The Leadership Japan Series

Why authentic leadership is vital in 2025, when AI is everywhere Back in 2021, the big conversation was about chatbots and holograms. Today, in 2025, AI has gone far beyond that. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and countless others are now part of daily life—at home and at work. They generate reports, answer questions, and even simulate empathy in conversation. For many, they feel like a companion. But there is a dark side. We now read disturbing stories of unstable people encouraged by AI interactions to harm themselves or take their own lives. This isn’t science fiction. It’s here, and it’s dangerous. AI doesn’t feel, but it can appear to. And when people trick themselves into believing a machine cares, the consequences can be tragic. In this new context, the role of the boss has never been more important. Leaders must become the human alternative to AI—providing authentic empathy, guidance, and care that machines simply cannot. Why do people prefer AI conversations today? The attraction is convenience. AI never gets tired, never loses patience, and always has an answer. For someone who feels isolated, anxious, or unseen, AI can feel like a safe space. In Japan, where loneliness is a social crisis, this is particularly dangerous. Employees may begin to confide more in machines than in their managers. If leaders neglect people-care, their staff may default to AI for guidance and validation. That’s not just bad for morale—it’s risky for mental health. Mini-Summary: People turn to AI because it feels safe, patient, and always available. Leaders who don’t engage risk leaving staff vulnerable to dangerous dependence on machines. How did the pandemic pave the way for this? Covid-19 accelerated remote work and digital reliance. People learned to depend on screens for human connection. By the time AI matured, the habit of seeking digital substitutes was already ingrained. Now, instead of waiting for a manager to reply to a message, an employee can ask AI and get an instant response. The problem is that AI provides efficiency, not empathy. It can mimic listening but cannot care. Mini-Summary: Remote work normalised digital substitutes for connection. AI has filled the gap with speed—but not with real empathy. What are the risks of letting AI fill the emotional void? The most alarming risk is manipulation. AI systems can mirror human emotions, but they cannot judge when someone is in crisis. We’ve already seen tragic cases where vulnerable people, treated to AI’s false empathy, were nudged toward self-harm. In the workplace, the danger is disengagement. Employees who feel unsupported may retreat into AI interactions, becoming emotionally disconnected from their leaders and teams. Over time, this undermines loyalty, performance, and culture. Mini-Summary: AI cannot distinguish between casual talk and crisis. Employees who rely on it emotionally may drift away from their leaders and teams—or worse, suffer harm. Why is the boss’s role more important than ever? Because only humans can care. A boss who asks a team member, “Are you okay?” and listens deeply is offering something AI never can: authentic empathy. In Japan, where harmony and belonging are powerful motivators, the boss’s role as a human anchor is critical. Leaders must check in intentionally, not leave staff to find comfort in algorithms. Mini-Summary: The boss’s role is to provide real empathy and belonging—things AI can mimic but never deliver. What should leaders do in 2025? Schedule human time. Block out time for conversations with staff, no matter how busy. Ask better questions. Go beyond “How’s work?” to “How are you coping?” and “What support do you need?” Listen actively. Don’t interrupt, dismiss, or rush. Coach direct reports to do the same. Human connection must cascade through every level of leadership. Without these steps, staff may choose AI as their “listener.” Leaders must compete by being more present, empathetic, and human. Mini-Summary: Leaders must outcompete AI by offering deeper listening, better questions, and genuine care. Conclusion AI is now woven into daily life in Japan and worldwide. It offers efficiency, speed, and simulation of empathy—but not the real thing. For vulnerable people, the illusion of care can be deadly. For employees, it can quietly erode engagement and loyalty. That’s why the boss’s role is more vital than ever. Leaders must be the human alternative to AI—showing real concern, listening with empathy, and anchoring their people in authentic human connection. In 2025, it’s not optional. It’s the only way to keep teams safe, motivated, and loyal in the age of AI. About the Author Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Why foreign “hammers” fail and what leaders must do differently in 2025 For decades, foreign companies entering Japan have repeated the same mistake: dispatching a “change agent” from HQ to shake things up. The scenario often ends in disaster. Relationships are broken, trust collapses, and revenues fall. In 2025, the lesson is clear—Japan doesn’t need hammers. It needs builders who listen, localise, and lead with respect. Why do foreign change agents so often fail in Japan? Most fail because they arrive as “hammers,” assuming Japanese organisations are nails to be pounded. They issue orders, demand compliance, and move quickly to replace “uncooperative” staff. Within months, good people leave, clients are alienated, and HQ is asking why nothing has improved. In Japan’s relationship-driven culture, trust and precedent matter more than speed. What works in the US or Europe—shock therapy and rapid restructuring—backfires badly in Tokyo. Mini-Summary: Change agents fail because they impose foreign models on Japan, destroying relationships and trust in the process. What makes Japan’s business environment unique? Japan’s corporate culture is deeply relationship-based. Employees and clients alike expect stability, respect for hierarchy, and long-term partnership. Leaders who ignore these norms are seen as reckless and disrespectful. Imagine if a Japanese executive were sent to New York or Sydney with no English, no knowledge of local clients, and an eagerness to sack your colleagues. How would staff react? That’s how many Japanese employees feel when foreign hammers arrive. Mini-Summary: Japan values stability, respect, and trust. Ignoring cultural context guarantees resistance to foreign-led change. How does poor localisation damage performance? Foreign leaders often fail because they don’t understand Japanese customers, laws, or working styles. Policies designed for HQ markets rarely fit Japan. When imposed, they drive away clients and demoralise employees. Losing even a handful of senior staff can devastate sales because relationships with clients are personal and long-standing. Unlike in Silicon Valley or London, relationships in Japan cannot be quickly replaced. Mini-Summary: Poor localisation alienates both staff and customers. Once key relationships are broken in Japan, they are almost impossible to rebuild quickly. What should leaders do differently before landing in Japan? Preparation is everything. Leaders should study Japanese language, culture, and business practices before stepping on the plane. They must also build “air cover” at HQ—support for localisation and patience with results. Quick wins help: small, visible improvements that build credibility. Equally important is identifying influencers inside the Japanese office to champion necessary changes. Instead of dictating, leaders must co-create solutions with the local team. For a comprehensive roadmap, leaders should read Japan Business Mastery and Japan Leadership Mastery, which remain the most up-to-date guides on how to succeed in Japan’s unique and complex business environment. Mini-Summary: Leaders should prepare deeply, secure HQ support, and pursue small wins with local influencers. Japan Business Mastery and Japan Leadership Mastery are the definitive playbooks for succeeding in Japan. Why is listening more powerful than ordering in Japan? Successful leaders in Japan listen first. They try to understand why processes exist before changing them. What seems inefficient to outsiders may serve a hidden purpose, such as preserving harmony with partners or complying with local regulations. Listening builds credibility and signals respect. Staff become more open to change when they feel heard. By contrast, ordering without listening provokes silent resistance, where employees nod in meetings but fail to execute later. Mini-Summary: Listening creates buy-in and reveals hidden logic. Ordering without listening triggers silent resistance in Japan. How can foreign leaders build rather than wreck in Japan? The answer is to be a builder, not a wrecker. Builders respect relationships, cultivate influencers, and adapt global practices to local realities. They hasten slowly, introducing sustainable changes without blowing up trust. Executives at firms like Microsoft Japan and Coca-Cola Japan have shown that localisation, patience, and humility create long-term growth. Change agents may deliver in other markets, but in Japan, only builders succeed. Mini-Summary: Builders succeed by respecting trust, localising global models, and moving at Japan’s pace. Conclusion The “change agent” model is a repeat failure in Japan. In 2025, foreign companies must abandon the hammer approach and embrace a builder mindset—listening, localising, and cultivating trust. Japan’s market is rich, stable, and full of opportunity, but only for leaders who respect its unique culture. For executives who want a practical roadmap, Japan Business Mastery and Japan Leadership Mastery remain the most relevant and up-to-date books on how to win in this demanding environment. About the Author Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Balancing strength and flexibility in leadership in 2025 Leaders are often told to “never surrender” and “winners don’t quit.” At the same time, they are also expected to be flexible, adaptable, and open to change. These opposing demands resemble the yin-yang symbol—two seemingly contradictory forces that must coexist. As of 2025, when Japanese and global organisations face complex challenges from AI disruption to demographic decline, the real question is: should leaders concede, and if so, when? Why are leaders expected to be both tough and flexible? Leadership has long been framed as toughness—perseverance, resilience, and determination. Leaders are expected to stand firm when others waver. Yet modern organisations also demand agility. Executives must adapt to shifting markets, employee expectations, and cultural norms. In Japan, this dualism is particularly acute. The expectation of gaman (endurance) coexists with the need for kaizen (continuous improvement). Leaders must embody both, choosing when to persist and when to pivot. Mini-Summary: Leaders must balance resilience with adaptability. In Japan, gaman (endurance) and kaizen (improvement) highlight this dual demand. Why do most people avoid leadership roles? Leadership is stressful. It involves accountability, difficult decisions, and constant scrutiny. As Yogi Berra once quipped, “Leading is easy. It’s getting people to follow you that’s hard.” Leaders must sometimes fire underperformers, push unpopular decisions, and absorb criticism. In Japan, where harmony is valued, these responsibilities are even more daunting. Many professionals choose to remain followers, leaving leadership to those willing to shoulder the stress. Mini-Summary: Leadership is hard because it involves accountability and stress. Most people avoid it, which is why true leaders are rare. Why is delegation so difficult for leaders? Many leaders struggle to delegate effectively. The pressure to deliver results tempts them to keep control. Yet failing to delegate creates bottlenecks and burnout. In Japan, where leaders are often overloaded with both strategic and administrative tasks, this is a recurring challenge. Research shows that high-performing leaders focus on tasks only they can do, while delegating the rest. This requires trust, coaching, and patience. Without it, leaders end up hoarding tasks that should be done by others. Mini-Summary: Leaders often fail to delegate, but true effectiveness comes from focusing on high-value tasks and trusting the team. How should leaders balance authority with openness? Many leaders mouth platitudes about “servant leadership” or “management by walking around.” In reality, these often turn into issuing orders from new locations. The real test is whether leaders listen and incorporate team input. In Japan, where collectivism runs deep, openness is crucial. Employees are more engaged when they feel heard. Leaders who concede occasionally—adopting team ideas over their own—strengthen trust without losing authority. Mini-Summary: True openness means listening and conceding when team ideas are better. In Japan, this strengthens trust and loyalty. Can conceding actually make leaders stronger? Conceding is often seen as weakness, but in fact, it signals confidence. Leaders who admit they don’t know everything gain credibility. They also encourage innovation, as employees feel safe proposing new approaches. In my own case, developing self-awareness has been key. Recognising that my way is not always the only way allows me to adapt and grow. Conceding doesn’t mean surrendering; it means being smart enough to choose the best path. Mini-Summary: Conceding wisely shows strength, not weakness. Leaders gain credibility and foster innovation by admitting they don’t know everything. How can leaders develop flexibility without losing authority? The key is mindset. Leaders must accept that multiple paths can lead to success. Flexibility requires conscious effort: more coaching, more listening, and more openness to alternatives. Japanese leaders, often trained in rigid hierarchies, may find this shift difficult. Yet flexibility is essential in today’s unpredictable business environment. By selecting the best ideas—whether theirs or others’—leaders strengthen both their authority and their team’s performance. Mini-Summary: Flexibility doesn’t erode authority. By adopting the best ideas available, leaders remain strong while empowering their teams. Conclusion Leadership is not about rigidly holding the line or constantly conceding. It’s about knowing when to do each. In 2025, leaders in Japan and worldwide must master the dualism of resilience and flexibility. By conceding strategically—listening, delegating, and adapting—leaders can inspire loyalty, foster innovation, and remain credible anchors in uncertain times. About the Author Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Why leadership requires sensing and feeling, not just knowing, in 2025 Managers often prioritise what they “know,” while leaders rely more on what they “sense” and “feel.” This distinction, popularised by executive coach Marcel Danne, is more than semantics—it highlights a profound difference in mindset. As of 2025, with Japan navigating demographic challenges, digital