Episode #19: Nine Leadership Lessons For Executives In Japan

As the leader are you coaching your people? I mean really coaching them, not giving orders or balling people out if they come up short or make mistakes. Do you have a methodology for your coaching or are you just thrashing around totally winging it? We are going to look at a structure for coaching your people and add in some human relations principles you can use, to get effective results.

1. Identify The Opportunity To Coach The Person

Where can we see some critical factor, that if improved, would really help this member of staff get a tremendous lift in their productivity and outcomes. What is it we should be focusing on?

2. Decide What Is The Desired Outcome

Do we know what success looks like? Do we have a clear vision of the goal once achieved? We need to nail down what the outcome of the coaching will be, so that we can work toward achieving that.

3. Establish The Right Attitude

Trust on the employees' part that the boss is really trying to help them is important. We should be playing to three things: what are they doing now that is good; what they can do to become even better and relate the business relevance to the improvements we will bring.

4. Give Them The Resources

Usually the most expensive resource is boss time. We have to be willing to give them time out of our busy day to help them build their career. Easier said than done, which is why most bosses are not actually coaching anyone

5. Practice and Skill Development

If they have never done it before, or if it is complex, we show them, they do it, we give them feedback, we cut them loose on their own, we circle back regularly to make sure they are on track. Where appropriate though, we ask their opinion on how to do it. We want them to own it.

6. Reinforce

Our feedback helps them to grow, so we are constantly looking for opportunities to feed in positive feedback. When they have done something well, we recognise that through very specific praise breaking down in detail the exact thing they did well. The more specific the better. Also we praise on the way through and not just at the end.

7. Reward

This might be praise, a lunch, a dinner, a promotion or a pay rise. Any number of ways are available to us to recognise their progress, to encourage them to keep it up and to aim even higher.

8. Principle #25

In addition to this coaching structure, Human Relations Principles are also a very rich source of information for bosses who are coaching their staff. Principle Number 25 is to ask questions rather than give direct orders. Yes, we must tell them the WHY, but make sure to get their input and ideas on the HOW. Usually we don't tell them anything about the WHY, because we assume they already know it. We don't ask for their input on how to do it, because we are too busy telling them what to do.

If they miss important bits of the process, then we prompt their thinking to consider what to do about those particular issues as well. Again, we are not suggesting answers, we are just raising things for them to consider from their side.

9. Principle #30

Make people happy to do the thing you want them to do. This is a key boss skill. It all comes down to what we say and how we say it. People are usually strongly motivated by self interest, so we work with that preference not against it. Time poor, busy, busy, busy bosses easily forget to do this. Yelling our orders is much faster and easier.

Don't forget to communicate the WHY of how this helps this person go forward in their career. We have to tie this into their best interests, so that they are happy to make the changes being suggested. Bosses forget to explain the "what's in it for you" bit of the work.

When coaching, we are asking people to change and change resistance is pretty staunch. To get people to move, we have to overcome the inertia of doing nothing different. No change is the easiest default position. Japan is also highly risk averse. Steel like barriers pop up at the first inkling of change. Everyone is a critic opposed to the initiative because they resist change.

We need an "inside out" solution - they change because they have bought in to change. They see it suits their best self-interests. If you think you can drive change from the "outside in", let me know how that is working out for you in Japan!