Challenges Facing Japanese Corporations
These days Japan’s global corporations find it more challenging than ever to achieve leadership in their business fields, increase their revenues and profitability, develop innovations, and fully benefit from their worldwide human resources.
Japan’s continuing economic slowdown has made it very challenging for these corporate success to come from business in Japan.
More and more, the growth and vitality of Japanese corporations must come from their overseas markets and operations. Of all the countries these companies depend on for growth and profits, the United States is at the top.
The differences – some obvious but many subtle – between the way of doing things in Japan and how to be successful in the U.S.
Why Japanese Executives Need a Coach in America
Japanese subsidiaries in the U.S. are increasingly run by teams of American (local) and Japanese (expatriate) executives. The Japanese executives assigned for several years to their company’s American subsidiary are typically capable managers with good business experience in Japan and often overseas, especially in the U.S.
To perform at their peak and as soon as possible after arrival in the U.S., these Japanese executives usually face many obstacles:
- Using American English – face-to-face and phone, for different personalities, status levels and situations (formal and informal).
- Communicating for results – engaging (humor), listening, asking questions, answering questions, using logic, persuading, giving feedback (positive and constructive) and coaching.
- Understanding the total American system – of peers, direct reports, organization, strategy, customers, technology, suppliers, government, local community, business groups, American culture, among others.
- Trusting American employees – with information, responsibility and authority.
- Behaving assertively – direct, frank and persuasive.
- Assuming a leadership role – beyond managing current business, to leading to build future business.
- Thinking and acting strategically – amid new forces and options.
- Working with a diverse workforce – nationalities, races, women and lifestyles.
- Chairing and participating in meetings – to be productive and satisfying.
- Solving problems – characterized by emotions, confrontation, controversy, conflict, discipline and termination.
The most effective way for the Japanese executive to overcome these obstacles is to work over time with an American executive coach.
What Is Executive Coaching?
Just like a success-minded golf player is coached by the pro to improve his performance on the golf course, so the executive coach sharpens the thinking, actions and performance of the Japanese executive in the American business context.
Executive coaching is a structured conversation -- one-on-one partnership, two-way, open-ended process, which develops and harnesses an executive’s talents in the pursuit of specific goals. It occurs on a regular basis over time.
The focus of executive coaching is usually upon organizational performance and professional development.
The purpose of coaching is to enhance the executive’s three core competencies:
- Connecting meaningfully with American businesspersons and employees.
- Clarifying business and management situations and strategies.
- Committing to take action to increase relationship and corporate performance.
Through coaching, executives
- Deepen their learning about American culture, business, and management.
- Improve their performance on the job and for the corporation.
- Enhance their quality of life in the American workplace.
Executive coaching focuses on issues related to the executive’s experience, concepts, intuition, motivation and self-development.
Coaching helps executives make things happen more successfully. It brings out that little extra each time, which adds incrementally to overall performance. Thus, worthwhile coaching always asks for a stretch goal – one that aims just beyond the executive’s recent performance.
How Japanese Executives Benefit from Coaching
During the executive coaching process, Japanese executives will develop competence and confidence in:
- Setting challenging, measurable goals and targets.
- Upgrading their English to an American executive level.
- Coping with the American cultural ways of doing things.
- Responding to endless, disruptive American change in innovative ways.
- Exhibiting appropriate leadership behavior.
- Communicating effectively with Americans.
- Enhancing business and management skills.
- Gaining greater clarity, a new sense of purpose.
- Examining assumptions that produce unintended results.
- Surpassing self-imposed limits, and recognizing unknown strengths and potential.
- Reframing ways of thinking, behavior and interacting.
- Stimulating creativity to recognize opportunities and solve problems.
- Modeling the successful behavior of Americans.
- Shaping new action plans to generate desired results.
- Achieving better results for themselves and their companies.
- Discovering more options for becoming more effective.
- Achieving greater flexibility to thrive in any situation.
- Expanding emotional intelligence to cope with American culture and interpersonal relations.
- Discovering how to bring out the strengths of other employees through their own coaching experience.
- Experiencing more fulfillment in working in America – because of less stress and confusion.
- Increasing self-awareness – the purpose of coaching is not to become an "American" and lose their own cultural values, but instead to adapt their approaches to get to where they want to go.
