• 584 Breaking Leader Bad Habits - The Struggles of Health, Fitness, and Stress We All Face
    Nov 6 2024
    Are you sitting too much and for too long at your desk every day? Are you eating too much every meal because your mother told you when you were a kid to finish everything on your plate. Are you hitting the booze after work with your mates or at home to rid yourself of your stress? Are your kidneys and liver in good shape? Are you carrying around too much meat and making your muscles and organs work much harder than they should? Is your blood pressure elevated and too high every day? Are you constantly thinking about all of your troubles at work? Are you having trouble getting good quality consistent sleep? Are you promising yourself to get to the gym, but don’t make it as often as you need to in order to make any progress? Well, I have pretty much described myself here. Knowing about it and doing something to fix it are two universes separated by infinite space. Intellectually I know what I should do, but practically I struggle with a lifetime of negative habits which all need work. I do a lot of pontificating in my content about what to do and how to do it, so I can imagine I can come across as Mr. Goody Two Shoes pseudo perfect. This time I will use myself and my failings as the mirror for you to think about yourself and what you are doing if you share these same attributes. Ironically, as I sit here writing this, I have been sitting at my home desk writing my weekly blogs for the last three hours and haven’t once stood up. I know just sitting is bad, but I get into a concentration zone and I forget to stand up. Right, I am going to use a timer with an alarm and set it so that I stop what I am doing and stand up and walk around at set intervals, a bit like the pomodoro method of twenty-five minutes work, five-minute break and then after four pomodoros take fifteen minute break. Eating less is a choice. Leaving parts of the meal unconsumed is a choice. Another irony. I am sitting here in Tokyo writing this blog and we have the “hara hachibu” tradition here in Japan of only eating until 80% full. This idea originally came from Okinawa and they are one of the longest lived peoples in the world. I have to break that habit driven deep into my mind by my Mum and not feel compelled to eat everything on the plate. I had lunch the other day with my mate Tak and I noted he left most of his chicken uneaten, which was quite a feat, as the main meal was chicken. Growing up in Japan, maybe he didn’t have to break free of the gravitational pull of “finish everything on your plate”. Roughly once a week, over a meal with my wife, I like to drink Australian wine at home on Fridays after my hard toil at the Dale Carnegie Siberian Salt Mines. I used to finish a bottle between us, but actually I was drinking most of it. Today, I am down to a single glass to give my blood pressure, kidneys and liver a rest. This is extremely hard because I want to keep drinking. It is a weekly battle with myself to stop at one glass. At one point back in the 1990s, when I was working in Nagoya, after many months of wining and dining and being wined and dined, my weight blew up to 90kilos. I didn’t notice it, because it was gradual. After one event where we were having a meal sitting on tatami, some kind soul sent me a photo from the evening. It was taken from the side, so I got a full appraisal of the profile of my massive girth. I was so shocked. Today, my weight floats around 82-83 kilos at the moment and I need to get it floating around 80—81, and those last couple of kilos seem so hard to evaporate. For reference purposes, when I was competing in karate competitions, I was fighting in the 75-80 kilo weight division, so getting close to my fighting weight is a good goal for me to have. Switching off from work is a pain. I think about my problems at work all day and night, and that black monster is always sitting there in the darkened corner of my mind. Lately, I am also adding to my woes by not getting good quality sleep. I am not sure why that is, but I think part of it is not enough exercise. I need to be more tired at night so that I drift off to sleep quickly and smoothly. I was walking every morning, then I caught a cold with the change of the seasons, so I took a break. Then I tripped on the stairs at home, smashed my toe into the stair rise and it is a miracle I didn’t fracture it, but boy has it been sore. Consequently, no walking in the morning. I need to get back to that routine of awakening at 5.50am, get out the door, walk for an hour while listening to podcasts and then get off to work. Getting to the gym regularly is a difficulty because I am often at networking events at night, but I know I can do better. What about going to the gym on the weekends? I can do better. One item you may note that is prominent by its absence is smoking and the quitting thereof. Both my parents died of lung cancer and my father at age 51, so I have ...
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    13 mins
