendous impact. They spark a lot of effort to clean up the mess created. It draws people away from what they should be doing, dragging them into the morass of re-work. We tried to get around these coordination and communication issues by creating one truth. There was a live document in Teams that everyone could access and all changes were noted there. As a training company, we had training events scheduled LIVE On Line or in the Super Safe Classroom, so we could see which ones were being executed, which were postponed, who was involved, etc. A limited number of people were allowed to feed into this document to enforce accountability and control. Today, with people at home, you may need a similar live document that tells everyone what is going on, which is being updated continuously as things change. GIGO (garbage in garbage out) is an issue for any document, so the details have to be monitored carefully. To overcome the isolation, one on one meetings were being held more frequently than when we were in the office. However, I found it even harder than normal to get hold of people because they are often holding online meetings or were on the phone. In the office, I could just walk over to their desk and signal to them to see me after they finished their call or grab them when they came back from their meeting. I find our younger people are not phone savvy. They don’t check their phones for incoming calls they have missed. This wastes a lot of time trying to get hold of people, so I had to be pretty bolshie with them, about checking their phones for missed messages and to check their voice mail regularly. It is a real pain, but sending emails or text messages as well seems to be the way to get their attention. Many people are still working from home and are liberated from the daily grind of commuting in Tokyo which is good. They are not necessarily pouring this extra time into their work though. As the boss, I have had to become a much more “supervising” leader than before, which I actually hate. There are many more moving pieces now due to the residue of Covid-19, so whether I like it or not, I have become more interventionist to make sure it all hangs together. How about you? Has this been your experience too?
Transcribe →How To Have Executive Presence
Jan 29, 202500:13:51Tap to summarizeClients sometimes ask us to help their Japanese executives have more “presence”. This is rather a vague concept with a broad range of applications. There is a relevant Japanese concept called zanshin ( 残心 ). A rather difficult term to translate into English, but when you see it, you will recognise it. In Karate we do the predetermined, specified forms called kata (型). When someone is performing one of these kata, there are different points of emphasis and after the physical action is completed, there is a residual energy and intensity of commitment that continues. It is the same in the kumite (組手) or free fighting. After a powerful punch or kick is completed, the karateka keeps driving their energy, intensity and focus into their opponent. In business, we call this intensity “executive presence” but usually without the concomitant violence. When the executive makes a comment, there is an energy that remains after they have stopped speaking and the audience feels that intensity. We also call this having gravitas. Emilio Bortin was the CEO of the Santander Bank, which was a shareholder in the Shinsei Bank, when I was an executive there. He was visiting Japan to check on his investment and we were assembled to give him a presentation on what was happening with the Retail Bank. He was a broad shouldered but not so tall man, but when he entered the meeting room, he was like a Spanish Bull entering the arena, looking for a matador to emasculate. He completely filled that large room with his presence. It was absolutely palpable. He hadn’t even said a word, yet you felt his energy, intensity, determination, passion, strength and confidence. He was radiating zanshin - “presence” big time. “When I am a billionaire like Emilio baby, I will have presence too”, you might be thinking. So, did he get presence when he became a billionaire or did he become a billionaire, because he had presence? We know it was the latter. Right, very good, but how do we aspirant billionaire punters get executive presence? The energy being pumped out is a big factor. Low energy, low intensity people have zero zanshin and so zero presence. Softly spoken people can have presence too I guess, but frankly, you just don’t meet too many of those. There is a vast difference though between being raucous and loud and having presence. Being loud is basically just annoying. To have presence, your vocal strength and your body language must both be engaged at a higher than normal level. In casual conversation we speak at a certain level of intensity, usually fairly mild. When we are in a meeting or presenting, we need to ramp that up by at least 20%. When I am teaching participants in our classes to increase their vocal strength and speak more loudly, they struggle. I say to them “double that energy” and they raise by 1%. They resist because they feel like they are screaming. However, when they see themselves on video, it just seems confident and credible, not loud. This is one element of having presence. Pauses, ma (間), are another critical element. This space between the phrases or sentences, allows the audience to actually distill what you are saying. When you rush the words together, each thought overwhelms the previous thought. Each successive idea canibalises its predecessor and so not much content is consumed in the end. Our messages, in effect, are competing with each other. We speak at a good pace, so that the energy button has been pushed, but we need to break the content down to smaller brackets, which people can more easily digest. We are not rushing, so it shows control and no pressure being felt. This emanates confidence. We hit key words for additional emphasis, rather than allotting equal importance to each word. This focuses the audience attention on what we want them to focus on, rather than trying to ask them to swallow the whole talk, in one gulp. This communicates “I am confident”. This