Episode #43: Paul Goldsmith, Country Manager, Aquent Japan

Paul Goldsmith, Country Manager of Aquent Japan, shared his extensive leadership experience in the recruitment, automobile and IT industry across multiple countries including Japan, Australia, Singapore, the US, Kuwait and the UK. He first arrived in Japan in 1985 at 28 years old to help set up the staffing agency Adia, currently Adecco, in Japan. In 1993 he founded Panache, a recruitment agency focused on hiring bilingual IT engineers, which ran for 13 years. He then moved on to the luxury automobile industry by turning his love of cars into business. Mr. Goldsmith was involved in hosting global-scale car shows in Kuwait and the UK and also became involved in the British automobile manufacturing industry. Mr. Goldsmith returned to Japan in 2017 and worked in a software marketing company as well being part of projects working with Maserati Japan, the Italian luxury automobile company. In 2019, Mr. Goldsmith took on his current role after being approached via LinkedIn. Mr. Goldsmith found it challenging and exciting to be able to use his previous leadership skills and experience he had gained from his recruitment background in order to make Aquent Japan grow.

Having worked in leadership roles in multiple countries, Mr. Goldsmith emphasizes the importance of communicating with clarity and consistency and explaining the reasoning behind it. He further explains: “I learned that having a vision is very important and…having a strategy and presenting that strategy to your staff clearly and sticking to it.” He also noticed that in meetings, compared to the West, it is vital for foreign managers to be able to draw opinions out of people even if they do not speak up. Mr. Goldsmith also adds that COVID has reinforced the importance of managing through others, and he is very careful to continuously relay messages, ideas, instructions, innovation through his management team. In order to create a culture of open communication and innovation, Mr. Goldsmith is a proponent of giving everybody equal opportunities to succeed in their role. Through monthly company meetings Mr. Goldsmith reinforces the company values to ensure all levels of his employees understand what is expected of them. He has found that such communication and words of encouragement to take risks, has made his employees more flexible and innovative. One innovative aspect of Aquent is their use of technology, which has made the transition from office to remote work quite seamless.

While maximizing the use of technology, Mr. Goldsmith is also mindful of delivering customized service to each job or employee-seeking client. He says this can be done through training and providing incentives. Additionally, Mr. Goldsmith maintains a balanced mindset between being results-oriented organization and making sure his staff genuinely care for the clients. Mr. Goldsmith also explains that he shows a degree of tolerance regarding employee performance instead of purely evaluating them on numbers. He claims: “We have these [all-staff] meetings and each office relays to the rest of the company, their successes during the month, but also failures…And the lessons learned from both. And as we both know, you learn more from failure than you do success.”

To newcomers in Japan, Mr. Goldsmith advises to have cultural sensitivity and to take the time to understand Japanese culture, instead of trying to implement drastic changes right away. He explains: “things are not the same in Japan as they might be from your home country, but Japan is open to new ideas and you can apply new ideas, but maybe there's a way of localizing some of those ideas. And maybe in some ways, some of those Japanese ideas are better than they are outside.” Secondly, Mr. Goldsmith advises to understand the importance of going the extra mile for clients and paying attention to detail in order to build long-lasting, trusting relationships as he believes that “trust is an accumulation of positive experiences.” Thirdly, he advises newcomers to develop strong ties with the foreign community to share ideas and expand one’s perspective. He claims: “I think there are often viewpoints and sometimes there are rules that initially as a foreigner that you think are quite illogical, but then when you start to think through it from a different viewpoint you kind of see where it comes from.”