  • 583 AI Enabled Leadership In Japan
    Oct 30 2024
    We know that AI has gone from the domain of geeky people in white lab coats to the mainstream of business in a nanosecond. Such speed is difficult to keep up with and the roll out of new options continues unabated. As the leader how do we surf this tech wave and prepare our people for this AI enabled future/ Making data backed decisions is always preferred in leadership and AI has the power to crunch large amounts of data and provide answers very quickly. As long as it isn’t lying to us with so-called hallucinations about the results, then it is a big help. Direction on using AI in our businesses is not going to bubble up from down below and we leaders need to get to work to harness this beast. 1. Audit We can start with an audit of where we think AI can bring savings in terms of time, money, effort and quality. Doing this process with the team is required because we want them to own the process and the results. There may be fears that certain jobs will disappear because of AI and we need to face that reality head on. It doesn't necessarily mean the person leaves the firm because finding staff in Japan is at a premium, but it may mean their job content changes. There will be flow on effects about required retraining and thought has to be put into the feasibility of doing that with the resources we have available. 2. Strategy & Innovation Having completed the audit we now have some insight into the opportunities and difficulties working with AI will bring, rather than relying on our imaginings of the future. Where is the intersection of AI capabilities and the goals we have set for the firm? The goals are usually revenue related and these won’t change much, but the way we deliver the results could. People will have to work with AI, there is no escaping that fact, so what is the strategy to determine how this happens? We don’t want to leave everyone to their own devices to wander off and somehow work it out by themselves. Which AI platforms do we need, how much should we budget for them and who will take care of what, are leading questions we need to find answers for? For some staff, AI may never be an immediate part of their world at this point, although that may also change. We need to do an analysis of who needs it the most and who needs it first. Which jobs will benefit the most from applying AI’s capabilities to the work? That simple question may be difficult to answer because we have to explore the possibilities AI introduces. We may need to appoint champions to drive the usage of AI inside the company, so that we can break the task up into smaller pieces. The scale of AI can be overwhelming. How can we find ways of having AI help us with becoming more innovative or at least set out some frameworks for us to explore by ourselves? 3. Staff Training A lot of the training for the use of AI will be internal with people dedicating time to play with it. If we think of AI as external to our work, then we won’t nominate the time for people to experiment and learn on the job. The explosion of AI means that no one can keep up with the latest developments as functionalities are superseded by new alternatives. There is also the issue of the broad range of platform variations and upgrades which are emerging every month. How can we navigate this breadth and speed? We can’t but we shouldn’t be so overwhelmed we don’t start. We should select a few platforms which seem to have the greatest application for what we do and start there, realising we may need to jump on to the back of faster racehorse, once the gun has sounded and we are off barrelling down the track. We should block out a certain number of hours per week for our team members to play with AI and see where they can apply its power to the business. If the leader nominates 4 hours a week, for example, then that gives people permission and time from within their work day to experiment. 4. Reporting Naturally, we want to have reports and updates on the progress and learnings these hours experimenting are yielding. This requires some time scheduling changes for everyone and for the boss too. These ideas are all difficult in an already busy life, but we have to grant AI the priority or it will all just be hot air from the boss and there will be no follow through. We are all touching different parts of the machine, so getting together to share makes a lot of sense and the boss can nominate a couple hours in a month to make sure that happens. 5. Data We will unearth and collect a host of data, but what do we do with it? This seeking data for data’s sake is tremendous fun for some, but it all has to connect back to driving the firm forward. There will be financial data we can use to try and pick up trends or patterns which will aid us in trying to set budgets and allocations for spending. ...
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    12 mins
  • 582 Leading People Through Disagreements in Japan
    Oct 23 2024

