The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

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 experience from year to year to hopefully make life easier. So as a presenter what would be possible?

There are around 4.4 million podcasts around the world. Blogs are in the billions now, video content is going crazy, live streaming is rampant. Every single which way, we are under assault from competitor content marketing on steroids. In addition, there is all of the advertising content coming at us through every medium. Will it diminish? No. What does it mean for us in business?

Personal reputation will be built through our efforts to cut through all of the clatter competing with us. People are consuming information on small screens and are deluged with competing content. The experience is transitory, because the next deluge is coming down the pike. How do we linger long in people's memories? Well we don't. Even the few who see our content soon move on. In offices, people sitting next to each other send emails rather than talk. Phone calls put a dread fear into those younger colleagues entering the workplace. The anonymity of the texting facility is preferred to human contact. We are becoming increasingly impersonal, as we are fixated with our internet connected devices.

In business though we need the human touch. We want to do business with people we can judge are a safe option as a business partner. We can check out their social media to get a sense of what they are about. We can watch their videos to get a better idea of who they are and what they know. This is all still rather remote and at arms length. We don't do business that way. We want to look them in the eye, to read their body language, to gauge their voice tone, to judge their intelligence through their mastery of the spoken word. AI can write your posts for you, but when presenting on stage it is just you baby and you had better have the goods. We want to see what we are getting.

To get cut through, we need to be standing in front of as many audiences as possible. Yes, we can attend networking events as a participant and we should, but we should be striving to do better than that. We should be hogging the limelight, a titan astride the stage, commanding attention and delivering powerful messages. That means seeking every opportunity to speak we can possibly manufacture, being proactive in promoting ourselves, unabashed about pushing our personal brand.

Yes, there will be haters. Two of my staff attended an American Chamber function recently and some helpful fellow attendee started laying into me about my social media profile and prolific posting behaviour. They being very loyal staff were really upset about this, told me about it and were obviously frustrated regarding what to do about it. I asked them a couple of clarifying questions. Was the individual or their company a client? No. Were they ever likely to become a client? No. Did they have a personal brand of their own? No.

I didn't bother asking who it was, because they are obviously a know nothing, do nothing, become nothing nobody. If you want to promote yourself you have to pop your head above the parapet. Expect there will be someone who will want to kick it. That doesn't mean we should self-censor ourselves, because some nobody is jealous about what we are doing. Grasp on to the bigger picture here, have courage and go for it. Those who get it will respect you, haters will hate you, no matter what you do.

Public speaking is the last bastion for those who want to take their personal presence to the top. We are being flooded by information around us, so we need to look for chances to break free from the crowd and establish ourselves as the expert in our field. It means putting ourselves out there to be judged, but we are going to be judged anyway, so let's control our own destiny. In 2025, resolve to do as much speaking as you possibly can and create as many opportunities as possible to promote your personal brand.

Of course, AI can create a vast number of talks for competitors and can drown the market in content. What makes the difference though is our the sharing of our experiences and the personal stories we can tell. The AI cannot match this personal authentic factor and we can escape the velocity of the vanilla content which AI produces so effortlessly. This is how we can stand out and be memorable.

When we read text, we can tell this was authored by AI. Audiences will soon start to recognise speech content created by AI and they will immediately discount it and the person delivering it. In a way, it is a golden chance to standout amongst the AI Lilliputians. Don't wait for people to clamour on your door to give talks. Get out there and seek those opportunities for yourself and keep polishing your abilities

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 issues from staff should be surprising. There have been two major tectonic plate shifts in organisations over the last twenty years. One has been the compression of many organisational layers into a few. The other has been the democratization of information access. Bosses have been struggling to keep up.

When we had more layers in our company structures, leaders matured like a fine wine. They rose up the ladder in small increments, over an extended period of time and were groomed for responsibility. There were assistants aplenty to do mundane, time consuming tasks. The striping out of the layers, for the sake of cost cutting and "efficiencies", has thrown this world off its axis.

The fewer layers means the jumps are larger, the responsibilities greater and no assistants. Boss busyness has resulted in less subordinate coaching and delegation getting done. Explanations have been replaced with directives – "do this, do that". Bosses don't delegate much anymore, because they are time poor. They don't have the bandwidth to explain, so they say to themselves, "it will be quicker if I do it myself". Does this scenario sound familiar at all?

The internet has made information instantly available and free. Boss monopolisation of information is not as easy or replicable as in the past. The amount of information emerging everyday has become a massive flood tide against which resistance is useless. Bosses cannot be in command of its entirety, so they have to rely on others much more than before. They need their subordinate's help, but the sting in the tail is that they are not doing enough about accessing that help.

