Project Team Leadership
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
Release Date: 08/25/2024
341 Don't Get Sabotaged By Your Colleagues When Selling in Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 country of on-the-job training and consensus decision making, so the numbers involved automatically inflate. Even in Western style operations, there is more of a...
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340 How Crazy Can We Go When Presenting In Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 are rather restrained. Unfortunately, this often carries over into our public presentations. Without realising it, we find ourselves speaking in this dreadful monotone, putting...
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339 Building A Team In Stages In Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 of us would never experience building a team in our careers. This concept is too narrow. In reality, we are building our teams every day, regardless of whether we suddenly became their leader or...
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338 Sales Storytelling That Wins In Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 the training reigns supreme. No wonder they default to waxing lyrical about the spec. These discussions, however, tend to be technical, dry, unemotional and rather boring. ...
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337 Don't Freak Out During The Q&A In Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 rules. “Oh, that’s not right” you might be thinking. “What about social norms, propriety, manners, decorum – surely all of these things are a filter on...
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336 Team Glue Insights In Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 the brass ring crowd. Other types are the functional stars: category experts; best salesperson, long serving staff members; older “grey hairs” or the last man standing at the end of the...
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335 Servicing Your Buyers In Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 management. The common success point of organisations is to have the right culture in place, that best serves the customer. The success of senior management in making all...
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334 Those Vital Few Seconds When You Start Your Talk In Japan
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 presenter for this audience. This can often be a problem though, depending on a few key factors. How big a risk taker are you? Are you relying on the MC to do the necessary...
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Dealing With Ambush Speaking Requests
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 in your chair, taking a mild interest in the proceedings going on around you and next you are the main event. Usually the time between your name being called and you...
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333 Real World Leadership
The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan
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 is viewed as professional work. The things that are valued in Japan, like working loyally (i.e. long hours) even with low productivity, keeping quiet, not upsetting the applecart, not contributing in...
info_outlineProjects are too common. Because of this we take them for granted, seeing them as part of everyday work, but we don’t approach them properly. We usually gather the team together and then dive straight into the details of the project, without really applying a professional approach. We certainly don’t apply as much planning expertise to the task as we should, as we wade straight into the mechanics of the execution. Why is that? Poor leadership and lack of skills make for dangerous dance partners, as the team launches forth rocking and rolling with no strategy and little expertise.
Often, there is no existing documented planning process in place. This can be rather ironic because often the projects are repeated or very similar projects are undertaken. Templates and structure are missing so everyone just wings it, making it up as they go along, re-inventing the wheel.
The goals of the project are often vague. This is a lack of direction from the top leadership to those tasked with doing the work. The project leader has to push back and manage upwards, seeking clear reasons for the WHY of the project and then make sure everyone involved in the team understands the WHY.
Project scope creep is like a cancer that can kill the project, denying it success. The project begins with vague boundaries around what is to be done. In quick order, either external parties or the team themselves, become like Emus and are attracted by bright shiny objects. Very quickly the additional tasks multiply but the time frame and the resources committed to the project do not change. This never ends well.
The implementation strategy regarding roles, budgets, timelines and follow-up is weak or non-existent. Well, when you are having fun and winging it, you are super busy getting on with the actual work, so no strategy needed. Later things go wrong because timelines were not clear nor properly planned. The resources do not turn up at the required timing or the sequencing of the work is found to be skewwhiff, so there are delays you cannot easily cover or resolve.
You quickly find that people, rather than logistics, are the trickiest part of project leadership. All the coolest project management software and sophisticated systems in the world won’t save you from people problems. You may not have been able to match the project team resource with the skill sets required and you have to make do with what you have. There may be incompatible working styles in the team and you are now also chief psychologist, in addition to team project leader, spending a lot of time and energy dealing with staff or division conflicts.