Japan's Top Business Interviews Podcast By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan

Yumiko Murakami is the General Partner and Founder of M Power Partners, Japan's first ESG-focused global venture capital fund. The organization was founded by Ms. Murakami, along with Kathy Mastsui and Seki Miwa. Ms. Murakami was born and raised in Japan but studied in the US and spent a significant part of her adult life abroad. Upon returning to Japan, Ms. Murakami was shocked to experience the Japanese consensus-driven leadership style. Ms. Murakami observes this consensus-driven culture and the labor market structure leads Japanese people to become risk averse. In large Japanese companies with lifetime employment, there is little incentive to taking risks and putting one's reputation or chance of a promotion at stake. This notion of low-risk tolerance in Japan applies to start-up companies as well, as there are many legal and structural problems to start businesses in Japan. Ms. Murakami does point out that things are changing. The Japanese government is trying to change the legal framework to push start-up initiatives. Ms. Murakami explains, when it comes to innovation and creating new businesses, the role of start-ups and entrepreneurs is critical. Thus, proactive initiatives are taken by the government and private sector leaders. Ms. Murakami sees tremendous potential in Japan to start creating this healthy ecosystem. She hopes if there is enough sense of crisis among leaders, things will move quickly. Additionally, many talented young people are eager to join start-ups or even starting their own business, which is a relatively new phenomenon in Japan. Things started to change around 2000 in the US where there was a shift in student employment interests. In the past, the labour market discouraged employees from taking risks, but young people today have more bargaining power as they are in high-demand. To keep people motivated, Ms. Murakami thinks employees need to feel they have ownership and have the responsibility to make the organization better. With her organization, M Power Partners, Ms. Murakami feels everybody has a fair chance of voicing their views during the decision-making process. M Power is a small team, and there is not much of a hierarchy, although this becomes tricky when the company grows into over a hundred people. The core culture in their fund is to nurture a sense of inclusiveness, especially since the three founders including Ms. Murakami have always been a minority during the majority of their career. Since they are all different, they know that they can offer interesting perspectives that many do not see. On advice to achieving success in Japan, Ms. Murakami says it is important for international people who come to Japan to understand the Japanese culture and values, and realize what values they can bring to their leadership role. They would have to ask themselves, what is important about them as a person and how do they want to construct their relationships with new colleagues in Japan, setting aside any cultural differences. Ms. Murakami additionally points out that Japanese women have been a secret weapon for international companies for a long time because they are more open-minded to hire female professionals compared to Japanese companies. So when Japanese companies are not looking at this female talent pool, there is an opportunity for international companies to hire talented Japanese women. For Ms. Murakami, leadership is not something that one could claim by having a title but, something that one should demonstrate through action. Ms. Murakami prefers a leadership approach where she grows together with her team and learns from each other.

Mario Munoz is presently the President of Mölnlycke in Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Munoz has a long-standing history with Japan, having first come to Japan in 1979, he was studying in middle and high school until 1982. He moved to France for the rest of high school, where he continued studying Japanese. Mr. Munoz was one of the lucky foreigners who was immersed in the Japanese language and culture at such a young age. He went to the US to continue his education and attended Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona. He had an affinity for an international career and with the program's heavy emphasis on international business, this was the right choice. Mr. Munoz says that to increase innovation, there are ranges provided in terms of targets provided to an individual. He says the target numbers are set but the way in which the representatives handle the accounts differ. Mr. Munoz speaks about encouraging his staff to speak. He has made Townhall meetings, there is a section called "Ask Mario" where people are encouraged to ask questions, a hot topic on their mind or something that they are curious about. A few things have worked from Mr. Munoz to gain trust. He walks around the office to talk to people and there are two engagement surveys done a year. Mr. Munoz says something that works in Japan is analyzing the surveys and addressing low hanging fruit and pain points. In Japan he has found, flexible time schedule and encouraging people to take their holidays goes a long way. Mr. Munoz encourages people via personal messages to take holidays. Mr. Munoz has a lot of advice for people coming into Japan. Firstly, he advises individuals to be themselves and not try to be Japanese. He also suggests learning a little bit of Japanese would be helpful in communication, as most Japanese people can read and write in English, but they aren't as comfortable speaking English. Mr. Munoz also emphasizes that the Japanese are very patient, especially with foreigners. It helps foreigners to be patient while in Japan as well. Mr. Munoz suggests keeping an open mind, have good open communication and be ready to be flexible in the Japanese work setting. He ends by saying that investing in Japan is likely to be fruitful if you are patient.

Christian Wolf, Managing Director of JAS Forwarding Japan originally moved to Japan straight out of university in Germany where he worked in the freight and logistics industry as a student. He first started out as a roads development manager at DHL, developing new business for air and ocean freight transportation from Germany to Japan. Upon moving to Japan from a small village in Germany, Mr. Wolf experienced culture shock, and quickly realized he needed to be "very persistent" and have high "frustration tolerance" to be successful. Mr. Wolf then moved on to work in the project forwarding business at Panalpina where he dealt with large scale projects with complex challenges such as construction schedules, liabilities involving different transportation modes, and worked alongside engineer specialists. In 2011 Mr. Wolf joined JAS to set up a new project forwarding unit from scratch. He recalls the earlier months as a challenging time since he was pressured to gain profit quite quickly while motivating his team to keep pushing with a positive attitude. On leading in Japan, Mr. Wolf indicates how difficult it was for him to initially gain the trust from his customers and employees and maintain a positive attitude within his team members. He claims: "You need to gain trust from the customer and it is not seldom that you are quoting for over one year without seeing them... It's a very common process. And there, even if you have a lot of setbacks, you need to be calm and need to demonstrate that we are going to get there." When faced with challenges such as consecutive profit-losing months, Mr. Wolf says it is important to cut down on your expectations and generate rewarding situations. He also points to open and honest communication with every member of the team as a vital aspect of building trust. Gradually, the new unit grew by building on client relationships and providing expertise on complex transportation solutions. In 2014 he stepped into his current role as Managing Director, leading the 40+ year old business with around 100 employees. In order to gain trust from an even larger number of employees, Mr. Wolf first tried to understand the history and culture of the company, instead of making drastic changes. Over the years of working in Japan, Mr. Wolf has come to realize that Japanese people value consistency and patience, which he tries to exhibit through his behaviour. During Mr. Wolf's first year as the Managing Director, he kept all the main department managers in place in order to observe how business had been developed from the previous years. During these early leadership years, Mr. Wolf also spent one-on-one time with his managers to better understand the business from their point of view. In doing so, he also encouraged his employees to be more innovative and think outside of the box when coming up with solutions. Yet Mr. Wolf mentions the importance of respecting the hierarchy and to "follow certain rules to approach certain scenes." For example, doing nemawashi (groundwork) before a meeting or communicating with an employee through their manager instead of them directly. To newcomers of Japan, Mr. Wolf advises to not tell one's colleagues how long one's assignment is. This is to avoid people from thinking you will only be there for 2-3 years and therefore, is not worth trusting. Mr. Wolf's second advice is to learn the Japanese language. Lastly, Mr. Wolf advises to "never give up." He adds: "You need to have a lot of frustration tolerance. Sometimes don't ask the why just accept it."

Please listen to our most accessed episode of Japan's Top Business Interviews! Leading A Small Team In Japan - Kervin Go: Episode #5 Japan's Top Business Interviews Kervin Go CEO Of Curvature Japan Because it is easy to let your inner pride at being a leader override the humility that is necessary as a leader, it is important to meet with other people to remind you to be humble. Managing people in Japan is like having an extended family, you have lots of different children and go through their various growing pains. Communication is the most important thing for a leader. I always leave my door open even when I am working on something and do not want to be disturbed, because most Japanese who have never worked for a foreign company think that a closed door means they cannot speak to you. When you are communicating, it is important to remember that you are connecting with a person. Remember we are all the same at the end of the day, we all eat dinner and get on trains, no matter what our titles are. Work-life balance is a better phrase to lead by since work-hard, play-hard is getting old. Personal success is affected by things outside of work and a leader needs to consider how they can make their employee`s welfare better since all employees have friends and family that are important to them. 360-degree performance evaluations are not very popular nor common in Japan. It is often just seen as more work that people have to do. The scores are always low in Japan. Culture cannot be forced on people. I think the company comes first, the employee comes second and the client comes third; and these are basically the decision points we try to use. We have open plan seating, lunch is eaten together, and we try to do sporting events that encourage people to engage without talking about work. New blood is always good because it creates new ideas, different perspectives and more engagement. We do not have walls in our offices. People often just shout out ideas and we have a conservation about that. We try and innovate that way. Some big leaders in Japanese business would make good politicians. They always know the right words to say but it does not always translate into action. I don`t want to be like that. When I say something, I want to execute it. I would rather cut out the middleman and make sure things go ahead. Trust and rapport have to be side-by-side. You have to listen to what people are complaining about, what they are trying to do and why they are trying to do it. That`s how you build trust. That is why sport events are very good, you build relationships through your mutual goals and learn to communicate and trust each other. Two-way traffic for communication is the key to building trust, once you have it, it is rock-solid. When learning English or Japanese, do not worry about learning difficult words, use simple words but how you present them is more important. Written communication is useful when communicating with Japanese people but give them 1 – 2 days for it to sink in. No one person can have all the answers so make sure you pick the brains of many people around you. The best way to grow is to have the good traits of others rub off on you, so don`t just hang out with other executives, it is too limiting.

Mark Militello is the Country Representative of the Bank of New York Mellon. This is his third posting to Japan, though he has had a long history within the Investment banking space. He was most recently with the Bank of New York Mellon in Hong Kong for 10 years before relocating to Tokyo. When leading in Japan, Mr. Militello explains how Japanese employees may not feel comfortable asking specific questions to their clients. This may be due to their lower rank in the company or the Japanese culture. He says that it is important for him to sometimes step in and ask those hard questions to ensure the operation is running smoothly. Although banks as an industry are not known to be creative, Mr. Militello says that creating a safe, relaxed environment for his team, especially the junior employees, can bring out more innovative ideas. Mr. Militello further explains that gaining the trust of Japanese employees can be a challenge for a foreign leader. He adds, letting the Japanese staff know that you have their back, that you are invested in them and will fight for the team with headquarters has helped with establish trust. A way of getting people engaged in the company is to be transparent. Mr. Militello emphasizes that they must try to give everyone a voice and that must go beyond the leadership team. He says that leadership is typically of a certain demographic. Leadership may be men that are of a certain age and background with a traditional way of thinking. This is not representative of the views of the whole company. Mr. Militello emphasizes being mindful of this and trying to hear everyone's views, even people lower down on the hierarchy, is essential. Mr. Militello advises people to come to Japan with an open mind. He also suggests unlearning most of the things that they may have learned, as they may not apply to Japan. Furthermore, Mr. Militello referred to his experience to nearby countries. He says that people in Hong Kong and Korea have more English speakers in the population, whereas in Japan it is a lot less and thus it is important to be mindful of this. He recommends trying to learn Japanese, even if it is a few phrases to show your commitment. Mr. Militello also suggests getting to know Japan outside the office. He says there is a lot to enjoy, especially the green spaces and the fantastic food.

Mr. David Bennett has been in Japan for more than 10 years in total. He has lived in Japan throughout his student years, and came back after graduation on the JET program for two years before joining AMD, an American multinational semiconductor company in Tokyo. His first leadership role would be with Lenovo Japan and NEC. Currently, Mr. Bennett has moved on from Japan and has become the Chief Customer Office at Tenstorrent Inc in the US. As the President of Lenovo Japan, and the CEO of NEC Personal Computers, which is a joint venture between Lenovo and NEC Corporation, Mr. Bennett led both a foreign and domestic company. Since the skillset required to lead a multinational company versus a traditional domestic company is different, he created a hybrid culture, blending the best of both worlds. He took certain parts of Japanese traditions and business approaches and fine-tuned them to make them more suitable for the organization. Additionally, the organization spent much time holding cultural and social events to increase employee engagement and cooperation. To get innovation while managing two companies with different characteristics, the company would implement many initiatives such as holding contests and giving out awards. These activities pushed the team to feel they could be more open and try something new, and others will have their back. As a result, the company kicked off things that had never been done before in the PC industry, like the world's first Gaming PC Leasing Service, Sugu Game. Mr. Bennett accepts mistakes as long as the reasons behind them are rational and the intention was to benefit the business. Moreover, Lenovo has a concept called Fu Pan. This is similar to Kaizen which is a continuous process of reflection. After major sales activity, the team would go back and reflect on what went right, what didn't go well, and what can they learn. Mr. Bennett says through those meetings, people gained innovation and felt empowered to try new ideas and take risks. To get employees further engaged, Mr. Bennett has several mantras he follows since becoming a leader. One of his mantras is "win together, lose together." Although everyone understands the meaning of "win together", he frequently got questioned, "why lose together? " Mr. Bennett explains that it is easy to win together. But if something bad happens, he says it is important for everyone to take responsibility and figure out a solution. He is proud of helping to change the culture at Lenovo and NEC in a way that the team came together and started taking risks. Being explicit with the head office also helped him win the trust of the organization. However, Mr. Bennett notes the difficulty of ensuring his messaging permeates to the bottom of the company, past his direct reports. He insists, when you have a large organization, it is important to be consistent with your messaging. On advice to newcomers wanting to lead in Japan, Mr. Bennet says the most important thing is to listen and understand what is working for the team and what you can learn from them. He says that in Japan, what people tell you about the business may not necessarily reflect the actual state it is in. Mr. Bennett further adds, one cannot completely change how the Japanese ecosystem works, nor how one's partners, customers and the commercial buying behavior works. Hence, it is important to truly listen. Secondly, he advises to become familiar with the Japanese language. For Mr. Bennett, knowing Japanese has helped him gain quicker connection with his team. Therefore, the combination of understanding Japan, the Japanese language, and his management style and supportive approach helped create trust and engagement. Mr. Bennett's goal is to empower his employees and to make his team successful. To him, empowerment means everyone is facing the same direction. Mr. Bennett feels it is essential to inspire and empower people to work towards the same goals and encourage them to take risks. By doing so, he believes people will become further engaged and the organization will continue to grow.

William "Bill" Hall is currently the President at Ipsos Healthcare Japan Ltd. Mr. Hall has a long-standing history with Japan. He first visited the country in 1969 on a scholarship for post-graduate research, having majored in Japanese and Economics at Sydney University. After graduation, Mr. Hall worked in the consulting and marketing research field, starting his own market research company, and eventually leading Sterling Winthrop, a pharmaceutical company. Mr. Hall then worked for Kodak which had acquired Sterling Winthrop at the time, before becoming the Japan President of ISIS, a medical market research company. After selling ISIS to Synovate, Mr. Hall then expanded the health care division within the new organization. Finally, after Synovate was acquired by Ipsos, the global marketing research company, Mr. Hall stepped into his current leadership role at Ipsos. Mr. Hall recalls one of the first leadership challenges he encountered was finding the right people and building a team from scratch. He found it especially difficult as a foreign company to convince people on the longevity of the organization. To overcome the issue, Mr. Hall tried to provide opportunities for people who joined the company to be exposed to the discipline of market research, such as conducting interviews, which is still not seen as a profession in which people study for years to be in. Mr. Hall also was fortunate to find foreign workers who spoke Japanese. He says the key is to sometimes take a gamble and try to see the potential of the person, instead of trying to find someone who is already well-developed. A common problem many leaders of foreign companies in Japan have, is explaining the difference in employee engagement scores across different country branches to the head office. Mr. Hall says, this is a complex matter, as there are many cultural factors that need to be taken into account, and companies are "reading the scales wrong." For more information on engagement scores and cultural bias, please contact Mr. Bill Hall at [email protected] and he will be able to provide a whitepaper regarding this topic. Mr. Hall finds that engagement depends greatly on the history the employees have with the company. For example, he says that people who are initially engaged when a company is in the start-up stage, may not be as engaged 20 years later when the scale of the company has grown. Mr. Hall adds that sometimes handling long-term staff can be complex. It is important to pay close attention to these worker who have helped the company become what is it today, while finding the balance between the long-term staff and younger employees and adjusting the organization structure accordingly. Mr. Hall advises people to learn basic Japanese if they are coming into Japan in leadership positions. He agrees that Japanese can be a difficult language to learn. He understands someone in a senior leadership role will have multiple aspects to juggle in their life such as family commitments, generating revenue for the organization and others. Yet Mr. Hall suggests learning a little bit of the Japanese language will enable foreign leaders to better communicate with the local staff within and outside the office. Basic communication is important, however Mr. Hall also suggests having a bilingual assistant to translate the important business materials, so that the individual is not dependent or pressurized to learn fluent Japanese quickly.