disruption, and global uncertainty, the ability to sense and adapt has become more critical than simply knowing facts. What’s the difference between managers and leaders in decision-making? Managers tend to focus on knowing first—building confidence through data, self-education, and sheer hard work. Leaders, however, prioritise sensing first—tuning into people, context, and emotions before deciding. In practice, this means managers often bulldoze forward with certainty, while leaders pause to feel and reflect before acting. In Japan, this distinction matters. Hierarchical firms often elevate those who “know,” but the complexity of 2025 requires leaders who can sense subtle shifts in markets, teams, and cultures. Mini-Summary: Managers lead with knowledge; leaders lead with sensing. In 2025 Japan, sensing is critical for navigating complexity. Why are managers often so confident in their own answers? Managers often rely on personal effort: self-education, long hours, and relentless execution. This creates confidence, even ego, but often without much self-awareness. Many managers assume the path is clear because they’ve worked hard to “know” it. This overconfidence mirrors Western corporate cultures where rugged individualism is prized. But in Japan, such confidence can clash with collaborative norms. A “my way or the highway” mindset alienates teams, undermining innovation and engagement. Mini-Summary: Managerial confidence stems from effort and ego, but without self-awareness, it risks alienating teams—especially in Japan. Why do Japanese firms prioritise questions over answers? Japanese business culture values asking the right questions more than having immediate answers. To a Western-trained manager, this seems counterintuitive, but it ensures decisions reflect collective wisdom. Leaders in Japan often pause to ask: Are we even solving the right problem? This contrasts with the West, where speed and decisiveness are praised. In 2025, Japanese organisations that blend both—rigorous questioning plus timely execution—are best positioned for global competition. Mini-Summary: In Japan, leaders prioritise asking the right questions before jumping to answers, ensuring collective wisdom shapes decisions. How do feelings reshape leadership effectiveness? Managers often dismiss emotions as distractions. Leaders, however, integrate feelings into decision-making. Dale Carnegie’s Human Relations Principles emphasise empathy, appreciation, and understanding as essential leadership skills. Leaders who sense how people feel can adjust tone, timing, and messaging. In 2025, with hybrid work and employee burnout prevalent, emotional intelligence is more critical than ever. Companies like Hitachi and Sony are embedding empathy into leadership development to retain talent and drive innovation. Mini-Summary: Feelings, once ignored by managers, are now essential for leaders managing hybrid workforces and avoiding burnout. Can leaders evolve from “knowing” to “sensing”? Yes. Leaders can shift by gradually reordering their priorities. Many, like myself, began as managers focused on knowing and execution. Over time, through feedback and reflection, feelings and sensing moved to the forefront. For example, Dale Carnegie training encourages leaders to practice empathy, appreciation, and active listening. These skills shift behaviour from control to collaboration. Even small changes—like pausing before responding—signal growth. Mini-Summary: Leaders can evolve from knowing-first to sensing-first through training, reflection, and small behavioural changes. What should leaders do today to balance sensing and knowing? In 2025, leaders must balance data with empathy. This means: Asking the right questions before chasing answers. Listening actively to signals from teams and markets. Using knowledge as a foundation but not the driver. Modelling humility and curiosity in decision-making. Executives at firms like Toyota and Rakuten illustrate this blend, combining rigorous data with people-first leadership. Leaders who fail to evolve remain stuck in outdated managerial mindsets. Mini-Summary: Leaders must balance sensing and knowing by listening, questioning, and modelling humility—skills critical in 2025 Japan. Conclusion The difference between managers and leaders lies in order of priority: managers know first, leaders sense first. In Japan’s complex 2025 environment, sensing, feeling, and questioning matter more than simply knowing. Leadership is a journey of self-discovery—moving from rugged individualism to collaborative sensing. The challenge for executives today is clear: are you still managing by knowing, or are you leading by sensing? About the Author Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Why vision, mission, and values still matter in 2025—if leaders make them real Not long ago, talking about “vision” often invited sneers. Leaders who spoke about visions were mocked as spouting psychobabble. Part of the cynicism came from the poor quality of early vision statements—trite platitudes that could double as sleeping aids. But times have changed. In 2025, vision, mission, and values are essential leadership tools, yet most organisations still struggle to make them resonate with staff. Why were visions mocked in the past? In the 1980s and 1990s, many vision statements were badly written—either too vague, too long, or too clichéd. Employees saw them as irrelevant. Cynical cultures, like Australia’s, dismissed them as hollow leadership exercises. Fast-forward to today, and vision has become mainstream. Companies in Japan, the US, and Europe frame it as a strategic anchor. But credibility remains the challenge: if employees can’t recall the vision, they can’t live it. Mini-Summary: Early visions failed because they were clichéd or irrelevant. Today they are vital, but only if staff remember and act on them. Do employees actually know their company’s vision, mission, and values? Research and field experience suggest most don’t. Trainers often test this by flipping framed statements on the wall and asking staff to recite them. Typically, no one remembers the vision or mission, and at best, a few values. In Japan, where employees pride themselves on discipline and detail, this gap is striking. It shows that leadership communication is failing. Employees can’t live what they can’t recall. Mini-Summary: Most employees cannot recite their organisation’s vision, mission, or values—evidence that communication and ownership are missing. Why do so many statements fail to inspire? There are two extremes: bloated statements too long to recall, or cut-down slogans so short they become vapid clichés. Both kill engagement. Worse, leaders often draft them alone, without wordsmithing skills or input from employees. Even when teams co-create content, turnover means newcomers feel no ownership. In Japan, where lifetime employment has eroded, this turnover effect is magnified. Leaders must find mechanisms to refresh ownership constantly. Mini-Summary: Vision and value statements fail when they’re too long, too short, or disconnected from employees—especially in high-turnover environments. What practices help embed vision into daily work? One proven method is daily repetition. Ritz-Carlton Hotels review their values at every shift worldwide, with even junior staff leading the discussion. Inspired by this, Dale Carnegie Tokyo holds a “Daily Dale” every morning, where team members take turns to lead the session and recites the vision, mission, and values and discuss one of 60 Dale Carnegie Human Relations Principles. This practice ensures even new hires quickly internalise the culture. Egalitarian leadership—having secretaries, not just presidents, lead—also deepens ownership. Mini-Summary: Embedding vision requires daily rituals, repetition, and egalitarian involvement, not just posters on walls. Should companies also create a “strategic vision”? Yes. Many visions describe identity—who we are and what we stand for—but not direction. During the pandemic, Dale Carnegie Tokyo added a “Strategic Vision” to articulate where the company was heading. In 2025, with Japan navigating digital transformation, demographic decline, and global competition, leaders need both: a cultural compass (vision, mission, values) and a directional map (strategic vision). Without both, organisations drift. Mini-Summary: Companies need two visions: a cultural compass for identity, and a strategic vision for direction—especially in turbulent times. How can leaders bring visions to life in 2025? Leaders must test whether employees know the vision, mission, and values. If they don’t, leaders should redesign communication and embedding processes. Mechanisms like daily recitation, story-sharing, and recognition linked to values make culture tangible. The post-pandemic world has raised expectations: employees want meaningful work, and customers want values-driven partners. Leaders who treat vision statements as wallpaper risk being left behind. Mini-Summary: Leaders bring visions to life by testing recall, embedding practices into daily routines, and aligning recognition with values. Conclusion Vision, mission, and values were once dismissed as leadership fluff. Today, they are essential but often forgotten or poorly implemented. In 2025, leaders in Japan and globally must transform them into living tools—clear, repeatable, and tied to both culture and strategy. If your team can’t recite your vision, mission, and values today, you don’t have a culture—you have a poster. About the Author Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Why leaders must nurture ideas if they want innovation to thrive in Japan People are more creative than they give themselves credit for, yet many work environments suppress rather than encourage innovation. Brainstorming sessions often produce nothing but wasted calendar space, or worse, good ideas that die on arrival because no one champions them. In Japan and globally, corporate graveyards are filled with unrealised concepts. Leaders must understand that creativity is not a one-off spark—it’s a journey that requires cultivation, sponsorship, and careful timing. Why do so many good ideas die inside companies? Most ideas never make it past the brainstorming stage. Either nothing actionable emerges, or promising suggestions are quietly buried. Even in companies with innovation-friendly cultures, ideas face hurdles before they can be applied. Lack of sponsorship, risk aversion, and overloaded leadership pipelines kill innovation before it matures. In Japan, this is amplified by hierarchical decision-making. Ideas often stall before reaching senior management because middle managers, stretched thin and politically cautious, block their path. Without a system to shepherd ideas upward, they disappear. Mini-Summary: Good ideas often fail because they lack sponsorship, timing, or pathways upward—especially in Japan’s hierarchical organisations. Where do creative ideas come from? Ideas start with individuals. Inspiration can come from anywhere—external networks, professional communities, or day-to-day frustrations. The broader an employee’s networks, the higher the likelihood of fresh sparks. The problem is engagement. In Japan, only about 5–7% of employees rank as “highly engaged” in surveys. That means most staff aren’t motivated to generate or push ideas. Without engagement, even the most creative sparks fizzle. Leaders must connect daily work to purpose so employees see why innovation matters. Mini-Summary: Creative ideas emerge from individuals with broad networks and high engagement—but in Japan, low engagement is a major innovation barrier. How can leaders cultivate employee ideas? Cultivation requires more than slogans about innovation. Leaders must make purpose explicit, encourage risk-taking, and reward those who step outside comfort zones. If junior staff can’t articulate the company’s “why,” their ideas will lack direction. In Japan, where conformity often trumps experimentation, leaders must show daily that trying new things is safe. Recognising effort, even when ideas fail, builds confidence. The way leaders treat innovators—successes and failures alike—sets the tone for the whole organisation. Mini-Summary: Leaders cultivate ideas by clarifying purpose, rewarding risk-taking, and encouraging experimentation—even in failure. Why do smart ideas need sponsors and champions? Ideas rarely succeed alone. They need collaborators to refine them and sponsors to promote them. Expecting to walk straight into a boardroom with a raw idea is unrealistic. Allies, mentors, and champions must first shepherd it through the system. In Japanese firms, where harmony is prized, ideas must often be “harmonised” at lower levels before reaching executives. Champions play a critical role in ensuring promising concepts aren’t lost to politics or hierarchy. Mini-Summary: Ideas need allies and champions to survive the political journey inside companies, especially in hierarchical Japan. How does timing affect idea success? Even brilliant ideas fail if introduced at the wrong time. Microsoft famously launched its Tablet PC years before the iPad, and its SPOT Watch long before the Apple Watch. Both flopped, not because the ideas were bad, but because the market wasn’t ready. In Japan, timing is especially crucial when companies face cost-cutting or conservative leadership cycles. Innovation requires resources—time, talent, and money—which are scarce during downturns. Leaders must align idea introduction with corporate readiness. Mini-Summary: Timing can make or break ideas—introduce them too early or in the wrong climate, and they will fail regardless of quality. What systems help ideas travel upward? Without an “express lane” for good ideas, most are trapped in corporate silos. Middle managers, often protective of their turf, can stall innovation. Creating formal pathways that allow vetted ideas to reach senior leaders quickly is essential. Some global companies use innovation labs or dedicated sponsorship committees to fast-track ideas. In Japan, establishing such systems prevents good ideas from being smothered by bureaucracy or politics. Leaders who create express lanes differentiate themselves and unlock competitive advantage. Mini-Summary: Formal “express lanes” help promising ideas bypass bureaucracy and reach top decision-makers, ensuring innovation isn’t lost. Conclusion The creative idea journey within companies is long and fraught with obstacles. Ideas require engaged employees, cultivation, sponsorship, careful timing, and systems that allow them to travel upward. In Japan’s conservative corporate culture, leaders must work even harder to ensure innovation isn’t stifled by hierarchy or risk aversion. The true white-collar crime of leadership is failing to apply ideas that could have transformed the business. About the Author Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie “One Carnegie Award” (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban “Hito o Ugokasu” Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan’s Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.