    Recently, I was teaching a class of APAC executives on how to handle pushback to their ideas. Some participants were senior legal counsels, who frequently had to say "no" to their salespeople. As a salesperson myself, being told "no" is something that comes with the territory and is not intimidating at all. In fact, we often hear "no" most of the time. We're tough and have learned to persist until we achieve a "yes."

    These executives spoke about how challenging it was to get the other side to accept their advice or point of view, which made a lot of sense. Think back to your school days—was there ever a course, or even a fragment of one, that taught you how to argue with someone to get them to agree with you? Academic debating is different; it's an arbitrated intellectual exercise. But the dynamics within a company are entirely different, and most of us aren't trained for these real-world, practical needs, even through corporate education.

    Here are some key steps to successfully navigate resistance and disagreement, especially when you're battling over ideas, policies, direction, or decisions.

    1. Truly Listen to the Other Side

    We often think we are listening, but when we hear the word "no," it looms large in our minds. We become preoccupied with crafting our counterargument and, as a result, stop fully listening to what’s being said. People often make a statement we dislike and then provide their reasoning. If we've already stopped listening after the part we didn’t like, we can’t fully appreciate their logic.

    2. Pause Before Responding

    Before blurting out our disagreement, we need to pause and think. There are a few ways to do this. We can remain silent and think before speaking, although this can be tricky, as silence may prompt the other party to press harder and add more information. Another method is to use a "cushion"—a neutral, non-committal statement that neither agrees nor disagrees. This buys us valuable thinking time. Even a brief pause of five or six seconds can significantly improve the quality of what we say. Without that pause, we risk saying something we regret because we haven't had enough time to formulate a proper response.

    3. Reflect Briefly

    Use this pause to have a brief internal conversation about the topic. Ask yourself: What do I believe? And why do I believe it? Usually, our opinions are formed based on some personal experience, or something we’ve read, heard, or seen. Recalling the origin of our belief helps us structure our response.

    4. Share Your Story

    Once you've reflected, tell your story. It doesn’t have to be long, but it should clearly outline what happened, where, when, and who was involved. This method reminds me of Japanese grammar, where the verb comes at the end of the sentence, determining whether the action is positive, negative, past, present, or future. You can’t interrupt someone in Japanese until they finish their sentence because you don’t know where they’re going with it. In English, listeners often anticipate the conclusion and jump in or finish the sentence for the speaker. You can't do that in Japanese.

    By telling your story, you provide background and context. While the listener can disagree with your conclusions, they can’t argue with your background or experience. Given the same context, they might reach the same conclusion. If you tell your story well, they might even reach your conclusion before you do. By holding off on the "punch line" until the very end, you prevent interruptions and ensure they hear you out. Even if they still disagree, they’ll have a clear understanding of why you hold your views.

    By following these four steps, you can persuade others to consider your ideas and ensure you're heard and understood. In the worst-case scenario, even if they still disagree, at least they will fully understand your reasoning. This allows for a civil discussion without heightened emotions, preserving relationships and enabling you to agree to disagree.

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    12 mins
  • 581 Techniques For Getting Agreement As The Leader In Japan
    Oct 16 2024

    Pulling rank on people is clearly the fastest and easiest way to get people to fly straight and do what we want. It is also a very dangerous choice in Japan in an era when the demand for people is so strong and the supply so limited. Mobility today means people have choices. If you are not interested in what they have to say or their ideas, they will jump ship to somewhere they think they will be better appreciated. The problem is their ideas are rarely much chop. They don’t have the experience, sufficient information, enough understanding of the context or the weight of responsibility on their shoulders if it doesn’t work. In a busy boss life, the simplest thing is to tell them “that won’t work” and just keep moving forward because there is so much to do.

    Here are some human relations principles we can employ to do a better job in our communication with our people.

    1. The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it. This sounds a bit counterintuitive. Does it mean I just fold and let them have their way? Not at all. However we know that people rarely yield once they get into an argument and graciously accept our viewpoint. Rather they have their ego wrapped up in what they are saying and they won’t let go, so they just keep arguing with us. Our best response is to not respond in kind and try a different track.