Jennelle "Jennie" Petit is the President of TUV Rheinland in Japan. Over 30 years, Ms. Petit has gone through different positions in a various companies including the service and manufacturing industry. Her first leadership experience was after her first year in Japan when she was training new teachers who had come to Japan to teach English. In the corporate world, Ms. Petit first had an opportunity to lead a team when she was about 35 years old in the hospitality industry. Her main function was training and development of all the staff in the hotel. Ms. Petit feels that trust is an essential factor in motivating team members and encouraging collaboration. According to Ms. Petit, many Japanese employees prefer to take orders and avoid responsibility. Therefore, she tries to have an engaging conversation with them in the beginning. She claims, it is important to take a collaborative, soft, low-key approach and try to understand the culture. Ms. Petit adds, this approach needs patience. She tries to be authentic and consistent, treating people equally. She also points out that trust comes from communication, and if you are not communicating with anybody, you cannot expect to have a high level of trust. To get engagement in Japan, Ms. Petit takes a bottom up style. Although it is difficult to implement change in Japan, trust is what makes it possible. One of the examples is teleworking. Ms. Petit was already looking into teleworking before the pandemic. Work-life balance was the key word. She focuses on having engagement, empathy, and a bottom-up approach to her leadership. By listening to the voice from the field-level, Ms. Petit is constantly rewriting the employee committee and guideline and other implementing changes. In terms of making innovation, Ms. Petit encourages it through regular meetings. TUV Rheinland has different committees and different groups of people that meet regularly. They have discussions about strategy, and how to grow the company. In doing so, they are able to create an open culture and environment. Ms. Petit is the first female to run TUV Rheinland in Japan. She says, even as a woman, you can do a lot if you focus on the right things and find people that are willing to work with you. Trying to be open to those things is also important. Ms. Petit adds that in order to increase female leaders in Japan, we need to provide training on diversity, in order to prevent discrimination among both men and women. As an advice for new leaders, Ms. Petit raises two points. Firstly, to listen before you start to make any changes. Secondly, to make an attempt to learn the culture of the language. Ms. Petit suggess to not try to change people's culture in Japan but to work with it and put your assumption aside. On defining what is leadership, Ms. Petit says, leadership happens first with the leader themselves. It is the ability of a person to reflect and then take the appropriate action based on a particular situation. Leadership is also possessed by people that look at things in general and are willing to say, we can do something better here, and make a split decision. Moreover, Ms. Petit adds, leaders should always ask and answer "why", and provide information on their decisions. On whether one should learn Japanese or not, Ms. Petit says being able to speak Japanese is an advantage, but it is more important to understand the culture.

Originally from Australia, Mr. Campbell Hanley is presently the Managing Director of Weber Shandwick, Japan. After graduating from university, Mr. Hanley was looking to go to a country that was non-English speaking, which led him to Japan. Since then, Mr. Hanley has worked with various organizations, the latest being Weber Shandwick for the last 8 years. Engaging people in the workplace is important as employees are more likely to be loyal and not quit on a whim. Mr. Hanley tries to ensure consistency and fairness in the workplace. He tries to make sure he is calm and reacts the same way to things, so people can predict his behaviours and reactions. He also emphasizes being authentic in giving honest feedback to people and ensuring his staff knows the things that they are doing well. Mr. Hanley tries to have breakfast or lunch with a different staff member every week. This is usually a short, informal meeting outside the office to try and get to know staff one-on-one. Mr. Hanley says these meetings make him more approachable, and he finds out many things during these sessions and sometimes can catch problems early. He talks about innovation as well, and says that if people care about the business, they want to build a better, more innovative workplace. Mr. Hanley says that they have a suggestion box set up in the office to gather feedback, highlight problems or suggestions. He ensures anonymity by sharing the website of this anonymous suggestion box. The staff are digitally literate and thus they know that they are truly anonymous and there is no way to track who has made the suggestions. This is to ensure they know that they are anonymous, and the company gets accurate feedback. He also ensures that the staff know that they would not be penalized for anything they say in this suggestion box. Advice that Mr. Hanley would give would be to be patient. He also emphasizes good communication. He has three points that he suggests to people coming into Japan. Trust their instincts Trust their employees Have a group of advisors or counsel on your side Mr. Hanley advises people that first come into Japan to trust their instincts. Sometimes he feels foreign leaders shy away from sharing their views or ideas on business plans as they are concerned about offending the locals. He advises them to trust their instincts and their business experiences and knowledge in such cases. He also recommends placing trust in the Japanese employees and understanding that hard work, loyalty, and teamwork is in their culture and many times there isn't a hidden agenda to their hard work. Lastly, he advises to have a few people that you can trust on your side in case the first two fail.

Ernest (Ernie) Higa shares his extensive leadership and entrepreneurial experience starting from his mid-20s succeeding his family business and leading various industries including lumber, medical device, and food and services. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mr. Higa graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in International Business. He also holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (MBA) from Columbia Business School. After university, Mr. Higa joined his family business, Higa Industries Inc. (now Domino's Pizza Japan). Shortly after, he became the company's Representative Director. Mr. Higa then began developing the Domino's Pizza chain within Higa Industries, and became the President in the early 1980s. Presently, he is the Chairman and President since 2015. Mr. Higa has led many other corporate and professional organization including the Representative Director of Wendy's Japan, First Kitchen and Director of Shinsei Bank and Del Sole Corp. Leading a lumber business company which was part of Higa Industries at just 26 years old was one of the first leadership challenges for Mr. Higa. Mr. Higa was fortunate to be able to hire employees who had retired from major trading firms and other large corporations, but still wanted to work. He says these people had a wealth of experience and contacts that allowed him develop his company. Being Japanese American enabled Mr. Higa to not have to play by the rules when leading staff who were much more experienced and senior then him. Being in the trade industry, working between Japan and the US, his experience and knowledge of working in the states and knowing how to communicate to English speaking businesspeople also helped him earn the respect and trust from his employees. Mr. Higa adds: "there's a certain rule that you can break because you're not Japanese and that becomes an advantage, but you have to know what those rules are. And so it really requires understanding the Japanese culture." Eventually, Mr. Higa grew the business from 20 people in 1985 to 9000 people including full-time and part-timers, by 1997. In addition to the lumber business, Mr. Higa had diversified into the medical business with neurosurgical implants and then started developing Domino's Pizza in Japan. Regarding his success in Japan, Mr. Higa credits his ability to position himself in the niche Japanese marketplace and adapt foreign products to Japanese consumer needs. Moreover, the experience of starting Domino's Pizza made Mr. Higa take a more bottom-up leadership approach as he realized the head office executives are there to support the store managers to successfully drive their business, which then increases the entire company's profit. He adds that building and maintaining trust with the customers is essential in the sustainment of the business and if there are any errors made, it is important to take care of it right away. Having worked in various industries, Mr. Higa claims a strong corporate culture is the key to good employee engagement across all organizations. Mr. Higa says due to his entrepreneurial background, the culture of his organizations reflects this spirit, and emphasizes a positive, "can do" mindset. Due to this approach, Mr. Higa's organizations have attracted employees who enjoy being in a more flexible environment that encourages innovative thinking and growth. Mr. Higa also developed a training centre to ensure this corporate culture messaging was communicated right from the beginning at the orientation stage to his staff. Additionally, his company holds many internal events to motivate the employees, including full-time and part-timers. By having a unique but consistent approach to building corporate culture across various sectors, Mr. Higa thinks this set them apart from the more established, larger corporations and enabled his business to grow. On advice to newcomers leading in Japan, Mr. Higa advises to be respectful of the Japanese culture and understand there are differences from the western way of doing business. This mentality is important when launching products and making strategic decisions, as well as managing people. Mr. Higa adds one must "think global and act local, but don't go too native. If you go too native, then you are managing completely like a Japanese corporation, then you'll miss out. I think you'll lose against the Japanese companies who are Japanese. But it's a moving target, what is global, what is local, and what is going to be native? And you always have to adjust." Mr. Higa thinks learning Japanese does help, but the most important thing is realizing there's a difference in cultures and respecting that. Mr. Higa defines leadership as something that changes depending on the leader, as there is no one-size-fits-all format. He adds: "I try to lead by example, I try to get the respect of my people but I also try to enhance my people and work with my people so that they make a lot of decisions themselves

Originally from Austria, Mr. Dieter Haberl has a wide array of experiences, the most recent being the President and CEO of Furla Japan. Previously, Mr. Haberl has worked with well known names in the retail space such as Adidas, Toys R Us, Lacoste, Reebok, and GAP. Mr. Haberl went to the US after high school. He first went to Northern Michigan for his undergraduate degree, and then to Arizona for his master's degree in management. He developed a strong interest in Japan very early on, selecting Japan as his regional specialization in university and later doing an internship in Japan. In the organizations that Mr. Haberl has worked in, he has tried to improve team culture by trying to bring people together. He says that many times, people are divided based on their departments, i.e., Marketing, Finance etc. He says that creating culture can be a top-down approach, where senior leadership is involved. He suggests bringing people together for dinner and drinks and says that this works well in creating good culture. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic age, this can be difficult, and he suggests bringing people together in smaller groups and having virtual meetups. Mr. Haberl advises trying to engage his team by listening first, learning from them, and then leading them. He says that teams get engaged when they realize you are paying attention to them and that you care. Moreover, driving innovation involves taking risks. However, Japanese culture and education teaches people to be risk averse. This can be a problem when trying to innovate or seek new novel ideas or ways of doing things. He stresses that this can be overcome by creating an environment where people know it is okay to make mistakes and then learn from them. Advice that Mr. Haberl would give to someone coming to Japan would be to find people that you can trust. He suggests trusting your instincts and asking yourself who you can trust and who you cannnot. He also suggests being patient, listening and learning as much as possible. Sometimes offices with overseas headquarters are unfamiliar with Japanese culture and thus may have unrealistic expectations. He recommends having honest conversations and communicating well with headquarters. Mr. Haberl has noticed that loyalty is a trait unique to Japan. Both Japanese customers and staff are known to be extremely loyal, and it can work to the company's advantage if they can capitalize on this. Additionally, Mr. Haberl recommends learning Japanese, even if it just a few phrases to communicate better with the locals.

Originally from Austria, Mr. Dieter Haberl has a wide array of experiences, the most recent being the President and CEO of Furla Japan. Previously, Mr. Haberl has worked with well known names in the retail space such as Adidas, Toys R Us, Lacoste, Reebok, and GAP. Mr. Haberl went to the US after high school. He first went to Northern Michigan for his undergraduate degree, and then to Arizona for his master's degree in management. He developed a strong interest in Japan very early on, selecting Japan as his regional specialization in university and later doing an internship in Japan. In the organizations that Mr. Haberl has worked in, he has tried to improve team culture by trying to bring people together. He says that many times, people are divided based on their departments, i.e., Marketing, Finance etc. He says that creating culture can be a top-down approach, where senior leadership is involved. He suggests bringing people together for dinner and drinks and says that this works well in creating good culture. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic age, this can be difficult, and he suggests bringing people together in smaller groups and having virtual meetups. Mr. Haberl advises trying to engage his team by listening first, learning from them, and then leading them. He says that teams get engaged when they realize you are paying attention to them and that you care. Moreover, driving innovation involves taking risks. However, Japanese culture and education teaches people to be risk averse. This can be a problem when trying to innovate or seek new novel ideas or ways of doing things. He stresses that this can be overcome by creating an environment where people know it is okay to make mistakes and then learn from them. Advice that Mr. Haberl would give to someone coming to Japan would be to find people that you can trust. He suggests trusting your instincts and asking yourself who you can trust and who you cannnot. He also suggests being patient, listening and learning as much as possible. Sometimes offices with overseas headquarters are unfamiliar with Japanese culture and thus may have unrealistic expectations. He recommends having honest conversations and communicating well with headquarters. Mr. Haberl has noticed that loyalty is a trait unique to Japan. Both Japanese customers and staff are known to be extremely loyal, and it can work to the company's advantage if they can capitalize on this. Additionally, Mr. Haberl recommends learning Japanese, even if it just a few phrases to communicate better with the locals.

Masatsugu Shimono is the former Senior Vice President at IBM Japan. Mr. Shimono has a longstanding career of 40 years with IBM, primarily in Tokyo but with a short stint in New York. Mr. Shimono majored in Computer Science at his university when computers were new and computer science was quite different to what it is now. Mr. Shimono says that to gain engagement on his teams, he focused on closely managing his 10 direct reports. In addition, he held regular meetings, and communicated well with them. He says that he held round table discussions and regular Monday meetings. Whenever there was a need for innovative ideas, Mr. Shimono says he tries to lead the discussion in an innovative way. He praises IBM for being so diverse in terms of racial background, gender, nationality, and age, so gaining diverse perspectives is easier at IBM than it may be in other companies. Mr. Shimono says that the understanding of the Japanese culture is quite important and the general awareness about Japanese culture is much better than it was 20 years ago. His advice to colleagues and people looking to come to Japan would be to be patient. He believes there is globalization on various levels, 1) Globalization of Japan 2) Globalization of Japanese People 3) Globalization of Japanese companies. For newcomers to Japan, he suggests making changes and innovating Japanese companies, as this will be received well. However, trying to change Japanese people and their culture may be met with resistance. He advises even if someone doesn't agree with the Japanese way of doing things, forcing change can be tricky and advises people to keep an open mind and be patient. Mr. Shimono says learning Japanese is not necessary when coming to Japan. He says learning the Kanji script is integral to the Japanese language and this can be quite difficult and incredibly time consuming for adults. Mr. Shimono says nowadays there are a lot of interpreters available and many software programs that can bypass the need to learn the Japanese language.

Philippe Jardin is the Country Manager for Pierre Fabre in Japan. His interest in the global world was greatly inspired by his parents who had an interest in Asia. Mr. Jardin learned Judo in school and during business school he had an opportunity to learn Japanese. As a part of the curriculum, which included doing internships, Mr. Fabre chose to do all of his internships in Japan. Mr. Jardin chose the marketing route after his undergraduate degree which led him to do an MBA and enroll in the Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) which was partially in Singapore and France. This led to him furthering his career with various organizations in the corporate world in Japan before coming to Pierre Fabre. One thing that helped Mr. Jardin with his job was his intuition. He explains the importance of reading the room or reading between the lines. Sometimes in Japan, not everything is explicitly said, and being more intuitive has helped him greatly. Understanding without explicitly asking is a soft skill that he says has been essential in his career. Mr. Jardin faced some challenges with his first posting to Japan including how to improve profitability. He said he overcome this by identifying exactly what the issue was and reinforcing to his staff that they need to break even and make a profit. When starting a new leadership role, Mr. Jardin takes a systematic approach to evaluating the company. He sits down and talks with everyone on the staff and asks some questions. The first type of question is their personal evaluation of the power of the company by rating the company out of 5 or 10. The second question would be their opinion on the power of the brand. This provides them with some valuable findings regarding the strengths, weaknesses, and issues that the company is facing. Then they are better able to tackle them as a team. Advice that Mr. Jardin would give to someone who is being sent to Japan for a posting is to be open. By being open he means don't judge too quickly. He also suggests being patient as Japanese work culture can be unexpected and taking things slowly is beneficial. He suggests learning the language to the extent possible, though he knows that someone younger may be able to learn the Japanese language faster than someone older. Regardless, Mr. Jardin would still suggest for people to learn a few phrases in Japanese for a more comfortable daily life.