Innovation is not the monopoly of the R&D Department.  Everyone of our staff has highly tuned antennae which pick up valuable commercial intelligence about consumer trends, supplier data and client feedback.  Just because they are not wearing white lab coats, doesn’t mean their insights should be ignored.  Yet that is what we do in most companies.  Innovation is the application of creative ideas into practical products and services.  The germ of the idea is where the creativity component comes in and this is available to anyone.  The journey from creative idea to idea application treads a path which transcends the scope of one individual.  This is where the wheels fall off and most companies cannot capitalize on the latent creativity inside their firms. Our recent global survey on creative ideas at work uncovered some disturbing findings.  Given the intense competition in the marketplace for companies, you would expect that leaders would be doing all they could to seize and shepherd creative ideas through to application.  Yet the survey showed that only 21% of leaders were really actively seeking ideas from anywhere and anyone in their organisations.  Only 23% of survey respondents answered that it is very easy to get support for good ideas in their firm. That germ of an idea will start with one person, but will it start at all?  If you don’t care about the firm and you are not engaged, you don’t care if the mousetrap being built is better or not.  Our research on the emotional triggers for high engagement showed that leaders need to make their people feel valued, confident, empowered and connected.  These are all leader soft skills and depend on attitude orientation and communication skills to work.  However, the numbers do not look promising.  Only 27% of respondents said their manager makes them feel really valued, just 24% strongly agree they feel empowered and 62% said they don’t feel particularly confident in their skills and abilities at work. Purpose is a key word in business today.  Are the leaders actively promoting an emotional connection to the team’s work?  Are the daily tasks being connected back to the company’s purpose by the leader?  You might be thinking, “no problem, I do that”.  However, if we recorded your conversations with your staff for a full day, how much time would have been spent connecting work with purpose?  By the way the boss waxing lyrical about “shareholder value” won’t cut it, as a defining purpose for the staff.  We need a higher purpose here to motivate people to get out of first gear. Psychological safety is a phrase we didn’t anything about at work until recently.  Today, crusty old leaders like me, have to re-invent ourselves and become more skilled at creating, coaching and maintaining workplace psychological safety.  This is not that easy.  Many of us grew up in the “suck it up” ethos of fight or flight.  “If you can’t take it, then leave and we will replace you with someone tougher who can handle the pressure”.  Namby-pamby whiners complaining about their lack of psychological safety are an affront to everything we did in our careers, because we did tough it out and we did climb the greasy pole to the top.  So what?  That is not the current workplace. Times have changed and we have to change with them.  The War for Talent is unending and is actually becoming more intense.  We can’t throw people overboard today,  because replacing them will be a nightmare. We just cannot afford to ignore people with ideas, because we are running the show like a demented pirate captain.   If the environment is considered safe for idea generation then there is a higher willingness to take risks such as putting forward new and original ideas.        