Subordinates have good information, get ideas, are closer to the market, collect the most up to date experience and produce insights. Harassed time poor bosses have no time to seek out these ideas and bring these insights out into the open. They don't create the time required to coach. They do delegation, but in a way guaranteed to fail, because they won't invest the time to sell the delegation.

The consequence is that subordinates hesitate to engage with their boss, because they see how distracted and frantic they are already. When they do talk to the boss, it is all formulistic around reporting on progress on the various projects being worked on. Bosses don't bother to enquire about the other key things going on in their subordinates lives. They fail to seek ideas and innovations because they are already preoccupied with their own work. They hover between distracted and selective listening. On a slow day, they might stray into the zone of attentive listening, but that would be a rarity in a year long period.

In fact, bosses tend to excel at pretending to be listening, because they are brilliant at multi-tasking. They are mentally fixated on something else, while they are talking to their subordinates on a completely different topic. Does this ring a bell? They are listening for key items which will be of interest to them and they are tossing out everything else. The subordinate doesn't feel they are actually being listened to at all. They don't feel it is attentive listening, let alone empathetic listening. They draw the conclusion that their actual perceived worth and value to the boss is pretty low. They get discouraged and soon just stop inputting ideas into the system.

If you have not been hit up with an idea from one of your subordinates in the last month, take a moment and reflect on exactly when was the last time that happened? The chances are it has been a long time between drinks. The reason is probably that you are not really engaging with the team and making sure they feel they are being listened to. They need to know that their ideas have value, that you are recognising their contribution. They want to see their ideas being put into application. Are you doing this? Are you really listening?

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 with an even higher target". Maybe that was it, but it was hard to tell. There were three other things which were gnawing away at me, regarding incidents which happened the previous week. Sales is an emotional roller coaster, we all know that. Well knowing that and being able to deal with the emotional downers is another thing altogether. I am a positive, upbeat person, for whom the glass is always half full. My glass got severely drained and it is still bugging me.

I had a pitch for a client's business to help their sale's effort. Actually they said they wanted a "transformation programme". I had met the CEO previously and had understood what he was after. I came back to him with a comprehensive proposal. In the interim, a new HR person was recruited and I was informed were now going to have a five entrant beauty parade.

They had various needs. They wanted transformation for their senior leaders, middle level sales managers and also wanted an internal trainer-the-trainer functionality, because the size of their sale force. That cost would preclude an externally delivered vendor solution.

I gave them that transformation formula. I even brought all of the training materials to the pitch, so they could see the professionalism we offer. I went through in detail what each group would need if they wanted to transform the business. That week the HR guy wrote to me and said we didn't get the business.

I had no idea why, but I did know I wouldn't find out the real reason by talking to the HR guy. All I would get would be vagary. I needed to seek out the CEO directly and get some feedback. We rarely ever lose pitches, so I was a bit perplexed. To be honest, my ego was bruised, hurting and I found this news depressing. The point here is that although I know intellectually, that sales is an emotional rollercoaster, it doesn't make much difference in the moment when you don't get the deal.

The second piece of bad news was a delay in commencing a project. I had done a similar project for their company and they asked me to come back and do another one. That last project was a real nightmare. I was dealing with a young staff member who proved to be very demanding and sucked up a lot more of my time than was expected. Frequent changes were de rigueur and often without much actual requirement, except for whim.

Frankly, I was a bit gun shy to go again. However, it was a different member of staff this time, again quite young, but I agreed. Deja vu. Very demanding, very picky, but despite recurring nightmares about last time, I decided I wouldn't throw in the towel and would tough it out. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger type of thing.

Then I got the email telling me to put the project on hold. I am guessing they were shopping the project around and were putting me on ice. I was wondering what was the issue? Was this a generational thing? Both individuals were quite young in business. You have to have some degree of experience, to have perspective and to know how to judge what you are looking at. Is this why there is a gap between what we were both looking at?

Another deeper thought occurred to me. Am I secretly blowing it up, because I actually I don't want to do it? I know how much time it required last time and it looked like we were going down the exact same path again? I was wondering, what was my psychology here? Was I trying to get out of doing it? Or was I too old and inflexible to deal with these demanding young whippersnapper pups? That was a depressing prospect.

The third one was a case of sports negotiating. This is an ego trip for buyers, who like to see who is the sheik of the souk, the biggest wheeler and dealer, the cleverest negotiator, the bargain hunter extraordinaire. They like to play a little game of "beat down the supplier" to show how tough they are. Okay, you do run into that from time to time, but on this occasion it came from an unexpected source.

