Learning to Lead and Leading to Learn with Katie Anderson

How can we build organizations that keep reaching higher and higher goals? What is the relationship between lifelong learning and leadership?

To explore these questions, I invited Katie Anderson, a globally recognized leadership coach, consultant, and speaker. Her recent book Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn is based on her interactions with Mr. Isao Yoshino, a 40-year Toyota leader.  

“The only secret to Toyota is its attitude towards learning. We don’t even notice and take it for granted.” – Isao Yoshino

To view the entire conversation, click here or play the embedded video below. 

Senia: Let’s start with Daruma dolls. Why are you fascinated by them?

Katie: Daruma dolls are these papier-maché dolls made in Japan. When you have a goal, you fill in the Daruma's left eye. Then it can sit there as a visual reminder of perseverance and patience and the Japanese proverb, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” These dolls are weighted at the bottom, so they wobble and then straighten back up. When you achieve your goal, you fill in the right eye.

I discovered these when we were living in Japan. You can see my Daruma collection, including some I got at the Daruma Temple in Takasaki. I import mini Darumas and give them away to clients. I’ve probably filled in both eyes of at least 30. You’re actually supposed to take them to the temple to be burned for purification to mark the new year. But I'm not willing to get rid of my Darumas. I have one for my book, and I got to fill in the second eye this summer.

Senia: What does the title of your book mean?

Katie: The original title was Practicing Hansei, a Japanese word that means reflection. But I didn’t want to have a Japanese word in the title. I had headings within the book that were Learning to Lead and Leading to Learn. They helped me see the real essence of the book. Practicing reflection was the process I used to write the book. I worked with Mr. Isao Yoshino, a 40-year Toyota leader. We became friends and partners.

The book is about how do we create learning in ourselves and support learning in our organizations. We are all learners and leaders. The essence of leadership is not just to support your own learning, but also to support other people learning. That's how we create an organizational culture of learning, innovation, and creativity, which helps us achieve the organization's purpose and accelerate. It’s a cycle in that we're always learning to lead, and then we're leading with the intention of learning. I like the alliteration of the title.

It's about a lifetime of learning. I first met Mr. Yoshino in Japan. He had lived in the United States for 14 years of his career. He’s fluent in English, so language was not a problem as I tried to explore the secret to Toyota. The company is renowned for its learning culture, as well as being lean, able to do more with less.

Mr. Yoshino said to me, "There's no secret to Toyota. There's nothing special." Then later, he said, 'Well, actually, the only secret is its attitude towards learning." All the Toyota tools, processes, and techniques are in service of learning and getting more effective as individuals and then collectively as an organization. I think that's what is hard to replicate. You can take tools, but if it's not in service of learning to be better, then you're not going to have the same outcomes that an organization that's focused on the original intention of learning.

Outcomes are still important at Toyota, but not at the expense of learning. One of Toyota's mottoes can be translated as, "We develop people so that we can make cars." They put the people first so that they can be more effective at achieving the outcomes. We sometimes forget that, becoming so outcome-oriented that we lose sight of the fact that it’s people who are creating the outcomes.

Senia: Tell us more about your relationship with Mr. Yoshino.

Katie: We moved to Japan for my husband's job. Because of my work on continuous improvement here in the Bay Area, I was thrilled about this opportunity. I attended a coaching conference about six months before we moved to Japan. Mr. Yoshino was onstage with one of his employees, the first non-Japanese employee at Toyota.  They were talking about their role as manager and direct report.

I was so taken by Mr. Yoshino's humility, humor, and wisdom, that I found a way to get introduced to him. He said, "When you move to Japan, look me up. Here's my card." When we got to Japan, I made my husband take the day off of work. We jumped on the bullet train down to Nagoya. Mr. Yoshino picked us up in his Toyota, and took us on a tour of Toyota City. He said, "Come back any time."

During the 18 months we spent in Japan, I spent the entire day maybe 8 times with Mr. Yoshino. We stayed in touch after I returned to the Bay Area. We've partnered teaching classes together in Europe.

About three years ago. I said to him, "Your stories, wisdom, and learning need to get out. Let's write a book." He thought that was a great idea. It was a lot more work than I anticipated. We started with some purposeful interviews rich with stories of his experiences. Some got written down just as they came out of his mouth, and others took some unraveling , especially some very challenging long-term experiences that we peeled back like an onion to go deeper.

As I learned about his stories, I realized that his journey of learning and leading needed to be told from the beginning, because that's how we experience it in our own lives, starting off young. His goal to move to the United States was an anchor for him throughout much of his life. We all need to first learn to lead. Then how do we begin to lead to learn? It happens through both success and failure, being honest that it's not an easy journey. We're all human, and we make mistakes. But if we can learn from mistakes and share that knowledge forward, that's the power and the beauty.

The humanity in his stories is powerful. He's just a wonderful person. I'm just so appreciative that he's a close friend of mine now, and he's turning 77 tomorrow.

He persevered. It was only when he was in his forties that he finally got to move to the United States. I'm honored that I've been able to amplify his messages and his stories and add my own contributions as well through the questions and framing of the stories.

Senia: Could you tell us about the connection between the book structure and fabric?

Katie: The image on the cover shows the warp and weft of weaving.  I said to Mr. Yoshino, "I feel like there are two threads that have run through your life. One is around a real strong desire to be an international person with broad experiences, and the other is about developing people and learning." He said, "Yes, and actually, there's this metaphor in Japan about weaving." The warp are the vertical threads that are taut, that are laid down on the loom. They provide the force and the structure. Then the weft threads are the ones that are woven in between that provide the color, the texture, the pattern. The weft threads can break, and they can be different weights. It's the intersection of warp and weft that create the fabric, the unique patterns of our lives.

In the book, I explored using that metaphor for ourselves personally. What are our warp threads, the things that anchor us in our lives? The weft threads are the things we've learned along the way, maybe through success and failure. There's some times we have to tie a knot to start a new color or change the pattern. It’s the intersection that creates the uniqueness of our life tapestries.

Senia: What surprised you while you were writing the book?

Katie: What surprised me were some of his personal stories. He did some really incredible things, and I think they've challenged me to think about for myself, "How am I going to go beyond my role or my function to develop other people and have other people at the heart of what I'm doing as a leader or as a coach?" Once he had a temporary role and saw that his employees didn't have many opportunities. Most of them hadn’t traveled outside of the Nagoya area.  He pestered the airlines to get 22 tickets donated for these young people to have international experiences.

That confirmed the importance of leading from the heart first. It’s also about having a mindset of being open to other ideas and experiences.

 Senia: What is a thought that you would like to leave our viewers?

Katie: One of the pillars of the Toyota way is translated as respect for people. In Japanese, the Toyota way pillar of respect for people, actually, there are two different ways to translate respect. One is, "I respect you because of your position or your seniority, or you're my teacher, or you're my boss.” The other type of respect is translated as holding precious what it means to be human. It's really about respect for humanity and our humanness.

Respecting others because of their humanness means respecting all differences and perspectives. How do we invite different perspectives along a shared journey of purpose in our organizations? 

Senia: If you could snap your fingers and almost everybody in the world were to take some action, what would you want that action to be?

Katie: We can pay attention to what comes out of our mouths. A barrier to creating learning organizations is thinking that we’re asking questions to invite people's comments when we’re really telling them something. Are we asking closed-ended questions that are really our own ideas with question marks on them? If so, can we reframe them as what or how questions? Paying attention to the quality of my questions has been transformational for me. Also buy my book.

Daruma Doll photo from Wikimedia

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