The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Artificial intelligence is bringing a lot of speed to tasks and helping with mundane work.  As we all become better at prompting the machine, we will uncover greater utility for it to propel our work.  It will not be able to replace the human aspect of leadership though. One thing it won’t fix is watching 40% of new hires walk out the door within the first three or four years of employ.  I was talking to an HR person from a very large international firm about this issue.  Originally, there had been a plan to provide training for these new recruits, with a view to keeping them in the company and not having them wander off to competitors.  In the end, they budgeted nothing for the training, so the whole idea collapsed.  The early departure problem is still there though. I suggested that the actual issue is with the young recruits’ supervisors and that this group needs some remedial training.  I said “remedial” because they have to unlearn some bad thinking and bad habits.  Most of these supervisors will be sect

 Many of our clients have told us that Covid and especially remote working situations, revealed a lot about the leadership frailty of their organisations.  When everyone was in the office, the inability of mid-level leaders to lead was effectively masked.  However, once the big homeward bound migration took place, sizeable gaps suddenly became apparent. These gaps were around the communication of the firm’s strategy, direction, the alignment of the team and getting things done.  Each of these aspects had to be updated in a rapidly changing Covid environment, where in the early phases, there were no vaccines and people were dying in droves. The latest Covid variants are highly contagious, but less lethal.  The government has moved Covid down the scale to be equivalent with the flu.  Current numbers are about 70% of firms are back in the office in Japan, so there is now a more complex hybrid challenge to deal with.  Communication becomes more difficult when some staff are meeting colleagues in person and others

 Three candidates in a row with mental health problems and recruiting fees in the tens of thousands of dollars.  Am I just unlucky or is this a trend? Our first instinct as leaders will be to not recruit people who are broken and to avoid those who are suffering with mental health issues. We will worry they will just disappear into a prolonged medical leave absence and we will be footing the bills for the duration.  The issue though is these candidates are often ninja level masters of illusion and obfuscation. The hidden mental health problems don’t reveal themselves until after they have passed probation.  Some recruiting companies have nifty little clauses in their contracts that state if the person isn’t fired or resigns before the end of the first three months’ probation period, then there will be no contractual obligation to replace them and you are out of pocket.  Everyone, go back and read this clause in your existing contract with your recruiters and agitate to change it.  I think 60 days should be th

As a leader, try yelling “be inclusive, be inclusive, be inclusive” at your staff members.  You are trying to move the organisation toward achieving greater creativity and innovation through the benefits of diversity.  You know that becoming more inclusive is the catalyst for gaining diversity inside the firm.  The President and the Executive Team have made the official pronouncements about using diversity to better prepare for a more creative and successful future.  Whatever your own thoughts on the merits of diversity, it is your leader job to turn their pronouncement into reality.  Being a smart leader, you know that just yelling at your staff to be more inclusive is a nonsense and won’t work.  Great, so what do you do about those in your charge? This type of major transformation is not the moment for shotgun style team meetings or town halls to convince everyone to get on board with senior management’s directions.  En masse, that blanket approach will yield a lot of tatemae or superficial acceptance, but

“Does this candidate have a pulse?  Yes? Then we need to hire them”.  Does this sound ridiculous, a fantasy and dystopian snippet from the future?  The Japanese Government says that if we don’t see a turnaround in the population decline before 2030, then the country will get tipped over the edge and into a decline from which it cannot easily recover.  Covid wiped out the tourism and hospitality industries and there are still difficulties in hiring people.  A lot of workers decided these industries were too unstable and have quietly moved elsewhere and are not going back. If you need English speakers, then good luck because they are in massive short supply.  The Kishida Cabinet says they are going to encourage 150,000 young Japanese to get degrees overseas.  This is up from the current 62,000 a year and they want to achieve this increased target by 2033.  That is good and we need this programme to work, but what do we do between now and 2033?  Once upon a time, the foreign multi-nationals had this English-spea