Hans Werner Burg is currently the Representative Director for Leschaco KK in Tokyo Japan. Originally from Germany, Mr. Werner Burg describes himself as a working-class kid raised in Western Germany close to the French border. He went to university to study Business Administration and that was when he had the opportunity to do an internship at a subsidiary of a car parts manufacturing firm in Hokkaido. Mr. Werner Burg explains his leadership style and the way it evolved over the years. He claims that in the beginning he was trying to get his team to improve by finding faults in everything they did, and this did not work well. He says he did not like that approach himself. So, he slowly changed overtime. He mentions that in Japan, an apology can be seen as a cultural way to admit that you may have caused the client inconvenience and will rectify for the next time. In comparison to Germany, an apology may be seen as an admission of guilt. As apologies are typically made for larger mistakes in Germany, the company may be taken to court for that admission. Mr. Werner Burg says he tries to encourage engagement by keeping an open-door policy and trying to speak with people in smaller groups for around 40 of his staff in Tokyo and Osaka. He understands that people in Japan are less forthcoming with ideas and engagement than in the West, and it takes more for them to open up and share their thoughts and ideas. He says he tries his best to be approachable and is calm by nature and doesn't get upset with anyone who disagrees with him. Once they have good engagement with his team, Mr. Werner Burg encourages innovation and good ideas from his staff. In the past he has tried to have a limited agenda at meetings to keep it open for ideas. Mr. Werner Burg notes, engagement and sharing of ideas have become harder as most people are still working from home due to COVID-19. Mr. Werner Burg explains that Japan is a country where trust is very important. He emphasizes the importance of being authentic and transparent to earn the trust of his staff. Additionally, Mr. Werner Burg says that he shares credit with his team. For example, if Head Office congratulates him on a target that was achieved well, Mr. Werner Burg will make sure his staff members who were involved in the project are acknowledged as well. On the contrary, if there is a problem, he tries to tackle the problem together with his staff, by admitting the mistake to clients as needed and taking responsibility for the company. Mr. Werner Burg says that knowing the Japanese language can be helpful, as it is a useful tool, though he has seen people succeed without it.

Scott Smalley is presently the Managing Director of DSV in Japan. Mr. Smalley is originally from Michigan in the United States and his first introduction to Japan was through an exchange he did with Japan during his schooling at Michigan State University. He returned to the US to finish his degree in Economics and Anthropology before starting to explore more opportunities in Japan. Mr. Smalley worked in Sales for a few years before pivoting into Logistics starting with Herbalife in Japan. After this role, he held various mid-level and senior leadership positions in Logistics in the US and Japan. Mr. Smalley defines leadership as leading by example. One of his biggest leading examples is taking a vacation. In Japan, Mr. Smalley finds that many people have not taken a vacation in 5, sometimes even 10 years. He emphasizes that without ample work life balance, people are not at their creative best. He emphasizes that taking vacation will encourage people to be more innovative and to work smarter not harder. Working long hours does not necessarily mean that someone is more productive, and he tries to show his staff this by leading by example. Mr. Smalley explains that they try and reward innovation by giving out $100 Amazon gift cards as they are a big motivator. He explains that in Japan, the culture is so unique that you really must try as a non-Japanese leader to make that connection, which starts with understanding the language and culture. He emphasizes that to make people drop their defenses, you must show them that you value their culture, be honest and straightforward, and try to share your own experience of being in Japan. Additionally, Mr. Smalley connects with his staff over drinks after work, holding meetings in the mountains and connecting with people at Onsen, the Japanese hot springs. Mr. Smalley would advise newcomers to Japan to really listen and get to know people outside of work, perhaps through a drink after work. He says that learning Japanese has become easier now with more technological options. He recommends trying to learn Japanese, which will help with communication, getting people to let their guard down and in ensuring good teamwork in Japan.

Per Rasmussen is currently the President and Representative Director for Millet Mountain Group, Japan. Mr. Rasmussen is originally from Denmark, and he studied Business at University of Southern Denmark. His first introduction to Japan was through his Japanese wife who was based in Denmark when they first met and his first job after graduating was with the Lego Group in the marketing side of strategic product development. After working in Denmark for 4 years, Mr. Rasmussen transferred to the Tokyo office and in Tokyo he worked in progressive marketing roles over the years with various companies. This led him to working in senior leadership roles such as Managing Director and President in recent years. Mr. Rasmussen talks about bringing change through his work with the Danish Toy Company, The Lego Group. He says that in parents' minds education is one of the most conservative things and specifically in the Japanese market, as they do not want to take risks with their children's future. At the time in Japan, education was more closely associated with knowledge and not so much with creativity. They worked to change the product slightly and the commercials to try and market Lego to the Japanese market. He says that trying to increase sales of the products and increased revenue to the company brought about some resistance from employees. Many employees said they had joined for the stability of the organization and were not in favour of change. One of their most popular products was a large bucket full of Lego Bricks which some people thought was boring. After some tough negotiations with headquarters, they introduced The Elephant Bucket to the Japanese market. While most toys last only 3-6 months, the Elephant Bucket was so popular that it lasted on the market for 20 years. In terms of getting engagement in Japan, making the distinction between success and failure is important in understanding success. Success is spoken of as non-failure. Mr. Rasumussen emphasizes not singling people out if a mistake is made and trying new ways, or new things in the workplace works differently in Japan. In Japanese workplaces, it is okay not to try. But if someone tries to do something, they must succeed. Thus, if someone doesn't try, that is alright with everyone, but they would prefer not trying rather than trying and failing. Japanese work culture can be seen as risk-averse in this regard. Being mindful of this when trying to bring about change can be important. Mr. Rasmussen would advise newcomers to Japan to come with an open mind, understand that Japan works differently, and do not try to tell Japan how Japan works. He gives an example of his early years, where he would become frustrated because Japan worked at a slower pace. This pace of innovation and change was slower than he was used to. He would also advise investing the time and energy in learning Japanese only if the intention is to stay 15 or more years in Japan as it is a significant time commitment.

Doug Hymas was the previous Japan Country Executive for the Bank of New York Mellon Group. Many years ago, during his college days, Mr. Hymas served in Japan as a Mormon missionary based in Tokyo. He returned after this stint and finished up college at the Brigham Young University (BYU) back in the US. He developed an interest for Japan, while he was at college in the 1980's and Japan was at the frontier in business and culture. Mr. Hymas was glad he was given the chance to develop his Japanese at the university and through his missionary work in Tokyo. During his time with the Mormon Church doing missionary work in Japan, he focused mostly on verbal Japanese and not on the Kanji Japanese script as most of their work was verbal. After about 6 months in Japan, he was very confident in his conversational Japanese abilities. He later did get a chance to develop his written Japanese through BYU, which had a strong focus on Japanese and other languages. The retuned missionaries often teach courses to current students at the university, and this gives students a fresh perspective of people who have experienced Japan. Mr. Hymas later returned to BYU to do a Law degree and graduated as a lawyer. He started working with KPMG and was later transferred to Japan. He then worked by advising Japanese clients on International Law. Afterwards, Mr. Hymas was headhunted by a Japanese firm called Minebea Company Limited, where he worked as an in-house counsel advising on legal matters outside of Japan, primarily in the US. Mr. Hymas loved this job, but the pay was very low. At this point one of his friends was building a team of lawyers within the Lehman Brothers and invited Mr. Hymas to join his team at Lehman. At this role, his salary tripled but he says his lifestyle went down. He stayed with Lehman brothers for 3 years, which led him to his role at BGI, who were the world's largest indexing investment manager at the time. He liked the business model at BGI as he felt that the company's interests aligned with the clients−if they did well, their fees increased. If they didn't do well, they received a reduced fee. This business model was one of the reasons he stayed within Investment Management for 10 years thereafter. Afterwards, Mr. Hymas was headhunted by Citigroup, which allowed him to step away from the legal world and into business. Soon after, he started leading the organization. To foster creativity in the workplace, Mr. Hymas reminds his staff that they are not government workers, and their success is dependent on working hard with engagement. Mr. Hymas says there are many ways to be creative in his work. For example, it can be a creative solution in sales, the actual product design, or innovative ways to provide customer service by understanding client needs. Mr. Hymas emphasizes that some people are motivated by financial incentives, but many are not, and acknowledgment through public recognition is also important. Mr. Hymas advises those new to leading in Japan to be open to cultural differences and try and understand the strong team culture. He observes that Japanese people work well if the team is working well. Thus, trying to understand what you may see in a meeting may not be the real picture. For example if the staff are nodding and agreeing to something in the meeting, that may not necessarily be the case, and there may be something they are holding back. Being mindful of this and trying to understand what is happening in between meetings is important. Mr. Hymas also recommends the person coming in getting a confidant. By building a relationship with people you trust on the team who act as your eyes and ears, Mr. Hymas says you can get a better understanding of Japanese people and workplaces.

Mitch Kristofferson is currently the Director of Customer Service Japan for UpClear. Mr. Kristofferson was a Pre-Med student during his bachelor's degree at Stanford University. His first experience of Japan was when he came on exchange, and was place in a teaching hospital at Yamaguchi prefecture. He graduated from his undergraduate degree and worked in the oil exploration space for 5 years before doing his MBA at Stanford. The MBA led to a pivot for Mr. Kristofferson, and he moved into marketing, working in various companies in Japan and the US. Mr. Kristofferson explains how leadership and bringing about change in the workplace can take multiple steps. He admits the challenge of stepping into a new role and making changes. Mr. Kristofferson starts out by explaining the direction he wants to take the company but in many cases, he initially gets resistance from people who want things done the old way. He explains that when something like this comes to light, people are divided into 3 groups - those who are keen to innovate and bring about change, those who are hesitant and in the middle, and the third group who are not willing to listen at all. Mr. Kristofferson says that he must deal with each group differently. Mr. Kristofferson explains that not everybody is ideal for every job in every company, and in some situations, it is a matter of finding the right fit within the firm. For those in the middle group, Mr. Kristofferson has attempted to encourage them to try new innovative ideas. For example, Mr. Kristofferson has brought the middle group of marketing professionals with the sales team. He says that the sales department typically has good innovative ideas as they are on the ground and meeting customers and talking to clients everyday. Hence, trying to engage the middle group with such groups seem to work well. On the contrary, he explains that the early adopters are usually the people that have the best ideas and sometimes they reach out to Mr. Kristofferson and try and fast track the innovation for the company. Mr. Kristofferson has many advice for someone coming into Japan. He explains different cultures in terms of their approach to conflict and expressiveness based on a Harvard business review article. He cites the example of the Philippines where people are expressive but don't like conflict. In Germany, people are not too expressive but are alright with direct communication and conflict. Japanese don't like conflict and they aren't very expressive either. Someone coming into Japan needs to be mindful of the more reserved nature of the Japanese. People may have some great ideas, but they won't necessarily be direct in sharing them. Becoming comfortable with silence in meetings is something that newcomers can be mindful of. Mr. Kristofferson explains that things are slower paced in Japan, but great ideas come out of people and solutions are more methodical and sometimes end up with more fruitful results in the long term.

Peter Cammaerts is currently the Managing Director, AB InBev in Japan. Mr. Cammaerts is originally from Belgium. He studied in Leuven in Belgium, which is still where AB's headquarters are located. He started working at AB as a student and worked in different positions first as a sales rep where he was visiting stores and ensuring good store execution and then moved up into different positions in Belgium. After 9 years in Belgium, he moved to France before relocating to Japan in 2020 for his current role with AB InBev. Mr. Cammaerts says he builds trust with his team by showing his effort to learn Japanese and the culture to ensure that he is invested in the team in Japan. He tries to run the company as if it is his own business, which shows ownership to the firm. He also tries to connect with the team by holding 30 minute one on one conversations with all 70 of the staff members. During COVID, these conversations were held on Zoom, and he believes that they helped in building a trusting relationship. Additionally, delivering results was another big factor in establishing credibility. Mr. Cammaerts explains that if people can see the results, they are more passionate and more likely to work hard on those projects. Similarly, they will not be as passionate if they don't see the results materializing. Mr. Cammaerts would advise a new person coming into Japan to try and learn Japanese if they are willing and able to invest the time. Mr. Cammaerts also light-heartedly suggests learning golf before coming to Japan. He explains that many people in Japan have asked him whether he plays golf, and many customers would like to play golf so that is a good way to connect with people. Mr. Cammaerts would also recommend that if anyone is considering relocation to ensure they are happy in their personal life as well. He gives his example of ensuring that his family was happy, and he was able to deliver well in his professional life because his personal life was sorted.

Jan Babatz currently is the President and CEO of Gurhing in Tokyo, Japan. Mr. Babatz was born and brought up in Berlin, Germany, on the East side of the Berlin Wall. In High School, Mr. Babatz learned Japanese which was quite unusual at the time. After graduating from a Business Engineering background, Mr. Babatz started working as a Sales Engineer, before stepping into a leadership role as General Manager at Waldrich Siegen GmbH Japan. In 2017, he took on his current role as CEO of Gurhing Japan. In terms of getting the team to come up creative ideas and solutions, Mr. Babatz is not a fan of big meetings as they aren't efficient to get creative ideas, he feels meetings are good for making announcements. Creativity is fueled in smaller working groups of 2-3 people. In the beginning, he tried getting down at the team level and tried to work as a salesperson with the others, but this didn't go well as people were nervous working closely with the CEO and President and clients weren't comfortable either. In each department, he figured out which people had which strengths and weaknesses by getting to know people outside of work through lunches and non-work activities such as karaoke. Mr. Babatz says that coming down to their level by talking about his personal life and bonding with them instead of acting like their boss works well in improving efficiency. Mr. Babatz further explains that most of the time when he talks to people one by one, he always asks them what their aim is in the next 5 years. In many cases, after these conversations, Mr. Babatz will try to fulfill his employees' goals. By improving work culture, Mr. Babatz claims that it leads to retention of good employees. Thus, he takes culture building seriously. Mr. Babatz admits that creating culture within Japan that is outside the head office can be different, and that he can only talk about his own office of about 30 people, but there, they hold social activities such as barbeques and play softball. Additionally, at his office, employees are free to to take vacations whenever they like and everyone who wants to try something new or different always get that chance. If the staff feel that they can share their opinion freely and are able to take vacation flexibly, their motivation and engagement within the company increases. Mr. Babatz emphasizes open communication, and this also leads to high staff retention. Since hierarchy is more defined in Japan than the west, Mr. Babatz is also mindful of calling each other by name instead of job positions, in order to break down the barrier between himself and the other employees. Mr. Babatz would advise new foreign leaders working in Japan to learn Japanese. He has seen people who learn Japanese quickly by practicing every day are much better off than those who use a translator or interpreter. He emphasizes that speaking even a little bit of Japanese builds a bond with clients and other locals. Mr. Babatz also says to keep close contact and find support within one's team by inviting them to events and being open about oneself. For example, Mr. Babatz brought in German beer which he shared with his colleagues. By doing something unique like sharing his own culture, Mr. Babatz says he was able to build a more trusting relationship with his team.

