The news cycle is awash with Prime Minister Suga’s shock announcement that he will not continue as Japan’s leader. His predecessor Shinzo Abe quit on health concerns and handed over the Covid crisis to Suga. Here we are twelve months later and Suga is gone. His inability to communicate as a leader has been seized upon as one of the key reasons for his failure. In Episode #233, I focused on Suga’s challenges with communication. Here we are five months later and he has joined that large community of entirely forgetable Japanese leaders. From his own admission, he has reflected that he wasn’t able to communicate his thoughts in an authentic way. That would be a case of delusional thinking.
He was entirely authentic. He was boring, showed no passion, had a single facial expression regardless of the content, had no variation in the speed or strength of his delivery and never smiled. Apart from that, he was totally forgettable, especially regarding his message. His supporters, fellow politicians, have lamented that he should have spoken more from his heart. More delusion. He read all of his speeches, because he couldn’t string two words together by himself and so had to read it to us. Those speeches were no doubt prepared by bureaucrats in the relevant Ministries depending on the subject or by his staff. Every time he tried to speak to reporters without notes, he was obviously struggling and he kept those occasions as short as possible. If there was any opportunity to use teleprompters, he grabbed at it like a drowning man going down for the third time. No heart at play in any of these speeches.
He is a abject lesson for everyone about the importance of having a skilled capacity as a public speaker. This might be one of those urban myths, but apparently some parents wouldn’t let their kids listen to him, in case he created a negative influence on their communication skills. Even if it isn’t true it is still not a bad idea, because he can only instruct through negative example.
Basically, he has been a so called “retail politician” his whole career. Someone without privileges or an array of silver spoons like Abe and Previous Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Taro Aso, who through his own dint of hard work and cunning managed to climb to the highest post in the land. This is a classic tale of patronage, backroom deals and obligations running out of gas. What was also needed was a personal strength in persuasion power through public speaking. In the end, his colleagues, fully concentrated on saving their own necks, forced him out because they were concerned about an electoral backlash of voter unhappiness.
As we rise through the ranks in our careers we will be called on to become more persuasive. That will involve public speaking. Shinzo Abe version Mark 2, when he came back into the Prime Ministership, had obviously had public speaking training. He was much better than the earlier Mark 1 version. So what happened with Suga? If he in fact did receive coaching on speaking, then let’s find out who was his coach and make sure we never use them. Watching him speak in public from his time as Chief Cabinet Secretary since 2012, until he became Prime Minister in 2020, he hasn’t changed at all. It is more likely he has never sought any professional coaching on how to become more persuasive.
Why would that be? My guess would be he didn’t see the need until it was too late. By too late, I mean having to announce he was quitting. When he became the leader, he inherited the Covid crisis from Abe. During Suga’s watch it has gone on to the fifth wave, with epic numbers of people becoming infected. Let’s also toss in the Olympics, just to really turn the heat up. Probably not a lot of spare time for coaching on how to be more persuasive and get his message across to the Japanese voters.
This is the point. Don’t wait until it is too late like Suga. Get the training now and keep getting it right throughout your career. If you want to be persuasive, if you want to get your message across, then it takes work and requires concentrated time. When you get to the top like Suga, it is too late because you don’t have time. We all need to be working on this speaking facility before we get to the top. In fact, this same facility will become an engine to power us to get to the top. Get trained and keep polishing your communication skills as a lifelong learning commitment. In a few months time, Suga will have been replaced and forgotten. It could have been totally different if he had learnt how to be persuasive. He could have delivered his message, authentically and professionally, expressing clearly and succinctly what was in his heart. Sayonara Suga san.