    2. Show respect for the other person’s opinion – never say you are wrong. This is a red flag to a bull. One of my trigger words is to be told “no” and another is “you are wrong”, which is basically the same answer. We have to learn to disagree in a way which maintains the relationship. Telling people they are wrong isn’t going to help with that aim. Whenever the urge seizes you to tell others they are wrong resist the temptation.

    3. If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically. Leaders have ego, position power, pride and status and admitting we are not perfect is not easy for us. If we admit it won’t we be eroding our power? That fear is fair enough, but what we will find is that by giving up the God mantle and admitting we are human makes it easier for our team to emphasise with what we are trying to do. The secret is all in the communication of how we admit we are wrong.

    4. Begin in a friendly way. This sounds easy except when we are busy, harassed, pressured and under the gun we forget this part. We bring our businesslike self to the conversation rather than stepping back and thinking about first impressions for this conversation.

    5. Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately. Manipulation was the first thing which sprang into my mind when I heard this Principle. That obviously is a losing proposition. What is meant here is that our communication skill is operating at a very high level. We package up the idea and do it in such a way that the other person finds themselves in agreement. This is a high level of communication skill and takes a lot of practice, but it works well when done correctly.

    6. Let the other person do a great deal of the talking. Leaders love to talk. They love to hog the limelight and dominate the conversation because they are such amazing individuals. Rather by giving the floor to others they in turn will feel appreciated and valued. We already know what we know, so this also invites the opportunity for us to learn things we actually don’t know and broaden our perspectives.

    7. Let the other person feel the idea is his or hers. Sounds like more manipulation, but it isn’t. We remember that Socrates was famous for getting people to go deeper in their thinking by asking a series of questions which drove the quality of their understanding. This is the same idea. We communicate in such a way that the other person self-discovers the same thinking that we came up with and now we are in perfect agreement.

    As the leader we can always do better and usually, it is our poor communication ability which leads us into trouble. By changing our approach and how we express ourselves we will have much more impact on getting others to follow us. Brute force is not going to work in Japan anymore, so we need better tools.