Nikolaus Boltze is currently the country representative for Thyssenkrupp in Japan. Mr. Boltze first came to Japan in 1972 as a child, while his father was working with the German embassy and was posted to Japan. He attended the German school which was at that time in Ōmori and since that time he has a certain soft spot for Japan. They returned to Japan in the early 80's and he finished his graduation from high school at the German School in Japan. He returned to Germany for his University in Engineering and military service. When Mr. Boltze was applying for jobs after university, he came across a Japanese company starting its operations in Europe called Daifuku. The job description listed a variety of initatives, from setting up an office, finding additional staff, reaching out first to new customers in Germany, transferring the products, which had an excellent Japanese design, but make them fit for the European market and so on. This role got him excited as a young engineer without any previous experience as it was much more than just designing the rear back wheel for a Mercedes Benz, which would be the typical start position for a young engineer. He stayed in this role for 5 years and then later took a position at an automotive supplier called Bayer based out Stuttgart and they were looking for a Project Manager. He took this role and spent a year developing a strategy for entering the Japanese market based in Stuttgart. He presented this to the board, and they came back to him and asked him if he was willing to implement his own strategy and go work from Japan. So, he returned to Japan and started looking for an office and a secretary to start Bayer's work in Japan. He was in this role for about 6 years until 2005. Mr. Boltze says they have not been too successful in hiring new graduates in Japan. Typically, new graduates in Japan are focused on working for Japanese firms and they also may have some family pressure to work for well-known Japanese companies. They feel they have better success with mid-career employees who have returned to Japan after working in the US, Europe, or Southeast Asia and they don't feel well suited to the Japanese environment. Mr. Boltze says that female engineers are another of their hiring strengths. Hiring female engineers has been good for the company because a lot of the time women feel more comfortable and less restricted at a global company rather than a Japanese one, Mr. Boltze also says they don't discriminate based on gender so women may feel more at ease at Thyssenkrupp. Another segment of people they hire are people from other Asian countries such as Korea, Taiwan or Malaysia who have a degree from Japan and are rather well versed with the culture but for work, they may prefer to work for an international firm. Advice that Mr. Boltze would give to someone new to Japan who is not familiar with the culture would be to understand that Japan is a G7 nation and if you are bringing a novel idea or a new way of doing something, chances are there may already be a Japanese way or a local firm doing this, and it is harder to penetrate that. Ensuring that firms understand that Japan is a unique island nation and there is likely a local way of doing the thing that you are wanting to do in Japan is beneficial. Learning Japanese isn't going to hurt but on the other side communication is very important. Japanese as a language is vague and not very precise and sometimes communicating in German or English can be more direct, setting clear goals and giving directions to staff may be more beneficial in German or English.

Joe Latteri is currently the Managing Director for Customer Success with Meltwater Japan. Meltwater is a global company and originally started in Oslo, Norway. Meltwater was founded by a tech entrepreneur named Jorn Lyseggen, who currently oversees the global board. They are a global leader in media intelligence and social media analytics. They work with close to 30,000 companies around the world including 800 clients and about 50 employees in Japan. Mr. Latteri's history was quite unique and with Japan started when he was 6 years old, his parents encouraged him to pick a language and he opted to do a Japanese immersion program in elementary school. Mr. Latteri went to an English-speaking Middle School, but he tried to keep up his Japanese and although he was a business major, he took a minor in Japanese at University to keep up with some of his language skills. His plan was to work in the US and was hired in Sales at Meltwater in the US, but he started working in London and then later moved to Singapore and he had more success in Singapore and that was when he started to research Japan and he spoke Japanese. Mr. Latteri launched the team in Japan in 2008 with 3 other team members. Initially he thought he would be in Japan for a year or two but there was a lot of potential in Japan, so he kept getting drawn back to Japan. Mr. Latteri says that something that drives engagement is finding the best fit and that would mean finding someone who has the same core values that the company has. Fun is the first core value of Meltwater Japan. He says that he believes that is a very important core value, fun can mean going to Karaoke after work or it can mean having a pleasant customer meeting and he emphasizes that since the employees spend so much time at work, they need to be having fun while they are doing it. Enjoying the personal development that comes from work, the thrill of doing the job or trying to be the very best also provides enjoyment and satisfaction for some people. Advice for someone that is new to Japan from overseas is to try and understand the team and be patient. Mr. Latteri says to try and understand the staff and the influencers within the team. Mr. Latteri says that usual way of doing things is engrained into people's way of doing things and the staff really needs to understand that you are here for a long time with them. He also suggests being humble and be open. He suggests being humble and open to new ideas, hear their staff out and try and implement their ideas. Approaching the staff as people is always a good approach and embrace Japanese culture. People pay close attention to little things, if you are open to learning about Japan, if you attempt to speak and learn the language, if you attempt to eat using chopsticks, these things are noticed and will go a long way. Embracing Japan will get you a more positive response as the people think you are open to learning about Japan and you like Japan and people are more willing to trust and like you. If you are coming to Japan, it is important to be genuine and work to build that trust. If you really want to have long-term success, being genuine and consistent builds a lot more integrity and trust and builds stronger relationship. Owning your mistakes and being humble are core tenants of leadership, especially in Japan.

Meghan Barstow currently is the President at Edelman Japan. Ms. Barstow is originally from Alaska and Japan and Alaska were strongly connected through the fishing industry and the airline industry, as many international flights land in Anchorage. The Japanese economy was booming when she was in high school, so she decided Japan was a good place to be. Ms. Barstow first came to Japan exactly 30 years ago which was the obvious step as she majored in English Literature with a minor in Japan. She first came to Japan as a third-year university student, she studied at Osaka from Kansai Gaidai for her year abroad. Prior to university, she studied at a school in Middlebury with an immersive Japanese program prior to coming to Japan in her third year of university. She completed her degree back in the US before returning to Japan through the JET program. She was in Japan in a very rural area in Japan for 3 years for the JET program, she was an ALT teaching English for 2 years and the last year as a CIR working for the local government. She was the only ALT in that region, so it was a wondering immersive experience for her. After completing the JET program, she returned to Seattle in the US, and she again wanted to use her Japanese skills and she worked for Kyoga prefecture in the Business and Culture centre and later she also taught Japanese at a local public high school filling in for someone on maternity leave. After this she retuned to Japan again for her third round in Japan working as an editor creating business textbooks and English textbooks at Time Life. At this time, she had many friends that were expats, and they were doing communications for automobile companies such as Mercedes and Reno and it sounded like many of the skills Ms. Barstow had such as meeting people, writing, editing, communicating but also strategizing. This led her to apply for a job in an English Language newspaper and that's where her journey in PR started. It can be hard to earn the trust of colleagues and especially as a foreigner coming in during COVID Ms. Barstow found this to be quite difficult in Japan. Ms. Barstow feels that Edelman is doing very well with regards to having female leadership and equity in the firm. Traditionally, you'll find that more women are present at the junior levels and as you go higher up, there are less and less women. At Edelman, Ms. Barstow says that there are a lot of strong female leaders, and she has felt very supported by the female leadership at Edelman. Ms. Barstow has found that Edelman is very creative in many ways, the team often call themselves entrepreneurial, by constantly thinking of new products, new evolved techniques, and new and creative ways to do things. She feels the staff is constantly learning and innovating. For creativity and one of their passions is to be constantly curious as every day is new, and she finds herself learning every single day. She feels to be creative; employees need to given freedom and time to become creative. At work, they have various working groups in various topics, such as an ESG group and an Olympic working group. Staff join these working groups based on their area of interest, for example someone interested in the environment, might join the ESG working group. Advice that Ms. Barstow would give to someone coming into Japan would be that listening is very important and asking for feedback and spending time 1-on-1 with the staff. Building trust and understanding that change takes more time in Japan. She says that Japan seems contradictory to her that though Japan tends to seem a hierarchical country but in other ways it can be a country that is very bottom-up, so striking that balance is hard and navigating that as a foreign leader can be challenging as well. She ends on the powerful note that leadership is not about the leader but is the power of those who report to you because the organization is not about one person.

James Yamanaka is currently the President of BAT Japan. Mr. Yamanaka has had a truly global career, he started out at Deloitte in Consulting, then moved on to work in the Telecom industry and then started at BAT and his career has mostly been at BAT. Mr. Yamanaka is a 4th generation Japanese American; he grew up in California, started his education in the US but ended up going to Business school in London. 22 years ago, Mr. Yamanaka was working with BAT as a client in the Middle East and transitioned to working at BAT 18 years ago. His time at BAT has taken him across the world and he has worked in London, Germany, Sri Lanka, back to London and then to Denmark and now Japan. Mr. Yamanaka grew up in a heavily Japanese area called Torrance in the state of California in the U.S. When Mr. Yamanaka found out about his posting to Japan, he felt both worried and excited. He was excited to be closer to his Japanese roots and to find out where his ancestors came from. Although, Mr. Yamanaka is ethnically Japanese he hadn't lived or worked in Japan prior to his posting with BAT. Mr. Yamanaka talks about improving engagement with his staff. He tries to achieve good engagement by trying to talk to his employees across the organization and goes 2 or 3 tiers below in rank and asks for feedback maybe about 4 times a week from his staff members. He follows a list and makes sure the organization is on the right track and doing the right thing, and secondly, he tries to ensure through these meetings that they are not missing anything vital. Sometimes, he also sits in into other teams' meetings and listens in. Mr. Yamanaka emphasizes that they treat BAT as an outlier company and as a company that has over 20 nationalities in their staff, BAT prides itself in being in a unique position compared to other multinational companies. Many other companies tend to be very heavily Japanese with a few expatriate staff at the higher levels. BAT has a large foreigner population, not all are expats and has a lot of foreign staff at the junior levels as well. He says that due to this outlier position, their recruitment strategy differs from other organizations, and they have accepted that they are an outlier company and thus recruit differently. He says that if you come to BAT, you can experience leaving Japan without actually leaving Japan. Advice to someone coming to Japan for the first time, someone who doesn't speak Japanese and has not been to Japan would be to do the typical things, such as reading some books about the formalities in Japan, listen to the cultural things, try to read a real "yes" versus a yes that's said to you just to be agreeable. Someone who has been brought to Japan is usually in Japan to make some change, Mr. Yamanaka says that identifying a team that is willing to work with you to make that change will make a large difference. Learning Japanese would certainly help to work in Japan. Mr. Yamanaka says that he understands the cultural nuances as he is ethnically Japanese and recognizes the culture from his family back home. Mr. Yamanaka also says that as an ethnically Japanese person, the expectations of him with regards to learning the language are higher, yet this wouldn't be the case for most people, and they should learn Japanese if they are able.

Will Shaffer is currently the President of Boeing, Japan. Mr. Shaffer is originally from the US and started out as a pilot in the Navy, stationed out of Whidbey Island. After working as a pilot, Mr. Shaffer went to Business school and then worked in Consulting in the Seattle area. It was in this role within the consulting space, that Mr. Shaffer got accustomed to Boeing. Before coming to Japan with Boeing, Mr. Shaffer worked for many years in the Puget Sound area working across multiple roles within the supply chain organization. Prior to his posting to Japan over 2 years ago, Mr. Shaffer had some prior exposure to Japanese culture. When he was in the military, he was deployed to Japan several times. He later visited Japan many times when working in Boeing's Japanese suppliers. He says that an advantage of working at a global organization like Boeing is that though it is in Japan, there are Japanese hires but there are also international staff on the team that were hired locally. He says he has noticed that many of the employees in Japan are a bit shyer when sharing ideas than perhaps other countries. Mr. Shaffer says that sometimes it takes a bit more effort to draw those ideas out from these people. He says the advantage that Boeing Japan has is probably staff that are more outspoken than an entirely Japanese firm. Sometimes drawing out these ideas can take a bit longer in Japan. Boeing is a highly regulated company, on both the commercial and defense sides so it can be easy to get caught up in the process and rules. He says that encouraging and rewarding managers that encourage innovation on their team while meeting safety and quality requirement is a way to encourage innovation. He uses a variety of techniques to engage teams and garner ideas outside of them. Before COVID, he says he walked around to talk to people personally for the staff in Tokyo. Boeing has employees dispersed throughout Japan, so he would periodically go visit those regions to engage with those staff in-person. During the COVID period, this has shifted to the virtual world, Mr. Shaffer says that he has noticed that the virtual environment through chat and Webex has enabled some people to speak up and ask questions that they may not have asked that question in an in-person meeting. Mr. Shaffer's advice to someone coming into Japan who doesn't know Japanese, or the culture would be to be humble. This advice could be different from US based or multi-national companies where you are supposed to be louder and advocate for yourself to succeed in the workplace. Another piece of advice would be to have patience, Japan does move at a slower pace and just being positive and celebrating the smaller wins will be helpful. He also suggests exploring the country and culture as that can bring you closer to colleagues and clients as well. Getting to know your team and people is a good step to bring you closer to your team, after-work culture and having drinks with your colleagues. Mr. Shaffer gives his personal advice on respecting privacy but also getting to know his team and workplace and asking about their weekends, sharing more about his own personal life on the weekend and hobbies brings him closer to his team.

Noriko Silvester is the President and Founder of Candlewick. Candlewick is a Public Relations consulting firm that works with clients in the Food, Beauty, Travel and Education space with a strong focus on products that influence people's wellbeing. They support overseas clients with their transition into the Japanese market, developing a strategy that considers differences in consciousness, customs and business in their home market and Japan. Mrs. Silvester started her career working as a secretary working at an American Financial Institution in Japan. She later realized that she wanted to get more involved in the business side of things and moved her way into sales and then got into Japanese cosmetics. She did marketing and sales for 8 years before moving briefly to a pharmaceutical company that had moved into Japan at the time, the company pulled out of Japan. She later started working at a Swiss company as a Brand Manager and they also pulled out of Japan. At this point, she started to feel that someone else was dictating her life, so she decided to start her own business. She founded Candlewick in 2004. She wanted her company's name to have some meaning. Candlewick was the name of her husband's grandmother's home which was also close to Candlewick Lake. She also added that the wick is the string at the core of the candle that is necessary to light it, so it is like the message that is core to a business functioning well. Mrs. Silvester says that she finds that sharing knowledge and sharing experience makes people more open and likely to share. She also notes that the default Japanese tendency is to be less proactive. She is currently trying to get people on her team to be more proactive. She says providing people with experiential learning automatically forces them to be more proactive. For example, there is a foreign staff member on her team and most of their clients are overseas clients, so her staff automatically must be more proactive to work properly. The handling of mistakes depends on the staff's attitude, if the staff consult with upper management and do everything within their power to do things correctly and there is still a mistake, she says that upper management takes responsibility of that, however, is someone is very casual about making mistakes and not taking responsibility, she can be very severe about that. Mrs. Silvester's advice to someone coming to Japan for a posting to Japan who doesn't speak Japanese and doesn't know Japan she would say to cover 4 areas: Staying in the box is the default option. Staying comfortable with the familiar is ingrained into Japanese culture It is good to have a mentor, a leader who is heading an organization would be helpful. A foreign mentor running a company in Japan would be helpful to speak with and learn from. Reading books about leadership in Japan to allow them to gain some insights before coming to Japan. Mrs. Silvester says she recently read a book with the title is "Making Rules, Breaking Rules that she found insightful. Experience and join the community. She says Japan has a long history and things are ingrained in the culture and people have a way of working. Learning and trying to understand this would be very helpful. Learning Japanese would be helpful in the workplace as well.

