The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

How To Command Unruly, Alcohol Fueled Crowds   The Master of Ceremony (MC) goes to the microphone to get the programme underway but the audience are simply oblivious, caught up in their own riveting conversations.  The situation is much worse at receptions where alcohol is already flowing and the people down the back are generating a roar, a positive din, that drowns out the speakers.  Apart from bona fide members of Imperial Families, everyone is fair game in the “let’s ignore the speaker” stakes.  Cabinet Ministers, eminent speakers, famous personalities all struggle to get the attention of the crowd.  When it is our turn, what can we humble beings do about this?   Here are some ideas that will shut down the noisy rabble and provide a proper platform for the speaker to be heard.    Make sure to turn off the background music well before you are ready to start.  Surprisingly, this is often forgotten by the organisers.  Speakers should not try to compete with irritating white noise in the background, so check

How Do You Make People Feel?   We are all pretty average on recalling events, people’s names, locations, sequences, etc., but we are geniuses on remembering feelings.  We are especially good on how people made us feel.  Stop, recall, reflect - how do you make others feel?  Are you a master of the snappy remark, a character assassin brilliantly wielding the sharp put down, a notorious one-upper, a sarcastic sadist?  Or are you a builder of friendships, confidences, trust, regard, cooperation, fans and followers?   Business is deemed to be logical – cool, balanced, unswerving on the road to greater efficiencies.  Ironically, we are such emotional beings trying to be detached, but we are usually not very good at it though.  Dale Carnegie noted, “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic , but creatures of emotion”.  We forget this advice at our peril.  Ever find yourself still chewing over some ancient injustice?  The precise details may grow dim in the mists of time but the

Self Sourcing Confidence  Are you confident?  If the answer is “no”, then how can you become more confident?  If the answer is “yes”, does that extend to areas where you lack existing expertise and experience?  Generally speaking, we are all confident while operating within our Comfort Zone. The tried and true activities are reinforced over and over.  The only problem with this construct is we are limiting ourselves to what we already know and can do.  The growth areas are always located outside our Comfort Zone, but venturing forth is a scary prospect.  How do we either gain confidence in the first place or how do we extend the scope of our confidence? The work environment has a huge impact on how we grow our confidence.  If we work with or for people who are supportive, we can try, fail and grow.  If our boss or teammates deride us for making mistakes, we learn to avoid doing anything new.  If we offer up an idea or suggestion and are met with rebuke, derision, sarcasm or mock, we learn very quickly to neve

Business Five Step Storytelling     Best intentions, higher callings, righteousness – all good stuff but without good communication, our efforts fail.  Instinctively, we all know storytelling is a great communication tool, but the word itself is a problem.  We associate it with bedtime stories and therefore the idea sounds a bit childish.  In the modern era, Hollywood talks about the arc of the story or in politics, the media punishes the lack of narrative.  Actually, this is storytelling just dressed up in more formal attire.   The other problem with storytelling is that we are not very good at it.  It seems too simple, so we gravitate to more complex solutions – frameworks, theories, models, four box quadrants, pyramids, Venn diagrams – anything to appear more convoluted and pseudo-intelligent.  If we present something complex, we must be smart.  On the other hand, anyone can tell a story.  Ah…but can they?    How many really good business stories have you heard lately?  Have you been captured by the speak

Hard Impact Soft Skills     Dale Carnegie Training conducted a global survey to examine what are the key people issues organisations are facing.  The research identified three common macro trend areas: Leadership Development, Succession Planning and Employee Engagement.  The results proved to be consistent across organisations, regardless of size, geography or industry.   Leadership Development ideas have been overtaken by the democratisation of innovation through the internet.  Leaders no longer have a clear monopoly on information, so where to locate their authority to lead?  Dealing with a blended workforce, consisting of four generations, is a new challenge for leaders.   The concept of “only leaders lead” is being challenged by new business demands, where all must lead, regardless of status or operational level within the organisation.  Consequently, there is more demand for staff  to develop personal leadership skills, set and manage goals, control emotions, increase productivity and improve internal an

Mysterious Millennials   Japan is entering a scary world of work.  The tried and true assimilation methods of the past, for injecting youth talent into firms, are starting to falter.  Every generation feels a gap with its successor, but the size of the impending chasm in Japan is generating fresh challenges.    The bankruptcy of Yamaichi Securities in 1997 put loyal staff on the street.  This was a postwar watershed in the company-staff contract.  Shocking at the time, it was followed by something much worse - the Lehman Shock starting in 2008.  The expected compact of lifetime employment security, in return for total devotion, was now revealed to be a mirage.    Millennials, defined as those becoming adults around 2000, are the first generation to collide with two major trends: being fired when your company “right sizes” and a youth population decline.  The end of the old order has created skepticism among young people about the relevancy of their parent’s experiences to their own employment reality.  The

