Episode #487: The Leader’s Unconscious Biases

There is a lot of focus on conscious and unconscious biases at the moment given the amount of attention being directed at Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. In Japan’s case, for the most part, this is a discussion about gender and to some extent age. The leader however faces other challenges, apart from addressing these topical subjects. We are all witnessing major changes in the workforce driven by Covid. Many companies have staff continually working from home or are executing a dual shift approach where half the crew take turns attending on specific days. Leading a remote team is not how we leaders were trained, so there is a lot of gritting of teeth going on.

Leaders are smart enough not to be voicing their preferences for everyone back in the office, under the careful gaze of the supervisors. The hesitancy is fairly simple – staff retention. If you are forcing people to work in the office, they may just quit and go to your competitor, who has a more flexible leadership approach and doesn’t demand too much, in exchange for people staying put wherever they want to work. The unconscious bias is that this is not a proper, logical or efficient arrangement and we should all get back to what the boss is used to. This version of reality is based on inertia for the most part. This is how is was done when we started working and so that is how is should be today.

There is a McGregor Theory X boss moment going on here. Under this theory workers cannot be trusted and have to be carefully watched all of the time for slacking off and not doing the right thing and putting in the required effort. The underlying culture is “if I cannot see them, then they will be cheating the organisation by not taking their work seriously”. In Japan however, there is a pride in work and a sense of responsibility which doesn’t easily fit into McGregor’s model.

As an example, I remember a bleak, sleeting, winter’s day in the Yurakucho area, when I emerged from a subway entrance and here was forlorn, frozen young woman, diligently handing out tissue paper packs, while sheltering under an umbrella. Without thinking about it, I knew she would stand out there in the cold and hand out all the packets, until her task was completed. If that was a Western country, probably the packets would be in a dumpster and the shelter would be moved to a nice warm bar close by.

Given we all know about the loyalty and responsibility aspects of Japanese work culture, why are we letting our unconscious bias tell us that we should worry about people not taking their work seriously, simply because they are at home? Theory Y bosses would believe that people inherently want to do a good job and want to enjoy pride in their work, so we don’t need some invasive checking going on all of the time. I believe, if the boss trusts their team, they will reciprocate of their own volition.

The lack of trust stems back to the culture of the organisation and that in turn is a product of the leader’s imagination. How we see the culture we want is a key to what we create. If we make our values a central piece of how we lead, then inevitably we will come up with some wonderful guideposts. I cannot imagine a leader proclaiming values such as: no trust, no integrity, no accountability, etc. Values are always highly aspirational elements, reflecting the world we want to experience.

Engagement is another critical element of work. All of the surveys I have ever seen for engagement scores in Japan tell you that the highly engaged proportion of the work population is very, very small. I am a bit dubious about some of the questions in those surveys and how relevant they are to determining a Japanese team’s level of engagement. The survey asks “would you recommend your firm as a place to work to your family or friends?”. I don’t think Japanese people want to have that degree of exposure to such heavy responsibility. If their friend screws it up, they will feel responsible. If their friend hates the place, they will feel responsible. That is not very attractive. Better to mark that question with a very low score. One of the leader’s jobs is creating an environment where people can become engaged with their work. If we are doing our job, then our unconscious biases need to be suspended and replaced with the hard work of building that high trust environment.

Rather than worrying about the work location, we should be worried about have we built the right culture in the team? Do we have the right work human relations principles in place? Have we forged the required mindset to win in the market? Are we focused on our external competitors or on our internal rivals within the firm? There are so many bigger issues than having everyone confirm our biases and conform with how we were brought up in business.