Darren Morrish is the General Manager of the Tokyo American Club and a numerous-time five-star hotel general manager throughout Asia, including Japan. Mr. Morrish is a Chef by trade and has been in the hospitality and hotel industry for many years. Mr. Morrish has a long history with the hotel industry as his parents were into the business of buying and selling hotels in Australia, so Mr. Morrish grew up moving a lot and exposed to the world of hospitality from an early age. Mr. Morrish wanted to start working as early as possible, so he started out by becoming a chef and then slowly moved out to the floor and worked his way through different levels of management with different hotel groups, both in Australia as well as stints in Malaysia, Singapore, China before moving to Japan permanently in the early 2000s. Mr. Morrish also worked in Korea and says that his experience there was very different from Japan. Mr. Morrish says that to get people to be more creative is to have meetings in smaller groups. He says that in Japan, the smaller the group, the braver people feel to speak up and ask questions, whereas in a large group of 300 people, people typically would not ask questions. He says that Japan has changed over the years, the change is slower than what might be expected but compared to years ago, Japan has changed. In Japan, there are some very incredibly creative people, and they tend to stand out as there are fewer of them that go against the norm. He says that when he wants staff to be creative or have open discussions, he refers to Japanese success stories when talking with his colleagues, as these are examples that his staff can relate to. Mr. Morrish talks about Toyota or a local café as success stories when speaking with his colleagues as they will be able to relate to these examples more than they can relate to an example from Australia. Mr. Morrishs' advice to someone coming for a posting to Japan would be to have a lot of patience. He says Japan may not be exactly what people think it is coming from outside and it is a very old culture, so things do not change quickly and just being mindful of that and being patient would go a long way. The second piece of advice would be to get involved in the culture, immerse yourself in the culture and build trust and enjoy your time in the country. Japan can be lonely if you are coming alone, so immerse yourself in the culture and meet other people. Another piece of advice would be not to make a quick judgement to say that Japan is different from anywhere else. He advises people to be flexible and try and learn from Japan. He says Tokyo is quite different from elsewhere in Japan and even Asia, it is perhaps the only Asian city that operates globally in the region. The diversity and the things you can experience in Japan is unique. China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore are all quite different in terms of experience and work culture and one should take this time in Japan as an opportunity to learn and grow with the culture.

Klaus Meder is the President of Bosch in Japan. Mr. Meder has been in Japan for almost 10 years in total, he worked in Japan from 1996 to 2000 and then shifted base to Japan again in mid 2017. During his initial visit to Japan, Mr. Meder was a part of a joint venture between the German company Bosch and the Japanese company Zaxel. The joint venture had about 100 people including the production team. There were 4 German staff members, and the rest were all Japanese. Mr. Meder said that at the time it was quite challenging as he didn't speak Japanese and although he had a full-time translator with him, he still found the language barrier to be a problem, he says have expert knowledge of ABAC control systems helped him a lot. Mr. Meder also said that as he was a specialist in the field and knew the current and next generations of modules this helped him a lot in his early days in Japan. When Mr. Meder returned to Germany after his first stint in Japan, he said he learned to communicate really well with his small team in the countryside in Japan and he tried to emulate that back home in Germany. Another benefit he felt was that in the countryside in Japan, there were very few distractions and people were able to better focus on their work, in Germany he feels there is a lot to do outside of work so it can be a bit distracting. Upon returning to Japan the second time, Mr. Meder felt that a lot of things had changed. When he left the first time Bosch had less than 500 employees and now, they are over 7000 employees. Another interesting distinction Mr. Meder noticed in Japanese employees was the answer to the typical survey question, "Would you recommend Bosch to your family and friends?". He says that globally, over 90% staff say yes to that question, however, in Japan the number is lower. This could be due to the cultural factor, where Japanese staff feel more of an obligation towards making sure their friend/family member is a good fit for the employer and also, they feel more obligated about giving Bosch a good employee. Mr. Meder's advice to someone coming into Japan would be to be respectful and don't say no right away. He says that being respectful usually doesn't hurt in Japan and small actions, words can go a long way. In Japan, where customer satisfaction and harmony are of most importance, if something doesn't seem like a good fit, don't reject it right away but consider it. Another piece of advice to foreigners would be to try to learn the language in Japan. Though, the language can be complicated to learn, effort is also rewarded, and locals really appreciate it even if you know a few words. Learning gestures and body language in Japan would be beneficial for someone coming to work in Japan, and body language is also very important. A point that Mr. Meder makes that is useful as well is that he thinks that the ideal time for a role in the workplace is 3-5 years as he feels that you can learn and master the role in that time. He has noticed that Japanese associates typically take longer in one role partly because it is discouraged to make too many changes and that employers might retain employees longer than they'd like because it is so difficult to fill vacancies. He feels though to learn and grow and be beneficial to the individual and the team, 3-5 years is an optimal duration in a role.

Hiroki Ishida is the Representative Director and President of BASF Japan Ltd, a German multinational chemical company. Mr. Ishida originally joined BASF in the early 90s as a new graduate and worked his way into leadership roles. He has also worked in the company's headquarter in Germany as a research chemist which he recalls as a challenging experience due to the language barrier and environment. Mr. Ishida then switched into sales and marketing as he realized he could add more value there. In addition to Japan and Germany, Mr. Ishida has developed global leadership experience working in Malaysia and Hong Kong. The first thing Mr. Ishida noticed about working in Germany was the need to ask questions and show initiative. He recalls not getting his laptop because he did not ask for one on his first day at the office. In total, Mr. Ishida worked in Germany for 3 years before returning to Japan. During this time, Mr. Ishida focused on new business development which he started in Germany to introduce some new products to the Japanese market. Back in Japan, Mr. Ishida found the need to adopt a "hybrid" business mindset working for a Japanese market with a Japanese team, but in a global environment. When working in Malaysia as a senior manager of sales covering multiple Asian countries, Mr. Ishida experienced further cultural differences. In the beginning, Mr. Ishida tried to implement changes that were successful in Japan, but completely failed. Overtime, Mr. Ishida realized unlike his Japanese employees who would follow the boss's instructions, he needed to his Southeast Asian employees to buy in to his initiatives. Mr. Ishida learned to understand his team's background and their source of motivation, and properly explain why he needed things to be done a certain way. In the end, Mr. Ishida recalls his experience in Malaysia as "fantastic" as he was able to further develop leadership while valuing diversity and inclusion and learning from his colleagues. To this day, Mr. Ishida says he has a team-oriented approach to leadership. He explains: "my motto is [to] get together…sometimes my ideas are better, but sometimes my colleagues' ideas are better…so I don't care about organizational hierarchies." In adopting this respectful and enthusiastic approach to leadership, Mr. Ishida thinks his team enjoys working together. When encouraging others to have high engagement, Mr. Ishida is careful not to simply give out instructions when delegating but also explain the objective, reasoning, and benefits people will receive by completing them. By giving a clear framework of the task but leaving the detailed process to the workers, Mr. Ishida gives both accountability and flexibility to his team. He is also understanding of mistakes and failures, and emphasizes the importance of analyzing the mistake and learning from them. Mr. Ishida adds: "In the VUCA era, we need to be more passionate, encouraging mistakes [and] bolder ideas…particularly in Japan, under these uncertain situations, we definitely need such a leader in the future." On innovation, Mr. Ishida recognizes the challenge of fostering creativity as BASF is a very task-oriented company with structured targets. He explains that top and mid-level leaders need to encourage bolder ideas instead of just focusing on achieving the already set goals. Mr. Ishida observes that BASF is beginning to focus on long-term success based on customer needs, understanding of industry trends, and encouraging newer ideas. To newcomers of Japan who want to succeed as leaders, Mr. Ishida advises to understand and respect the deep-rooted Japanese culture. In Japan, harmonization is highly valued, so people may not be as comfortable speaking up compared to the west. Usually when foreign leaders enter a Japanese company, Mr. Ishida points out that it is because the organization wants to implement some sort of change. By being aware of the background and culture of a Japanese organization and clearly communicating your mission to the team and customers, Mr. Ishida thinks newcomers will establish more trust. Mr. Ishida thinks learning Japanese in an international company is not necessary, but in smaller organizations, it is beneficial to learn a few words to develop good relationships. Mr. Ishida defines leadership as someone that inspires others and make speedy decisions particularly in uncertain situations. Additionally, it is someone who communicates with positivity, is approachable, trustworthy, and encourages open communication.

Tim Schlanghecke is the Country Director for Flavour of Symrise in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke has been in Japan ever since he graduated University from his home country, Germany. He says that he is not able to compare Japanese workplace and management to Germany since he did not work much in Germany. Mr. Schlanghecke says that his first venture was a small brewery that he started in the Japanese countryside, where people did not speak much English. He moved around Japan quite a lot in his early years in Japan, he spent some time in Fukuoka, Hokkaido, Mishima, Shizuoka, Yamagata and the spent some time in the Kansai area before coming to Tokyo. As someone who was passionate about breweries, the natural inclination for Mr. Schlanghecke was to go to the Japanese countryside to work there. The businesses plateaued at one point and then Mr. Schlanghecke decided to move to Tokyo to start his own consulting business, in his expertise niche which was consulting breweries. Since Mr. Schlanghecke is in a unique industry, Mr. Story asked Mr. Schlanghecke if it was challenging to convince Japanese board members and junior staff that they should come work for his smaller organization and not a larger, more stable, typical Japanese firm. Mr. Schlanghecke says he is passionate about his work and that translates outward and a lot of the time he hopes people see it and join him because of that passion. Japan works differently than other countries, resistance to change is one example of one thing that is different in Japan. Mr. Schlanghecke says that this is almost a philosophical topic as the resistance to change is deeply embedded in Japanese culture and it goes back hundreds of years. Japan's work culture has achieved astronomical things, the amount of total wealth that Japan has generated and the distribution of wealth in Japan has improved phenomenally over the years. Though Mr. Schlanghecke suspects that what worked in the past will not be the same way to be successful in the future. He believes though that we are at a turning point in society and industrialization and modern capitalism as we know it is likely not the way forward. He believes that for the world to be sustainable for future generations, we need to think about climate change, change our way of thinking about society and change the ways of working due to a changing demographic of an aging population. Though Japan has resisted change in the past, it may need to start slowly accepting it given the circumstances. Mr. Schlanghecke's advice to someone coming into Japan would be to listen first and don't complain. He says a lot of the time people come in and make assumptions on the little knowledge of Japan they may have; he also encourages them to go into details and be more Japanese. Learning about Japan and the Japanese way takes time and patience and an in depth understanding of Japanese. Having been in Japan, Mr. Schlanghecke says that for a foreign company to work in Japan, they need to have 100% backing and support from their head office, all the successes he has seen have worked in this way. Though Mr. Schlanghecke speaks Japanese and he used to work in the Japanese language, he has recently shifted back to communicating in English. He states that the reason for this is that Japanese tends to have nuances and be misunderstood by the other party because of the subtleties, he feels English is a more direct language and people are better able to understand instructions if he speaks in English.

John Flanagan is a General Manager Japan and Regional Head of Programming and Marketing Asia at A+E Networks Japan G.K. Mr. Flanagan has been in Japan for 30 years. Originally, he is from Denver, Colorado in the United States. He studied Political Economy for his undergraduate degree and was at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. He has been based in Media and Marketing for his career in Japan. Mr. Flanagan has a long history with Japan, as he was born in Tokyo because his father was a Professor of Japanese Political Science, but they returned to the US when Mr. Flanagan was 2 years old. In 1985, he returned to Japan as his college had an exchange opportunity with Waseda University and he did an exchange in the third year of his college. He went back to the US to graduate college and looked for ways to come back to Japan, he says one of the easiest ways to come back was through the well-known JET Programme. Mr. Flanagan applied to the JET programme in the first year it started, and he was placed to the sister state of Colorado which is Yamagata. The JET programme was his first exposure to Japanese work life which led to a career in Japan. One thing Mr. Flanagan remarked was that the office location is very important in Japan, which is different from the US. In the US, people are more used to driving to work so location is not so important and it's alright to have an office in the suburbs. In Japan, people rely on the trains so location needs to be central so people can get into the office. Mr. Flanagan also remarks that the Japanese style of working is much more risk averse than the Western style. He emphasizes its important to understand why the people are so risk-averse, he cites an example of a colleague who revealed to him that he had made a mistake in the past and it is like a black X in his career. Traditionally, Japanese people are employed for life, so it is easier to be very risk-averse, not make many mistakes and have a nice stable paycheque for the rest of your working life. Mr. Flanagan talks about the Japanese old-school system is typically to hide mistakes from upper management because it can be common to be publicly scolded for smaller mistakes. He tries to keep a positive, open culture so people come to him when there is a mistake that has been made and he asks them what they learned and how the mistake can be rectified. Mr. Flanagan would give someone coming into Japan from headquarters for 3-5 years a lot of advice. He says that what helped him the most was understanding the Japanese culture and language. Being patient is another thing that he felt was important and he overcame this by asking questions. Sometimes due to the cultural aspect, people do not want to seem too critical or point out faults, yet they may be trying to say something indirectly. It can take some time to grasp this and try and understand the point or hint someone is trying to make. In Japan, harmony is more important than truth which can be seen as all aspects of business and culture. Sometimes people coming from headquarters are told to do things in the same manner as they are done in that country and that won't necessarily work in Japan. Trying to learn the language, the culture and enjoying the food can bring you closer to your staff. Trying to pick up the nuances of Japanese culture can be difficult to grasp for some people so being patient with that is helpful. A challenge that Mr. Flanagan found that the time to take a decision is longer in Japan and trying to understand that there is more convincing and more nuanc

Professor Jody Ono is a Specially Appointed Professor at Hitotsubashi University Business School, School of International Corporate Strategy (ICS) in Tokyo. She teaches courses in Leadership Development and Leading for Sustainability for MBA students and business executives. She is a graduate of Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs (MPP '03), New York University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (MA '93), and American University's School of International Service (BA '89). Prior to her move to Japan in 2014, she worked for 7 years in the US, at the George HW Bush School of Government, Texas A&M University and for 10 years in Sweden, at the Stockholm School of Economics. When discussing improvements to workplace engagement, Professor Ono says engagement can be defined as how excited people get about their work, how engaged they are with their workplace, and how much they look forward to going to work. She proposes that engagement has changed from the 20th century: employees today need continuous stimulation in the workplace through interaction and exchange of ideas. Younger employees, especially, need to feel personally seen and valued in the workplace. Professor Ono says it is really very difficult to change an organization fast, and typically the largest companies struggle with maintaining high engagement. While so much is implicit in Japanese culture, she says, in order for intentional change to happen, decisions about change must be made explicitly and then communicated often and via multiple means. Building trust takes time, Professor Ono explains, in part because individuals trust others at different speeds and levels depending on their lived experiences and related learning. For leaders to be viewed as credible, they need to be clear about standards and expectations for performance. Clarity on these points makes it much easier to have real conversations that foster mutual trust in the workplace. Professor Ono cautions against "stylizing your facts" when coming into Japan. By this she means that individuals should be cautious to question cliched assumptions about Japan and its people. She advises newcomers to cultivate a diverse network, with people of all ages and backgrounds, to construct a holistic view. In addition, Professor Ono notes that people Japan has different leadership traditions from many western cultures. Leaders should display patience, competence, and disciplined thinking in order to build constituency for the change they desire.