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    11 mins
  • 580 No Legacy Leadership In Japan
    Oct 9 2024
    Have you ever had the experience of leaving a job and seeing your successor screw it up? We spend so many hours at work and we are trying hard to lift the bar through our leadership. However, if we do well, we get promoted or we join another company seeking a bigger job. It is very disheartening to leave and see the place go backwards under your replacement. You wonder what all those weekends spent working and long hours were al about. We expect that we add to the cause and the firm progresses and moves forward, improving over time. We expect those who come after us to be doing the same thing. So it was very confronting to read some statistics recently about how short the term at the top is these days and thinking about what does that mean for the leader’s legacy? According to data analysis firm Equilar, the median term for a CEO in the 500 largest US companies, is now down to 4.7 years, having dropped twenty percent over the last ten years. Russell Reynolds says globally, for CFOs, the tenure is down to a five year low of 5.7 years. If you are sent from Headquarters to Japan to run the local operation you don’t have much time. If you realise this and decide to go gung-ho from Day One and drive change to get the results faster, then you will probably blow up the firm. On the other hand, if you wait to understand the market, customers, the staff and the culture, then years of study will be required. By the time you get it, it is time to pack for the next assignment or another job change. The analogy I like is leading in Japan is like swimming in warm lake. You land here from headquarters and you are immediately placed in a warm, nice lake, but the surface is covered in a heavy fog. You can hear voices and vaguely make out shapes. Over time, the fog lifts a little as you understand Japan better and you can make out the shoreline and some islands. After about three years the fog lifts and it is now time to leave for your next post. What did you get done, what legacy have you left? If we go too fast the Japanese team cannot keep up and we have new internal troubles. This might include staff writing to the Chairman anonymously informing headquarters that you are ruining the business in Japan and destroying the firm here. It might mean key staff conclude you are an idiot and they vote with their feet and join the opposition. In today’s society in Japan, job mobility has changed an enormous amount and shifting firms doesn’t have the same stigma it once had which used to ensure lifetime employment with the one company. It might mean you decide to become “efficient” with customer relationships and after overcoming stubborn staff resistance, you force you will on everyone only to see your buyers depart and not come back. On the other hand, headquarters are contacting you because they are not seeing the spike in revenue numbers they sent you out there for. The staff engagement survey results are a disaster. Your bosses are not happy with your performance as a leader. You try to explain the subtleties and nuances of the Japanese market and how business is done here, but it all falls on deaf ears. They are fully preoccupied with themselves and nobody cares about your problems. There are no simple answers unfortunately. Listening is a good idea at the initial six month stage, especially listening to customers. Finding allies within the staff of firm who can get behind your changes is going to be vital. You can pontificate and shoot out orders, to only find those below are sabotaging your efforts and are not doing anything to carry out your commands. This country has a lot of informal lobbying going on underground and the big meetings are there to rubber stamp what has already been negotiated prior with the relevant parties. That means we have to persuade, rather than order, to coalesce rather the remonstrate. Sadly, none of this is fast and your bosses want fast. We are fighting two fires on two fronts at the same time. We are pushing headquarters to get behind what we are trying to do and we are persuading the team to do the same thing, but at a faster pace than what they are used to. Staff are terrific at telling us what won’t work and why, if they are involved. They are less help in coming up with creative solutions to overcome problems. Often, we are the one to think differently and be prepared to try something new. Bite sized experimentation suits Japan, given the general fear of failure and risk aversion. Change takes time in Japan, lots of time and maybe it just isn’t possible in one rotation of your term here and you have to rely on your successor to pick up the gauntlet and keep pushing the strategy through the changes. If you don’t get headquarters to sign on for it and therefore get them to engage your successor to keep going, then there will be lots of effort exuded by you and none of your legacy to show for it in Japan. You ...
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    12 mins
  • 222 Customer Service Is Your Brand
    Oct 3 2024

    You really appreciate the importance of brand, when you see it being trashed. Companies spend millions over decades constructing the right brand image with clients. Brands are there to decrease the buyer’s sense of risk. A brand carries a promise of consistent service at a certain level. Now that level can be set very low, like some low cost airlines, where “cheap and cheerful” is the brand promise. Another little gem from some industries is “all care and no responsibility”. At the opposite end are the major Hotel chains. They have global footprints and they want clients to use them where ever they are in the world. They want to be trusted that they can deliver the same level of high quality. There are plenty of competitors around, so the pressure is on to protect the brand.

    When you encounter a trusted brand trash their brand promise, it makes you sit up and take notice. When I arrived at the Taipei WestIn Hotel check-in I was told there were no rooms ready. I asked when a room will become available. The young lady checking me in, tells me she doesn’t know.

    I ask her for the name of the General Manager. This is where it gets very interesting. Her response - stone motherless silence. Not one word in reply. Nothing! So I asked again. More total silence. I elevated the volume of my request to try and illicit a response. More pure silence. This low level of client service has now morphed across to the ridiculous zone. Finally I get a whispered “Andrew Zou”.

    So what am I thinking now? Wow, this Andrew Zou character is a lousy General Manager, because his staff are so poorly trained. There is no room ready for me and no indication of when it will be ready, so in that great Aussie tradition, I head for the bar and wait.

    Any number of things can go wrong with the delivery of a product or service. We all understand that. The problems arise when our client facing team members are not properly trained in how to deal with these issues. Hotels have guest complaints all the time, so they should be absolute gold medal winning, total geniuses at dealing with them. This would have to be a key area of training in that industry. The poor training is a direct result of poor leadership. If the leaders are working well, then the staff service levels will be working well.

    The Westin brand is global and I have stayed in a number of their properties in Asia. The Taipei property was killing their global brand and that is an expensive thing in the world of cut-throat competition amongst leading Hotels.