level of control requires us to be very concise. Too many words and the message becomes less clear, drowning in surplus words. We need to trim the fluffy bits right back. Our eye contact is a powerful engagement tool. Spraying the eye contact around the room is fake eye contact and meaningless. We focus 100% of our attention on one person, look them in the eyes for 6 seconds and then repeat the same formula with each person, one by one. They feel they are the only person in the room and we are speaking directly to them. Previous American President Bill Clinton was famous for his ability to engage strangers in crowds, when he was mixing with the masses. He focused his eye contact completely on that person in front of him and engaged them at the highest level. Standing up straight or sitting up straight is super easy, but few can do it. They kick out one hip when standing or sway around all over the place, while they are talking. It distracts from their message and dissipates their strength and intensity. When they are seated, they are sprawled out in their chair, looking way too casual to be taken seriously. They don’t use gestures and just talk, talk, talk. Talking way too much means they are always taking the long way round to get to the point. Little chance for zanshin in this case. Absolutely exude your belief, confidence and power from inside. Drive it into your audience. Use your voice and eyes for powering up your messages. Be concise, so you are distilling and focusing only on the key messages. Break the rhythm with pauses and engage people with your power eye contact. Strong posture says a lot about who you are. People believe body language, so ramp it up. This is how to have zanshin, which is the key to having executive presence.
Transcribe →Why We Need Phase Three Thinking
Jan 22, 202500:13:48Tap to summarizeIn business we live in the world of shallow statements of opinion. Imagine there is a topic for discussion amongst the leadership team. People will let fly with their thoughts and this becomes the basis for decision making, based on people’s statements on the matter. Usually everyone is pretty busy, so the drill is to listen to what was said and then make the choice from amongst the various alternatives and move on. There is a problem with this. We are trapped in Phase One thinking if we continue in this way. Phase One thinking is that first reaction level of contemplation on what you have just heard. Instantly, you pour out your immediate thoughts on the issue. The problem with this is, although it is quick and saves time, there is pretty light contemplation going on here. The famous Greek philosopher Socrates lived from 470-399 BC and was famous for his questioning techniques. He used this method to help others dig deeper into their thinking. We have to take inspiration from him and develop our own questioning techniques. If we do, we will get to a deeper realm of understanding of the issues. This is the platform we need to make the best decisions. I notice this issue in our training classes. When we ask someone for their opinion on something, they will give us an immediate Phase One answer. Because Dale Carnegie was a devotee of the Socratic method of asking questions, our teaching methods rely on us digging in a bit deeper. We are trained to never take what someone says at the Phase One Level, but to always push further. This applies to leadership and to sales. In both disciplines, the students in the classes are encouraged to go further and question more deeply. In sales, for example, imagine we were talking to a customer. They tell us they need the widget in green. We train our students to ask why they want it in green, as opposed to accepting the green option at face value. This gets us to a Phase Two much deeper answer. That is good information, but it isn’t enough. We need the client to go to Phase Three thinking and we do that through further questions. If they said they wanted green, because of XYZ reason, we don’t stop there. In Phase Three we ask, “what would be the impact on your business if your were able to get XYZ?”. We have now elevated the discussion to the achievement of their strategic goals. We have taken them to a much richer source of information to help them clarify what they are doing. In sales, we have started to position ourselves as the customer’s trusted advisor. In leadership it is the same thing. Members of the executive team will give their opinions on an aspect of the business. Normally we collect all of these various opinions and then we make a decision based on that discussion. Often, we are influenced by the force of personality behind the opinion. This is only Phase One thinking though. If we ask them to explain why they think that, we have now driven deeper down to Phase Two. Once we hear everyone’s Phase Two level of thinking, we could make a decision at this point. We shouldn’t stop there however, instead we should keep going. Push them to go to Phase Three and tap into their ideas on how XYZ would strategically impact the business. This is a tremendously simple process. It does take slightly longer than just tapping Phase One thinking outcomes, but the harvest is so much richer. We have all had the experience of having had a discussion with someone, often an argument and a couple of hours later, we are having a conversation with ourselves. We are telling ourselves genius things such as, “I should have said this” and “I should have said that” etc. This is because in the interval, our thinking has moved way beyond the simple Phase One responses we were applying in the conversation. We have moved to Phase Two and Phase Three thinking, but we have missed the boat. Instead of having to wait a couple of hours to get a richer response in meetings, as the leader, we have to get our Socrates mojo working and go for Phase Two and Phase Three responses right there and then. We have to guide our people to start thinking more strategically about the business. You will be surprised by the improved quality of thinking that you trigger. This means the leadership group discussion and the decisions made will also be much better. Let’s all decamp to the Phase Three world and live there from now on.