The big chiefs in the organisation have embraced the idea of Diversity, Equity and inclusion (DEI).  Even more, they expect Middle Management to get on board with this push and make it happen.  That means people who probably haven’t spent one second thinking about DEI now have to be the role models for the new cause.  I always tell people that the success or failure of DEI in Japan is decided at the kacho or section chief level.  This is where the bulk of the people are being supervised and where the decisions about coaching, promotion and role allocations are made.  The President has signed off on the idea and the kacho level leaders have to drive this throughout the ranks.  Here are nine ideas for kacho level leaders to consider regarding how to turn the rhetoric into a reality. 1.      Avoid negative self-talk It is not unusual that change represents a challenge and the self-talk we generate as a result may easily become negative.  If we allow this to happen, then the people under our supervision will fol

The organisation gets religion about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).  The senior management team, led by the President, decide this is a key path for moving forward.  The upside in achieving greater innovation and creativity by embracing a more inclusive workplace is seen as the Holy Grail.  The Middle Managers are told to get behind the push on DEI.  Brilliant that getting change in Japan is so easy.  Japanese staff love change.  They want their boss to change, their subordinates to change, their colleagues to change, their clients to change, but they want to stay precisely the same.  DEI in Japan is mainly about gender issues, rather than race, religion or national identity. The male Middle Managers themselves are part of the cohort of not wanting to change, regardless of what senior management may be saying.  No one will openly oppose the pronouncements from the top, but that doesn’t mean there is any real enthusiasm for change. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist wrote a book calle

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are the end goal for companies today, because there is a recognition that the value derived warrants the effort.  The WHY part is certainly well understood and female manager ratios are often being set as company targets.  Key triggers to achieving a diverse workforce are through gaining inclusion within the work environment.  The issues arise though, as to just how to make that goal a reality.  Certainly, if there is an effective communication capability by the team, then understanding each other and accepting differences becomes that much easier.  We all have experienced arguments and fights with people because there has been some misunderstanding or poor communication going on, making it hard to work together. Wishing to be more inclusive is fine, but it takes work and one area is in the communication skills remit.  We can find some people too fast when they are speaking so we are not catching the detail.  There are others who may be too cryptic and we can’t plumb the meanin

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made the following comment on diversity in Japan, “My mission is to create a society where anyone regardless of age, gender and position would be able to play an active role and for people with various experiences and backgrounds to inspire each other”.  Today, most companies in Japan would agree with that statement and are working on improving the degree of diversity in their organisation. We know that to get to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in our organisations, the starting point is to work on improving the Inclusion component.  What happens though when we have disagreements with each other? Arguments tend to create division, bad feelings, distance and even hostility, which are all moving us further and further away from the goal of inclusion which we need to trigger diversity in the workplace. The reality is we will have differences of opinion within any team on how to spend the money, which projects to go forward with, who owns the client, etc.  A good starting point is to

Internal conflict is like a cancer destroying our organisations.  This is normally a massive headache for leaders, but when trying to improve the diversity within the team, it becomes a blocker.  There is a pathway to diversity and that leads to gaining an acceptance of the necessity for inclusion first. Once achieved then diversity becomes a possibility.  Being inclusive with someone you are arguing with or now don’t like, because of some point of conflict, makes that possibility quite remote Companies in Japan have been diligent in organising awareness sessions about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.  Often it is a box ticking exercise though and no one actually measures whether the firm achieved its diversity aims.  In other cases, they took it seriously but there was no result.  The awareness session ended and that was that.  The bridging from the “why” to the “how” wasn’t achieved.  There are many reasons why the transition didn’t occur and certainly one of them is unresolved conflict within the team, act

