Episode #276: What Type Of Leaders Do Followers Want In Japan

Leaders want many things from followers. Results, top line, bottom line, efficiency, cost cutting, loyalty, engagement, consistency, honesty, skills, etc. Great, but so what? I love that Yogi Berra quote about leading is easy, getting people to follow you is the hard bit. As you might expect from a professional baseball player, that is pretty straight to the point, and what we would expect from someone who did well in one of the most fierce meritocracies on the planet. So what do followers want from their leaders?

They want effective leaders. Fine, but what does that mean in practice? We recently held some leadership training and the participants were asked about what they meant by effective leaders. They want leaders to praise their people. This sounds pretty straightforward doesn’t it, except that few leaders make the time to do it or do it regularly enough. I am one of them!!!

I do appreciate how hard my team works, but my own busy, busy high output daily work sidetracks me. Being perpetually time poor, I am rushing through the days pumping out work like a demon on speed. Somewhere along the line, the actual physical act of “speaking the words” gets lost. Instead out comes the pirate captain, barking orders and taking down names. How about you? Are you wearing a patch, flying the Jolly Roger and brandishing a cutlass at work? We need to slow down don’t we and remember to make the time to praise and to do it correctly?

What does correct look like? “Good job” is not actually praise, although many bosses may mistake it for such. The team have many facets to their work and when we say “good job” we are not providing any insight into precisely which part of their job they are doing well. We need to name it, to call out the exact thing they are doing well. We need to give some detail and describe why this was important, to nominate what difference it makes for the business and to encourage them to keep doing it.

Another point nominated was listening to the staff. We are doing that aren’t we? Or are we doing pretend or maybe selective listening? Busy bosses need to be sure they are giving their full attention to their staff. I had a colleague at Shinsei Bank, who was a shocker in this regard. He always had two screens going at the same time and would hold all his conversations with you, while looking at the screens and typing into his computer. This was taking multitasking to a new high, but I never felt good about the way he interacted with me. I didn’t feel I was important or that anything I had to say was important to him. Our staff are the same. I have taught myself to put the keyboard away entirely when I speak to my team. This is to make sure there is a full opportunity for me to have eye contact with them, stop looking at the screen and to fully concentrate on what they are saying, without being in any way distracted

Reasonable requests is something staff appreciate from bosses, but I am not sure too many bosses agree with this idea. The sticking point is your view on what is reasonable? My boss reasonable is seen by the staff as ridiculous. This is the high energy boss inflicted death of a thousand cuts technique. We keep getting great ideas and we want them implemented yesterday, so we keep peppering the staff with things for them to do. These new requests are in addition to all the other current things they already have on their plate. We forget what we gave them last week, because we have moved forward to this week. They are still stuck with the pile of work already accumulated and now we add yet another piece. We should be asking them to prioritise the task, if it is indeed time sensitive, or we should be giving them some guidance on expected and required completion times, so that they know where to place it in the queue.

Clear direction is valued by staff. This is the classic WHY of what we are doing. Senior executives craft enormously well thought through Vision, Mission, Value statements at the ExCom offsite and then cascade them down throughout the organisation. Middle management tends to be the blockage point. They are two sided. The side which is facing up, has this massive sponge soaking up information from the senior executives. The bottom side is concrete, so that nothing gets passed down to those below. This means staff are busy doing things for which there has been no explanation as to why this is important.

The boss’s role is to explain the Vision, Mission, Values, the strategy of the organisation, the tactics being used, the direction forward and their staff’s part in all of that. They want to know and when they do, their work will make a lot more sense, once these gaps are filled in. The key point too is you have to keep explaining all of these things. Never assume that telling staff once is enough. Just ask them what is the Vision or the Mission or what are the Values? What is the strategy etc., and you will rapidly realise that they don’t know, because they have not internalised any of that weighty stuff from above.

Followers want effective leaders, as they define them. The boss may have a view, but if the boss wants people to put their shoulder to the wheel, then the boss needs to understand how to keep the team motivated. Praise, listening, reasonable requests and clear direction were some of the things put forward during the leadership training. As usual, we the instructors also learn a lot from the participants and the session made me reflect again upon my own leadership shortcomings.