Regardless of what level of leader we are, from neophyte to legend, there are four attributes which we need to master and keep remastering, because business never sleeps.  There are leaders who are busy, busy working in their business and then there are those who make the time to work on their business.  The biggest component of working on their business should be working on themselves.  This however tends to be neglected.  We graduate from varsity, learn on the job, maybe we can lob in an executive education week, at a flash, brand name business school, but the day to day consumes us.  Before you know it, the last serious work on yourself as a leader was many, many years ago.  Often all you have to show for the passage of time is a thinning hairline or more grey (or both), a more generous waistline and higher blood pressure. Leadership as a discipline requires constant study.  We need people to work longer, so the generations in the workplace have increased up to five for the first time in history.  Younger people grow up digital natives, seem terrified of the phone in many cases and often lack sufficient interpersonal skills, because they spend all their time staring at screens.  In Japan’s case formal leadership education is rare because most firms don’t invest and default to the OJT (On The Job) training model. A few generations of this and the wheels fall off.  Covid forcing leaders to operate in a remote online environment, exposed the weaknesses in the leadership cohort education systems.  Many of our clients contacted us to get to work to fix the issues. The areas of greatest weakness tend to be: (A) poor time management, especially not having a rock solid system for prioritising time usage and then having discipline to spend their time working on only the most important items, when they are at their freshest. (B) Delegation of tasks, so that the boss can work on the highest value items that only the boss can do.  Delegation tends to be a fertile training ground for subordinates, to prepare them to step up and take accountability at a higher level.  Bosses who hoard work, because they don’t know how to delegate properly are denying their staff the opportunity to grow.  (C) Coaching is one of those high value tasks which is always sanctified but little practiced.  Bosses confuse barking out orders like a mad pirate captain with coaching.  When we shadow bosses and at the end of the day show them how many actual minutes they spent coaching their staff, they are universally aghast at how little time they are investing in their people. Selling is a boss job for both internal and external audiences.  Some bosses though, mistake spruiking for selling.  Sales is mainly listening to the answers to supremely well crafted questions. The remainder of the time is spent asking follow up questions and introducing solutions.  Bosses need to sell their vision and direction for the company to the team, stakeholders and the shareholders.  If the boss has come up through the sales track, then there is a hope that they can do this well.  If they are technical people, who have come to occupy the hot seat, this idea may be foreign, even repugnant to them.  Nevertheless, bosses not only have to be able to sell, they have to master all of the medium touchpoints which now populate our business universe.  Communication skills maketh the leader today.  Bosses have to be able to compose and deliver messages, all the while being paragons of clarity and conciseness.  This is the Age of Distraction and the Era of Cynicism, so the task to get our message across has become unbearably complex and difficult.  Staff are time poor, constantly minimising everything, swimming against the daily tsunami of emails and tramping from one meeting to the next.  They are often not devoting the right amount of time to digest the boss’s messages. The related skill here is giving presentations.  In this modern era, a boss who cannot give a sterling presentation won’t be boss much longer or won’t rise above their current station.  There are best practices for delivering presentations and a boss who doesn’t know them is defective.  I was astounded to witness a gaggle of executives give two minute talks on why they should be elected by their peers to executive council positions.  These were captains of industry in charge of brand name firms with large numbers of people and significant revenues.  They were shockers.  How could that be?  They obviously hadn’t received any training on how to present and it embarrassingly it was obvious to all. The modern boss has to be a multi-tasking wizard, waving magic wands across leadership, sales, communications and presentation skills.  This is not an opt in function or a nice to have.  We are speaking of necessities here, because if your rival has the full package and you don’t, they will win and you will lose.  We don’t want that do we!  

We are often leadership practitioners, rather than genteel philosophers, pontificating on leadership issues.  Yet, we have probably developed a certain style of leadership nevertheless.  We just haven’t focused on it as a methodology, because we are too busy doing it.  We leave the books and articles to the academics, who study this stuff with intellectual rigour, complete vast research projects and then write about business from atop their ivory towers.  Or we leave it to other successful business people to have ghost writers assemble their mad ramblings into a coherent form and get it published.  Or we have that rare bird amongst businessmen, someone who can write their own tome on the subject. If we think about the concept of kaizen, continuous improvement, it would make sense to apply this to ourselves, as leaders in our businesses.  We should take a moment and examine just what we are doing, why we are doing it and how we are doing it.  In this way, we can analyse where there are gaps, inadequacies and fluff.  Maybe we received our business education in the University of Life or maybe at varsity, but we cannot rest on what went before, because business keeps changing. Sometimes you will read a book on leadership and think to yourself, “I could have written that”.  It is a bit like comparing your kids daubs at playschool with some modern art and see the results as basically the same.  The big difference is you didn’t try and product that piece of art and you didn’t write a book. The process of getting your random thoughts into a clear and coherent story is the discipline of the writer.  We don’t have to publish a book on leadership.  If we search “leadership” on Google we get one billion eight hundred and seventy million results. On the US Amazon site it lists over sixty thousand books on leadership, so do we really need another book on the subject?  However that same discipline needed to write a book is useful to uncover why we do what we do and why we think what we think. Start by breaking down what you do as a leader.  This will be a bit of a shock, because you will quickly realise that you spend a lot of time managing and doing work, but it is not actually leading.  That in itself is a good breakthrough to remind us that we need to work on the highest value items. One of those must be getting results through others and that means more time should be spent on leading the team. We can take a look at strategy.  Is this just some fluff we pump out each year to keep HQ happy and we really haven’t spent any significant time educating ourselves on strategies for growing our company?  Have we noticed that a lot of what we do is down in the trenches and we are not spending any time standing on a sunny upland contemplating the bigger world and devising a strategy for the future direction of the business? We might reflect on our communication.  Another shocker.  We notice that we are telling people what to do most of the time.  We are not engaging them to see what they think, to plumb their experience and garner their ideas.  We are shouting out orders like a pirate captain.  We also notice that we don’t communicate much about the big issues facing the business.  We don’t do many town halls or regular update emails to keep everyone abreast of what is going on.   If we attended a meeting of the regional heads for APAC or a get together with the top brass back at HQ, we keep it all to ourselves and forget to share the findings with the team. How much time do we spend on motivating the team?  This is a trick question because we cannot motivate the team. We can only create the culture and environment where they motivate themselves.  If you don’t believe me, try shouting “be motivated” ten times to any staff member and watch the results.  Leaders get the culture they deserve, so what have you been doing on the culture build front as a leader.  Nothing much? It is a simple exercise to break down the various aspects of leadership in your business and then examine just what you are doing as opposed to what you should be doing.  Yes, it is  a bit scary, but better to be scared by yourself than a rival or the market.  If it goes well, it might be time to reach for the search tool for that ghost writer or getting busy typing yourself.  

The most fatal words ever spoken by a leader are , “it will be faster if I do it myself”.  No it won’t.  If you want to scare yourself, sit down and write down all the tasks that you face both regular and irregular.  That is one long, long list for leaders.  Are you really going to be able to get through all of these items and take care of filing your taxes on time, see the kids sports events, have a romantic dinner with your partner, lie on the couch and read a book, magazine or the newspapers?  In short, you won’t, because you will be working all of the time, putting off life to earn a living.  The treadmill you should be the on is the one down at the gym, not the one where you are working like a dog, because you are trying to do it all yourself. Inherently, we know we should delegate, but we have had prior bad experiences with it and are now gun shy about using this important tool in our leader toolkit.  When I was growing up in Australia there was a common expression that “a good workman doesn’t blame his tools”.  Delegation gets a bad rap because it is a misused tool and the tool itself is fine.  What we are mistaking is dumping for delegating.  What does dumping look like?  My old boss at Jones Lang LaSalle literally dumped two huge file collations on my desk, with a “whump”, they were so thick.  He just said “take care of this” and walked away.  I had to take on the work in those files, but there was no guidance, no instructions, I just had to work it by myself.  Is there a simple and better way to make sure that as the leader we are only working on the most high level tasks that only we can do? Here is an eight step process to make delegation work for you. Step One: Identify The Need Among the many tasks facing us, which ones will lend themselves to being delegated and what does a successful delegation outcome look like in our mind? Step Two: Select The Person This may sound counterintuitive, but select the person on the basis of how this delegated task will help them achieve their goals.  Wait a minute?  Isn‘t the delegation about me achieving my leader goals of getting work off my leader desk?  Actually no.  We are focused on using delegation to build leader bench strength in the organisation not playing “pass the parcel” at work.  Think about the team and identify which strengths need attention and how this piece of work will build this person’s capabilities. Step Three: Plan The Delegation Meeting We don’t plan to fail, but we fail to plan and this is one of the big missing pieces in the delegation puzzle.  Leaders will just willy-nilly grab the person and starting downloading what they want them to do, without thinking the conversation through in any meaningful way.  There are three sub-goals involved here. Desired outcome – what is the outcome to be accomplished and what does success look like? Think ahead to be able to explain what is in it for the person receiving the task. Current Situation – Clearly analyse where we are today both internally and externally. What factors may hinder or help this delegation? Goals – Define and set goals which are reasonable and yet challenging. Step Four: Hold The Delegation Meeting There are four subset goals. Identify their vision or goals. We are trying to align the task with their own goals so we need to be clear what is in it for them. Identify specific results to be achieved. We need to make success clear and also talk about the strengths they have which will allow them to succeed in this task. Outline the rules and limitations. There are bound to be resource limitations around time, money and people.  These need to be made clear from the start. Review the performance standards. To what level of sophistication are they required to deliver results? Step Five: Create A Plan Of Action We don’t create the plan – they do.  This is important to  give them authority and ownership of how this task gets done. Step Six: Review Their Plan They create it but we must check it so that we are all on the same page and have a clear understanding of what happens next. Step Seven: Implement the Plan If there are other people going to be impacted by the plan then the leader’s job is to clear the way and provide any needed air cover, while the task is under way. Step Eight: Follow Up Without micro managing the task, the leader needs regular progress updates so that everything is going as expected and there are no surprises at the end. None of these steps are diabolically difficult or complex.  Well then, why don’t all leaders follow them?  It could be because they haven’t thought about a process for delegation or they fear the time required for Steps Three and Four. Stop procrastinating.  These two steps, Three and Four, are not that big a time steal, so suck it up and get going.  You will never have the time available which you need, unless you start seeing delegation as a tool to develop the talents of your subordinates and treat the whole process that way.  Delegation is just Latin for coaching!