日本のビジネスパーソンの方々にストレスマネジメントやビジョン設定についておはなしする機会があります。その中でいつもトピックに上がることは、日本社会はとても生きづらい。仕事イコール自分のすべてになっている。忙しすぎ。文字どおり、心を無くしている状態。。。という共有を聴くことはとても多いです。 このポッドキャストをお聴きの方々にも同じようなお気持ちを持ちの方々は多いかもしれません。 最近は、沢山の方々が日本を訪問してくださるようになりました。 私がお会いした海外の方々が口をそろえておっしゃること。それは、「日本大好きです。定期的に日本に来たいです！願わくば日本に住みたい！」中には「今年中に日本に仕事を見つけたいので準備に来日しています。」と言う方もいらっしゃいます。その中には、「日本語をもっと上達したいです！」と、ありがたいことに、海外でこのポッドキャストを聴いてくださっている方々もいらっしゃいます。  さて、その方々とお話しをすると、彼らは口をそろえて、「日本の方々は日本に住めること自体がどれだけ恵まれているかに気づいていないのが歯がゆい。」という事をおっしゃいます。 四季があり、自然に恵まれ、経済大国であり、独自の文化があり、何よりも食べ物がおいしい、人々が親切で、治安が良い。とおっしゃるのです。 実際は、日本に既に住む私たちも、自分達は恵まれている環境に住んでいる事、そのことに感謝をすべきということはわかっている。という状況ではあると思います。 私も含めて、日本のビジネスパーソンの心の重さが軽くなるにはどうしたらいいのか。を日々様々な方々とディスカッションします。  後半では、私が今週実際にお会いした海外の方のエピソードで、皆様の人生に何かヒントになるようなお話しだと思ったことを、この場でシェアをさせて頂きたいと思います。 Ｍさんと言う方のエピソードです。彼女とは仕事を通じてお会いしましたが、彼女は私の親しい友達であり、心から尊敬する女性の一人です。元気で、仕事もプライベートも充実し、大変な責任のある仕事を軽々とこなし、常に余裕があり、自分の時間もしっかり確保できる方です。誰にでも自分の考えを前向きに上手に伝えることができ、自分の幸せを心から追及している方です。そんなＭさんですが、「私も以前はこのような性格ではありませんでしたよ。」と壮絶な過去の経験を話してくださいました。「アメリカの同時多発テロが起こった20

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has become an important topic in Japan and the trigger to getting to diversity is getting inclusion.  When people feel included in the team, they are more motivated, hard working and committed to the firm.  Retention is a nightmare problem which will unfold slowly and terrifyingly for all firms over the next few years.  Getting people to join is one problem in a declining population reality and keeping the ones you managed to hire, will be the bigger problem.  Training them, to then see them walk out the door to the competitor is a very painful prospect to entertain and no one wants to see that unfold. This is where the inclusion part helps us to keep our people with us and not have them stray. One of the ways to improve the inclusion culture inside the organisation is to find the glue to meld everyone together as a team. We want people to be able to contribute and that  means we will have to deal with having different opinions and personality styles scattered amongst the team.

In Part One of Key Factors To Achieving Diversity, Equity & Inclusion In Japan, I covered Building Trust and Psychological Safety as well as looking at the issues around Cultural Awareness.  In Part Two, let’s tackle Dealing With Unconscious Bias In Japan.  Those living in Japan might be grimacing right now, because there is the view that the bias is quite conscious and out in the open. Some of our clients tell us that they have a good proportion of their male staff, who do not support the attention being given to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and say they feel they are the victims.  The post-war period in Japan saw a number of transitions.  One was from farm-based work to factory and service industry work in cities, as people moved out from the countryside.  The US Occupation sponsored breakup of absentee landlord ownership of farms, to having tenant farmers becoming owners of their land, created the Middle Class.  Thanks to Japan becoming a major supplier to the US military during the Korean War, Japa

It is always good to discover new ways of looking at how we humans get on with each other.  As a new leader, inheriting an existing team, the first thing you discover is very few of the team are like you and that they are motivated individually, rather than as an amorphous group.  Understanding people is certainly a key to successful leadership.  I recently came across Ms. Shade Zahral in an interesting video, explaining a four quadrant intersection of courage and humanness.  In this format, courage is shown from bottom “low” to “high” on the left vertical and humanness on the right horizontal from left “low” to right “high”.  I thought this was a useful tool from which to examine the human dimension of work. So if you are high in humanness, but low in courage, you are in the bottom right quadrant.  This quadrant is labelled as “People Pleasers”.  We meet this type of person don’t we.  They are often empathetic types who genuinely like people. They do everything they can to be accepted and avoid any criticism

Actually, we don’t want to lead imperfect people – we want the winners, A Players, the motivated and the capable.  Fine and they cost a bomb, so I hope you have deep pockets.  If you work for a major corporation then that is exactly what you can command, because you have the bucks to sustain that type of ecosystem.  They are also attracted to work for your brand name firm, so it is a happy exchange.  If you work for a small to medium enterprise then life is quite different.  There is a constant trade off of financial resources to be tied up in someone who probably won’t make much money in the first year, against the cost of hiring, onboarding and training them.  The outlays go out in a flood and the return ebbs back in a trickle. Japan, like many other economies is witnessing a population decline.  There will be roughly a million people less in Japan, every year, for the next ten years at least.  That translates into a smaller number of potential staff available to hire and that means compromises have to be m

