81 Professional Leader As The Coach - a podcast by Dr. Greg Story

Leaders become leaders because they were the best at their job, their tasks, their function. They are promoted and then left to their own devices to become a leader.  The lucky few actually get some training on what it means to be a leader. Very, very few however are ever taught how to coach others.  The leader’s job is to manage processes and build people.  Everyone gets the manage processes part, because that is easy to understand and we all basically know the processes of the business.  The build people part however absolutely requires an ability to coach adults.  This takes training to master.

 Welcome back to this weekly edition every Tuesday of "THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show"

I am your host Dr. Greg Story, President of Dale Carnegie Training Japan and best selling author of Japan Sales Mastery. We are bringing the show to you from our High Performance Center in Akasaka in Minato-ku, the business center of Tokyo.

Why the Cutting Edge? 

In this show, we are looking at the critical areas for success in business in Japan.  We want to help advance everyone’s thinking so that we be at the forefront, the Cutting Edge, of how to flourish here in this market.

Before we get into this week’s topic, here is what caught my attention lately.

Using a typical Lawson convenience store as a model, a franchise promotion website managed by Fc-convenience.com estimates that when a store’s monthly sales are  fifteen  million  yen, then the owner ends up with four  point  seven million yen after paying for stock.  From that they have to pay the franchise royalty fee as well as staff wages and overhead, such as utility costs.  In the end their profit per month is  four hundred  and fifty  eight  thousand yen or  five million  four  hundred  and  ninety six  thousand yen per year, roughly fifty thousand  dollars. In order to maximize income, the franchise owners adjust their personnel expenses because it is the only thing they can control.  Japan’s labour shortage is making it hard to recruit staff.  Convenience store workers average salary is  nine  hundred  and  seventy four  yen or  eight dollars seventy  five per hour, which hasn't gone up since two  thousand  and  thirteen.  Most non-Japanese who work at convenience stores are on student visas and currently there are about  forty  thousand employed here.  The Japanese government has included convenience store workers are a category for the new work visas being introduced.  In other news, the majority of people under age fifty who lived in the three towns close to the site of the  two  thousand  and  eleven Fukushima nuclear disaster have no plans to return.  Many former residents of Futaba, Namie, and Tomioka say they have established new lives elsewhere and that their adopted towns are more convenient. The residents of these three towns were subject to compulsory evacuation orders by the government following the crisis. Finally, police arrested two men on suspicion of trying to illegally bring fertilised eggs and sperm of wagyu cattle into China last year.  Chinese authorities prevented the suspects, who traveled by ferry with the sperm and the eggs stashed in containers,  from entering the country as they did not have a quarantine certificate.  They were arrested when they returned to Japan. The arrests came as the Agricultural  Ministry is tightening control of wagyu reproductive material amid rising popularity of the Japanese beef overseas.

This is episode number eighty one and we are talking about   THE PROFESSIONAL LEADER AS  COACH      Soredewa ikimasho, so let's get going.

A consistent issue our clients raise with us concerns effective coaching. Becoming a leader is usually the result of demonstrating your own ability to get results.  We promote the performers in the hope some of the pixie dust will get sprinkled around. The outcomes are often underwhelming.  For the organization to grow, it needs talent to be fostered right throughout the whole organization.  The natural owners of that fostering effort are the leaders.

Coaching fails because of the poor quality of the processes being applied.  In many cases there is no real process at all.  Here is a seven  step process which will vastly improve the coaching outcomes.

ONE   Identify Opportunities

The need may be obvious or circumstances may reveal a need. For busy leaders, selecting who to coach is a critical decision.  The staff with the most untapped potential are probably the most attractive candidates.  You can’t do everything at once, so start with the option that will create the most value.  We will get to everyone over time but we need to prioritise our efforts.

TWO  Picture The Desired Outcome

Coaching without a clear strategy often results in sporadic efforts which ultimately lead nowhere.  The Coach must work with the staff member to arrive at a clear vision of what the improved state will look like.  It is hard to hit a target you haven’t nominated.  Creating a word picture of the desired outcome helps to keep the efforts focused, especially when the chaos of everyday seems to conspire to ensure you get distracted.

THREE  Establish The Right Attitude

This sounds simple but it is not snapping your fingers and presto, brilliant attitude. Improved performance requires change and everyone agrees in principle that change is necessary but as long as it is not expected of them in practice.  We need to know our people in order to understand how to communicate the change need in a way that resonates with them and they want to be part of it.  Learning to talk in terms of the individuals’s personal motivations is powerful.  Reality check for leaders – do you really know this level of detail about your team?

FOUR   Provide The Resources

The most expensive and highest value resource is your time to devote to coaching.  It also requires a sincere personal commitment to see the person being coached succeed.  A lot of successful people climbed over the bodies to get to the top and expect that is how everyone else should do it.  Their attitude to coaching is usually negative.  People develop in different ways and at different times, so making ourselves the only metric of success is pure folly.

Find out more when we come back from the break

Welcome back Let me introduce a couple of coming opportunities to you.  Our One day Step Up To Leadership Course will run on May 24thand again on September 2nd.  Also our seven week Leadership Training For Managers Course will start on June 3rdand run through to July 23rd. Another Leadership Training For Managers Course starts on November 5thand runs through to December 17th. Details are on our website at enjapan.dalecarnegie.com

Back to where we left off.  FIVE  Practice And Skill Development

Make the time, identify the correct skill set needed, explain it, demonstrate it, then let them practice it.  There is a balancing act going on here, where we need to let go, but keep monitoring without micromanaging them. We all learn by making mistakes and this is a fact we need to embrace.   Encourage them to fail faster.

SIX   Reinforce Progress

Knowing and doing are sometimes related. Don’t expect because they have learnt it, they are automatically doing it.  Check that there is no slipping back into the cuddly Comfort Zone, as people revert to their old, better established habits.  Habit is stronger than knowledge.  Keep them accountable to continue to progress.

SEVEN  Reward

What we reward gets repeated and what gets repeated becomes a new habit. Give praise which is specific, explaining exactly what they are doing that is good, rather than obtuse general statements of  approbation.

None of this is complicated. Common sense though is not always common practice.  Executing these steps takes commitment but the rewards are enormous.  If your leadership team is coaching your key people using a solid process and your rival leaders are not, expect to win the war.

Action Steps

1. Identify Opportunities
2. Picture The Desired Outcome
3. Establish The Right Attitude
4. Provide The Resources
5. Practice And Skill Development
6. Reinforce Progress
7. Reward

THE Cutting Edge Japan Business Show is here to help you succeed in Japan.  Subscribe on YouTube, share it with your family, friends and colleagues, become a regular.

Thank you for watching this episode and remember to hit the subscribe button.

Our website details are on screen now, enjapan.dalecarnegie.com, it is awesome value, so check it out. Please leave me some feedback on YouTube, I would love to know how this show helped and what other topics you are interested in for me to cover.  Remember I am here as a free resource to help you, so just tell me how I can help you best.

You might also enjoy my weekly podcasts. Look for the Leadership Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series and The Sales Japan series wherever you get your podcasts.

In episode  eighty two we are talking about Using Your Hands Find out more about that next week.

So Yoroshiku Onegai Itashimasu please join me for the next episode of the Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

We are here to help you and we have only one direction in mind for you and your business and that is UP!!!

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