The Leadership Japan Series By Dale Carnegie Training Japan

http://japan.dalecarnegie.com Presentation Effectiveness For All   We are such a judgmental lot aren’t we!  We form opinions about people within seconds of seeing them, often even before we hear them speak.  We judge their dress, their body language, their style without knowing anything about them as a person.  We are slow to unwind our first impression as well, so those first seconds of any interaction are vital.    We are all critics too, when it comes to presentations. We want the best, we want to be educated, entertained, wowed in our seats and we are usually disappointed.  We carry that history of disappointment around with us like heavy baggage, to the next presentation.  We shamelessly hold others to a level of accountability, we never wish imposed upon us!   The cold, hard reality is that Presentation Effectiveness can be a make or break skill in the workplace. At some point in your career you will be asked to present information to a group. It doesn't have to be a formal occasion.  It might just mea

Dealing with Your Own Mistakes   We want people to fail!  That’s right, because we all know that we are the product today of all of our accumulated failures.  We have learnt what works and does not work by trying something, failing and then adjusting the way we do things.    American Basketball Coach John Wooden once said, "Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be." The obvious point he was trying to convey is that everyone makes mistakes and fails. It is what you do after the mistake or failure that makes all the difference.   This attitude to mistakes is particularly relevant here in Japan.  Errors are viewed very dimly in Japan.  In fact, the fear of making an error is so strong, that people are very cautious about anything new or unfamiliar, as the mistake incidence is likely to be higher.   If you grow up in Japan, you will have had this idea drummed into your head from an early age.  I encountered this when I was working with a visiting Japanese film crew, doing a shoot for a magazine imag

Dale Carnegie Training Japan: http://japan.dalecarnegie.com/mainsite/ It's inevitable - at some point disagreements are going to come up in the workplace. Power struggles, political plays, sectionalism, siloism – the list goes on regarding sources of organizational conflict.  As we all know, disagreements can get heated quickly and it can be difficult to put aside our opinions and biases in order to handle the situation diplomatically.  Powerfully motivated people often have powerful egos and when conflicts arise, teamwork can be compromised. Positive collaboration is a product of the culture created in the organization and needs to be built and rebuilt all the time.  It doesn’t have to be a “winner takes all” and the losers are vanquished in a battle of wills and egos.  There are several tried and true methods to "disagree agreeably” with colleagues and get the issues out on the table, but still preserve the teamwork.  Read on to learn how to navigate a disagreement in an empathetic manner while presenting y

Dale Carnegie Training Japan: http://japan.dalecarnegie.com/mainsite/ In the war for talent, high potential employees are one of any organisation's most valuable resources. They have what it takes to succeed, tackle difficult projects, and eventually function as a leader within your organisation. However, if they are not engaged or properly motivated, they will oftentimes leave in search of more challenging or fulfilling opportunities. Needless to say, the loss of a high potential employee can be devastating and their replacement costly. In Japan, the population of 14-24 year olds has halved in the last 10 years.  So, we have to recognize we are going to have to do a lot better at retaining people.  What we don’t want to see are our highly trained people going across to our competitors.  The dainishinsotsu phenomenon, where new employees out of university are departing 3-4 years into the job, will potentially grow to epidemic proportions, as a bidding war erupts to secure a diminishing supply of young worker

japan.dalecarnegie.com   Credibility Is King in Sales Salespeople are carrying around a lot of baggage with them when they visit clients.  The smooth talking, dodgy sales person trying to con us, is the folkloric villain of the piece.  Reversing that doubt and hesitation is critical to gaining acceptance as a valuable business partner for the client.  This entire problem is magnified when we meet the client for the first time.  Because they don’t know us, their default position is one of caution and doubt.  We have all grown up being rewarded for being risk averse and so we are resistant to change.  The new salesperson represents “change” – asking the client to buy something new or to change suppliers.  We need to break through that mental protective wall erected by the client and establish trust and credibility, so we can properly serve them. Great – but how do we do that?  Try crafting a Credibility Statement.  This is a succinct summary that will grab the attention of the client and help to reduce their r

Dale Carnegie Training Japan: http://japan.dalecarnegie.com/mainsite/ How To Be Likeable and Trustworthy In Sales The first few seconds decides all   It has always been astonishing to me how hopeless some salespeople are in Japan.  Over the last 20 years, I have been through thousands of job interviews with salespeople.  We teach sales for our clients and so as a training company we see the good, the bad and the ugly - a very broad gamut of salespeople.  We also buy services and products ourselves and so are actively on the receiving end of the sales process.  Well actually that is a blatant exaggeration.  There are almost no salespeople operating in japan using a sales process.  But there are millions of them just winging it (badly).    Why?  On The Job Training (OJT) is the main training pedagogical system in Japan for training the new salesperson.  This works well if your boss has a clue and knows about selling.  Sadly, there are few sales leaders like that populating the Japan sales horizon.  So what you

Dale Carnegie Training Japan: http://japan.dalecarnegie.com/ Middle Management Madness Why 70/20/10 Doesn’t Work in Japan Senior leaders must work through people and the key leverage group are Middle Managers.  Doing more, faster, better with less, screams out for delegation.  Putting aside the issue of basic delegation nous on the part of the leaders, the capability of the delegatees to pick up the shield and spear, makes or breaks organisations.  Middle Managers are the corporate glue.  Market and system noise are filtered, sorted, nuanced and passed up to senior leaders.  They must also amplify the key direction and messages to everyone below.  Well, in theory this is the case - what about the practice?  Middle Managers in Japan are tutored by their sempai – their seniors.  The seniors themselves were similarly tutored.  Looking at the postwar period there are distinct periods of managerial mis-development.  The military officers returning from the war came back to a devastated economy and were placed in