Interview with Mr. Yuichiro Ishihara, Director of Training for Dale Carnegie Training Japan

A Wet or Dry Sayonara?   In most Western economies, a colleague’s farewell is no big deal, just a part of the tapestry of business.  If there is some turnover and the recently departed are being replaced, then that is considered the natural order and life moves on.  Darwin explained it all a long time ago.  Managers applying a typical Western business approach to departures in Japan however, may skip the need to communicate with those left behind.  Underestimating the emotional component of colleague separations here is a big mistake.   Most Western enterprises are “Dry” rather than “Wet” ecosystems.  Dry meaning logical, ordered, efficient, unemotional, competitive and oriented around the survival of the fittest.  Wet on the other hand is more emotional, nuanced, interdependent, harmonious, inefficient and more forgiving of human frailties.  After living here for nearly thirty years, carefully observing the differences with my native Australia, I would proffer the unremarkable conclusion that Japan much pref

BE, DO, GET   As professionals how do we grow in our business careers?  Academic studies usually form the platform to which we add: on the job experience; books, articles, blogs and websites; mentors showing us the short cuts; cleverer colleagues providing insights and continuing professional development through training.  One of the issues with the training component is the effectiveness of what is being offered.  The classic brand name University residencies for executives are limited to the chosen few.  What about the majority of our teams – how can we get liftoff across the whole organisation?   In-house training, either delivered internally or externally and attendance at publically offered training, as well as on-line training, are the main provenance of corporate skill building.  On-line training is relatively inexpensive, easily accessible and in most cases rather passive in its approach.  The completion rates for this format are also extremely low, at around 10%, for self-directed learning.   Classro

How To Give Praise That Resonates Cynical, skeptical, doubtful, cautious, suspicious, worried – yep, that is our usual reaction when we hear praise being directed toward us.  You're the boss, you have read about the power of praising staff, however it never quite seems to work the way it should.  You recognize and praise outstanding work by your Japanese staff to the whole work group, but nobody looks very happy about it, especially the praised. Why is this so hard?   Japan throws up a few additional challenges when it comes to praising people.  We all know about Japan’s strong group culture, the preference here for consensus decision-making and the submersion of individual preferences to the bias of the group.  One of the by-products of this groupthink, is that the boss singling out one person publically for praise, creates issues within the group dynamic.    The majority of the group are probably OK with the praise, but there are bound to be those who feel unhappy.  They think they should have been recogni

Mr Nakatani and the Gold Plated Room   The snow was heavy as the bus pulled out of the Yamashiro Hot Spring Hotel. Twenty minutes later we were deposited in front of a large store, designed to entice tourists to spend up big.  Our tour group obediently trotted in toward an area at the back, appointed with fold away chairs arranged schoolroom style. We were all facing an incredible reproduction of warrior leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s famous gold tea ceremony room.  Every single square millimeter of this room was covered in gold sheeting, including the fire alarm!   Mr. Nakatani, a young man in his thirties opened up the presentation.  About five minutes into the detail about how they make the gold sheets, how they apply them to make a whole wall, the time involved to complete one section, I started to notice something unusual about Mr. Nakatani.  He was speaking in Japanese, but he was doing something remarkable.    He sometimes spoke with passion, energy, enthusiasm and then he would switch and speak in more

How To Avoid The New Year Blues   The end of each year is a pain.  We are racing to get things completed in one year, so that they won’t spill over and mess up the next year.  We are usually rushing around before we head off on holidays, to get it all done.  Being so busy we have zero time to reflect on the year that was.  Presumably, we are learning from our mistakes. Normally we are encountering these errors of judgment one at a time and rarely can sit back and observe the lessons learnt with quiet reflection.  The change over of years could be a good time for reflection and study, but the rush to finish, to escape to somewhere else, all combine to reduce that scope.   Did your year finish with a weighty burden of emails, not deleted, delegated or decided upon.  That is a very depressing prospect with which to welcome in the next year.  Is there a minor Amazonian forest of paper riding high in your in-basket and supported by subsidiary piles on your desk, choking your work space.  Is there a bunch of fine d

Salespeople Should Be Principled   In 1936 an unknown author, despite many frustrating years of writing and rejections, finally managed to get his manuscript taken up by a major publishing house.  That book became a classic in the pantheon of self-help books – “How to Win Friends and Influence People”.  Surprisingly, many people in sales have never read this work.  Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius etc., were all around substantially prior to 1936 and we still plumb their insights. Dale Carnegie has definitely joined that circle of established thinkers, offering wisdom and valuable ideas.  His aim was to help all of us be better with each other, particularly in a business context.  He did this by laying down some principles, which will make us more successful in dealing with others, especially those people not like us.   Salespeople should definitely be friendly.  Ancient Chinese wisdom noted, “ a man who cannot smile should not open a shop”.   Here are nine principles for helping us all to become friendlier w

