Episode #129: Brendan Delahunty, President and Representative Director, SPORTS TRAVEL & HOSPITALITY JAPAN

Brendan Delahunty, who is the President of SPORTS TRAVEL & HOSPITALITY JAPAN (STH JAPAN) , first arrived in Japan for the JET Program in 1993 and has been living in the country since then, for over 30 years. His teaching experience through the JET Program led him into working at Pearson, the world's largest education company. At Pearson, Mr. Delahunty ended up working as the Sales and Marketing Manager for about four years in Tokyo and Osaka. While working at Pearson, Mr. Delahunty moved back to London to work in the global project management office there. In London, he and his team members looked after all the international projects. Based on these experiences, Pearson asked him to come back to Japan in 2007. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Delahunty became the President of Pearson Japan and led the company for seven years until stepping into his current role at STH JAPAN.

While working in various countries such as Japan and the United Kingdom, Mr. Delahunty learned about leadership and how it works in different countries. Mr. Delahunty defined that leadership is the person in the team who ultimately takes responsibility and makes decisions but involves the whole team in the decision-making process, trying to make the team feel comfortable with the leader and team. Also, he mentions the key to managing other Japanese salespeople is to be a “longman” – someone who gives advice and leads – especially since salespeople are concerned about the ability of their managers to lead with confidence.

The age factor is quite important in Japan and Mr. Delahunty also knew that. Because of this culture, he got into conflict with his team members during his first years of leadership. In order to resolve this issue and build better relationships with his team, Mr. Delahunty looked for people who were not satisfied in their current working environment at Pearson. He then set up a “voluntary redundancy scheme” to better evaluate employee performance and promote those who had the ability and integrity. And what he found was that by giving skilled, younger managers opportunities that they were not expecting to receive for another 10 years, they became increasingly engaged. As a leader, he established a new young and passionate organizational culture by adjusting the old Japanese workplace structure and promoting young talent throughout this process.

Mr. Delahunty gave some advice for newcomers to Japan. Mr. Delahunty says, the most important thing for them is “to be open when you come here…[because] the ways of working here, the meetings that you do, and the sorts of things that go on in meetings, the relationships that you have, they're all very different to working in Western cultures.” Therefore, sometimes silence is the best way to treat some actions from Japanese coworker when adopting Japanese workplace culture. Mr. Delahunty also says, “after you get used to this culture, start learning Japanese.” Because, at least a little bit of Japanese is always useful, enough to be able to go out and have a few beers and have a small conversation. Due to Japan having a drinking culture after work, it can serve as a bonding opportunity for coworkers in Japanese.