Episode 63:  THE Leadership Japan Series - How to be a Leader Who Can Super Motivate Staff Today we are going to listen to a presentation given to McGill University MBA class here in Tokyo on how to be a leader who can super motivate staff. Staff Intro:  Greg is a big supporter of this program.  He’s been coming here to talk since about 2007, years and years ago.  He actually gave the graduation speech in 2009.  We really appreciate Greg coming back to speak with us.  Today’s format is similar to before.  We’ll have a presentation by Greg and then questions and answers, and then we’ll spend a little bit of time to give you a chance to network and exchange meishi if you like.  Greg:  What I am going to talk about today is leadership and how to motivate people. One of the issues in successful business is it is very hard to be successful if you can’t take the people with you, unless you want to be doing everything yourself.  Leading people is not such a straightforward thing.  What are some of the issues that y

Episode 52:  THE Leadership Japan Series - How to Use PowerPoint, Etc. (Properly) When Presenting Intro:  Greg:  Konnichiwa and welcome to Episode 52 of THE Leadership Japan series.  I’m your host in Tokyo, Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, and much more importantly you are a student of leadership, highly motivated to be the best in your business field.   If you enjoy the program then you might consider subscribing on iTunes.  Also, if you would like your own access to 102 years of the accumulated wisdom of Dale Carnegie training through free white-papers, guidebooks, reports, training videos, blogs, course information plus much much more, then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.  Today, we are going to discuss the proper use of PowerPoint when presenting. Greg:  Welcome to Dale Carnegie Training Japan, High-Impact Presentations.  Today we are going to look at the proper use of visuals when we are presenting.  Many people ask us at Dale Carnegie, what should I do with preparing my PowerPoin

Dale Carnegie Training Japan: http://japan.dalecarnegie.com/ Stop Destroying Your Business Leadership “cancer “is quietly killing the organisation Careers are cut off at the knees and businesses destroyed when people problems are allowed to fester.  Getting the people part right is not just fundamental, it is critical in any business.  Ironically, we are all taught to believe that “hard skills” - our technical expertise - is the main requirement for success.  The reality is that if the people skills part is not working well, no amount of technical expertise will compensate for the damage being done to the business.  Poor, mediocre or uninspiring leadership is easy to spot.  However, there are other types of problematic leadership which are not so immediately obvious, but which must be fixed.  Smart, capable people get promoted and are given responsibility for others.  This is usually because they have demonstrated a mastery of the “hard skills” areas of the business.  The challenging part is that often these

Episode 56: THE Leadership Japan Series - How to Build a Culture of Engagement in Your Organization  Today, we are going to hear a presentation on how to build a culture of engagement in your organization. Greg:  Thank you very for coming.  My name is Greg Story.  I am the president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan.  We’re going to run through organizations and pride in organizations and the culture around that today.  This is actually the fourth of a series of these engagement seminars and workshops that we’ve been doing.  They’ve all had different themes and we are working through the elements of that.  Today it’s around pride in the organization.  That will be our main game.  Let me take us through a few things first.  Some of you will probably know about Dale Carnegie, some of you may not.  We are going to look at how great organizations create a culture of engagement.  The book on the left there is the original cover they used in 1936 when they issued, “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, which has

Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Dale Carnegie Training Japan

Episode 51:  THE Leadership Japan Series-Successful Public Speaking Part 2 Intro:  Greg:  Konnichiwa and welcome to Episode 51 of THE Leadership Japan Series.  I am your host in Tokyo, Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, and much more importantly, you are a student of leadership, highly motivated to be the best in your business field.  If you enjoy the program then you might consider subscribing on iTunes.  Also, if you would like to own your own access to 102 years of the accumulated wisdom of Dale Carnegie training through free white-papers, guidebooks, reports, training videos, blogs, course information plus much much more then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.  Greg:  In fact the judges are definitely going to asks you questions, trust me.  That’s their job.  But in business you will have people from a rival division, rival part of the group.  Your personal rival is going to ask a nasty question that is going to make you look bad.  That’s the objective.  We’re going to talk about that,

Episode 50: THE Leadership Japan Series-Successful Public Speaking Part One Intro:  Greg:  Konnichiwa and welcome to Episode 50 of THE Leadership Japan podcast.  I am your host in Tokyo, Dr. Greg Story, president of Dale Carnegie Training Japan, and much more importantly, you are a student of leadership, highly motivated to be the best in your business field.  If you enjoy the program then you might like to consider subscribing on iTunes.  Also, if you would like your own access to 102 years of the accumulated wisdom of Dale Carnegie training through free white-papers, guidebooks, reports, training videos, blogs, course information plus much more then go to japan.dalecarnegie.com.  Today, we are going to talk about successful public speaking.  This is a presentation to the Japan Market Expansion Competition (JMEC) audience on how to give a fantastic presentation. (Audience Clapping)  Greg:  Congratulations on getting your documents in on time.  That is a fantastic achievement.  No penalty points sounds good