- Becoming more self-reliant, more focused, more motivated, and more productive.
In short, the outcome of executive coaching is for the Japanese executive to become a
- Better manager
- More powerful leader
- More resourceful thinker
- More understanding person
Which Japanese Executives Need Executive Coaching in the U.S.
1. First-time Japanese Executive to the U.S.
For the Japanese executive assigned to the U.S. for the first time, executive coaching helps him understand, appreciate and succeed in a business and cultural environment very different than in Japan, and even different than any other part of the world.
2. Experienced Japanese Executive in the U.S.
Even if the Japanese executive has had prior management experience in the U.S., the need for him to have a relationship with an executive coach is because of:
- New and greater leadership responsibilities and performance accountability involved in his new assignment.
- Continuing changes – from subtle to dramatic ones – since his previous assignment that are occurring in the U.S. – such as economic/financial, governmental/political, social/cultural, technological, Internet-related, workforce practices, customer/marketing, and communication media.
How the Executive and Coach Work Together
- The Japanese executive and American coach form a relationship.
- They meet regularly – for as many months as the executive feels he is benefiting from the relationship.
- The meetings are private.
- The content of the meetings is confidential.
- The first meeting or series of meeting are face to face – objectives are set, situation and issues are assessed, and future meetings are arranged.
- The frequency of the meetings is adjusted to the needs and urgency of issues that arise – several times a week and one or two hours a time.
- For urgent matters, the executive can contact the coach anytime –by email or, if available, by telephone.
- Follow up meetings can be a combination of face to face, by telephone, and by email – depending on the American locations of the executive and consultant, and on their travel schedule.
- Each session is client centered and goal focused – the executive sets the agenda to get the results he wants, changing needs and priorities are recognized, and the executive is always the real expert about himself and his work.
- Each coaching session has these four basic steps:
- Set specific objectives – based on company goals, policies, opportunities, and problems.
- Explore the current situation – in terms of business, people, and personal aspects.
- Identify various options – through which the objective can be realistically achieved.
- Commit to a timed action plan – through which the objective can be accomplished.
Popularity of Executive Coaching in Western Corporations
Coaching develops extraordinary leaders. Extraordinary leaders produce extraordinary business results.
Around 60% of American companies currently offer coaching or other developmental advising to their managers and executives. The popularity of coaching in European corporations is growing.
According to Newsweek magazine, the question to executive soon will be not “Have you heard of coaching?” but “Who’s your coach?” Now the coaching approach is increasingly applied to business as a management tool.
Coaching has long been used to increase individual human performance, whether in sports or business. Since the late-1980s, the professional field of executive coaching has become more popular for large American and European corporations. The main reason is the imperative to achieve continuous resilience and performance in individuals and organizations.
Driving the trend in executive coaching has been an economy in which excellent staff are hard to get and harder to keep. In the need for constant change to stay competitive, companies see coaching as a way to help valued employees develop swiftly in the changing business environment.
In the West, business coaching has been increasing used to help clients set measurable performance goals, think through major decisions, handle career decisions, solve problems, manage relationships, communicate to and motivate others, tackle stalemates, deal with problem employees, reduce stress, and improve presentations and negotiations.
In a study of 100 executives from Fortune 1,000 companies coached by a professional services firm, the business impact of executive coaching was quantified. Companies that provided coaching for their executives:
- Improved productivity, quality, organizational strength, customer service, and shareholder value.
- Fewer customer complaints.
- Greater retention of the executives who had been coached.
- An average return on investment (ROI) of almost six times the cost of the coaching in terms of executive performance.
A growing number of Fortune 500 companies offer executive coaching to their top people. Whether hiring external coaches or training their own leaders in coaching skills, companies are finding that coaching is essential for creating change and evolving them toward their highest productivity and potential.
Valuable Beliefs About Coaching
Along with the procedures and skills of coaching, equally important to determine the success of the coaching relationship is the shared mindset of the executive and the coach. These key principles should be respected:
- Executives know more than they think they know.
- Every executive has resources for improving his performance.
- Useful questions to the executive are worth more than instructions.
- Each person is responsible for their own contribution to the company.
- Every setback represents a learning opportunity.
- Experiments are one of the best ways to learn.
Challenging, but achievable, objectives bring out the best in people.
