The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

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

Thrusting oneself into leadership positions usually relies on confidence, drive, capability and ambition.  All good stuff, but those are not necessarily the key reasons we follow someone.  Of course, if they lack confidence, then they are radio-active and won’t command any followship.  To take on the accountability of the leader, you need to have that inner drive and ambition to want to position yourself above others.  Finally, you have to have the goods. If you are not good at the business then you lack credibility, especially with smart, competent people.  However, these attributes are not enough.  The calibration by the team on whether they will follow you has a big values component.  We might initially be snowed by the confidence, drive, capability and ambition, but if we flag the values are not correct, then things fall apart rapidly.   We can admire leaders for what they have.  They could be physically attractive people, well dressed and bristling with the accoutrements of power.  The big house in a ton

Kokorogamae means to clarify your true intention. It is a compound word combining two characters – one for kokoro and the other for kamae, which becomes gamae when in the compound format.  Kokoro can be translated as our spirit and kamae as our stance.  If you have studied a Japanese traditional martial art, you will recognise kamae as the command to take your fighting stance.  Why is this idea of your true intention important for those of us in business?   We talk a lot about trust is business, but this is the outward manifestation of our inner thoughts, which in turn guides our actions.  Kokorogamae as a concept goes straight to the spark of the idea, the attitude, the approach, the true intention.  In traditional Japanese arts such as ikebana, the master will strip the stems of the leaves themselves, rather than leaving it to their assistants.  Similarly, in shodo, the master will grind the inkstone to produce the ink for the calligraphy to be written.  In martial arts, the master will sit quietly at the s

When we think about leadership what is the perspective we are taking?  There are many ways of thinking about this, but today let’s consider some different perspectives which create tension for us as leaders.  “Make sure everyone follows the rules and we will get ahead”, sounds like reasonable advice.  Compliance, regulatory rules, internal systems, standard operating procedures all push us in this “conform” direction.    “Break all the rules, innovate, practice shoshin – the beginner’s mind – and let’s start with a blank sheet of paper”, sounds like reasonable advice.  Freeing our people from group think, conformity, too many proscribing rules, pushes us in non-conformist directions.  How can we hold these two countervailing thoughts in our minds at the same time and lead others, all the while providing a clear direction?   Usually, we are promoted to leader because we followed the rules, did a brilliant job on our accountabilities and have proven we can be trusted.  We are told to take care of others now and

Business is stressful.  It becomes very stressful when your industry is hit by a global pandemic.  Just when you start to believe we might be finally escaping the death roll of the virus, we get Omicron pop up and raise the ante completely.  Just to add to the stress levels we now look like we are entering a global economic meltdown, because of the impact of the war in the Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia.  Oil, gas and grains are rapidly rising in price as are the delivery mechanisms of the global supply chain. If you are in certain industries the pandemic has smashed you, however other sectors have been sailing along quite unaffected. A global recession however, is much more democratic and will share the pain with everyone.  As leaders we have to be the rock for our teams.  Everyone gets nervous about their job and in some cases about whether the company can survive a one-two punch of the pandemic followed by a global recession?   “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” is an old mantra.  For le

Giving feedback at any time about performance issues is always fraught. Providing constructive feedback is one of those areas which we often dread, only surpassed by the prospect of having to give negative feedback.  Ideally, we can avoid negative feedback altogether and turn it into a more positive version. Nevertheless, those on the receiving end of anything but adulation and lavish praise, are rarely in a positive mindset about receiving corrective feedback.  They are keen to justify what they did, sometimes deny it was their fault or try to wriggle out of it and shift the blame to someone else.  It is extremely rare for someone to put their hand up and take ownership for problems.  What can we do about giving feedback?   Here are nine ideas on giving better, positive feedback. Be certain the feedback is positive and constructive. Don’t boost your own ego or pull an authority powerplay of blatant status affirmation, by putting down others less knowledgeable or less skilled. Whenever someone is struggling

How did it go last week delegating to your team members?   This week we will look at accountability.   Having delegated a task, we must make sure that the delegate maintains a strong sense of accountability for the results.  If we did a good job selling the delegation to the individual we have chosen for the task, then there shouldn’t be too much to worry about regarding them carrying out the project.  The issues arise when we think we were successful in persuading them why this task completion is in their best interests, but we weren’t as persuasive as we imagined.    Business moves quickly and perhaps when we spoke to them, there was some margin in their schedule, but now something else has popped up and they start allocating more time to that endeavour and let our delegated task slip and slide. They are reallocating their priorities and we have a mismatch between what we think is happening and what is really happening.  How do we make sure that isn’t the case?    Micro-managing people isn’t effective.  Nob