Honey works better than vinegar in attracting people and their cooperation. We know that, so why do we forget this at work. We are short with people and too much occupied with our immense status and authority. This is all vinegar. Others are not attracted to this approach. We need to work on our people skills if we want to have influence and get cooperation. How do we do that?
Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show"
I am your host Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.
Why the Cutting Edge?
In this show, we are looking at the critical areas for success in business in Japan. We want to help advance everyone’s thinking so that we be at the forefront, the Cutting Edge, of how to flourish here in this market.
Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.
There is an acute shortage of delivery drivers in the transport business that is impacting companies like Amazon and Rakuten. According to the Ministry of Health, labor and Welfare there were two point seven jobs for every driver application in June. A separate government survey in two thousand and sixteen found that eighty three percent of transport companies were overworking their drivers. This high demand situation has led to higher salaries, with the resultant costs increasing delivery rates. Amazon and Rakuten have been moving their business to Japan Post which has increased its share to twenty percent, third after Yamato at forty three percent and Sagawa Express at twenty nine percent. In other news, the pickup in land prices has been fueled by the Bank Of Japan’s monetary easing programs. The gains have been particularly steep in the areas popular with tourists. The booming tourist trade has pushed up demand for Hotels an shops that cater fir tourists. Land prices in Ginza keep rising and Kyoto is also doing very well. The biggest jump was in Kutchan in Hokkaido, the location of the internationally popular Niseko ski resort. Last year the number of inbound travelers to Japan hit a record twenty eight point seven million. The total this year topped twenty million in mid august and appears on course to exceed thirty million by year’s end. The governments target is fifty million by twenty twenty.
This is episode number fifty-five and we are talking about Lead To Outperform The Competition Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going. Harvard Professor Joseph Nye coined the term “soft power” to describe how nations can achieve their aims through persuasion and the ability to attract. Our world bristles with nukes. Testosterone fueled fighter pilots duel at supersonic speeds over rocky outcrop flashpoints. Drones have 007 licenses to kill and volatile dictators strut, posture and provoke. Hmm…having a soft power alternative to World War Three sounds attractive.
Closer to home, can soft power in our businesses achieve persuasion and attract cooperation? There are plenty of testosterone fueled dogfights going on in the C-suites amongst colleagues and between Divisions. Corporate leaders strut and posture, while middle managers whip the troops to do more, faster with less. Power, status, authority, rules, regulations, contracts etc., keep people in line, but none of this engages them. Time for some fresh thinking!
Here are four soft power plays that persuade and attract the team to outperform the competition.
Play One: work on our communication. The WHY of the vision as well as the what and the how need to be explained in ways that inspire the troops to care. We own the world we create, so include our people in creating the vision. Plenty of corporate offices have elaborately framed Vision, Mission, Values statements that hardly anybody can recall. How do you live it, if you can’t remember it? Well you don’t and this is a failure of communication. The Ritz Carlton Hotel chain became famous for having every shift start their day by re-visiting their WHY. Good organisation creates good communication. How hard is it to get all of your work units starting with a daily WHY recharge? It takes a few minutes and costs almost nothing.
Play Two:tap into the emotional wellsprings of engagement. Intention is important here. Following Douglas McGregor’s Theory X, Theory Y staff motivation models, if we see our people as lazy, inept, untrustworthy then we have to ferret out their failures and fix them. If we see our team as basically good, loyal people doing the best they can, then we can switch our gaze to becoming a “good” finder to recognise them, rather than to scold them. So leaders need to take a Theory Y “happy pill” every morning before work and decide they will be finder of good work and praise it, rather than becoming a Theory X carping dud detector. Try it for a week and see the difference.
Find out more when we come back from the break
Welcome backPlay Three:emphasise “valuing your people” rather than parroting the “corporate values”. Our global engagement survey, validated in Japan, showed that the feeling of being valued was the trigger point sparking inspiration, empowerment, enthusiasm and confidence. Innovation is directly correlated to engagement, because if you don’t care, why make it better? Communicating to each individual “you are valued” is using soft power.
Play Four: ask questions instead of giving direct orders. Based on their hard skills credentials, supervisors believe they have super vision, so they can tell people what to do. One brain’s output, no matter how good, is still only producing a narrow sliver of ideas. Actually the further up the chain of command you fly, the more distant you become from the action and informed perspectives. Engaging people in the front line, through valuing their input, produces outperformance. Don’t miss it – the crowdsourcing of ideas from the team is a soft power play that pays off.
The end is nigh for those organisations who don’t introduce Professor Nye’s soft power play into their leadership armory. As we say in Japan, “time flies like an arrow”, so let’s all commit to going “soft” and persuading and attracting our way to success.
Action Steps
Start with the WHY before explaining the What and the How
Become a daily Theory Xer, seeking out the positives in your people
Ensure your people feel they are genuinely valued every time, all the time
Become an “ask” rather than “tell” leader
Commit to persuade and attract your way to success
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In episode fifty six we are talking about How To Not Blow Your Acceptance Speech. Find out more about that next week.
So Yoroshiku Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show
We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!