    From this experience, I realized that I need to be very vigilant about the service levels in my own company. Are we fully geared up for trouble, should it arise? How do we protect the brand across 220 locations worldwide? Can people get to me easily if there is a problem? Are we doing enough training in client complaint handling? The Westin Taipei leadership did a poor job. We should go back a take a long hard look at our own operations. We may be incorrectly assuming things are working, when they may not be functioning properly. We have to protect the brand at every touch point with the clients. That is the job of the leadership team, starting with the boss.

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    9 mins
  • 579 Leaders Embracing Change In Japan
    Oct 2 2024
    Is change good or bad? When I was promoted or received a big bonus, I liked the change from my previous situation. When the big boss changed at the very top, the person who hired me got fired the negative ramifications ultimately cascaded down the line. Eventually I had to look for another job and I didn’t like that change much. Often organisations go through major internal changes and the middle level leaders are expected to rally the troops behind the change. How do you do that if you don’t agree with the change or don’t like the change yourself? If you buck the system and refuse to follow the changes, then you are automatically identifying yourself as someone who has to leave the organisation and the machine will crush you. Change is such a tricky area for everyone, but it is so common in business. Markets change, clients change, supply chains change, currency rates change – the list is long. You would think that with all of these “normal” changes in business, we would all be excellent in adjusting to change. However, that is not true, is it? The status quo is so attractive to most of us because it is known and safe. We have been doing the same thing for quite a while and we are good at it. We are doing skilled work in the current formation and suddenly we are being asked to change and are being pushed out of our Comfort Zone. Japan, in particular loves continuity and no change, because all the risk has been shaken out of the system and what we are left with is the lowest risk alternative. As leaders we have to make a decision. If we fundamentally disagree with the new approach then we should find another place to work, where we can be happy and in agreement with the direction. The chances of us doing our best work there dramatically improve, compared to if we stay and conduct an underground personal resistance to the changes. Ultimately, we will be outed by an ambitious rival or subordinate and probably fired. If we are not willing to move companies, then we have to be willing to go with the new direction. Here is the issue – a half-hearted compliance isn’t going to work well. Our team members will feel the lack of commitment and enthusiasm to the cause. They in turn, will not rally around us as the leader and charge into the fire together. How can we make this change work within our small cog in the machine? The big bosses set the direction back at headquarters, but they can never get their hands dirty with the daily minutiae at our section level. That application piece is within our control. We may be buffeted by the winds of macro change, but the micro where we deliver the change is within our grasp. We have almost total control over how we do it. What we are feeling about the changes is no doubt being felt by the team members as well. Turning up one Monday morning as some mealy mouthed, apparatchik mouthpiece of the machine isn’t going to go down well. Cynicism is already rampart in modern society and this will push some people over the edge, as we try to order them about what they need to do. All we can expect is resistance if we take this road. How can we approach this to get everyone behind us and the changes? Rather than being definitive about how to make the needed changes, we need to have the “change” discussion with the team. In Stage One we need people to be able to air their concerns and fears and be taken seriously. Stage Two is where we move on to how we as a team can implement the change in our world. Getting from Stage One to Stage Two is no easy feat, because many will remain unconvinced and unmoved. They will want to keep going with the old way of doing things. For the “never changers”, we need to have private one-on-one discussions and have them make a decision about stay or go. If it is “stay”, then they need to be part of the team decision-making process and contribute to practical solutions to make this work in a way we can all live with the changes. Just telling them to “suck it up and get back to work” is always a bad idea. It communicates you are not important. We are saying, “I have three stripes on my sleeve and so you have to do what I say, because I am pulling rank on you”. They may in fact stay, but they will join the underground guerrilla movement against the changes. We will wind up fighting each other internally when we need to form a united front against our competitors in the market. We need converts not resisters. So as the leader we need to get the discussion out in the open and get team ownership of the way forward. Maybe we all have to hold our noses against the stench of the changes, but we will hold them together and find a way through.