Leadership requires discipline and accountability.  We claim to know more than the team about the strategy and direction we need to take.  Are we being honest with ourselves though?  We probably made some New Year Resolutions in January and here we are one quarter into the new calendar year and how are we looking on those commitments?  I see the influx of overweight executives booking up the personal trainers down at my private club gym every January.  They clearly are okay to spend the money, because both the club and these trainers are not cheap. These newbies are usually obese and are clearly interested in doing something about their weight to improve their health and performance.  Six weeks later they have quietly vanished. I wonder what sort of corporate leaders they are, if they cannot maintain the discipline and commitment to take care of the most precious thing in their lives – their own health?  Are they credible with their teams?   Maybe I am wrong, but I doubt they can be a genius of organisation,

In Japan, we are in a zero sum game, death struggle for talent.  Actually, we are in the same struggle for even the modesty talented.  We had better get used to a lowering of standards going forward, as we struggle to get people, any people. They aren’t making Japanese in the numbers we are used to and each year the media reports how the number of new babies has declined to a new record low.  The 15 to 34 year old population in Japan has halved over the last twenty years and it will just keep going down.  We are going to face a “free agent” youth population who will be in high demand.  We talk about recruit, retain and advance people.  The recruit part will just get tougher and the retain part is on us as leaders to get it right.  If we can offer the right environment, then people will stay with us.  The problems arise when we have un-reconstructed middle managers who are asleep.  They are like Rip Van Wrinkle or Urashima Taro in the Japanese context.  They are not awake to these new changes and are still tre

 Some may believe that it is better to have staff who will argue back, than have a room full of yes-men and yes-women.  In Japan, in particular, it is hard to get anyone to dispute the boss’s opinion, so if we get counterpoints to what we think, we should be popping corks and celebrating.  This is a fine line for staff to tread.  How can they raise issues with the boss, without seeming to be in opposition with what the boss thinks or wants?  We hear a lot of talk about the importance of creating a psychologically safe environment and most of this is coming out of the West.  Japan certainly didn’t pioneer or promulgate this idea.  Are bosses really comfortable with a psychologically safe environment where their staff can challenge them on what they want done?  There is a lot of other rhetoric about becoming the “servant leader”.  The idea being that the boss’s job is to help the staff succeed, clearing obstacles and empowering people to go forth and prosper.    The problem with a lot of this is we are dealing

 Leaders are time poor.  There is too much to do and not enough time.  We are constantly being challenged to get control of our time management and for most of us, that struggle is often one we are losing.   Meeting and emails are time killers.  Multi-tasking is a given, which means that we are constantly losing time, as we keep having to get back up to speed on something we were concentrating on, to do something we hadn’t expected or diarised for that day. The upshot of all of this is our communication becomes very clipped.  We are speaking in short form all of the time, because we don’t have enough time for the full explanation.  When we have children, we are constantly handing out orders.  Don’t do this or that, don’t touch this or that.  We don’t take the time to explain the why, we just tell them the what.  We carry that same methodology into the workplace.  If we recorded you for a full day, I think you would be shocked to hear how much of your day is telling people what to do. Often we give them no or

 Business owners have a total stake in the enterprise and a commitment level that is always peaking at maximum. They have their wealth enveloped in the business and they take on debt, risk and the trials and tribulations of business cycles.  Executives are rewarded with salaries, bonuses and profit share depending on the organisation.  If you are an executive in America, the leader packages can get up to eight and nine figures.  Your commitment is going to be massive with that amount of reward involved.  Yet, we read about leaders who fire the bottom ten percent every year or weed out all of those who are not peak performers.  What about Japan?  Executives here are modestly remunerated and the vast majority of privately held SMEs (Small Medium Enterprises) don’t make a profit by design, so they can avoid paying tax.  Instead they run as many personal expenses through the business as possible.  The idea of firing non-performers as an architectural feature of the organisation isn’t a consideration in Japan.  Th