CEO Coaching Stories: "More Japanese than the Japanese"

CEO Coaching Stories - Edition:?Apr 2022

Note: In this series I’m sharing excerpts from executive coaching programs with CEOs. Details of the coachees and their organization have been significantly changed to maintain strict confidentiality.?

Meeting Akira-san

When I met Akira, 45 years old, for the first time in Tokyo, I was impressed by his confident presence, his perfect ability to switch between flawless English and Japanese and by his absolutely sharp intellect.

At that time, Akira was the Japan CEO of a US tech company, responsible for a business worth over 5 billion USD. Akira joined this company about 2 years prior to my engagement as his coach. I was briefed by the global CEO and the global CHRO - both in the US - about Akira-san as follows:

Key Strengths

• Great with key customers – business has been growing slightly above expectations, some key customers sang high praises of Akira
• Profitability of Japan business has significantly improved since he joined – now largest profit contributor to the group (3rd?largest revenue contributor after US and China)
• Perfectly bi-lingual & strong presenter – moved from Japan to the US at age 10 and returned to live and work in Japan only 5 years ago

Challenges

• Frustration on US headquarter side about Akira’s resistance to implement certain global policies that have been successfully implemented elsewhere – HQ people get tired of Akira’s repeated claim that “Japan is different”
• Several of Akira’s Japanese direct reports shared in confidence that they would be open to the requested HQ policies but cannot openly oppose their CEO
• The trust level with both HQ top executives and direct reports in Japan is rather mediocre; frustration levels are quite high; leadership style appears to be quite antiquated, i.e. top-down authoritarian

Coaching Approach

Besides interviewing several stakeholders at the US Headquarter, the assessment phase also included a psychometric assessment (Harrison Assessments), 2 days of shadowing (observing numerous team and 1:1 meetings as well as a townhall led by Akira) and interviewing local stakeholders at their Tokyo office. Throughout the two days, I had several shorter sessions with Akira to share certain observations and get his inputs.

His Harrison Assessments report revealed that he had a mildly self-critical tendency with a flip to defensiveness. Also, his leadership style appeared to be a lot more task and less people-oriented in contrast to the leadership culture promoted by the US headquarter.

It was interesting to hear from multiple parties including his predecessor, an American who led the Japan business for over 10 years before returning to the US, that Akira seemed to be “more Japanese than the Japanese”. Akira’s repeated claims that Japan is different were seen by some of his (Japanese) direct reports only as partially true. In a number of cases, they represented ‘old views’, i.e. true perhaps 15-20 years ago, but not today anymore.?

When confronted with this notion, Akira responded in a somewhat defensive manner, pointing out that his undeniable financial success proved him right – a typical case of potential mix-up of correlation with causation.

Shifts that needed to happen:

• Even though his self-esteem was not low, there was still upside potential – we know from experience that even a slight tendency to self-criticalness often leads to undesirable behaviors such as micro-managing, defensive flips and an overly harsh or distant leadership style
• He believed that with his background he should be fully able to understand the Japanese culture and know what is acceptable in Japan and what is not – this strong belief undermined his openness to recognize what needs to be done in a Japanese way (mostly external activities) and what is more discretionary (mostly internal decisions). Besides, he may have underestimated the quite significant changes Japan has been undergoing in recent years
• Knowing it better – perhaps the biggest and most limiting belief was that he should know things best, being the CEO of the organization. And his financial success seemed to serve as proof, except that it didn’t. When I got him to analyze more deeply the true sources of his commercial success, he realized that there were other significant reasons for it and that some of his strong beliefs were rather hindering than enabling even greater success, especially the belief that he should know best

Outcome

It took a number of intensive and challenging sessions to get Akira out of his comfort zone and to facilitate the necessary shifts. Luckily, Akira had a high willingness to self-improve and wanted not only to be seen as leading the most successful company in the group, but also as one of the most outstanding leaders within the organization - motivation enough for him to open up and work on himself.

Charlie Lang is considered a Pioneer in Executive Coaching in Asia, with 20+ years experience in coaching top executives in Asia-Pacific and beyond. Charlie is the author of 2 books and over 250 articles related to corporate culture, leadership and coaching. Charlie partners with CEOs with the purpose of achieving a meaningful transformation that benefit the CEOs, their team and their organization. In some cases, he also includes team coaching of his clients’ teams. His coaching style can be described as pragmatic, daring and intuitive.