Arthur Mitchell is a Senior Advisor at White & Case in Tokyo. White & Case is a global law firm with a global presence. White & Case is just over 120 years old, having started in 1901, it has progressed to the global firm it is today and serves clients worldwide. Mr. Mitchell has a long history with Japan. He has been in Japan for 54 years. Mr. Mitchell came to Japan when he was 14 years old for a short trip, again when he was 17 and a few years later again as a third-year exchange student in college. After this exchange, he returned to the US, to complete his undergraduate studies at the University of Berkeley and went on to Harvard University for Law School. After Law School, in the US it is typical to get hired at a firm that you did an internship in a previous summer, but Mr. Mitchell didn't want to work immediately after graduation, so he decided to take up a Fellowship at Kyoto University. Mr. Mitchell is getting the sense that there are innovative things going on in Japan. He is seeing that the young people are not necessarily aspiring for government roles or large corporate roles, they are aspiring for more entrepreneurial roles or ventures. Speaking from the perspective of law, he says that the law usually changes with innovation. He is seeing from the 2 companies, where he serves on the board, that the senior management is seriously considering moving towards digital transformation and innovation. Mr. Mitchell not only relies on younger staff within his firm, but also young friends outside the firm to help him further understand technological innovation. Mr. Mitchell explains some of the things that he has been doing to improve engagement with his employees. Before COVID they used to have in-person seminars, this moved to online webinars, but these leave very little room for personal interaction. Typically for more complex matters, the best way is to sit in a conference room, use a whiteboard and have back and forth discussions, but COVID has made this very difficult as everyone is working remotely, and it becomes very difficult to read the roam in a virtual meeting. Regarding foreigners coming to Japan, Mr. Mitchell has heard one of the biggest challenges foreign staff face in Japan is explaining the situation back to their home offices. The larger, better organizations understand Japan's work culture and their managers and staff are better equipped to work in Japan. Sometimes, newer organizations that haven't had much exposure to Japan previously, it is challenging to explain the situation back to the home office. The pace of Japan can be quite slower compared to other countries, for example a decision can involve many coffee meetings, talking with multiple stakeholders and convincing a lot of people. Many of the global companies, Mr. Mitchell works with, have realized that they need to speed up the pace of decision making, their changes and their approach to the markets. Mr. Mitchell defines leadership as setting a clear vision and defining the mission. Mr. Mitchell also suggests that in the upcoming years, organizations may need to change the way hiring is done. Currently, companies recruit from the Legal and Economics departments, but if technology is going to play a more important role in the future, perhaps hiring needs to be done from the Science Faculties. Mr. Mitchell also notes that Japan has a shortage of people. Lastly, he says that leading in Japan requires a lot of listening and being a good listener works well for business.

Simon Wallington is the Managing Director of Insurance for Cornes in Japan. Cornes and Company was established in Yokohama in 1861 and is the oldest international trading house in Japan. Mr. Wallington worked in the UK from 1977 to 1985 and was looking for international experience, so when an opportunity opened in August 1985, he relocated to Japan as number two for Sedgewick Forbes Japan. Mr. Wallington worked in Japan until 1991 and then decided to move to Sydney, Australia. In 2009, Mr. Wallington's former boss moved to Cornes and asked Mr. Wallington to join him, so he did. In 2011, he took over as Managing Director in Japan and has been in this role since then. Mr. Wallington believes that a trait unique to Japan compared with some of the Western countries is that the people are not very expressive, so it is more difficult to understand how employees are feeling. Mr. Wallington tries to spend some one-on-one time with employees by taking employees out to coffee individually every 2 months. He tries to engage with the employees to see how they are doing, how their work is going and to pick up on any cues on mental tiredness. He says that recognising mental tiredness is especially important during these COVID times. Mr. Wallington talked about how the meeting matrix works at his company. They have four teams, and they have a weekly team meeting and a monthly division meeting. The news is given at the monthly division meeting. The teams each have team leaders, a general manager and five or six people on each team. He says his teams work very hard and the demarcation between home and work is less, especially nowadays. Currently, his teams come into the office three days a week and work two days a week from home. For families with very young children, they provide more flexibility. Mr. Wallington finds remote working more difficult as it is more difficult to read body language and trying to get his point across. He thinks he is maybe 70% more effective as a leader when he is working in the office as for example, he tries to explain to his staff why certain things are done in a certain way so that they will not need him for future similar problems, and this will be more efficient in the long term. In Japan, culturally people tend not to disagree with the boss. Mr. Wallington says that his general management team is quite good with disagreeing with him when they don't think an idea is going to work. When asked how Mr. Wallington got his staff to openly share their thoughts with him, Mr. Wallington says he credits this to two things, the first is his open communication and getting to know each staff member individually and the second is admitting to making a mistake. Admitting you have made a mistake or when something wasn't a good idea allows the staff to see that they can share their views with him and their boss is humble enough to admit when he is wrong, this provides open communication and more freedom for them to share their views with him. Mr. Wallington shares his view that the most effective leaders he has seen follow a servant leadership mentality. He says you do this by rolling up your sleeves and being there with them and solving problems together. This creates mutual understanding and a closer understanding of working relationships. He believes in the servanthood methodology of leadership and leading in this manner has worked well but when he needs to make a hard decision, he does that. Mr. Wallington is Christian and serving is in the Bible. He tries to apply this principle in many aspects of his work. Because after leading this way, results and good relationships follow. For foreigners coming to Japan. Mr. Wallington advises having a sense of humour helps. To get the best of the employees, the employees must see that you are here to stay and not just here for your short stint. Although, many foreigners are in Japan only for a few years, making sure that you leave it as a stable organization and not as an organization full of politics and high turnover is beneficial. A stable and productive organization is a great gift you can leave your Japanese colleagues, so that when you leave, the company's much better.

Originally from the United States, Derek Young is the President of Fidelity Japan for the last 3 years. Fidelity International provides world class investment solutions and retirement expertise to institutions, individuals, and their advisors. Prior to Japan, Mr. Young was working with Fidelity and had been living in Boston, USA for 22 years. Mr. Young had visited Japan on business briefly before 5 or 6 times before shifting base to Japan 3 years ago. In his initial days in Japan, Mr. Young started by approaching the Japanese market by examining his own strengths and weaknesses. His strengths lay within the investment space, having a deep understanding of Fidelity and having decades of investment experience. His weaknesses were in not speaking Japanese and not understanding the Japanese market. Identifying where his weaknesses were allowed him to collaborate with people that had those language skills and to take the best possible combination of strong investment knowledge, strong language skills and the best understanding of the clients to combine them for the highest probability of excellence and success for the clients. Mr. Young emphasizes that modelling what works elsewhere may not necessarily work in Japan. He believes that Japan has some of the most demanding clients in the world. Strong attention to detail is ingrained in Japanese culture and that is the expectation everywhere in Japan. His team had this understanding on attention to detail and this pressure to deliver yet he had to learn this. For example, if he was wanting to increase efficiency but this increased client errors, he realized that clients could leave for that error regardless of performance in the portfolio. Thus, anything that is done to improve efficiency cannot increase the risk for client errors. The tolerance for error is significantly less in Japan compared to elsewhere in the world. One major difference that Mr. Young found about working in Japan is that there is a general appearance of calmness within the employees in comparison to the US. For example, in planning for a large event, employees in the US may be more vocal about the pressures they are facing. In Japan, culturally there is hesitation to be vocal about that pressure and even though they seem calm, they may be facing pressure. These pressures are underneath the surface, and it is the Japanese way is to make things seem under control. Mr. Young has found that having one-on-one conversations to be a good way to truly understand what employees are thinking and providing them the tools they need for success and that makes employees feel comfortable in having these conversations with him. For example, asking for a translator may help the employee feel more comfortable. Even though to an outsider they seem like they speak perfect English, with a translator they may feel they have more time to frame their thoughts. Mr. Young also emphasizes connecting with employees on a more personal level has made them feel more comfortable with him as a person, and not just as the President of their company. He gives examples of asking for restaurant recommendations, vacation spots from the local Japanese people to connect with them on a more personal level. For foreign leaders coming into Japan, Mr. Young advises individuals to keep an open mind, to really examine your own personal strengths and weaknesses and really listen. He emphasizes that you must listen to what your team says. The team should feel that they are truly being heard and you are taking what they say, and you are responding to it in a genuine manner. He provides an example of keeping an open-minded approach. Something that may work well back in your home country may not work well in Japan and the employees should not feel that you are just forcing what you think is best on them. He also advises that learning the Japanese language and understanding the culture may help. If the Japanese language is a barrier that having the right people with the correct language skills on your team is essential for business.

Hideyuki Takahashi is the Chairman of State Street Japan, an American financial services and bank holding company. Mr. Takahashi established his career at Nomura Securities where he stayed for 21 years, becoming an Executive Account Manager for retail business and eventually moving on to manage international business. Mr. Takahashi has experience living and working globally in places including Australia, England, Amsterdam, Luxemburg, and Frankfurt through Nomura. When in Amsterdam and Luxemburg, Mr. Takahashi built his sales team from zero, starting from the recruiting process, hiring many local workers. Mr. Takahashi says he made sure that he clearly communicated there were no division in how the local and Japanese hires were treated in his team of six people in the beginning. He explains that the most essential aspect of building a team and delivering results is defining the goal and planning out how it can be achieved, as well as the reward. Mr. Takahashi says his experience working in Australia and London enabled him to manage the international team who tend to be more assertive than Japanese workers. As the CEO of Nomura Bank Deutschland, Mr. Takahashi led an organization with 300 staff and was first tasked with the role of restructuring, eliminating certain sections, and dealing with litigation matters. Mr. Takahashi recalls this as a tough experience, and required him to be very decisive, without any compromise. He wishes he had been better with constantly and clearly sharing information including his vision and direction of the company as a leader. For example, having a town-hall meetings in addition to communicating in smaller groups. When in London, Mr. Takahashi was the European Equity Division Head. There, he managed a team of approximately 150 people. Mr. Takahashi initially struggled due to his English skills as his team were mostly English speakers and found the speed of communication to be very fast. When Mr. Takahashi arrived in New York as the COO, and then CEO, he was now leading over 1400 people. He noticed in New York, his staff were very vocal and quick to speak their mind. He recalls working with this team to be "very tough but at the same time, very simple" since there was constant clear communication and everybody was treated equally. After 7 years in New York, Mr. Takahashi returned to Japan as the Global Head of Internal Audit of Nomura Group for a year and a half, then moved on to become Global Head of Research to integrate Lehman Brothers' and Nomura's research organization. There, he led a team of approximately 1000 people. Mr. Takahashi explains leading a team of researcher was a challenging experience, as they are highly intelligent and in a specialized discipline with a clearly set career path. After his time at Global Research, Mr. Takahashi then moved to corporate communication with non-Japanese media for a year and a half. Mr. Takahashi finally moved into State Street where he currently is the Chairman. On increasing workplace engagement, Mr. Takahashi advises to clearly outline and communicate the vision and goal of the company, as well as the benefit of each individual joining the team. He adds the importance of clearly defining the role and accountability of each person. In large organizations, Mr. Takahashi points out having a strong and trustworthy middle management team is essential. It is crucial to train these middle management staff to make sure they understand the leader's vision and goals so that they can consistently communicate the same message to the rest of the team. Giving people accountability and letting them know what they will gain from the work they are doing and the future prospect is also important to keep them engaged and motivated. With Japanese people, Mr. Takahashi explains they need to be encouraged to speak up, but once they gain the confidence, they will be more likely to communicate their ideas openly. On advice to foreigners leading in Japan, Mr. Takahashi advises to be mindful when recruiting people to understand that Japanese people have a tendency to not communicate their strengths clearly as English-speaking people. He recommends not jumping to the conclusion that people who cannot market themselves well are incapable and encourages seeing the real value of the more traditional Japanese staff. Secondly, Mr. Takahashi advises to stay committed to the job, as people will not trust managers who leave in a short period of time. Thirdly, Mr. Takahashi advises that in business, it is wiser to use one's own language to clearly communicate the message. Mr. Takahashi defines leadership as a very strong conviction of one's own vision and the ability to communicate that with others, as well as winning in business.

Originally from Sweden, Mats Lindstrom is the President of Ducati Japan, an Italian automobile company and shares his fascinating experience working in global companies in Japan. Mr. Lindstrom has been living in Japan since the mid-2000s. His love of marital arts made him develop an interest in Japanese culture. From the early 2000s, Mr. Lindstrom started working at Volvo Car Corporation as the Senior Purchaser and Team Leader. When Mr. Lindstrom heard IKEA was setting up business in Japan, he jumped at the opportunity to work in Japan and was selected among the first group of people to start the company from scratch in Japan as a Sales manager. He then moved on to work again in the automobile industry at Scania, a truck manufacturing company, before becoming the current President of Ducati Japan. Mr. Lindstrom recalls as the first 30 people hired to set up IKEA Japan, he was the least fluent in Japanese but his management experience at Volvo helped him join the diverse team. Mr. Lindstrom took care of recruiting the team, and was able to hire people with international experience such as having worked or studied abroad and wanted to work at a company that was different from regular Japanese companies. At IKEA, Mr. Lindstrom recalls the culture was very principled and not everyone was a perfect fit, yet he knows many of his former colleagues have worked in the organization for years. Mr. Lindtrom had five direct reports at this time, and as the team grew from 30 to 70+, he oversaw the entire group. The main difference between leading in Sweden and Japan in Mr. Lindstrom's opinion is the level of accountability and responsibility people take on within their work. For example, in Swedish culture, people work within frameworks and clearly set responsibilities, and how they find a solution to a problem is up to them. Whereas in Japan, people need detailed instructions to get started on their work. Mr. Lindstrom also points out that one cannot force people to make a change while staying fully engaged. He adds as a foreign leader, he needs to ensure he can rely on his Japanese employees to give him honest opinions and feedback from their perspective instead of being yes men and women who never questions the boss. Additionally, Mr. Lindstrom claims that listening in Japan needs to be done at a whole another level as details and history is taken seriously. Much of this passive stance comes from the fear of making mistakes, Mr. Lindstrom explains, and thus as the leader, he is careful to not criticize but exercise active listening and coach people to ensure they stay engaged. After IKEA, Mr. Lindstrom moved on to Scania as the Executive Director of Sales in Japan. He recalls meeting and receiving a warm welcome from the company's VP and eventually CEO, Martin Lundstedt. He found it especially memorable how Mr. Lundstedt tried to get to know Mr. Lindstrom on a personal level, asking about his experience working in Japan, his family, and so on, in addition to talking about business. Mr. Lindstrom has learned from this leadership approach and also tries to emulate being a human leader and helping people grow through a coaching approach. . He is also always giving credit where it is due and encourages creativity through small group discussions. Mr. Lindstrom tries to nurture creativity from his team through active listening and encouragement. For example, if a previously tested and failed idea comes up during a discussion, Mr. Lindstrom encourages his team to contemplate why it failed and whether a different approach can be taken. To gain trust, Mr. Lindstrom says he has tried to be himself as much as possible. He is honest with his team in letting them know he does not have all the answers and is relying on them for knowledge and expertise. For foreign leaders coming into Japan, Mr. Lindstrom advises them to practice active listening and understand that things take time in order to show results. Mr. Lindstrom defines leadership by taking John Quincy Adams' words: "Your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more." Mr. Lindstrom adds that a leader is generally interested in people, who is constantly learning and wanting to become better and grow with others to reach a common goal.