Transcribe →Kokorogamae For Leaders
Jan 15, 202500:11:58Tap to summarizeKokorogamae is one of those Japanese concepts which are a bit tricky to translate. Kokoro by itself as a word has a wide variety of meanings – mind, spirit, mentality, idea, thought, heart, feeling, sincerity, intention, will, true meaning, etc. It is a radical in the Japanese kanji ideographic script and so appears in a large number of compound words. Kamae comes from the verb kamaeru meaning take a posture, assume an attitude, be ready for, etc. In Japanese, when the two words are combined, there is a phonetic shift of the “k” in kamae to a “g” sound. I first heard these two Japanese words in my karate dojo back in 1971, but never as a compound word. Every class we were given the command “kamae”, meaning to take our fighting stance. For anyone doing Japanese martial arts, this is a very familiar word. The Kokorogamae concept is closely linked to Japanese ideas around perfectionism and mindset. You cannot produce a perfect output, if your mind is not properly aligned with the action. A great calligraphy master will establish their Kokorogame before they wield the brush, the ikebana master will do the same before they place the flowers, as will the master of tea ceremony before they begin to whisk the tea. They perfect their mindset, to produce the perfect output. In my first book Japan Sales Mastery, I wrote about Kokorogamae in the context of sales. What was your true intention as a salesperson. Was it to secure a big commission, bonus or promotion for yourself or was it to help the client to succeed in their business? The mindset is totally different and the output can be a single sale or a lifetime partnership with the client. If you are a salesperson, which is your intention? Leaders also have their Kokorogame. Hanging on many walls, protected behind glass, tastefully framed, clearly written is the Kokorogame of the organisation. In English, we call it the Vision, Mission, Values of the firm. Someone or a group of people, thought about where do we want to take the organisation in a perfect world, in other words what is the Vision going forward? What we do that is the Mission? Why we do that are the Values. This is the Kokorogamae at the macro level. The culture of the organisation is there to police the individual adherence to the corporate Kokorogamae. The leader’s key role is to bring clarity to the Why of what we are all doing. But where does that concept of the Why spring from? Simon Sinik has more or less, become the owner of the Why since his YouTube video went viral. The Kokorogamae concept starts up one step before what Simon is talking about. He concentrates on concentrating on the importance of establishing the Why, but how do you determine the Why of the Why? Where does that come from? This is where Kokorogamae is useful. It makes us reflect on what we believe and why we believe it. As the leader, is my true intention to build up the people in my team and help them become the absolute best that they can be? Or, are they there to serve me, to propel my rise through the corporate ranks, with them arrayed like worker bee slaves to me, the Queen bee. Just as in sales, these goals are not mutually exclusive. A famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar said, “you can have everything you want, if you just help other people get what they want”. Your Kokorogamae can create your own success wrapped up inside the success of your client. As a leader, you can rise through the ranks on the back of the results created by a highly engaged team, who feel you have their back and are focused on their success. The key point is where is the focus of your thoughts about the people in the business? How do you really see them, when we strip away all the psychobabble? To get better clarity on that, we can use the handy Japanese concept of tatemae and honne, meaning the superficial reality and the actual reality. Are you leading based on a tatemae version of what you are supposed to say and do or is the real you, the honne, the one your people see everyday? What is your true intention? What is your Kokorogamae as a leader regarding your team members and the organisation?