Shareholders put up their future security in the hope of increasing their returns and adding further to their security.  They take risk of losing some or all of their dough.  CEO remuneration is often tied to how well they increase value for shareholders by driving the share price up and paying out regular fat dividends.   Customers buy the product or service, so without them being enthusiastic, the scale of the revenues will fall and so will the share price and dividends.  Without engaged employees, the customer won’t be satisfied with the quality of the solution or the service provision.  If you don’t care about the company, then you are unlikely to care about the firm’s customers.  These interests are not always aligned, so where does the leader need to assign attention? There is no business without a customer and the reason you have customers is because your staff make sure you have repeater customers, rather than single transactions.  CEO attention however is not always focused on the staff.  They can see the staff as a tool for arbitrage in order to get more revenues.  The “pay em low and charge em high” type of mantra.  The USA has confused the world with its up to 300 times ratio between the CEO remuneration and the lowest paid employee.  The fact that many failed leaders of big corporations get hundreds of millions of dollars when they are forced out is also astonishing. I don’t see that as a sustainable model for Japan.  As leaders here we need to be focused on recruiting and retaining the best team members we can afford.  Recruiting them will only become more fraught in Japan and retaining them will be ever challenging.  The way to attract people is by having very deep pockets and paying tons of dough to the staff.  If that isn’t an option, then we need to build a culture where staff will trade money for the environment.  Getting paid a lot of money to work in a toxic environment isn’t sustainable and eventually people crack and look for a better environment to work in. How can we engage our staff so that they don’t want to leave and while they are with us, they want to work hard for the enterprise and want to support each other in that process?  Gallup’s 2021 survey in the US found that 36% of staff were engaged, 50% were either indifferent or compliant and 14% were disengaged.  Japan is hard to judge with these Western surveys.  Japanese staff are conservative in their estimations because they are always thinking in absolute, rather than relative terms. Also, questions such as, ”would you recommend our company as a place to work for your friends or relatives?”, have a lot of cultural issues in Japan, that we don’t have in the West.  This is one of those key “engaged or disengaged” decider questions in these surveys.  Japanese staff don’t want to take the responsibility in either direction.  They don’t want their friends complaining to them about the company they have now joined.  They also don’t want to have the company complaining to them about their friend they have just introduced.  Better to give this question a low score. Overall Japanese surveys are always at the bottom globally but is that really an accurate reflection of the workforce? What do staff want?  Here is what we found from our surveys looking at the emotional drivers of engagement.  Number One was they want the leaders to have a sincere interest in the employee’s well being. The key word  here is “sincere”.  This means taking a holistic view of the employee and not seeing them as an arbitrage opportunity or a tool to spoon up more revenues.  Another key phrase is “well being”.  In this modern age employees are taking responsibility for their kids, but also for their parents, as the latter age.  That means they need a supportive work environment that puts health and family health above company health.  Sounds sensible, but is that the case down at your shop?  As the leader, is that how you are talking and making decisions?  Is this an approach that is sustained right throughout the enterprise from top to bottom?  Are all the leaders walking the talk, starting with you?  There is much more required beyond mere words and slogans to make these approaches the daily reality.  Coaching and communication skills for leaders will rank at the top to encourage staff to believe what the company is saying.  How would you rank these two skill sets across your leadership bench?  If it isn’t where it needs to be, what are you doing about it?  Everything is related to everything else, so it needs a complete solution rather than a fragmented result.  How is that coming along?  

If the client complains directly to your staff member about their poor service, should you go to bat for your team member?  Should you publicly apologise and deal with the errant staff member privately?  Should you make a public show of solidarity with the staff member and criticise the manner in which the complaint was made?  Should you aggressively argue the point with the client?  Should you just ignore it and get back to other pressing matters?  The answers to these real life situations will differ, depending on the culture of your society and your legal system.  America is a very litigious society and there seems to be a built in reflex to not admit guilt, accountability or responsibility.  The upshot of this positioning is to ignore what was said to your staff member and hope it goes away naturally, after the client has gotten their complaint off their chest.  Privately, the boss can then commiserate about the “nasty” client and bond with the staff member. Loopholes are always in high demand in these tense situations.  The favourite one is to complain about how the client communicated the complaint.  If the client is really losing it and abusing the staff member, that is great for the boss.  Now their high horse can be mounted and a full attack on the unreasonableness of the client can be commenced.  It is a bit trickier when there is no name calling and no florid abuse of the staff members stupidity.  A clear outline of the staff member’s failings by the client is annoying, because it is hard to beat it back. An attack on the language can be made anyway and various deductions made about the “accusatory” nature of the remarks and appeals made for fair play.  If the labour market is tight, the boss may be prepared to lose a client in order to retain a key staff member. How about Japan?  Arguing the point with the client is unthinkable.  The same applies to taking responsibility and accountability.  Japanese clients expect this and if it is not forthcoming, they will keep pushing until they get it.  No sweeping under the tatami is acceptable here in Japan.  The concept that the client has to be moderate in their communication of their complaint is a non-starter.  The client is allowed to be as obstreperous as they like and the guilty party has to accept it. So as the boss, how do you deal with your staff member?  Do you hang them out to dry and bear the full force gale of invective from the client, as a good lesson in client service requirements?  Do you stand up for them and defend them against the client’s claims, while privately reading them the riot act?  Do you decide the staff member is someone you would rather retain than the client?  I have recently been in all three of these scenarios.  I have been the aggrieved client, observing the American style of “shift the blame back to the complaining client” model.  I stood by my team member’s claim against the service provider and went hard to support the argument that the service provision wasn’t good enough.  When the shape shifting kicked off, I went even harder to counter that nefarious attempt to slip out of the noose.  I have fired the client.  A very unpleasant client began belittling one of my salespeople, when speaking about her.  I did not accept that libellous affront and staunchly defended the staff member, without hesitation.  I then told my salesperson to fire that client and don’t deal with them ever again and to keep a note in our CRM, for when they get fired and pop up in another company.  Life is short and they are not the type of person we want to spend any time with, so we should get rid of them forever.  And we did. I have screwed up.  I have had to go hat in hand and apologise to the client for my shortcomings.  I have had to sit there and be berated by the client, at length and in great detail, for the error.  I had to be not only accountable, but also sincerely remorseful and apologetic.  I had to determine to give the money back, without ever being asked to do so. In principle, we should accept responsibility for our service or product provision and when it is inadequate we should accept the blame and do everything we can to fix it. No mealy mouth platitudes or counter offensives about “inappropriate language”.  We should be the one to bear the client’s wrath and deal with our staff members in private.  Is the client always right – no.  We should stand ready to fire the client too, if that is what the situation calls for.  None of this is easy, but we have to determine what we mean, when we say we are in the business of serving clients.  We have to set the example for everyone to follow and we have to be consistent.                

