Episode #328: The Five Drivers Of A Positive Workplace

As the leader you set the culture and tone of the form. In Japan, up until a few years ago, you could get away with whatever you liked as the leader. You could create a hellhole to work in and everyone caught up in the vortex had to put up with it. There was shame attached to changing companies and mid-career hires were given the cold shoulder by the HR hiring teams. The end of the Bubble economy in the late eighties, the IT industry meltdown at the turn of the century, the Lehman Shock in 2008 and the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown in 2011 shaken things up here over the last forty years. In particular, basic demographics of a declining population have moved the locus of power to the employment candidate away from the hiring firm. Having a positive workplace becomes even more important to attracting and retaining good staff.

As leaders we need to work on our skills in five areas.

Self-Confidence

This world of rapid change is throwing up new risks, daunting challenges and fierce competition. Change is no longer just constant, it is moving at hyper speed. How do we keep up and how do we gain the confidence to have the audacity to lead others in such a complex construct? The first step is to take charge of our attitude and determine that we will take the steps needed to make ourselves more confident. This will mean emerging from our comfort zone and putting ourselves into tough situations where there is no road map and no guarantee of success. Only by doing that ourselves can we have the ability to lead others to do the same thing. “Do as I say, not as I do” won’t cut it anymore. Despite how we may personally feel at any one time, we have to be the beacon, the guide, the strong stream of positive light in the organisation, pollinating everyone with our rampant optimism.

People Skills

Leaders often become leaders because of their high IQ, despite their desperate EQ skills. In today’s business world, people skills are an essential ingredient for gaining influence and persuasion with others. Every person needs a defined approach and the leader must know just what that is. The Golden Rule is severely flawed. We shouldn’t treat people the way we want to be treated. This is a mistake, because it assumes that everyone is like us. We need to treat people the way they want to be treated and we must spend time with them, to know exactly what that actually is. Busy leaders however can miss this because they are not spending the time and so are not able to function at a high EQ level with their teams or teach it to their subordinates in middle management.

Communication

Shouting out commands is the quick and dirty way of leadership. Very time efficient, and maybe even rewarding to the leader themselves, but ultimately not very effective. We need to be asking questions rather than telling people what, and sometimes even how, to do it. The megaphone has to be replaced by the earphone. We have to amplify our listening skills. Individually, we cannot possibly have all the answers today, as the world is moving so quickly and business is so much more complex. We need to be able to tap into all of the ideas of our team and that requires changing our skill set from commanding to becoming a sponge.

Leadership

Leadership is about creating the environment that allows our people to motivate themselves to succeed. We have to set the vision, manage the processes and build the people. We can inspire them through our advanced communication and persuasion power, but ultimately they have to do it. Our job is to help them do that. Leaders used to be locked away on the executive floor where quiet reigned, the carpets were plush and the secretaries fulsome. Today they are often working in open spaces with no set desk, just like everyone else. This requires a lot of flexibility and openness to being available to the team, rather than being closeted away. We have to lead from the front today and role model what we want to see in others. Our daily work visibility has never been higher in business.

Worry and Stress

Gloomy, depressed bosses kill enthusiasm. The ability to face trouble with a constructive attitude will determine how successful we are in building the team spirit. Tension, stress, worry - all kill our productivity, so we need good methodologies in place to deal with them. Dale Carnegie’s book “How To Stop Worrying And Start Living” is a treasure trove of the means to reduce stress and get ourselves back into peak productivity. Read it and you will become fully capable of reducing your stress and being much happier. If you want a happy team, then you need to be happy yourself.

The world of work challenges us as leaders to constantly re-evaluate what we are doing. There is no pause button, as it all happens in real time and at a fast clip. The competition for talent is real and people are more mobile in japan these days and they will leave to find a happier work environment. Develop these skills and this will be yours and you will have a greater choice of which talented people you want to hire. The alternative is be like everyone else and be on the wrong end a beating, as you hustle and bustle about trying to hire and retain staff. It is a zero sum game of winners and losers, so don’t play that game.