We are all exposed to leadership lessons throughout our lives, yet for most of the time we are unaware of them. When we were children, we didn’t think about what it meant to be a leader. Adults were all seen as leaders and they seemed to be unassailable authority figures whom we had to obey. In sports, maybe we were selected as the captain of the team or maybe we weren’t, but either way we didn’t think too much about what it meant to be a successful leader. At University we might have taken on a...
Aug 31, 2022•12 min
Covid driving us all to work from home has been good for the commuter. For Tokyo, many people typically face three hours a day in lost commuting time, standing around in packed train carriages, waiting to get to their office or getting back home. That three hours is now being spent sleeping, playing with the kids, enjoying hobbies or working. One of the major dilemmas is what happens after Covid has gone or is contained? Every public opinion survey you read, says that the troops like working fro...
Aug 24, 2022•13 min
Leadership encompasses many required skills and mind sets and it is always interesting to dissect the topic from fresh angles to shed some light on areas where we could be making a bigger effort. Japan has hordes of managers, but no so many leaders. The managers here are great at getting the operational side of things humming like a finely tuned engine. They are brilliant on eliminating errors and avoiding defects. Deadlines get met, things work well and the wheels of commerce turn as they were ...
Aug 17, 2022•18 min
All guns blazing the new leader hits the ground running. They are the new broom, sweeping all the detritus away from the old regime’s reign of terror. “Embrace me as your saviour”, they say. Well dressed, even natty, their hair is nice, they look the money. They are the type of front man the organisation needs and a pleasing contrast to the previous incumbent. Good looking, articulate, “hail fellow well met” and you think this is looking good. They take on a much higher profile in the media, bec...
Aug 10, 2022•14 min
Covid-19 cases are skyrocketing every day. Just when you thought we might be getting somewhere, the latest BA5 variant is spreading like wildfire. For many businesses this will make no difference, but for many industries like mine, we are watching those numbers like hawks, praying they go down. Why? Because our buyers are making decisions not to buy, because of the danger factor of getting the virus. If buyers reduce or stop buying, the next thing you have to worry about are cash flow prblems. C...
Aug 03, 2022•12 min
Over the last six months we have been getting a steady stream of enquiry for leadership training. Covid induced working from home situations has revealed the gaps in the leadership abilities of people who are managers. The two roles are actually different, but usually companies conflate them, to expect their managers to also be leading. Did they give them any training to make this leap? No. Yet they complain about their leaders are only managers and are not doing a good enough job. There have al...
Jul 27, 2022•16 min
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 a...
Jul 20, 2022•13 min
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...
Jul 13, 2022•16 min
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 form...
Jul 06, 2022•17 min
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...
Jun 29, 2022•12 min
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 ...
Jun 22, 2022•15 min
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 wis...
Jun 15, 2022•14 min
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 deli...
Jun 08, 2022•13 min
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 info...
Jun 01, 2022•16 min
“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. Fu...
May 25, 2022•13 min
“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 h...
May 18, 2022•14 min
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...
May 11, 2022•14 min
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 dea...
May 04, 2022•16 min
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 t...
Apr 27, 2022•16 min
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 superfic...
Apr 20, 2022•13 min
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...
Apr 13, 2022•12 min
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...
Apr 06, 2022•13 min
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’...
Mar 30, 2022•12 min
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 glob...
Mar 23, 2022•12 min
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 ...
Mar 16, 2022•13 min
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 ...
Mar 09, 2022•12 min
This week we will look at becoming a master of delegation. Delegation is a mystery for many leaders. They don’t know how to get it to work properly, so they ignore its power. This is a busy life and business is becoming more and more complex each year. The leader needs to delegate for a couple of reasons. The most important one is to help their subordinates become ready to step up into their own leadership positions. The fear that a subordinate will replace you is a misplaced concern in my view....
Mar 02, 2022•12 min
This week we will look at getting the team members engaged. Now this is a tricky subject in Japan because what is the native Japanese word for engagement? We always have this dilemma when we try to translate “engagement” into Japanese. In the end, we just leave it as “engagement” in the katakana script which reproduces the sound, but which in itself has no meaning, as opposed to kanji pictographs, which have actual meanings. So, if there is no word for engagement in Japan, how on earth can you g...
Feb 23, 2022•11 min
Meetings, email, social media, reporting, coaching, planning, performance reviews, firefighting, supervising re-work, the list goes on regarding where our leader time gets taken up. Our talent got us into this illustrious position as the leader but do we have enough talent to sustain staying in this job over time. Can we move up to an even higher position and what additional talent development would that take? Are we investing enough of our treasure in ourselves, beyond anything the organisation...
Feb 16, 2022•12 min
We have seen the Hollywood version of leaders who are master blaster motivators. These charismatic leaders gather the team together and give a rousing call to arms to slay the problem. They persuade the team to go beyond their personal limitations and get the job done. In real life, usually the leader isn’t necessarily charismatic, nor a spirited orator. If you are leading in Japan, there is a strong chance that there are two languages in play and you are more likely to be better in one than the...
Feb 09, 2022•12 min