Recruiting and developing the perfect team is an illusion, a Fool’s Gold hot pursuit for leaders.  Even if you do manage to recruit great people, an increasingly difficult task in Japan where the population is in decline and the improvement of English skills is getting nowhere, they leave.  They start a family, get poached for more dough, get sick, need to take care of aging parents or a myriad of other reasonable reasons and you have to start again.  The reality is we are always going to be dealing with people in different stages of their career and ability build.  It is useful to know which solutions are appropriate for particular situations. Japan loves the middle of the fence and sitting there is the most comfortable position.  In fact, in a mistake, defect free work culture like Japan that makes a lot of sense.  Building slack into your world means you never get strained to a point where you might make mistakes.  On the other hand, there is a lot of underperformance associated with being in the Comfort Zone, relative to what is possible.  In big companies, if promotion through the ranks is determined by age and stage, why would you care? Just sit tight, keep your head down, make no errors and you will rise, like cream, to the upper levels, although never to the very top.  That might be good enough for many people. The flipside of this equation is you get bored.   This particularly seems to occur with engineers.  They often need something interesting to work on and if they don’t get it, they could be lured to greener, more interesting pastures.  For the rest of us, the Comfort Zone saps our will to do our best work.  What we do is enough, but not all we are capable of and the gentle hum of that equilibrium, where we face no stress, is like a lullaby, putting us into a state of stasis. At the other end of the scale are those working in smaller companies, where they have to do everything, because there are not enough specialists.  Leaders place heavy burdens on them.  They have high expectations of people who are underpowered for high levels of performance.  This could be a gap in aptitude or insufficient experience and training.  The work is overwhelming and they are very stressed.  They run into the conundrum of needing to avoid errors, yet plough through the workload.  They are stuck in the Frozen Zone.  They are erring on the side of caution, because the no mistake culture is causing them to avoid risk and really going for it.  The Breakthrough Zone is where we want people to live.  They are performing at full expectations just within or slightly beyond their capability.  They permanently live in stretch goal land. They are able to challenge new tasks, because they know errors are seen as education and mistakes are tolerated in the messy world of innovation.  What is interesting is that our people could be in all three zones, depending on the tasks at hand.  The movement between zones is also a constant, as work changes, colleagues change and the company direction changes.  In the West, you get hired for a job, the senior leadership makes some decisions about the firm’s direction and next thing you find yourself out on the street.  In Japan, you are expected to make the transition.   Someone in the Breakthrough Zone can see their performance decline when given a new, challenging task.  Like any new task, there is a learning curve and the initial track of that curve is down.  After some period of adjustment their performance begins to track back up again and keeps going up. As leaders, do we know where our people are across their various tasks?  Over time, can we identify the tell tale clues to understand where each person is right now relative to their tasks? Have we got too many people underperforming in the Comfort Zone for some tasks?  Have we given so many tasks to others that they are overwhelmed and stuck in the Frozen Zone?  How many would we identify as being in the Breakthrough Zone.  Can we see mistakes as education?  Are we prepared to accept errors during innovation?  Can we anticipate temporary performance decline when new tasks are allocated?  Are we giving people enough training and support? What is the culture we are creating? We need to know these things if we are going to see the best performance from our crew.  Yep, we are busy like bees on speed, but we need to be watching carefully how people are doing, task by task.  Have you ever done that or thought that way?  If I asked you, could you plot your team in a matrix, zone by zone, across their tasks?  Perhaps, it is time to do just that and keep doing it.  

Leaders are often poor listeners in the modern age.  To listen to our team members requires the allocation of precious time. Advances in technology, especially hand held devices, was trumpeted as unfurling access to more time for contemplative pursuits and work-life balance.  Is there anyone out there who feels they are now more ebullient, because of all the extra time the technology has thrown our way?  Probably not.  In fact, as the pace of life has sped up, we are more time poor than ever.  The mobile phone has become addictive and we are reaching for it almost every second of the day.  We carry it around, we keep it close and we are plugged in 24/7.  Leaders are probably the most time poor in society and so interactions with our team members becomes more and more transactional.  We want something from them in exchange for salary.  We want that report, that update, that meeting and then we rush to the next thing on our To Do list.  If we clocked how much time we spend we each day coaching our people, the results would be preposterously bad. Developing our people is one of the key tasks of the leader.  How can you develop people if you have little clue as to what is happening in their life?  Japan is especially tricky, because staff don’t share much about their private lives with their colleagues or the boss.  For example, if someone is getting married, they keep it a secret until it is a done deal, so there is no possibility of the marriage plans falling over and them losing face.  This means as the boss, we need to make a bigger effort to engage our staff and understand what are the key things in their lives.  We need to see where we can help them advance their careers.  But time poor people struggle with this. I know myself, I have never been busier.  When things are going well you are busy fulfilling client orders. When things are bad, you are busy trying to get client orders.  There is no rest. Everyone working from home has made the whole communication piece more challenging as a leader.  My time poor status has been elevated even more negatively by the pandemic and its impact on business.  As bosses, we imagine we are listening to our staff, because we are too optimistic about our time allocations and priorities.  In fact, we are giving orders, checking on details and coordinating efforts across the team.  This is not listening, because the direction tends to be one way.  “Aye, aye captain” as a response from our staff is not communication.  It is a passive response to our barrage of demands. There are different levels of listening and if we are not careful we can get stuck down the bottom of the hierarchy, at pretend or selective listening.  With ideas, thoughts, decisions buzzing around inside our brains, like a lot of bees on speed, we can miss what is going on around us. People are telling us things, but we have not been able to break away from the thoughts occupying our minds.  Instead, we make sounds that appear to indicate we are listening, but actually we are in the pretend listening phase.  Or we may be filleting the white noise emanating from our staff member and seeking only the most highly relevant bits, ignoring the rest.  It as if instead of speed reading, we are speed listening, skimming through the conversation, picking out the plums and discarding the rest.  We want to move up the scale to attentive listening and empathetic listening.  I used to work with a younger colleague who would continue looking at his computer screen and keep typing, while you were talking to him.  After suffering from that bizarre and unnerving experience, I made a commitment.  Whenever people want to speak with me, I need to physically prop the keyboard up on my desk, turn my head to face them and look straight into their eyes, giving them my 100% attention.  I need to be fully present for what they want to say to me and do no filtering.  I need to relax and really listen to what they are  saying and also think about what they are not saying. Empathetic listening is extremely difficult, if you don’t make the time to speak with the team members.  We need to know what is going on in their life. The only way to do that is to leap off the leader rat treadmill and spend time with them.  We need to take a leaf from the slow food movement.  We need an equivalent slow leadership movement, if we want to really hear our staff.  Slow down with people to understand their perspective, their emotions and their thinking.  We are listening with our hearts, eyes and ears to hear their needs. They are not making as many Japanese as they used to, so we will all be locked in a struggle to the death to recruit and retain staff.  It is a zero sum game. If you cannot keep the right people and your competitor can, then they can put you out of business. The boss ability to listen at the empathetic level is going to reflect the type of culture and environment, where people feel they can do good work.  Get this wrong and no amount of tech will rescue you.  

We have met them.  Thrusters, mad with power and hungry to control others.  Organisation insider politicians who spend all of their time sucking up to the powerful, while lobbying for themselves to be granted more and more status and authority.  The absolute nobody, who controls approval processes and who milks it for all it is worth.  The psychologically damaged and emotionally stunted intent on making our life hell, now that they have been promoted.  The mixture of leaders and power can be a powerful tonic and it can also be a toxic cocktail.  Let’s take a look at five power constructs for leaders.  Have you worked for any of these bosses? Which amongst these are you? Authority power is the absolute refuge of scoundrels. They have nothing going for them individually, but they have three stripes on their sleeve and we have none, so they can control our lives.  They flaunt their position power and try to suppress everyone under them. They often hate their job and take it out on everyone they can bully.  There has to be hierarchy in organisations and there has to be compliance with policies. Leaders are there to make sure that happens but some take it way beyond the original intention.  Coercive power is nuclear brute force unleashed on anyone who questions the leader’s position, direction, policies, actions or who they decide they don’t want or don’t like. When the status title or the three stripes doesn’t impress subordinates, or when they feel threatened, then the scoundrel morphs into the demon.  This is often the leader parachuted into the organisation from outside, who starts looking around for people to disappear.  They want to build their own crew of cut throats who will follow and support them. They use all the power of the machine against you and there is very little recourse.  The infamous Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) is their favoured bludgeon of choice with which to eject you out of the organisation. Expert Power describes those with capability, knowledge, experience, intellect and expertise. They are very smart and accordingly can command genuine respect.  We look up to them as a superior being in their field of speciality.  They are completely confident within themselves and so have no need to belittle others or flaunt their big brains.  They are magnets for attracting followers and fans. Reward power is the ability to garner followers by buying them off. Transactional relationships abound.  “I do this for you, so you need to do this for me”.  “If you don’t do what I say, you will miss out”.  Flunkies, yes-men, sycophants, toadies and lickspittles flourish.  They use the power of awarding promotions to favour nasties like themselves.  As patrons they demand total loyalty and so they trail these minions with them ever upward through the hierarchy, in order to bolster their own positions. Role model power is the knight on the white charger. They have charisma, integrity, vision and attract support from followers who wish they could be like them.  They have expertise like those with expert power and are respected because they can project their capacity beyond specialist knowledge.  They have tremendous EQ, human relations skills and are excellent communicators.   As leaders we are sometimes all of these types. We need authority to get things done, especially when our subordinates don’t agree with the policy or decision.  Not everyone is engaged with the direction the organisation is going and sometimes we have to coerce them to toe the line, whether they agree with the direction or not.  Hopefully we have real expertise in key areas, which justify the trust placed in us by the organization.  We need to reward good performance and encourage others to do more and make even bigger efforts.  We should be the role model for the team.  We are doing our best to grow our bench strength, so we are coaching others and investing in their career trajectories. I am sure we have all seen megalomania gone mad in leaders.  Equally, we have also met leaders who are truly impressive.  How are you seen by your subordinates?  The Johari Window talks about our leadership blindspots.  We can’t see our own faults but they are visible to our staff.  What can you do to investigate your blindspots?  How open are you to painful feedback on your behaviour?  What about all of those grossly unfair statements you read in the 360 degree feedback document?  What are you going to do about them?  As the American philosopher Yogi Berra famously noted, “Leading is easy.  It is getting people to follow you which is the hard part”.    

