The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

We often hear about the need for bosses to do more to engage with their teams. The boss looks at their schedule and then just checks out of that idea right then and there because it seems impossible. The employees for their part, want to get more praise and recognition from the boss, to feel valuable and valued. Bosses are often Driver type personalities who are extremely outcome and task orientat...

 Today is a good time to start reviewing and reflecting upon the presentations you have over the past few years.  What have you learnt not to do and what have you learnt to keep doing?  Those who don't study their own presentations history are bound to repeat the errors of the past.  Sounds reasonable doesn't it. We are all mentally geared up for improvements over time.  The only issue is that the...

Here is an important mantra: We don't want a sale, we want the re-orders. That task however is getting harder and harder.  Customers today are more educated, better prepared and have more alternatives than ever before.  Satisfying a customer is not enough – we have to exceed their expectations and provide exceptional customer service.  Customer service has only one truth – how the customer perceiv...

The New Year's resolutions concept is ridiculous, but only because we are weak, lazy, inconsistent and lacking in discipline.  Apart from those small barriers to execution of desires, the concept works a treat.  The idea of a new start is not bad in itself and we can use the Gregorian calendar fantasy, to mark a change in the year where new things are possible.  We learn as we go along and we add...

351 My Boss Isn't Listening f you reading this title and thinking "this has nothing to do with my leadership", you might want to think again. We hear this comment a lot from the participants in our training. They complain that the boss doesn't talk to them enough because they are too busy, don't have much interest in their ideas or do not seek their suggestions. In this modern life, none of these...

350 The Rule Of Three    Our financial year ended in August and we were up over 20% on the previous year's revenue results. I should have been ebullient, chipper, sanguine, fired up for the new year, but I wasn't.  Was it because we were back to zero again, as we all faced the prospect of the new financial year?  That sinking feeling of , "last year was hard and here we go again, but this time wit...

 I was invited to an English Speech contest for Middle School students.  The students must have home grown skills and are not eligible to compete if they have spent more than six months abroad, in an English speaking environment.  This was pretty grand affair.  The organisation running it is run by students at university, who took part in the contest themselves when they were in Middle School.  Ma...

The supervisor has super vision. The leader knows more. The captain makes the calls. The best and the brightest know best. The cream rises to the top. We accept that there will be leaders either our "superiors" or "the first among equals". We put leaders up on a pedestal, we expect more from them than we expect from ourselves. We judge them, appraise them, measure them, discuss them. When you beco...

  Poor customer service really irritates us.  When we bump into it, we feel betrayed by the firm.  We have paid our money over and we expect excellent customer service to come with the good or service attached to it.  We don't see the processes as separate.  In this Age of Distraction, people's time has become compressed.  They are on the internet through their hand held devices pretty much perman...

Athletes and coaches spend a lot of time watching their team's performance.  Strengths and weaknesses are sought in order to amplify the former and eliminate the latter.  Close scrutiny is applied to key moments, crucial transitions and pivotal points.  Presenting should be no different.  Cast your mind back though, to the last twenty presentations you have attended and ask yourself how many speak...

  Leadership is a swamp. Do leaders have to be perfect? It sounds ridiculous to expect that, because none of us are perfect. However, leaders often act like they are perfect. They assume the mantle of position power and shoot out orders and commands to those below them in the hierarchy. They derive the direction forward, make the tough calls and determine how things are to be done. There are alway...

Bad service is a brand killer. This is a controversial piece today, because I am singling out one race, one group in isolation.  It is also a total generalisation and there will be exceptions where what I am saying is absolute rubbish.  There will be other races and groups, who are equally guilty as well, who I am not singling out or covering, so I am demonstrating a blatant and singular bias. I k...

Public speaking takes no prisoners. I was attending a Convention in Phuket and the finale was the closing inspirational speech for the week of events.  I had to deliver the same speech myself at the Ho Chi Minh Convention a few years ago.  This is a daunting task.  Actually, when your audience is chock full of presentation's training experts from Dale Carnegie, it is simply terrifying.  The length...

 Being the leader is no fun anymore. In most Western countries we are raised from an early age to become self-sufficient and independent. When we are young, we enjoy a lot of self-belief and drive hard along the road of individualism. School and university, for the most part, are individual, competitive environments with very little academic teamwork involved. This is changing slowly in some Unive...

Sales is a nightmare. It is usually a solitary life.  You head off to meet customers all day.  Your occasional return to the office is to restock materials or complete some processes you can't do on-line.  Japan is a bit different.  Here it is very common to see two salespeople going off to meet the client.  If you are selling to a buyer, it is also common to face more than one person.  This is a...

Japan doesn't love crazy. In our High Impact Presentations Course we have exercises where we ask the participants to really let go of all their inhibitions and let it all hang out – and "go crazy, go over the top".  This is challenging in Japan. Normally, we are all usually very constrained when we speak in society.  Our voices are very moderate, our body language is quite muted and our gestures a...

Team building is fraught. Actually, when do we create teams? Usually we inherit teams from other people, stocked with their selections and built around their preferences, aspirations and prejudices, not ours. In rare cases, we might get to start something new and we get to choose who joins. Does that mean that "team building" only applies when we start a new team? If that were the case, then most...

Salespeople often miss the point. They are brilliant on telling the client the detail of the product or service. When you think about how we train salespeople, that is a very natural outcome.  Product knowledge is drummed into the heads of salespeople when they first join the company.  The product or service lines are expanded or updated at some point, so again the product knowledge component of t...

Q&A can destroy your personal brand. Creating and delivering the presentation sees you in 100% total control.  You have designed it, you have been given the floor to talk about it, all is good.  However, the moment the time comes for questions, we are now in a street fight.  Why a street fight?  Because in a street fight there are no rules and the Q&A following a presentation is the same – no rule...

Staff can be a nightmare. Teams are composed of the most difficult material ever created - people. That requires many capabilities, but two in particular from leaders: communication and people skills. Ironically, leaders are often seriously deficient in one or both. One type of personality who gets to become the leader are the hard driving, take no prisoners, climb over the rival's bodies to grasp...

Enterprise killers can include Customer Service. We know that all interfaces with the customer are designed by people.  It can be on-line conversations with AI robots or in-store interactions, but the driving force behind all of these activities are the people in our employ.  The way people think and act is a product of the culture of the organisation.  That culture is the accountability of senior...

Don't let your speaker introduction be a disaster. Usually when we are speaking we are introduced twice.  Once at the very start by the MC when they kick off proceedings and then later just before our segment of the talk.  The MC's role is quite simple.  It is to set the stage for the speaker, to bring something of their history, their achievements and various details that make them a credible pre...

Suddenly you hear your name being called upon and you are being requested to make a few remarks.  Uh oh.  No preparation, no warning and no escape.  What do you do?  Extemporaneous speaking is one of the most difficult tasks for a presenter.  It could be during an internal meeting, a session with the big bosses in attendance or at a public venue.  One moment you are nice and comfy, sitting there i...

Change is hard to create anywhere in the world. Getting things to change in Japan also has its own set of challenges. The typical expat leader, sent to Japan, notices some things that need changing. Usually the Japan part of the organisation is not really part of the organisation. It is sitting off to the side, like a distant moon orbiting the HQ back home. There are major differences around what...

Last week we talked about when presenting, you need to transfer your energy to the audience.   However don't have your energy levels at the maximum volume all the time.  That just wears an audience out and wears you out too.  Instead, you need to have some variation.  Very strong and then sometimes very soft.  And I mean drop it right down.  Remember to have that in the voice range.  Sometimes say...