Episode #332: Six Staff Members To Be Careful Of In Japan

In most cases, as leaders we inherit the staff employed by our predecessors. It is a rare chance to employ everyone yourself right from the start. That means there have been varying degrees of thinking about who constitutes excellent staff. Even if everyone preceding us had clear visions and great skills in selecting staff, times change and things happen in organisations which can disaffect staff. Also, we are all consummate actors in the job interview, thrusting forth an image of ourselves most likely to win the affections of the interviewing panels. The reality can be bitterly disappointing.

Organisations do their best, but sometimes get it wrong and some of these mistakes are now your responsibility. You arrive bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for your new assignment and to meet your new team. Here is the handy dandy guide to identifying trouble early.

1. Doom and Gloomers

This is a hard sub-group to identify in Japan, because everyone here is so conservative about trying new things, given there is risk attached to uncharted waters. The Government publishes their tankan survey of business attitudes to the direction the economy is going and invariably it is mostly pessimistic. Even if things are going reasonably well, there is the fear it will end, so the scores are never effervescent. We also know from government statistics that ten percent of the workplace population are suffering from depression. No wonder we will have negative, depressed, frustrated people in the team.

2. Fudomyoo types

Fudomyoo is Buddhist diety in Japan who symbolises immovability, resistance, implacability. These staff resist change entirely, either openly or in secret. They may agree with your ideas to your face, but secretly are undermining everything you are trying to do.

3. Salaryman types

The Japanese salaryman is the salaried worker, who just does the bare minimum to get paid and doesn’t contribute much. They are hanging around watching the section head or the division head, to see how early they can leave, once the bosses depart. This group represents a big proportion of the workforce who are stuck in jobs they don’t like, but cannot easily make a change, because society frowns on job hoppers.

4. Gossipers

Japan is a hard country in which to keep a secret. In big cities, there is always someone around watching what you are doing or where you are going. In small neighbourhoods, everyone is watching everyone else. In ancient times, the government divided populations up into groups of 100 FAMILIES and if a crime or misdemeanour occurred, then everyone would be punished, the severity getting stronger the closer the relative. This meant there was tremendous pressure for everyone to conform. It also has mean that A secret in Japan is hard thing to keep and people love exchanging secret information. True or not, doesn’t seem to matter that much, the forbidden fruit of the secret I S massively appealing anyway. So there are plenty of gossips, who enjoy dealing in the trade of secrets, more than getting any work done.

5. Victims

These are the people who tell you they are carrying the entire team, because the others are so useless. Because it is so unfair, they say they deserve special recognition or being cut some slack for their sterling contribution.

6. Informers

This group are expert at attaching the blame for problems on others. They quickly deny their own responsibility and are genius at guilt shifting. They are quick to tell you who is not pulling their weight, in the hope of ingratiating themselves with the boss.

Forewarned is forearmed, so take a careful scrutiny of who is in the team. You would be very unlucky to have representatives from all six groups in your team, but you can bet you will have at least one or two. Knowing where they are coming from will assist with the best lines of communication and handling of their issues.