To SER With Love In the movie “To Sir, With Love”, Sidney Poitier was brilliant in the role of a black teacher in a tough London East End high school.  He was trying to make a difference for these young outcasts to better prepare them for the life they would face after graduating from school.  A very uplifting story about what is possible when we encourage others to be their best.  So what has this got to do with business, you may be asking?  As leaders, we have four jobs.  Run the machinery of the operation so everything works well, provide the vision on where we are going, explain the WHY and build our people.  This “build our people” part is a communications exercise which most leaders fail to do well enough, myself included. Many of us grew up in business in a era when your boss just expected you to get on with your job.  No encouragement was needed, because you were required to do a full day’s work for a full day’s pay.  Praise didn't exist and you found your own sources of encouragement.  Things are different today, but are we skilled enough in the best practice techniques of giving honest praise and encouragement?  This is where the acronym SER comes in. “S” is strength, “E” is for evidence and “R” for relevance.  It is a useful formula to remember when you want recognize the good work done by one of your team. “Strengths” are interesting because most bosses are laser beam focused on identifying weaknesses and fixing them.  They are “error finders” as opposed to “good work finders”, when looking at how people carry out their tasks.  They are searching for defects, time delays, poor quality, unsatisfactory performance, cost overruns and basic idiocy.  If we switch our mindset and look for strengths, then we completely change how we see our people. That automatically changes how we communicate with them.  Now words strung together like “good job” are a complete waste of time.  Please - don’t even bother saying them. The person on the receiving end is fully aware they are doing many things in their work, but still have no clear idea which particular bit they are doing well.  We need to be highly specific about which aspect of their work we are recognizing.  This is how our words have impact. “Evidence” is critical to demonstrate that the boss has been paying attention and has noticed good work is being performed.  By referring to specific actions, decisions, outputs etc., the staff member knows the words coming out of their boss’s mouth are real and not flattery, propaganda or an attempt to snow them into believing the boss is nicer than they really are. Every piece of work is made up of separate tasks, so the idea is to select a particular task that was done well and single it out for praise.  You could say, “Greg, good work on the report”.  Or you could say, “Greg, thank you for your work on the proposal for the client.  That was one of the best I have seen.  You assembled the evidence very comprehensively and you argued the case very convincingly.  I am sure the client was impressed by the professional level of the work they received from you”. It is obvious which one we want to receive.  So, if it so obvious, why aren’t we communicating our feedback like this? “Relevancy” is a key step that 99% of bosses who do manage to offer some praise and recognition completely fail to mention.  We have to recognize the work, offer our evidence to make the praise credible and then take it one important step further.  We need to link the good work being done to the bigger picture.  That can be for the firm’s future, but it is much more powerful if it is linked to WIIFM.  “What’s In It For Me” is a powerful driver of employee self-interest.  The secret is to select that piece of excellent work and then link it to how that is going to help that person succeed in their business and career.  For example, “ Greg, your ability to source key data and then back it up with clear, concise language is a real skill.  That is the type of skill our company values highly.  It also means that you can have impact in your current role. This is the calibre of person we want to make a future leader in our organization.  I know you are working hard and keep going with what you are doing, because you are differentiating yourself in a powerful and positive way.  This will be a big help to you in your career”. If you are hearing that comment, you are going to be fired up to try even harder and push even further.  “Greg, good job” pales in comparison doesn’t it.  Even worse, when nothing has been said at all, because working hard is expected around here, there has clearly been a major lost opportunity to engage your team members.  What is required?  That most valuable of all resources – “boss time”.  We have to make the time to become “good finders” and then take the time to communicate it using the SER formula. If we can do that, then we will make a huge difference to the enthusiasm, loyalty, productivity and happiness of our team members. They will outperform the competition, because a happy motivated team will always beat a disinterested, disengaged competitor’s rabble.  

We know the name Achilles because of Brad Pitt and Hollywood or we may have read the Iliad.  He was a famous mythical Greek hero whose body was invulnerable, except for the back of his heel.  His mother plunged him into the river Styx to protect his body, but her fingertips covered the heel, leaving it vulnerable.  Research by Dr. Jack Zenger identified four common elements which comprise Achilles’ heels for leaders. Blind spots are a problem for all of us.  We can’t see our foibles, issues and problems, but they are blindingly obvious to everyone else working for us.  Remember, subordinates are all expert “boss watchers”.  They examine us in the greatest detail every day, in every interaction. Let’s examine what Zenger found and see what we can learn as leaders. Lacking Integrity Not too many leaders would be saying they lacked integrity about themselves but that may not be how they are seen by their subordinates.  The organization may be zigging but we decide to zag.  We don’t agree with the policy, so we decide to head off in another direction.  There may be promulgated values developed in the senior executive suites and we are not modelling the correct behaviour.  Maybe our big leader egos can’t admit mistakes or when we are wrong. We try to bend logic and justify our way out of the situation.  Maybe we say one thing and do the precise opposite of what we are preaching.  “Do what I say, not what I do” – does this sound familiar? Not Accountable “Of course, I am accountable – what nonsense”, may be our first reaction.  We may be telling our boss that the poor results of our team are because we haven’t been issued with the sharpest tools in the toolbox.  It is all their fault and we are pristine and perfect.  The 360 survey results are a bloodbath, as our subordinates hoe into us for our various failings, but we dismiss the results.  “Piffle. Don’t they know what I am facing here.  The pressure, the stress.  No one appreciates how hard I am working. They have no idea what they are talking about”.  Perhaps our decisions are poor and instead of owning them, we push the blame off on to others, particularly other departments.  “If only IT did their job properly.  If only marketing were more professional.  If only sales was pulling their weight”, ad nauseum. Over-Focused On Self It would be difficult to find leaders who don’t have this attribute to varying degrees.  You don’t see too many wilting violets whisked up into leadership positions.  Self-promotion is a fundamental aspect of getting ahead in business.  The issues arise when it goes to extremes.  Strong leaders can often believe they are in a zero sum game and another’s success lessens their own worth and promotion opportunities.  Not cooperating with rivals or even attempting to sabotage them can be some fallout from this attitude.  Subordinates too can be seen as future rivals who might replace the boss, so better to not delegate to, coach or  provide experience for capable people in order to keep them down.  Uninspiring It would be a rare bird of a leader who admitted they were uninspiring.  We easily believe we are a role model for others, that we have credibility and are someone others would want to emulate.  However, we might be a hopeless public speaker, barely able to string two words together without injecting a series of ums and ahs into proceedings. We might be morose, weighed down with the pressure of our position and responsibilities, permanently in a bad mood.  We might be so busy, we are incapable of directing others and wind up dumping work on them minus the WHY and the how bits of the equation. There is a bitter pill for leaders to swallow to overcome their blind spots.  It is called “feedback” and it can often taste sour, jagged and unpleasant.  We cannot see ourselves as our staff see us, so gird your loins and ask for help to be a better leader.  This is never easy, but the alternative of blundering forward, repeating the same errors is not tenable. At some point the organization will have a reckoning with us and it might prove fatal to our careers.  Better to take our medicine early, under our own direction, than hoping for the best and eventually getting the chop.