You meet people in business who are attractive, charismatic, your type of person. This buyer was like that. We have a lot in common and I like the cut of his jib. He asked for some training previously and I sent him my proposal. He came back with a counter offer that was at a steep discount. I like the guy and reluctantly agreed, because it was the first business with his company. I thought , "well once he experiences our quality, he will pay the right price". My big mistake right there.

So I delivered the training and then found out that the next round will be done by someone I knew who used to work with us as a contract trainer. This guy has a full time job in HR and does some training on the side. That was another red flag. There is no comparison in the quality of what is being delivered here, but I started to see where the client's negotiation pricing benchmark was coming from.

So he subsequently asked me for some one-on-one coaching for presentations. I sent him my proposal and he came back with what he thought the price should be. The language he used in the email was the same as the last email and so another red flag appeared. I asked myself, why is this guy nickel and diming me? The quality of the training he got from me last time was at the top of the tree. So I felt his haggling was insulting and saying our quality wasn't appreciated. I also thought we had a better relationship that that. This time, I stood my ground, defended my quality, our brand. I answered him that if he wanted the best, then this is the number. As far as I am concerned, this time, there will be no discounting of even one yen. Subsequent silence on his part.

So what do we take away from all of this.

Despite the many years we have all been in sales we need to prepare for cyclical depression. I should have known that there is going to be an inevitable downer associated with the start of the new year. I have to remind myself that my team will be feeling the same way, so I needed to work on boosting all of our emotions to move to positive ground. Just kicking off "as usual" in the new financial year won't cut it. I needed to make an intervention.

I told my team, "no" isn't "no". It is just "no" to this offer in this format, in this budget cycle, in this economic situation. I needed to tell myself that too. I need to separate my ego from the non-acceptance of our offers. There may be a number of reasons why the pitches failed and I needed to find out what was the mismatch between what I thought they needed and what they actually chose.

I discovered my new found buddy was actually no buddy. Where possible, I like to make my clients my friends. I thought he would be in that category. By the way, in his industry, his firm's fees are very stiff and they don't discount them at all. What I realised was his value system substantially differed from mine. He wants to "win" the negotiation. I am focused on building partnerships that concentrate on the re-order, not the one off discounted deal. We have a strong brand to defend and the way to do that is to draw a line in the sand on what you believe your value is worth. So he was moved into the acquaintance basket. Not long after, he up and quit as President and suddenly moved to Saudi Arabia, so he eventually disappeared altogether. I still feel unhappy, but I do feel better about standing my ground.

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. Many of the graduates become business patrons and supporters as they work their way up in their business careers. It a perfect Japanese storm. Japan loves uniforms and the organising body had that covered and Japan loves formality and there was plenty of that on display too. There were some significant lessons on offer for presenters as well.

One of the sponsoring countries had their Ambassador there to present a prize and give a speech. Extolling the virtues of his country and its educational opportunities for these keen students of English is a natural fit. What wasn't so natural was that he had to read his speech. I have been a diplomat, yet I see this time and time again - Ambassadors who are poor public speakers. Anyone in that position, for that type of occasion who has to read his speech, qualifies as a poor pubic speaker in my book.

By contrast Her Imperial Highness Princess Takamado gave a splendid speech, alternating between English and Japanese. She wasn't reading it, the content was relevant and interesting. When you are a member of the Imperial family there is tremendous expectation on you and she could have chosen the safe route and have read her speech. Yet, she gave her remarks without notes and spoke freely. It was so much more powerful and connected with her audience. The toast was given by a senior Government official, who did so in excellent English and without any notes either. The only one who couldn't give his speech without reading it, was the one native speaker involved. Rather ironic I thought.

Then we had the three finalists give their talks. Of course they had memorised their speeches. As Middle School students living in Japan it would be unlikely they would be able to do anything less. A five minute speech is a long time to memorise a speech, but they all did it brilliantly. If the Japanese education system does one thing well, it is rote memorisation. The final speech was given by the winner and it was very surprising. Also surprisingly, the three finalists were all boys, where normally this is an area of education where girls usually do better.

The English pronunciation of the finalist was certainly not as good as the second and third place winners. You would think that would disqualify him for winning but it didn't for a number of very important reasons. When he started speaking I was thinking that his pronunciation wasn't so good, so how did he manage to win? What followed was a winning combination of factors. We can learn a lot from a fifteen year old Middle School student from the backblocks of Wakayama Prefecture.

His theme was about him trying to improve his poor pronunciation which was congruent with who he was. In other words he was being authentic and appropriate in the eyes of his audience and so he could connect with them. The other boys told stories too but this boy included dialogue with his grandmother in his recounting of his story and this added that additional element of drawing us into the action. When he spoke he did something more than the other contestants.

