Episode #488: How Do You As The Leader Deal With Two Face-ism In Japan

“Japanese are two faced”, is a common complaint you will hear from foreigners in Japan. The implication is you cannot trust someone who has two faces, so believing what you are told is a folly here and you need to really evaluate the messenger carefully. It is totally true that Japanese are two faced, in fact they are world champions at it. Living cheek by jowl for centuries in crowded cities breeds a lot of accommodations and a big one is with the truth. In the West the truth is absolute, but in many parts of Asia the truth is more relative. Hence the trust divide between East and West and that includes Japan.

We do it in the West too. The “little white lie” is a bold faced lie, but we wrap it up in cotton wool and creates the illusion it isn’t so bad. If your friend, who is obese, tells you she has been trying to lose weight and she has last a couple of grams and asks you how she looks now, what do you say – an absolute truth – “You are still grossly overweight and look like a heart attack waiting to happen” or do your say “you are making progress and are looking great”? We know the answer and we are being two faced. Why? Because we know that is how we build harmony and protect people’s delicate feelings.

We do it in the workplace too. The level of sycophancy will vary, but it is always there between subordinate and boss. A career ending “absolute truth” statement to the boss is best avoided and something less fatal is substituted for what we are really thinking. We are being two-faced about it and are saying one thing to the boss, but then telling our workmates what a dill the leader is and how hopeless they are. Japan has just taken this to another level of sophistication.

Harmony in all aspects of society is much valued here and it makes sense. In the cities, the urban density is intense. The morning train commute is super intense and so we all have to learn how to get on with one another by restraining ourselves in many ways and that includes how we communicate. Being vague in speech is seen in a positive light in Japan.

In the countryside, because of the communal nature of many of the tasks such as rice planting and harvesting, neighbours had to support and get on with each other, so again harmony was put ahead of “absolute truths”. Telling your neighbour he is an idiot, doesn’t work well when you need that same neighbour’s reciprocal labour at rice seedling planting time.

So culturally, two faces works like a charm here and everyone is happy to join the charades. because everything works more smoothly as a result. Naturally, as the boss you are the target of a lot of two faces opportunities. One is the natural harmony required in the workplace and the other is because you have power and authority over people’s work lives, so upsetting you isn’t terribly smart.

Getting honest feedback as the boss in Japan is pretty well impossible. It is probably the same elsewhere as well, except the Japanese are brilliant at it and the difference is harder to spot. You can start believing your own internal publicity here and imagine the team do see you as the Great One. Very few people are prepared to disagree with you, so the assumption is that they are in agreement and are diligently following your lead. This would be delusional.

As the leader, our expectation management is crucial. If we want to take things at face value, then the two faces thing is going to annoy us and make us angry. We need to apply some strong filters. Any time we receive any whiff of praise from the troops, we have to immediately keep saying to ourselves “this is just grease smoothing the wheels of commerce at the corporate level”. It is a bit of zen approach – not attaching yourself to anything they say. We note it and just let it float by without any attachment or absorption.

When we realise that we are not getting any constructive ideas regarding issues, we have a potential “Yes Man” scenario playing out. It is nice to get agreement and also dangerous in Japan, because the bearer of bad news won’t surface, until it is no longer avoidable. Usually this is too late to rectify the problem, so a lot of effort goes into the train wreck clean up. What is not being said in Japan is also important. If we aren’t getting a balanced stream of feedback on ideas, then we have to create the environment where the team feel they have permission to state their own views.

Japan’s love affair with risk avoidance means coming up with what is wrong with any proffered ideas and is playing to the local strengths. We need to assign people to doing some due diligence on what could go wrong with this possible project and then get out of the way because the crew will do a sterling job decimating our ideas. As the leader, we are not allowed any negative reactions to their findings – no body language pushback, no facial expression change, no blood pressure rises.

We have to stay cool, calm and collected and appreciate that we are getting access to their real face for once.