Transcribe →Holistic Time Management For Leaders
Jan 8, 202500:10:57Tap to summarizeLeaders are now leading invisible people. Their staff are no longer in sight or at best are only visible in person a couple of days a week. What are their people doing at home? How are they spending their time, how motivated are they, how engaged? Being in the office brings a certain level of discipline with it. You can see if people are goofing off. In an open office environment, you can hear the phone conversations with clients to gauge what is going on. When people are at home though, there is no way to be sure the team are using their time effectively. Time is life. Time management is life management. The key tool to controlling time is the schedule, daily, weekly, monthly and annually. The temptation is to just imagine that time management is only about work time management. We are holistic beings, multifaceted, with multiple responsibilities. We play different roles in our lives and the work role is only one of those. Concentrating all of our time on work throws our lives out of balance. The schedule is the key tool, so what goes into that schedule determines the life we lead. We have parents or children or siblings or partners or friends. Devoting all of our tine to work means that these key personal relationships are starved of the time needed to be allocated to them, in order for us to have a more rounded life. If we are late for lodging our personal taxes, unfocused about our finances because we are too busy working, then we will suffer both now and in the future. Getting our financial lives in order needs time and that time is in our schedule. We either allocate the time for that purpose or it gets allocated for something else. Our health is the same. If we just work all of the time and don’t schedule time for exercise or relaxation, then we will encounter health issues. It is like running the machines 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The production numbers are initially impressive until the whole enterprise has shut down to spend time repairing the broken machines. We start by nominating the key roles we play in life. Work is certainly one of them, but not the only thing. After we establish the roles we play, we can now attach some goals for each of those roles. This becomes important, because the schedule prioritisation process will be run off the achievement of these goals. When we consider the competing goals, we have to make a choice about which goals have a higher priority than others and then time is allocated for the attainment of each of those goals. It sounds so simple and it is. The surprising thing is that you realise you are a multifaceted person and not just someone who works all the time. You need to allocate time to call your mother, to see the kids sports fixture, to go to the dentist, to check your bank accounts, to go for a run, etc. As the leader, this is the concept of time usage we need to be teaching to our team members. If you are running in the wrong direction, going faster doesn’t help. If you rapidly climb the ladder and find it is on the wrong wall, that doesn’t help. What do we want to have, do and be? We need to think about these aspects first, then set the direction, the goals to support that effort and the scheduling, based on priorities, to make it all a reality. Teaching people how to get more done each day at work is fine, but the modern leader needs to see their people in holistic terms. If they become sick or experience family breakups or financial instability because they only concentrated on time allocation for work, then they will not be able to fully contribute to the organisation. What’s more they will be very unhappy and unmotivated and that doesn’t produce the culture that breeds the quality of professionalism we need. The machine will break and require extended downtime. Having a key person in the business experience illness, which takes them out of the picture, can be devastating to the firm. We want our clients served by happy, engaged, healthy, satisfied and motivated staff. The leader’s job is to educate the team about proper holistic time management. If we do that, we will have a much more successful and sustained business. We all spend a lot of our time working, so making that a happy, fulfilling experience rests on getting all these aspects of people’s lives to be in alignment. For that, they need time and we teach them how to allocate that time in their schedules. Are you doing it?
Transcribe →Killing Rumours And Misconceptions
Dec 25, 202400:11:05Tap to summarizeStaffing is a subject that gets a lot of attention from those within and without the organisation. Those outside see staff movements as a bellwether of how the company is travelling. High turnover indicates disruption and uncertainty about the future. Rapid high turnover indicates real trouble within the ranks. When executives arrive in Japan, they often discover a lot of deadwood and they get about cleaning them out. They are wholly focused on internal issues. The outside perspective hasn’t been a consideration in their minds. They have forgotten about their competitors and how they will try to use this information to damage the firm. They think they can operate in a vacuum. Japan being such a risk averse culture, unscrupulous rivals have a field day playing up your instability and therefore heightened risk as a business partner. I remember running ads for sales staff when I was in Osaka. I merrily ran the ads looking to expand the sales team. Now I knew that, but interestingly our rivals took that as a sign of weakness not strength. Japan loves secrets and rumours. With everyone living on top of each other for centuries, keeping secrets is almost impossible and salacious talk and spreading rumours are up there with dining out and shopping as national sports. It was made to look as if we were in chaos and there was high turnover in the ranks. Our customers began to ask probing questions about our stability. No doubt they were doing this after they had been briefed by our competitors on what a mess we were and how we were not a suitable supplier anymore. That negative fallout from the ads never occurred to me in a million years because I was upbeat, focused on the positive, the expansion, the growth. After that near death experience with our customers, I made sure that every ad thereafter had the explanation that we were hiring because we were expanding. What was the additional costs of including those few vital words in the ads – nothing. It was only my ignorance and single focus that allowed our rivals to seek a way in. The same issues can arise from within. Whenever there is an organisational change, do