He spoke with his whole being. The other two finalists with better English pronunciation used their voices, some small gestures and some facial expressions in their talks. The winner however was speaking with his whole body language lined up behind his words. He was moving in a relaxed way that was congruent with his message. He sounded more natural, even though it was a totally canned speech. He wasn't the best English speaker in the contest, but he was the best communicator in English. That difference is huge. I found the same thing with my Japanese. I started by worrying about linguistic perfection but discovered it didn't matter. Even if my vocabulary was limited, my pronunciation unreliable and my grammar garbled, the audience came with me into my story, when I delivered it the right way.

As adults, in business, we can decide to avoid reading our speeches at all costs. Thinking about our audience when we craft our talk is critical. In the delivery, we should be authentic. That means we don't worry about occasionally mispronouncing words or stumbling over phrases. We are focused in our delivery on bringing our total body language, our passion, to the subject. We don't get hung up on perfection, because we are focused on communication. If we do that, then we will be successful in getting our messages across.

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 become a leader what do you find? There are rival aspirant leaders aplenty waiting in the wings to take over. They have the elbows out to shove the current leader aside and replace them. Organisations seem to be stacked with politicians who are excellent at ingratiating themselves with the higher ups and climbing over the bodies of their rivals to get to the top. Their political nous seems to be in inverse proportion to their lack of real leadership ability.

Given we have much flatter organisations today and the correspondent pressure to do more faster and better with less, the pressure on leaders is at an all time high. The super leader is bullet proof, never makes a mistake and sums up the situation perfectly. They are also a pain to work for. Followers don't deal well with perfection. This is mainly because it is fake, because no one is perfect. It is a leader charade, a marketing effort, a clever attempt to maintain their position power.

We never feel close to people like that, because there is no way in for us to be close to them. They are always separated from us by their self important self-image. We cannot identify with them because while they project they are perfect, we are only too aware of our own failings. We don't like perfect people because they make us feel inadequate and uncomfortable. They seem nothing like us, so there is felt to be very little in common.

The irony is that as leaders, the less perfect we try to project ourselves, the more effective we will be in winning over followers. Yes, absolutely, we have to be competent, but we don't have to be perfect. We have the have the goods but we don't have to be a pain. By admitting our foibles and failings, we provide a way in for our followers to identify with us. When your basic premise is "I am perfect", then you have to invest a lot of energy in backing that claim up and maintaining the perfectly assembled facade.

On the other hand, you can say I am imperfect, but I still bring plenty of value to my followers and the organisation. You are confident enough to say you are not Mr. or Ms. Perfect. People lacking in confidence often try to appear something they are not, because they are not confident to show others their weaknesses. I was exactly like that for a very long time.

When I was younger, I thought I had to be the best, brightest, smartest, toughest, quickest and the hardest worker. I thought all of this was necessary, because I didn't know how to be vulnerable. I was raised in a typical Aussie macho environment in Brisbane, where men had a clearly defined role and weakness wasn't any part of it. How about your case?

As you move through your career you meet leaders who don't make any claims about how great they are and their teams love them. They don't strut around trying to prove they are the best and they just get on with helping others succeed. They are comfortable within their own skin and having nothing to prove to anyone. They get the job done like a duck on water. Above the surface it looks like they are just gliding along, without any effort being made, while the legs are working away under the waterline.

The previous Mayor of Yokohama Fumiko Hayashi was relating a story about her time as a manager in BMW. She was unafraid to appear less than perfect, to encourage the men working for her to help her achieve the firm's goals. She later became president of BMW, Tokyo Nissan Auto sales and the Daiei supermarket chain - all bastions of male management.

She was able to project her vulnerability and yet succeed in a male dominated Japan business world. I don't think this had anything to do with the fact she was a woman. I can think of another example right now of another extremely successful Japanese woman, who just projects ice in the veins, vicious, steely, killer toughness. The out-machoing the men in the room way to the top. This domination approach is one way of doing it and I have worked for plenty of men like that. I never liked them, respected them or was motivated by them. I thought they were jerks. Hayashi san however was able to be vulnerable and get others to help her and this is the lesson we can all learn.

By being able to be vulnerable, we establish a relationship with our team where they feel comfortable. They still respect our ability, experience, dedication, hard work and our focus on helping them to succeed. None of that goes away just because we don't go around projecting we are superman or superwoman.

So let's be confident and vulnerable at the same time. If we do that, gathering followers will become easier and leading will become more enjoyable and successful.