How To Destroy Our Reputation In One Minute   It is a big crowd, yet the conversation suddenly dies and a hushed silence now sweeps through the room.  All eyes are fixed forward, as the MC tears at the envelope and announces the award winner.  Polite applause fills the air as the proud selectee stands up, glances around smiling and navigates between the maze of tables and chairs up to the podium.  Receiving the prize, obediently posing for the photographer, our winner turns and begins to move gingerly towards the mike.  Facing everyone, personal and organisational brands now begin to disintegrate.    They have that deer-in-the-headlights glazed look in the eye, as they contemplate a packed room full of searching, quizzical faces.  Their throat suddenly seems Sahara parched, words struggle to get out, both legs feel weak, and the mind is a whiteout.    What does come out of their mouths are pathetic Ums and Ahs.  There are particularly strained and embarrassing silences as they obviously struggle, thinking w

http://japan.dalecarnegie.com Your team’s introverts never fight for the brainstorming blue marker pen.  They leave it to the extroverts to occupy the white board, the ideas, the airwaves and the debate.  Consequently, we wind up with a shallower harvest of ideas for the organisation.  Voluminous and loud doesn’t mean most smart or insightful, but too often the same bolshie few dominate the proceedings. Over time this breeds a dangerous winnowing process entertaining a narrow band of ideas produced by the noisy minority.  How do we unleash the full power of these introvert types, who don’t bark and don’t bite?  This is especially important in Japan where the culture drives modesty, anonymity and a teishisei (低姿勢)or low profile.   “Think and Write” is a great tool to tone down the airwaves competition.  Instead of sponsoring a streetfight shoutfest of ideas, like the old style stock exchange floor brokers bellowing orders to chalkies, we start with stone silence.  On adhesive notes, have everyone write down on

Making Yourself Clear   http://japan.dalecarnegie.com Public speaking throws up many fears and challenges for all of us.  As part of High Impact Presentations, one of our public speaking courses, we have been surveying the various participants for the last four years about the types of things they most want to improve.  The most common request, from both Japanese and English speakers, is to “be clear when presenting”.  What do they mean by clear?  The speakers want their message to get across to the audience, to be easy to follow, to have some impact from their efforts to get up in front of others and speak. This is not easy, mainly because we keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!  There are some errors we make which kill our ability to communicate with the audience.  Here are some critical factors to make sure that situation never occurs. Firstly, we should decide what is the purpose of our talk?  Is it to Entertain people, so they leave feeling warm and fuzzy about us and our organization?  Is it

www.japan.dalecarnegie.com   Distress Less   It is no shock and awe surprise that most of us spend more time working than we do on any other activity.  As the pressure to do more, faster, better with less continues to mount the work day just dominates our lives.  Life is becoming more and more hectic, as we all switch to a 24/7 lifestyle, thanks to Blackberrys, i-Pads, smart phones, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.  As a consequence stress levels seem to be constantly rising.  If we don’t want to have major health problems, we must find simple ways to reduce stress at our workplace.   Here are some working habits that we can adopt to minimize worry, fatigue and potential ill health:   1. Clear your desk of all papers except those relating to the immediate problem at hand. The reason we have all that paper around us is we are filing it on our desk.  TRAF it instead.   Toss it away.  Whenever I look in my physical files, I always notice that there is a lot of paper which I never look at and never need.  At th

Why, why, why isn’t common sense common?  We deal with people in our work lives who do dumb things.  They make stupid decisions which fly full in the face of common sense.  It is such a puzzle.  Why don’t they get it, why can’t they see the obvious logical answer?    Reflecting on this phenomenon, we have to draw a clear line between losing our sanity trying to anticipate these crazies and getting on with our work.  That is actually the really scary bit – we can never imagine what they would choose as (for them) a rational course of action, which is actually irrational.  How can we spend our entire day worrying about what someone else might do?  Well we can’t, so rather than go crazy ourselves trying to head off feckless behavior, let’s concentrate on what we can control.   The first decision is, are we the idiot who is the cause of the problem? Whoa!  What if we are one creating havoc and they are just pawns in our game.  That can’t be right can it?  We are smarter than them, we see better and further than

There is a tremendous amount of noise buzzing around in the world of business today.  The noisiest portion is the bit going on between our ears, inside our brains.  We are so busy, so immersed in what we are doing, we are forgetting some of the basics.  The blue screen addiction we have all become hooked on, means there is barely a minute of slow time anymore.  We are texting, reading, surfing, jumping around all over the place. We are running our lives as a meeting conveyor belt, moving from one topic to the next, multi-tasking like demons on speed.  The upshot is that we are no longer really concentrating on what is happening around us, as we totally self absorb.  The skill of communication has become a one dimensional activity, where we are getting out what we want to say, but not really listening to what our counterpart has to say.  We go through the motions of pretending to listen, but we are only involved in partial listening.  Even worse, we are mainly specializing in selective listening. Seeking the