Zones Of Staff Performance: Episode #409 The Leadership Japan Series

Zones Of Staff Performance: Episode #409 (Audio hwere for multi-taskers!!) The Leadership Japan Series

Recruiting and developing the perfect team is an illusion, a Fool’s Gold hot pursuit for leaders. Even if you do manage to recruit great people, an increasingly difficult task in Japan where the population is in decline and the improvement of English skills is getting nowhere, they leave. They start a family, get poached for more dough, get sick, need to take care of aging parents or a myriad of other reasonable reasons and you have to start again. The reality is we are always going to be dealing with people in different stages of their career and ability build. It is useful to know which solutions are appropriate for particular situations.

Japan loves the middle of the fence and sitting there is the most comfortable position. In fact, in a mistake, defect free work culture like Japan that makes a lot of sense. Building slack into your world means you never get strained to a point where you might make mistakes. On the other hand, there is a lot of underperformance associated with being in the Comfort Zone, relative to what is possible. In big companies, if promotion through the ranks is determined by age and stage, why would you care? Just sit tight, keep your head down, make no errors and you will rise, like cream, to the upper levels, although never to the very top. That might be good enough for many people.

The flipside of this equation is you get bored.  This particularly seems to occur with engineers. They often need something interesting to work on and if they don’t get it, they could be lured to greener, more interesting pastures. For the rest of us, the Comfort Zone saps our will to do our best work. What we do is enough, but not all we are capable of and the gentle hum of that equilibrium, where we face no stress, is like a lullaby, putting us into a state of stasis 

At the other end of the scale are those working in smaller companies, where they have to do everything, because there are not enough specialists. Leaders place heavy burdens on them. They have high expectations of people who are underpowered for high levels of performance. This could be a gap in aptitude or insufficient experience and training. The work is overwhelming and they are very stressed. They run into the conundrum of needing to avoid errors, yet plough through the workload. They are stuck in the Frozen Zone. They are erring on the side of caution, because the no mistake culture is causing them to avoid risk and really going for it. 

The Breakthrough Zone is where we want people to live. They are performing at full expectations just within or slightly beyond their capability. They permanently live in stretch goal land. They are able to challenge new tasks, because they know errors are seen as education and mistakes are tolerated in the messy world of innovation. 

 What is interesting is that our people could be in all three zones, depending on the tasks at hand. The movement between zones is also a constant, as work changes, colleagues change and the company direction changes. In the West, you get hired for a job, the senior leadership makes some decisions about the firm’s direction and next thing you find yourself out on the street. In Japan, you are expected to make the transition.

Someone in the Breakthrough Zone can see their performance decline when given a new, challenging task. Like any new task, there is a learning curve and the initial track of that curve is down. After some period of adjustment their performance begins to track back up again and keeps going up.

As leaders, do we know where our people are across their various tasks? Over time, can we identify the tell tale clues to understand where each person is right now relative to their tasks? Have we got too many people underperforming in the Comfort Zone for some tasks? Have we given so many tasks to others that they are overwhelmed and stuck in the Frozen Zone? How many would we identify as being in the Breakthrough Zone. Can we see mistakes as education? Are we prepared to accept errors during innovation? Can we anticipate temporary performance decline when new tasks are allocated? Are we giving people enough training and support? What is the culture we are creating?

We need to know these things if we are going to see the best performance from our crew. Yep, we are busy like bees on speed, but we need to be watching carefully how people are doing, task by task. Have you ever done that or thought that way? If I asked you, could you plot your team in a matrix, zone by zone, across their tasks? Perhaps, it is time to do just that and keep doing it.

Engaged employees are self-motivated. 

o   The self-motivated are inspired. 

o   Inspired staff grow your business 

Are you inspiring them? 

We teach leaders and organisations how to inspire their people. 

Want to know how we do that? 

Contact me at [email protected]

If you enjoy our content, then head over to www.enjapan.dalecarnegie.com and check out our Japanese and English seminars, workshops, course information and schedules and our whitepapers, guidebooks, training videos, podcasts, blogs. 

About The Author 

Dr. Greg Story, President Dale Carnegie Training Japan

The bestselling author of “Japan Sales Mastery”, and “Japan Business Mastery” Dr. Greg Story is an international keynote speaker, an executive coach, and a thought leader in the four critical areas for business people: leadership, communication, sales and presentations. 

He publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter

Has 6 weekly podcasts:

1.     Mondays -  The Leadership Japan Series,

2.    Tuesdays – The Presentations Japan Series 

Every second Tuesday - ビジネス達人の教え

3.    Wednesdays - The Sales Japan Series 

4.    Thursdays – The Leadership Japan Series

Also every second Thursday - ビジネスプロポッドキャスト

5.    Fridays - The Japan Business Mastery Show

6.    Saturdays – Japan’s Top Business Interviews

Has 3 weekly TV shows on YouTube:

1.     Mondays - The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

Also every Second Thursday - ビジネスプロTV

2.    Fridays – Japan Business Mastery

3.    Saturdays – Japan Top Business Interviews

In the course of his career Dr. Greg Story has moved from the academic world, to consulting, investments, trade representation, international diplomacy, retail banking and people development.

Growing up in Brisbane, Australia he never imagined he would have a Ph.D. in Japanese decision-making, become a 35 year veteran of Japan and run his own company in Tokyo. 

Since 1971, he has been a disciple of traditional Shitoryu Karate (糸東流) and is currently a 6th Dan. 

Bunbu Ryodo (文武両道-both pen & sword) is his mantra and he applies martial art philosophies and strategies to business.