Originally from the US, Eric Wedemeyer initially lived in Taiwan working in journalism. He then came to Japan in 1980 and started out at a small PR firm, then moved on to working in magazines. Having gained some advertising experience, Mr. Wedemeyer next joined Cove-Ito Advertising as a writer first, eventually becoming the Creative Director, then Vice President of Strategic Marketing Services. He also became Chief Executive of Cove-Ito Interactive, a spin-off company of the original ad agency. Mr. Wedemeyer currently is the Managing Director of Tactus Partners as well as J-Global, Inc., an intercultural management services company. As Creative Director of Cove-Ito, Mr. Wedemeyer oversaw around 20-30 people during the 1980s through 90s. Having worked in other parts of the world including Taiwan, Mr. Wedemeyer observed that Japanese staff needed more clarity and were reluctant to try out new and different things. Mr. Wedemeyer explains that gaining trust from his Japanese staff was a gradual process, but his knowledge of the foreign advertising market in Japan helped him gain credibility. The marketing agency closed after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and Mr. Wedemeyer joined Tactus, where he initially led brand strategy. On maintaining employee engagement, Mr. Wedemeyer says having a clear direction and purpose gives people a target to aim at, which helps them stay engaged. He also explains how delegating and motivating people to take initiative themselves energizes them. Mr. Wedemeyer recalled one client manufacturing company he worked with who took this idea to heart. The company wanted their workforce to think more about better serving customer needs, and launched an initiative in which the entire company department delivered a presentation to the CEO on their insight. Mr. Wedemeyer says this initiative allowed people to think more about their work and communicate their ideas to the CEO, who was eager to listen to their thoughts. This boosted the organization's motivation, exceeding what Mr. Wedemeyer had originally envisioned. Mr. Wedemeyer says branding boils down to being a promise kept. He gives an example: "Our mission is to turn people blue. Then you make what I call a strategic question. You get your people to ask this question about everything that they do no matter where they are in their company and what they're doing. Does this make people blue? How could I change what I'm doing to make people bluer? If everybody in the company is thinking how to answer that one question from a thousand different directions…it really gets the company moving in one direction." To newcomers leading in Japan, Mr. Wedemeyer advises them to take time to learn about Japan, such as joining a local networking group like the American Chamber of Commerce Japan, and get some cross-cultural advice from more experienced professionals. He further explains that knowing how a Japanese business operates will enable one to understand why people act in certain ways and be a tremendous time saver. Getting an interpreter is also a way to get valuable insight from the local Japanese businesspeople even if one cannot speak Japanese. Secondly, Mr. Wedemeyer advises to always walk the talk and make sure what you say aligns with your behaviour. Mr. Wedemeyer thinks that learning Japanese is very helpful, but depending on how long people are planning to stay in Japan, it is case by case.

Jesper Koll is a highly respected member of the Japanese financial scene who has been working in Japan since the mid 1980's. He came to Japan to do academic research before moving into finance as the Chief Economist for SG Warburg in 1989. He followed this with a succession of high-profile jobs including as the Chief Economist for JP Morgan Japan, the Chief Economist for Merrill Lynch Japan, as the Managing Director for Equity Research at JP Morgan in Tokyo, and he is currently serving as the Global Ambassador and Expert Director for the Monex Group Japan. Mr Koll holds a master's degree from John Hopkins University and has written three books in Japanese. When discussing the role of financial analysts, Mr Koll believes it is important for analysts to look beyond the numbers and get to know the people behind the data. Developing this knowledge will allow trust to build in the analyst's relationships with clients which will in turn allow deeper levels of communication between analyst and client. Mr Koll believes this is what will lead to real success in the relationship for both parties. According to Mr Koll, the new leader of a team can increase their levels of trust by quickly making their team members look good and demonstrating that they (the leader) will stand up for them when dealing with headquarters, particularly a foreign based HQ that doesn't understand the local situation. One method to make team members look good is to accompany them to visit a potential client and assist them in closing a deal and then attributing all the praise to the team member. Mr Koll believes defending the local office and staff from headquarters while also promoting its virtues is a very important method of gaining trust. If a leader can make the 'Japanese way' on a particular issue the company's 'global way' that will be seen as a very significant win and a sign of trust. Mr Koll believes a leader is someone who can inspire others to be better than they already are. It is very important for new leaders to quickly get the balance of their leadership team correct. This means identifying good lieutenant/s who will cater for different needs of team dynamics such as a 'whip-cracker', some one with a can-do attitude, and someone who makes people feel comfortable.

After graduating from Keio University, Saori Kanno originally joined Revlon as a Marketing Director, before becoming the current General Manager of Revlon Japan. In between, Ms. Kanno has worked in several other cosmetic companies, making her an expert in the beauty industry. While still in her mid-30s, Ms. Kanno was scouted to become the Marketing Director at a prestigious French cosmetics company. Becoming a manager at a young age, she recalls needing to look professional as she was managing some staff who were older and more experienced. As a new manager, Ms. Kanno ensured she maintained close communication with each of her staff to earn their trust. She was careful in listening to the team and having open discussions. She would ask questions like, what is new? What is happening in the world, in the market, what should we do? By having such casual conversations on an individual and group basis, Ms. Kanno gained valuable insight from the team and built a transparent culture. At the same time, Ms. Kanno is firm that the objective of any meeting or brainstorming session is to decision-making and coming up with deadline-driven action items. iShe says: "the ultimate objective of this kind of discussion is that we win…we break our current status within our team…[as well as] win in the market versus our competitors." Ms. Kanno was also interested in working in the mass-marketing beauty industry, and thus joined a commercial cosmetics brand as the Marketing Director after the French company. Ms. Kanno says she used more or less the same techniques to build trust and communicate with her staff in her new company, as she says: "human relationship starts from the heart." Ms. Kanno also became eventually took on the dual role of Sales/Marketing Director. She found it extremely useful to listen to the marketing and sales team simultaneously to come up with strategies that reflected both fields' input. Ms. Kanno returned to Revlon as the General Manager. This time, Ms. Kanno was determined to take the lead in addition to listening closely to her team. She had many creative ideas ready to be implemented. To convince headquarters, Ms. Kanno used her expert knowledge in the beauty industry and analysis of previous initiatives. She explains: "the Japanese beauty market is very different from the others because many of women, even my age, are still looking for kawaii or lovely, which is not the case for Revlon, but in order to be successful in a local market, we really need to understand the consumers." Ms. Kanno quickly changed various things such as the way the product was promoted and recreated the visuals to suit local consumers. Sales immediately improved, breaking records from the last 50 years of the company. Ms. Kanno explains that her passion for cosmetics as a consumer also helped her be confident in her strategy to dramatically transform Revlon Japan. On leading an engaged team, Ms. Kanno points out that giving praise and appreciation is crucial. When she hears her team come up with ideas, Ms. Kanno always congratulates them. On handling mistakes, Ms. Kanno encourages her team to consider improving the process to avoid the mistake from happening again. Moreover, on certain initiatives that do not work out, Ms. Kanno will review and analyze to try to learn from its failure. Ms. Kanno also holds executive committee meetings amongst the division head where they share information so everybody is aware of what is happening in the company. Ms. Kanno values ideas that come from the ground up, and thus, encourages her division heads to bring new ideas to her. On advice to new foreign leaders in Japan, Ms. Kanno emphasizes the importance of listening to the local Japanese team to build trust. Secondly, when asking for people's opinions, Ms. Kanno recommends giving some space instead of constantly asking questions. By building rapport through daily communication, and speaking in a calm tone, Ms. Kanno has seen Japanese employees relax and open up to foreign bosses. Ms. Kanno defines leadership as similar to motherhood. She explains: "In my team, I want to make everybody happy and successful…my mission is giving love and passion to the team [like a mother would]."

After graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Law from the University of Tokyo, Yasunori Takeuchi began his career in the financial sector by working for 12 years with the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan. This was followed by positions with Commerzbank, The Royal Bank of Scotland, ABN Amro Bank NV, WestLB Tokyo and Credit Suisse First Boston. Mr. Yasunori joined Standard Charted Bank Japan in 2012 as the Managing Director, Head of Corporate & Institutional Clients and Co-Head of Wholesale Banking, before becoming the current advisor/former CEO of Standard Chartered Bank Japan in 2015. When reflecting on his career Mr. Yasunori describes his role as a team leader in Japan for European banks partly being that of a translator or interpreter. He explains how many European banks, like the country they originate from, have a very direct culture. This does not always align with the Japanese culture of arriving at decisions through consensus building via official and unofficial methods. Mr. Yasunori states one of his leadership roles was to try and act as a cultural translator between these two conflicting styles. Soon after becoming the CEO of Standard Chartered Japan, Mr. Yasunori led the company to create a country vision document. At first, they tried doing it amongst the leadership but quickly realised that wouldn't work and it needed input from across the organisation. Mr. Yasunori explains how, apart from giving some opening comments and instructions, he deliberately excused himself from the process so that junior staff would feel more comfortable sharing their ideas in an open discussion. The result was a productive and interactive process. In his career in leadership, Mr. Yasunori has tried to develop positive corporate culture by breaking down the divisions within organisations, or silos, and increase interdepartmental interaction. He believes this can be achieved through unofficial means such as Diversity & Inclusion events. Events like International Women's Day, Mental Health Day, and a charity run that Standard Chartered has been hosting for 10 years that encourage staff participation are all opportunities for staff to engage within various departments. To foreign executives coming to work in Japan, Mr. Yasunori advises that while their core leadership style does not need to change, they need to understand how Japanese may respond. Are you getting silence in return? What will you do next? He also advises patience and the ability to create an atmosphere where Japanese feel comfortable to talk. On the topic of Japanese language skills, Mr. Yasunori does not believe they are of vital importance for a foreign businessperson - a useful tool but you can certainly get by without it.

Tomo Hasegawa is a second-generation Japanese-American with extensive leadership experience in the global medical and pharmaceutical industry. After he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with an Electrical Engineering degree, Mr. Hasegawa joined Hewlett Packard (HP) as a Project Manager and Engineer where he helped design ultrasound devices that HP was creating at the time. When HP was struggling to survive the competitive market in Japan, Mr. Hasegawa was assigned from the US to work for HP Japan Medical (later became Agilent) to help turn around the business. He was originally hired to assist with marketing and sales of roughly 50+ people. Eventually, Agilent was acquired by Phillips and Mr. Hasegawa became the General Manager of the cardiac ultrasound business in Japan. After three years, Mr. Hasegawa was headhunted by Sonosite Japan, a company specializing in portable ultrasound devices. Mr. Hasegawa then began working at Sandoz Japan, a multi-national pharmaceutical company, and most recently, joined Medline Industries Japan office as their president. Mr. Hasegawa says HP's people-centric approach in business was what made the company so successful, and he has taken on this leadership approach throughout his career. He explains: "[As leaders] we were told to just do two things...first, set the direction and second, get things out of the way for your people." During the early 2000s, a rival company had headhunted many of the leadership staff from HP, which caused many challenges. Mr. Hasegawa initially struggled with the challenge of leading an organization with a strong competitor, on top of the fact that he had no experience in doing business in Japan in Japanese. Yet he eventually came to realize that the customers care much more about the product and wanted to hear about the technical details, which Mr. Hasegawa as an engineer had thorough knowledge of. Within his team, Mr. Hasegawa's knowledge and active listening skills helped him build trust and credibility. At Sonosite Japan, Mr. Hasegawa joined just as the company had set up a subsidy from Olympus, which grew to 15 people within a year. Mr. Hasegawa helped take the company from a distribution model to a direct sales model and exceeded set targets. After a successful four years at Sonosite, Mr. Hasegawa was offered a position at Toshiba in the US to lead their ultrasound business. There, Mr. Hasegawa was tasked with bringing an ultrasound device to the commercial side. Mr. Hasegawa's felt Toshiba had "made it" in the US when he was approached by salespeople from General Electric (GE) who joined Toshiba, and are still with the company. Mr. Hasegawa then joined Sandoz Japan after completing an MBA at the University of Washington – Michael G. Foster School Of Business. This was Mr. Hasegawa's first experience in the pharmaceutical industry, leading an organization of approximately 300+ people. Mr. Hasegawa found it challenging to be in a competitive market trying to sell a product that was similar to many other rival companies. He explains that because the company was trying to make a cultural transition yet at the same time not agreeing on how to make the change, maintaining transparent communication was a challenge. Mr. Hasegawa recalls his years at Sandoz as a challenge but also a time of tremendous growth and learning. He explains: "I remember my boss telling me I don't care about your opinion and it's like, okay, great. So, what do you care about? And he explained to me it's facts, insight, and then action. That's what we pay you for…not the, this is what my gut is telling me…Right, the insight is why we are human beings running a business. Otherwise, you can have a computer run the business for you." Finally, Mr. Hasegawa joined Medline, a medical product manufacturing and distribution company, which he calls the biggest company people have never heard of. The secret of Medline is, according to Mr. Hasegawa, despite its grand scale, it is run like a start-up – the organization is agile, bureaucracy-free, and focused on the genba (field). Mr. Hasegawa led the Japan branch of 400 people. At Medline too, Mr. Hasegawa practiced the leadership approach he developed at HP by setting the direction and leading by example. From customizing products to suit Japanese customers to building a warehouse in Japan, Mr. Hasegawa says such leadership activities allowed him to build trust from his team as well as customers who felt listened to. Mr. Hasegawa has built a yattemiyo (let's just do it) spirit within the company culture, which he believes has given the organization more innovation.

Born in Tokyo while his father was serving as a German diplomat, Georg Loeer spent his first five years in Japan before his family returned to their homeland. However, that was long enough for a keen interest in Japan to be sparked in Mr. Loeer, as he would study Japanese languages, history, and economics at universities in both Japan and Germany, eventually attaining an MA in from Freie Universität Berlin. In a rich career in the financial sector, after his initial training in Frankfurt, Mr. Loeer worked in leadership positions for a number of banks in Japan, Indonesia, and China. He also started his own company, now run by his wife, before accepting his current role as the President of NRW.Global Business' Japanese division. When discussing his experiences with leadership in Japan, Mr. Loeer explains that there are times when leaders must explain the local situation and cultural nuances to corporate headquarters who don't understand why things are, or aren't, a certain way. This can also include defending excellent performing staff who don't fit headquarters definition of an ideal staff. He also believes in the importance of giving staff challenges and clearly explaining what the opportunities and rewards are for the intended challenge. In working with Japanese teams Mr. Loeer is full of praise, highlighting that the Japanese he has worked with are well educated, hardworking and honest. He does acknowledge the cultural inclination for Japanese not to speak up and that this can make getting feedback difficult. However, Mr. Loeer believes this can be worked around by developing strategies to get direct feedback rather than relying on open or passive feedback. On building a culture within an organisation, Mr. Loeer believes communicating openly with teammates and showing empathy are important to developing a positive company culture. He also states that successfully managing the relationship with headquarters is vitally important and if you can do this, you will go a long way to earning the trust of your colleagues and employees. It is this trust which Mr. Loeer believes is a key word for doing business in Japan. It will mean standing behind your employees, supporting them, and sometimes taking the blame for them. However, trust can also be earned by showing that you have good ideas that work. Finally, Mr. Loeer defines leadership as being able to stand in front of a team and engage them about the path that will be taken together as one (a team). He also believes a leader needs to be mindful of the values they and the organisation embody and have influence on, like climate change and aging demographics. When discussing his experiences with leadership in Japan, Mr. Loeer explains that there are times when leaders must explain the local situation and cultural nuances to corporate headquarters who don't understand why things are, or aren't, a certain way. This can also include defending excellent performing staff who don't fit headquarters mould of what staff should be like. He also believes in the importance of giving staff challenges and clearly explaining what the opportunities and rewards are for the intended challenge. In working with Japanese teams Mr. Loeer is full of praise highlighting that the Japanese he has worked with are well educated, hardworking and honest. He does acknowledge the cultural inclination for Japanese not to speak up and that this can make getting feedback difficult. However, Mr. Loeer believes this can be worked around by developing strategies to get direct feedback rather than relying on open or passive feedback. On building a culture within an organisation, Mr. Loeer believes communicating openly with teammates and showing empathy are important to developing a positive company culture. He also states that successfully managing the relationship with headquarters is vitally important and if you can do this, you will go a long way to earning the trust of your colleagues and employees. It is this trust which Mr. Loeer believes is a key word for doing business in Japan. It will mean standing behind your employees, supporting them, and sometimes taking the blame for them. However, trust can also be earned by showing that you have good ideas that work. Finally, Mr. Loeer defines leadership as being able to stand in front of a team and engage them about the path that will be taken together as one (a team). He also believes a leader needs to be mindful of the values they and the organisation embody and have influence on, like climate change and aging demographics.

