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EQ for Leaders E-ZINE - ISSUE NO.37 / AUGUST 2009

Dear Reader,

As you might know, our expert in the area of EQ, my Partner Sebastien Henry, recently relocated to Tokyo to develop our latest Progress-U subsidiary there.

Sebastien speaks fluent Japanese (besides Mandarin, French, English, Spanish and yes, some German - though he denies it) and had lived in Japan before. Obviously, he has a strong interest in the Japanese market and the specifics of the Japanese culture, both in business and personal life.

Today he shares some surprising experience he recently had attending a workshop with mostly Japanese participants. Even though you might not live in Japan, there are good chances that you have to deal with Japanese people now, or perhaps in the future. So I trust you'll find his article relevant.

Let's keep progressing!

Charlie Lang
Executive Coach and Founder of Progress-U Ltd.
Author of The Groupness Factor

Using Emotions to Enrich Your Relationships with Your Japanese Colleagues and Team Members

By Sebastien Henry

Download this article

Your relationship with your Japanese colleagues and team members could be described as good and healthy, and at the same time, you wish you could connect at a bit deeper level, beyond the politeness and friendliness. You would really like to find a way to enrich your relationship with them. To understand a bit better who they are, and how they feel.

It’s just that you are not sure how to go about it. You have heard many times that it is pretty hard to have the Japanese to talk about themselves, and to reveal who they really are beyond the strict working relationship. You have also heard that they don’t really expose their emotions in the work environment (in public in general).

There is some truth in this. But some truth only. A small part, actually. The bigger part of the truth is that there is much more that you can do than what you think. You can really take the initiative to build the kind of relationship you want with them.

This is because many Japanese people are also interested in this kind of richer work relationship. But they won’t take the initiative. Especially with someone from a different culture. So it’s all up to you to take the initiative. If you do, I am ready to bet that you will be amazed at the results you will create.

Let me share with you an amazing experience that I had recently in Tokyo. As some of you may know, I used to live in Japan 15 years ago, and was working only with Japanese colleagues. Then I worked with Japanese teams during my career in sales and marketing. And I moved to Japan again this spring to build Progress-U’s office in Tokyo. Therefore, I have had plenty of opportunities to interact with Japanese colleagues.

However, I was in for a big surprise last weekend.

Although I already did two coaching certifications, I decided to attend a new professional coaching course in Tokyo, in Japanese this time. Last weekend was the first three-day module of the course and I was the only non-Japanese among 25 participants. Most participants were professionals between 35 and 50 years old.

This course was based on experience learning and participants had to give quite a lot of feedback about their learning and their emotions. We had also to practice coaching with each other on personal issues. And it would get sometimes very personal.

I was totally amazed at how comfortable other participants were with their emotions, and how easily they would talk about themselves. I had done more than 1000 hours of personal development over 10 years, mostly in groups, and frankly, I found that these participants were as fluent with their feelings as most Westerners.

Of course, I knew that what is typically said about the “secretive” and emotionally inhibited nature of Japanese people was largely untrue. Still, I must admit that I was surprised. And impressed.

I had some thoughts this week about what happened and what could explain the discrepancy between what I observed and what is typically reported.

Of course, one obvious factor is that this was not a work environment. Most people did not know each other before, and won’t have to work together in the future. In one way, you could say that this makes opening up much easier. At the same time, the opposite could be said too: opening up to total strangers is not a natural thing to do either.

Also, there were only Japanese people in the room. So one could say that this would not have been the case had there been some foreigners in the room. But there was one! And I can tell you that they would open up in exactly the same way with me as with other participants.

The more I think about it, the more I see two factors that really made a difference in creating these amazing results:

1/ Facilitators in this workshop made it clear to the participants that they were interested in the participants’ feelings and personal experiences, and asked many open questions in that direction.
2/ They built a massive amount of trust upfront.

Now, let’s face it. These two factors are in your hands as a leader. It is your choice to take the initiative to show interest in their feelings and their personalities. And it is all up to you to build massive trust with them.

I have addressed several times in this E-zine the issue of building trust. As for showing interest, there is no step-by-step procedure to follow! You can do it next time you talk to them. Enriching your relationships with your Japanese colleagues and team members could happen much faster and easier than you think!

Let me know if I can support you in any way in this journey. It would be my pleasure.

Warmly,

Sebastien

For more information related to Progress-U's leadership programs including our EQ related programs, please click here.

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