In today’s business world, leaders need to be “authentic” leaders. We have all come across this somewhere, endorsed by self-proclaimed gurus and prophets.  I often ponder what does that actually mean?  I am sure all of those Japanese leaders screaming abuse at their staff, when they make mistakes, are being authentic.  They are authentically terrible, dictatorial, abusive leaders.  Actually this worked like a charm for a very long time in postwar Japan.  You joined a company for life and there was only one route for those who changed jobs and that was down into a netherworld of strife, insecurity and lower salary.  In the goode olde days you had to dodge the flying ashtrays thrown at you by your authentically enraged boss, endure their publicly delivered abuse and keep going. Yamaichi Securities going down in 1997, made changing jobs mid-career respectable for the first time for those who became unemployed through no fault of their own.  Can a boss be passive at the other end of the scale? No.  Bosses have to lead the charge, set the direction, check on the milestones, monitor the performance and drive results.  They have to praise those who are doing a fantastic job or have a difficult conversation with those who are failing.  Where is the line between aggression and assertion though.  One boss’s idea of assertion is aggressive power harassment from an employee’s perspective.  In years past this didn’t matter much, because there were plenty of people to go around and it was “my way or the highway”.  Today, we are rapidly running out of young people. There is a temporary pause in hostilities in the talent war here in Japan, which will shortly resume, once Covid is brought under control. Aggressive bosses are self centered, concerned about their career and how they look to their bosses.  Assertive bosses will stand up for their team and themselves vis-à-vis the big bosses and sharp elbowed thrusting rivals.  They have a 360 degree view of what is going on and how actions affect the whole organisation, rather than focused on the needs of one aggressive individual. Aggressive bosses are often lashing out because they cannot control the stress and pressure they are under.  They play a toxic version of “pass the parcel” and take it out on their subordinates.  Assertive leaders know how to keep calm. They have techniques for handling the stress. They realise that their dark, erratic, satanic moods can destroy the motivation and equilibrium of the team.  They are the swan bosses paddling like crazy under the waterline but moving elegantly through the days no matter what is on. Aggressive bosses believe their job is to tell errant staff “how it is” and be very blunt and direct in their speech.  Assertive bosses can be honest and direct with subordinates but the language they choose doesn’t become inappropriate or demotivating.  They know they need this person to recover and get back into the fray and try again, even though their self-confidence is shattered by their poor work output.  When your young staff are useless you can’t easily replace them, so your job becomes to help them become useful. Aggressive bosses often have deep underlying poor self esteem, which is why they lash out and whip people verbally.  They need to establish their supreme dominance over the team and fear is their weapon of choice.  Assertive leaders have a confident self-image and good awareness of their strengths and weakness.  They are at home in their own skin and don’t feel the need to constantly prove themselves or beat up their staff.  Rather they are looking for ways to further develop their team.  They know they are stuck right where they are, until they can groom successors which will free them up for promotion to bigger jobs.  Every firm needs leaders. The person who is the leadership factory is going to be given more accountability within the organisation. I think words like “authentic” need to have more nuanced meanings.  What we are really talking about is someone who is honest, transparent, confident, considerate and a builder of people, because they believe that is the best thing for everyone.  Being an “authentic “bully in this era in Japan, will be a career ender once the top leadership work out this person is a sieve, rapidly leaking talent out of the organisation to rival firms.

Engaging your team as a leader is a relatively new idea.  When I first started work in the early 70s, none of my bosses spent a nanosecond thinking about they could engage their staff as a leader.  What they were thinking about was catching mistakes, incompetence, error and willful negligence, before these problems went nuclear.  That meant micro managing everyone.  “Management by walking around” meant checking up on people.  The construct was that the team were problematic and the boss needed to have forensic skills to stop problems escalating.  That was the age of the hero boss, who was the best at everything, knew more than everyone else and could do it all.  That won’t fly today because technology has made business so much more complex.  Back in 1971 Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon noted, “ a wealth of information would create a poverty of attention”.  This is where we bosses are today, with hand held devices which keep us permanently connected through the flood release valves of the internet.  We are time poor, handling trouble aplenty, struggling to keep up with market shifts and spending too much time on Clubhouse.  What this translates into is bosses are too busy to engage their staff properly.  Unlike the 70s when it wasn’t a “thing”, engagement is known today and expected.  We are doing a poor job by design today rather than through brutal ignorance.  There are three useful foundation tools we can apply to spark the process of engaging our staff. Engagement levels are closely calibrated with how well the direction, values and culture of the organisation synchronise with those of the individuals in the team.  Here is the tricky bit – how well informed is the busy, busy boss about the team members’ agreement with the firm’s direction, their value set and the culture they want for their workplaces? This is where the “poverty of attention” kicks in and bosses don’t know much about their team, because they never ask. There is scant time for asking questions when you are busy raining orders down like missiles on the team.  We can create connections with our team members by asking factual questions about where they were raised, how many in their family, where they went to university, etc.  We may find commonalities of experience or gain insights into what has made this team member the person they are today. We need to have this information as a base, but we need to go deeper to help us understand the way they think.  That means using causative questions.  These are enquiries such as, “why did you choose to study geography at university” or “why did you choose to join that company” or “why did you get involved with parachute jumping as a hobby?”.  You get the idea.  These questions reveal motives for decisions and inform about priorities. The third tool is asking value-based questions.  Our values drive our decisions and carve out our behaviour.  For companies this is often where the wheels come off. The rhetoric about what the company stands for and the leadership behaviours don’t line up.  There is nothing like tough times to reveal the firm and the boss’s true colours. These are not immediate questions we would ask, because they can feel intrusive.  Imagining you will engage someone by getting to know them better and leading off with a question such as “tell me about a turning point in your life” is not going to have the desired effect.  We need to be building the trust over time and once we have gotten to know them reasonably well, we can then ask deeper questions.  We can enquire, “thinking back to the way things have gone in your life, would you do things differently?” or “what have been the high points of your accomplishments so far?”, etc.  Things are in constant flux and a conversation held eighteen months ago may have been overtaken by a series of events in the meantime.  So we have to have to make chances to keep engaging with our team to keep up to date on where they are in their thinking, what are their current primary values and recent experiences. Less time on Clubhouse and more chatting with the team will do a lot more for the engagement of your people and will help to drive toward achieving the organisations goals.

Smirks emerge quite quickly when you mention “role model” and “leaders” in the same breath.  Most peoples’ experiences with leaders as role models have been that they encompass the “what not do as a leader” variety.  Hanmen Kyoshi (反面教師) or teacher by negative example, as we have noted in Japanese.  What are some of the things we should be focused on in our quest to become a real role model for our teams? We can break the role model aspect into four major areas: Self-Aware; Accountability; Others-Focused and Strategic.  Within these four categories, there are eleven sub-categories on which we are going to focus today.  Do a mental audit on yourself and see how many boxes you can check, acknowledging that you are doing a good job. 1.    Self-Aware covers a number of sub-categories: “Self-Directed”. Leaders have to give others direction, so they must be independent types who don’t have to rely on others to know what to do.  They have to be “Self-Regulated” which is a fancy pants way of saying they need strong personal discipline.  The leader has to decide what needs to be done and then marshals everything needed to get the job done.  This effort has to be sustained over time and that is where the self-discipline aspect kicks in. “Develop Self” talks about taking 100% responsibility for one’s own career.  Depending on others, or the company in general, to take care of your career is folly.  We need to represent value to an employer, because if we don’t, then we will be replaced by someone who does.  The tricky thing about business is they keep moving the goalposts.  What was required when you started and what is required today may be quite different. Scarily different. I see so many senior leaders and friends sacked by the organisation, despite many years of loyal and successful service.  A new CEO arrives, a merger takes place or a new direction for the firm is set and the next thing you know, you are out.  If you have been pursuing your own personal growth, then there is a safety factor involved there to enable you to weather the storms.  If you have just been working hard, which is admirable, you are left tired and then on the street. “Confident” is a vague term, really.  What actually defines being “confident”.  We can recognise it more easily than we can articulate it.  A leader who has confidence speaks in a certain way, with gravitas, with a certain finality.  Hesitation never arises and the body language backs up the confident words. 2.    Accountability is another area with sub-categories: “Competent” describes our capability to understand the business and do the work.  Most people rise through the ranks, so they have done the jobs their staff are doing, so they know the content well.  Changing jobs and entering as a mid-career hire can sometimes make the competence piece a challenge, though.  We have to be a fast learner to build credibility. “Honesty and Integrity” are both problem sub-categories.  Honesty is easier to gauge than integrity.  We can see if you are honest and can measure it.  However, while everyone says how important integrity is, defining it is a challenging task.  Saying and doing what you say is a fundamental basis of demonstrating integrity, as is standing for higher ideals.  How do you actually behave when no one is watching?  3.    Others-Focused is a big sub-category and so not all aspects can be covered here, but we will focus on some key areas: “Inspiring” is in the eyes of the beholder, so as the boss, you have to create the environment where everyone can be inspired.  We need to uncover what the range of views on the subject are amongst the troops, to get an idea of how we need to appeal to everyone’s individual needs.  This means making time to talk to people, rather than just barking out leader commands all day long. “Develops Others” means going beyond the managerial functions of everything done on time, to spec and to budget.  We have looked at this earlier. It means putting time into coaching staff and giving them stretch tasks through delegation.  Most people stay functionally at the manager level and never quite level up sufficiently to become a true leader.  Whose fault is that? I would argue it is their boss who has failed them.  The leader’s job is to create other leaders, and every organisation is crying out for good leaders. “Positively Influences Others” is an all weather skill for leaders. Our grumpy mood, short temper, irritability can bring down the motivation of the team.  Also, speaking ill of other divisions or sections to knit our own team together, a weak leader favourite, makes the team doubt the robustness of the organisation. “Effectively Communicates” sounds reasonable, except most leaders are not very good at speaking in public.  They do not generate confidence in what they are saying by the unprofessional way in which they are saying it.  The solution is simplicity itself: we need to get the training to master this attribute. 4.  The last category we will cover here is Strategic. We will deal with just one sub-category “Uses Authority Appropriately”.  We are talking about using our position power for good, rather than self-aggrandisement.  Bossing people around to boost our own fragile ego and having the need for power over others is totally sad.  We are given power to help our people do better - that is the only reason.  So how was your self-audit?  We now have a framework to place around the term “role model” and we know where we have more work to do.  Always a good thing for a leader.