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    11 mins
  • 578 “Ichi-Go, Ichi-E” (一期一会) Cherish The Moment Leaders
    Sep 25 2024
    This Japanese expression “Ichi-Go, Ichi-E” (一期一会), linked to Zen, focuses on transience and can be translated as “one time, one meeting” or “treasure an unrepeatable moment”. It is often closely associated with the Japanese tea ceremony, which is certainly never a hurried affair and the devil is definitely in the details of how the ceremony is conducted. Contrast that with our modern leader life in business. We are constantly in motion, always time poor and harassed for 24 hours a day by an avalanche of emails. We migrate from one meeting room to another, confronting an endless assortment of meeting details. We have many agendas in our minds when we meet people and our shrinking concentration spans make a lot of what we do a blur, bereft of reflection. This is a poor contextual background for dealing with people. Being so time challenged, we are constantly cutting corners and shaving off minutes to try and get it all done. Being “efficient” with people is a bad idea for leaders, but often once we are on a roll, that efficiency bug takes us over. The Ichi-Go, Ichi-E idea is that we treat each moment of interaction as special rather than just serial. If our team members felt that we were treating them individually as “special”, their engagement levels would be at very high levels, in what is increasingly becoming a tech driven, impersonal world. But often we are galloping too fast on horseback to smell the flowers, as we fly by. If we break each staff interaction down to a single defining unit, we will change the pace we interact with people from busy and tormented, to calm and caring. I remember a terrific example of Ichi-Go, Ichi-E by Ian Mackie, my old boss at Jones Lang Wootten In Brisbane. It was after 6.00pm one evening and I was sitting in his office having a discussion about a deal, when one of the secretaries was walking past on her way home and she popped her head in the door to say something to him. In those days Directors were like Gods compared to humble secretaries in that hierarchy. Yet Ian stopped what he was doing and he gave her his complete and entire attention for that one moment. He was showing his respect for her as a person, and it was a powerful experience for me to see how he handled that encounter. Often, as the boss, we don’t show enough respect because we are rushing, preoccupied with what we need to get done and our people can become cogs in the fly wheels of our business. Like Ian, we need to slow it down to a stop. Focus on the person to the exclusion of everything else, stop our brain for racing ahead and give that person our full attention. It sounds easy to say, but actually doing it is very difficult. We are usually caught up in the moment of what we want and what is important to us. We are perpetually rearranging things to suit what we need, when we need it. I am the first one to raise his hand as guilty of trying to do too much, in too short a time and just constantly cramming stuff into my day, such that my interactions are very “businesslike”. That is not a great idea when we are dealing with people. Ichi-Go, Ichi-E as a concept, reminds me to stop doing that and instead treat every staff interaction like a treasure. Once I switch my mindset to that “treasure” construct, then everything changes, especially around my time allocation. Just mentally slowing down while I am speaking to my team member, allows me to be more considerate, less selfish and self-centered. Instead of being “me focused”, I can switch to being “them focused”. I can ask about things that are important to them, rather than making sure that brief conversation is all about what is important to me at that moment. I have learnt to stand my keyboard up, so I can’t use it, when one of my team comes to me to talk and this helps me to focus my eye contact on them. I was reminded of how important this is when I visited a doctor here recently. The head of the clinic was sitting slumped in front of his screen and typing when I entered his office, he didn’t greet me, didn’t even look up at me and kept his face toward his computer keyboard and screen. Frankly, it was unbelievable, especially in this modern age. It made me feel unimportant and irrelevant. This is how we make our team members feel when we don’t stop what we are doing and don’t focus on that one moment with them. So, from now on, remember Ichi-Go, Ichi-E and practice treasuring every interaction with the team members and build their engagement and commitment one meeting at a time, one person at a time. Do this instead of rushing through life in an often meaningless and unfulfilling scramble. People do make the difference and how we treat them is what stands us apart as the leader and how successful we are in that role.
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    11 mins