Philippe Auvaro is the former President of OrphanPacific Inc. of CMIC Holdings. Being born in the 60s, Mr. Auvaro grew up in a generation when Japan was experiencing the economic boom. He developed an appreciation of Japanese culture including classic movies, leading him to apply to an internship at a French pharmaceutical company called Roussel. Mr. Auvaro was eventually hired as a full-time staff at Roussel based in France, then worked for Aventis, which had gone through a merger with Sanofi in France. As Mr. Auvaro wanted to return to Japan, he then joined Glaxo SmithKline (GSK) Japan where he eventually became Executive Director. Most recently, Mr. Auvaro was the Managing Director, Senior Executive Officer of CMIC Holdings and President & Representative Director at OrphanPacific, Inc. At GSK, Mr. Auvaro started as a Deputy Director in the Sales Division. He calls these years the "most amazing 11 years" of his life as he calls the organization "a school of empowerment." Prior to his leadership role at GSK, Mr. Auvaro has experience in moving through the traditional Japanese management style ranks as well as working in a multicultural environment in both Europe and Japan. Mr. Auvaro explains his true "cross-cultural leadership experience" came when he was promoted to lead Roussel (which at that point had merged into Hoechst Marion Roussel) in Taiwan where he created the local office from scratch Mr. Aurvaro's first major leadership role at GSK was leading a mega product for an antiasthma inhaler. There, Mr. Auvaro says he gained "field leadership" experience by working with people from various cultural background at the ground level, being in contact with every single part of the organization including manufacturing, R&D, and digital technology. Mr. Auvaro helped set up business units and create a shared service structure for the commercial operations such as helping start market research and call centres. Mr. Auvaro then got a secondment from GSK to work for Aspen PharmaCare, headquartered in South Africa, and was asked to help start Aspen in Japan. After GSK, Mr. Auvaro was offered his most recent position at CMIC Group as OrphanPacitic Company's leader through a personal connection. At CMIC, Mr. Auvaro had been working on providing pharmaceutical solutions for rare disease challenges. Mr. Auvaro describes his leadership as more "hardware than software" as he leans more towards directive leadership than being the recently popular "servant leader" type. Mr. Auvaro loves to be involved in the technical side of any product or service development and calls himself a fact-driven, field person. Mr. Auvaro defines leadership as a transaction between the leader and the employees. He says: "there is a fair amount of trust and delegation that people put in you. So you need to measure and scope and accept it, or redefine the scope."

Born in France, Jerome Chouchan has more than 25 years of experience working in the Japanese and Asian business environment. He began his career in Japan starting the local branches for the French high jewellery brand Mellerio dits Meller and the French Government Mint Monnaie de Paris. Mr. Chouchan then worked for the fashion brand Lacoste as their North Asia Regional Director, before becoming the Business Development Director for Hennessy, the famous Cognac maker. A move to the famous Spanish porcelain company, Lladro, saw Mr. Chouchan become their Managing Director for Japan and Asia before he finally became the current CEO of Godiva in 2010. Mr. Chouchan is also a long-time participant in the Japanese martial art of kyudo, the way of the bow, and has risen to the rank of 5th Dan, as well as being an accredited instructor. He has written the book, Target, on how the philosophy of Japanese archery can be applied to business. In his interview, Mr. Chouchan discusses coming to Japan as a young 25-year-old after graduation, in which he had the choice of doing compulsory military service or being part of a government program to help companies increase their exports. This led to him choosing Japan as he was interested in the country, and there he set up the local branch of the French high jewellery brand Mellerio dits Meller. Mr. Chouchan describes this first job as an 'adventure' as he was working by himself and did not speak Japanese upon arrival. Additionally, as a young man in a culture that respects age and experience added to the challenge. However, by the time he moved on Mr Couchan had established relationships with 20 retailers for his French suppliers. When arriving at the Spanish company Lladro, Mr. Chouchan was engaged in his first significant leadership position, leading a team of approximately 70 people. By going out with the sales teams to meet customers and understand their work, rather than sitting in his office and reading reports, Mr. Chouchan was able to build trust and be accepted by his team members. He even participated in selling product to customers during exhibitions at department stores. It was during his time with Lladro that Mr. Chouchan came up with the innovative idea to make porcelain figurines aimed at the Japanese market for Boys Day (Tango no Sekku) and Girls Day (Hinamatsuri). At the time this was a controversial move, even within his Japanese team, where the feedback was that Japanese people would only want to buy European-style products from a Spanish company. However, the decision to make figurines aimed at the local market was a great success for Lladro. Mr. Chouchan continued with his innovated business ideas when he moved to Godiva, the luxury chocolate company, which had been experiencing several years of stagnant sales when he arrived. In a shake up of the company's advertising strategy, Mr. Chouchan went all-in on TV advertising, which was highly unusual for a luxury brand at the time. This move proved to be a masterstroke with Mr. Chouchan stating that the company saw immediate growth of 20% as a result. New product development, or the burden of generating new ideas, is an issue that Mr. Chouchan admits all companies, including his own, must deal with. He explains that if the task of generating new ideas and products is placed on existing staff who already run the company's core processes, then there is very little innovation achieved as they are too busy with the core processes of the company. To overcome this issue at Godiva, Mr. Chouchan has set up an innovation team to create a new product every month in small amounts for testing in the market. On advice for newcomers to Japan, Mr. Chouchan believes the first few months are critical as that is when you will develop your first impressions and others will develop their impressions of you. He advises leaders to go out of the office and visit customers with their teams so they can learn the business firsthand and ask a lot of questions. Finally, he emphasizes the need for leaders to be capable decision makers and be able to say 'yes' or 'no'.

Om Prakash is the current CEO of Northrop Grumman Japan, a position he has been in since 2019. Prior to this he was Northrop Grumman's Director for Corporate Strategy and had also served in the United States Air Force where he performed numerous roles including a test pilot with over 3 000 flying hours in 60 aircraft and as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy before retiring with the rank of colonel. Mr. Prakash has a bachelor's degree in engineering from the US Air Force Academy as well as master's degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and national security strategy (National War College). In his interview with Dr. Greg Story, Mr. Prakash describes how his background in the military and involvement in many leadership transitions has helped his civilian career by being able to make decisions based on limited information. When discussing the topic of new leaders introducing change, Mr. Prakash is a supporter of author Simon Sinek's philosophy to "start with the why" and believes that if a leader is clear, open and willing to listen to their team, they are more likely to succeed. When describing his own leadership style, Mr. Prakash says it is important for him to get to know his team as individuals and encourage them to grow to their full potential, even if that means them moving on to something bigger and better. As Mr. Prakash says, a good leader does not keep talented people under them to make their own job easier. To help foster creativity Mr. Prakash believes incentives are needed not only at a team level but across an organisation. These incentives can take a variety of forms including financial, recognition, or as promotions depending on the recipient, organisation, and context. An incentive that may motivate one person to come forward with a creative idea may not motivate another person. To understand what motivates people, Mr. Prakash points to the need for leaders to know their people and their desires and suggests leaders can simply ask their teams what they want as incentives. Recounting a story from when he was in Japan in the late 1990's, Mr. Prakash recalls seeing people sending text messages and thinking it was a strange concept that would never catch on in America. He highlights the point that there are different mediums of communication preferred by different people for a variety of reasons, such as age and background, so it is important to experiment with different communications media. Similarly, he believes it is important to have team meetings not always run by himself, but have the meeting led by different members of the team as they will bring other qualities to the meeting. When discussing the topic of work delegation, Mr. Prakash describes some important factors that good leaders need to consider when delegating work. These factors include the comfort and skill level of the people who are taking on the work, discussing the deadline and time-management including leaders expressing how much time is to be spent on a task, as well as feedback. Mr. Prakash talks about how it is important for leaders who delegate work, not to delegate any criticism that arises from the work or to withhold praise. In his first piece of advice to newcomers to Japan, Mr. Prakash suggests not assuming that they were understood just because they received a positive response (Hai). People assuming that they were understood when they in fact were not can lead to difficult situations that can be avoided by checking for understanding. He also believes learning Japanese has been very useful to him including making friends that he probably otherwise would not have made. Lastly, Mr. Prakash acknowledges that in a business setting, people may get in to trouble if their Japanese is not proficient enough to pick up all the subtlties and nuances.

Mr. Spitzer has extensive experience living and working in Japan. After a business trip to Japan in the early 1990's he attended the European Union's Executive Training Program (ETP) which had a heavy focus on Japanese language and management skills. It was through this course he was headhunted to become the President and CEO of Stoll in Japan. Fourteen years later, Mr. Spitzer moved in 2008 to become the CEO of the Japanese division for Stihl, a world leader in the manufacturing of chainsaws and outdoor power tools, a position he continues to hold today. Mr. Spitzer was also an Executive Member of the German Chamber of Commerce in Japan from 2012 to 2016. In looking back over his almost 30 years of experience in Japan, Mr. Spitzer discusses some of the changes he has witnessed in the Japanese business environment including a reduced emphasis on 'wining and dining' customers and the shift to digital technologies in business. He also describes how he motivates his own teams; rather than leading through seniority alone he has tried to develop a respectful space where team members feel safe to develop and discuss ideas and not be afraid of failure. Mr. Spitzer admits this was not an easy process and it took a long time, but it has been worth the effort. On the topic of challenges when moving from leading a small team to a much larger one, Mr. Spitzer emphasised that once a team gets over approximately 30 people, leaders can't do everything themselves and they need trusted deputies. To build this required level of trust in his own organisation Mr. Spitzer goes to significant lengths to get to know all of his employees including calling them by name, knowing what is happening in their lives, wishing them happy birthday (even if it is on a weekend), and having an open-door policy to his employees in his office. Mr. Spitzer and his wife participate in company activities, and he like to think of the company as the 'Stihl family'. For foreign companies or professionals currently operating, in Japan, or looking to, Mr. Spitzer advises developing a real understanding of the local context rather than trying to implement a series of short-term projects which never get local support. He believes companies wanting to make change need; a sustainable concept, a clear vision with realistic targets, and to involve everybody in the process. With the right mindset and preparation, Mr. Spitzer believes success can happen in Japan as he views the Japanese market as very open-minded. On the topic of learning to speak Japanese, Mr. Spitzer has found it a very valuable skill in his own experience, but he does warn that there are times when a businessperson should use a translator including when they are not certain their Japanese will be correctly understood.

Michael King shared great insight into how to become a successful business leader in Japan. Mr. King's arrival in Japan may have been accidental but this did not stop him from having a long and prosperous career within Japan that has lasted 22 years. Despite originally being from Ohio, he began to work in the Asia Pacific 25 years ago within APAC in Sydney Australia before eventually moving to Japan as the General Manager for Sterling Commerce as Japan was the hot spot for business action and opportunity. His time at Sterling was integral as it was his sink or swim moment. With no experience of business in Japan and leadership skills, he quickly adapted to the environment around him and began to grow and develop his skills. Mr. King began to understand the importance of hard work ethic. His work increased ethic allowed him to understand the sales process better and interact with Japanese business. Despite not knowing the language at first, he did study, but he realised it was not necessarily important to know Japanese when working in Japan. Mr. King learnt that as a leader of a team to succeed, he needed to learn how to listen to his team and read the non-verbal cues his team would send his way and thus, developing trust. After his time at Sterling and later Borland he became the President of Citrix Systems for 7 years which reinforced the necessity of listening to the team and creating trust. Through his experience as a leader, he came to Citrix knowing how he can grow the company, which he succeeded in doing. After a stagnant 5 years, he formed a vicious and successful sales team which led to the acceleration of revenue growth. Through this team, he learnt to become proactive and lead rather than sit and take orders which allowed the team to create widespread awareness of who Citrix are. After his time at Citrix, he spent a year at Autodesk using his previous knowledge to help them change their business model to allow them to grow and increase revenue. While at Autodesk he learnt more about managing large groups of people and bridging the gap between the expectation of headquarters and the channels. After his short but fruitful year at Autodesk, he began working at the Japanese company Rakuten. While at Rakuten Mr. King developed a more intense understanding of working in Japanese business and leading a team of 1200 people as the CIO. Mr. King had become interested in what it would be like as an end-user which drove him to Rakuten in combination with working for one of Japan's best CEO's and businessmen Hiroshi Mikitani. Mr. King learnt a variety of lessons at Rakuten such as using data to optimise customer experience and developing new solutions to problems. His time at Rakuten was the gap to where he is now at SAS as the President. At SAS he strives to drive the engagement of his team and consumers. Mr. King's 22-year long career in Japan has taught him a range of valuable lessons that have helped him become the successful businessman he is today. He claims that in order to succeed in Japan you need to understand that accountability, listening, and trust are integral.

Originally from Austria, Dr. Parissa Haghirian is a renowned expert on international and Japanese management. Her studies include a Masters in Japanese Studies, a Masters in International Management, and a PhD in Business Administration from the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She has been a visiting Professor of International Management to numerous universities, Adjunct Professor of Japanese Management at Keio University and WASEDA Business School and since 2015 is the Professor of International Management at Sophia University. Dr. Haghrian started learning Japanese when she was 19 and still takes lessons 30 years later. She recalls enjoying studying Japanese, but thought she needed to study something a bit more 'practical' and went to business school at the same time. This led to her first job at Kyushu Sangyo University as an Assistant Professor where she was the first foreign woman the university had hired. Dr. Haghirian believes that, even today, not enough foreign business leaders working in Japan speak Japanese and that there is much to be gained from speaking the Japanese language. According to Dr. Haghirian, communication is a significant point of difference between Japanese and Western cultures and something that foreigners living or working in Japan need to mindful of. In Western cultures Dr. Haghirian argues communication tends to be focused on the speaker trying to get information out with listeners free to do what they please with the information. This contrasts with Japan (and many Asian cultures) where Keigo, or honorific speech, means communication is dictated by the listener and a speaker must first assess who they are talking to and adapt their way of speaking. When discussing Western and Japanese team dynamics, Dr. Haghirian highlights the differences in responsibility and accountability. Western teams emphasise responsibility for individual tasks or roles, while Japanese teams emphasise the group's responsibility. This can be challenging for cross-cultural team members and leaders, and she emphasises the importance of leaders working in Japan to not only understand their own leadership style but to also understand the 'Japanese way' of leadership which may have less executive power and relies on consensus building but carries enormous emotional weight with junior staff members. Talking from her extensive experience working in Japan, Dr. Haghirian believes that in Japan teams are most motivated when working together towards a common goal. She explains the goal should be clearly communicated to the team and should be one that allows the team to work collaboratively. Dr. Haghirian points out that the best way for managers to find out what works for their teams is to ask. Even in her work with university students, when asked if they would rather work alone or in groups her experience is that teamwork is the preferred option. Finally, when asked for final pieces of advice to foreigners coming to Japan to work, Dr. Haghirian offered; preparation by reading, asking as many questions as possible upon arrival, be mindful of the stresses in working overseas, and engage in self-reflection.