people start high fiving each other, celebrating the new structure as a way to steal a march on the competitors? No, they are concerned about losing their jobs, or having someone invade their turf, lose face, or being dragged kicking and screaming out of their comfort zone. This is a great breeding ground for rumours. The formal explanation of what and why this is happening never seems to outpace the rumours. The top executives are all on board with the changes, because they thought of them, but for everyone else, this is new. In the vacuum, the rumour mill kicks into high gear. The impact is that everyone forgets about the customer, the competitors and concerns themselves with their own best interests and imagining all the bad things that are about to unfold. We have to make sure that every person is spoken to directly and so quash the rumours and misinformation before THEY can gain momentum. Yes, this takes time. But the focus on the customer and the competitor is where we want people concentrating, rather than on what is going on inside the firm. They need to get back to work and the sooner their fears and concerns can be addressed, the faster they can do that. When people quit, the assumption is there is something wrong in the company. Key people departing is especially unnerving for a lot of people, who immediately jump to all sorts of misconceptions about what this means for their own security or the stability of the enterprise. Sending out a blanket email heaping praise on the departing is guaranteed to set up the vacuum, allowing it to weave its magic spell of impending doom for the survivors. We need to tell each person, one by one, what is really going on and assure them that everything will be okay. We will find a great replacement, we can carry on in the departing person’s absence, it is not the end of the world. This is time consuming, but it is the best way to ensure that the official version is the only version floating around. Action Steps When you have turnover whether it is positive or negative, be aware of external perceptions about the change – that perception will always be a negative one, so prepare to counter it Whenever a vacuum in information appears, it will be filled with rumours and misinformation, so you have to grab hold of the narrative and control it Internally, make sure every single person is spoken to directly and don’t imagine for one second that a blanket email will do the trick –it won’t
Transcribe →590 Stay On The Tools For As Long As You Can When Leading In Japan
Dec 18, 202400:10:45Tap to summarizeThe usual advice is to get off the tools and concentrate on being the leader and focus your energies getting leverage from the team who work for you. This makes a lot of sense because as the leader we are supremely busy these days and the pace of business in only speeding up and growing more complex. It also depends on how big your company is. When you get large numbers of people working for you, then the chance of doing anything other than attending meetings basically dries up. And this is exactly the problem. Without noticing it we have been consumed by the beast and we now live in its belly. We are surrounded on all sides by our own team members. We might meet clients, but usually they are not our client and belong to one of the troops. We are there for ceremonial purposes and not to seal the deal. We live at the margins of the business and we are gradually separated from knowing what is really going on. Some leaders may protest and tell me they know what is going on because their Division Heads, their direct reports, tell them. I would answer that what your Division Heads are telling you is what they want you know and that may not necessarily be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It may be difficult, but where possible I would recommend keeping a couple of clients for yourself. That way you keep your hand in with the market, the issues, the problems, the ups and downs of the flow of business. You are getting this news unfiltered and your clients are telling you like it is, with no sugar coating. More than couple of clients will be logistically very hard. We can all probably manage a couple and the intelligence we hear from these sources will be very valuable. We can also evaluate more effectively what our own staff are telling us. There is no doubt that the boss hears the bad news last, because everyone is hell bent on covering it up for as long as possible. But as the boss we operate on a different plane. We know we have the power, money and resources to fix problems and the faster we find out about the issue the less costly it is for us to fix it. So we have staff motivations and our own going in different directions. There is nothing worse than thinking our systems are certainly correct, to only find out that is not the case. We assume things are being put in place as part of the overall ecosystem, but actually there can be gaps. We don’t discover these gaps fast enough when we rely on others to tell us about the gap. In fact, think back to the last time someone on the team told you about the gap compared to when you unearthed it yourself? I am struggling to remember when that happened because it is so rare. The snapper there is if no one is volunteering this information then how do we discover it? This is where keeping your hand in the game comes in handy. We are more likely to see problems or imperfections is we remain part of the process. I was reminded of this recently. I had been teaching our High Impact Presentations Course which has two days in the classroom, then a follow-up half day, a twenty eight week self-paced programme so that the class participants don’t forget what they learned and a monthly Professional Ongoing Education class. As I was talking about these things at the very end of the class, I saw some blank faces. That set off a warning siren in my head to check how we keep people informed about the follow-up programme. And not just for this programme, but for all of them. If I hadn't been teaching that class, I may not have found this gap at all or for many months. We try to really work on providing added value beyond the class content, but all of this effort is wasted if people don’t know about it. I think I have systems in place to make sure the communication is working smoothly, but sometimes it isn’t and I have to fix it. The scary part is I only ever fix the gaps I know about and what happens to all the gaps I don’t know about? There is a cost to being on the tools but also some clear benefits. So take a look at your work and see where you can keep a hand it without the work devouring you.
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