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 permanently. We all seem to have less time than before, so we become cross if things from the internet don't load or load too slowly. If we have to wait we don't like it, regardless of what the circumstance. We are perpetually impatient. Here is a deadly breeding ground for customer dissatisfaction There are five elements usually driving customer unhappiness with us. 1. Process We need processes to run our organisations on a daily basis. This includes how we communicate and align the features and value of the offering with the customer's expectations. In constant drives for great efficiencies, we tend to mould the processes to suit the organisation's needs, in preference to the customers needs. Japan is a classic in having staff run the business based on what is in the manual. If a decision requires any flexibility, this is usually dismissed because the staff only do what the manual says. As the customer, we often want things at the odds with the manual or we want something that diverges from what the manual says. Take a look at your own procedures. Are there areas where you can allow the staff to exercise their own judgment? Can you empower them to solve the customer's problem, regardless of what is in the manual. Our processes often become covered in barnacles over the years and from time to time we need to scrape them off and re-examine why we insist things can only be done in this way. 2. Roles Who does what in the organisation. This includes agreement on tasks and responsibilities and holding people accountable to these. Japanese staff, in my experience, want their accountabilities very precisely specified and preferably to be made as tiny as possible. They are scared of making a mistake and being held accountable if things go wrong. They have learnt that the best way of doing that is to become as small a target as possible. The usual role split works well, but what happens when people leave, are off sick or away on holiday? This is when things go awry. Covering absent colleagues requires flexibility and this is not a well developed muscle in Japan. What usually happens is everything is held in abeyance until the responsible person turns up again. Customers don't respect those timelines and they imagine that everyone working for the firm is responsible for the service rather than only the absent colleague. We need a strong culture of we pick up the fallen sword and go to battle to help our customer, if we are the only person around. This is particularly the case with temp staff. They are often answering phone calls or dealing with drop in visitors and they need to be trained on being flexible and fixing the customer issue. 3. Interpersonal Issues How customer service personnel get along with each other and other departments is key. This includes such things as attitude, teamwork and loyalty. Sales overselling and over promising customers drives the back office team crazy. They have to fulfil the order and it is usually in a time frame that puts tons of pressure on the team. This is how we get the break down of trust and animosity reigning inside the machine. This leads to a lack of communication and delivery sequences can get derailed. When colleagues are angry, they tend not to answer the customer's phone call as sweetly as we might hope. We need to be careful to balance out these contradictions and have protocols in place where we can minimise the damage. What are your protocols and does everyone know and adhere to them. Now would be a good time to check up on that situation. 4. Direction How the organisation defines and communicates the overall and departmental vision, mission and values is key. This is the glue. We need this when things are not going according to plan. When we grant people the freedom to uphold all of these highfalutin words in the vision statement with their independent actions, then we introduce the needed flexibility to satisfy clients. Are your people able to take these guiding statements issued from on high and then turn them into solutions for clients? 5. External Pressures The resources available to the customer service departments such as time and money become critical to solving customer issues. How much control do we give to the people on the front line to solve problems for our customers? Often we weight them down with rules, regulations and procedures, which make them inflexible. Check how much freedom you have granted to your team to fix a problem for a client? You may find that during the last recession you wound that whole process in very tight and forgot to loosen it off, after times got better. We need to get under the waterline and check for a build up of barnacles impeding our customer service provision. Scrape them off wherever you find them and have a steady routine to always take a look and see what has built up over time. Invariably you will find something that can be removed or streamlined, that the customer will appreciate. Remember, if you can do this and your rivals can't or don't, that is a big advantage in the customer satisfaction stakes.

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 speakers were recording themselves for later analysis? I would assert that the answer would be either zero or very close to zero. Why would that be? High performance athletes are constantly using video to check on what they are doing. Why don't high performance leaders, experts, executives, industry influencers, and assorted gurus do the same thing?

These days the technology is very good. A simple video camera and tripod investment is a minor affair. The camera microphone itself at a certain distance is fine or you can add a shotgun microphone if needed. You just set it up turn it on and forget about it until the end. You may have to be careful with the arrangements such that no one in the audience will be in the shot and you need to tell everyone that is the case in order to remove privacy concerns. Well if it is all this easy why aren't more speakers doing this?

The smarter ones are. I often coach speakers before major presentations and we always use video. I can tell them what they are doing that needs improvement, but there is nothing more powerful than having that information pointed out to you and seeing it at the same time. If it is just you shooting the video yourself and there is no coach review possibility, there is still enough material on the video for you to make improvements in your presentation.

How do you review the presentation? Look at four possibilities for the next time. What can you delete, add, reduce or amplify? There may be habits you have that detract from the persuasion power of the message. Perhaps you are mumbling or umming and ahing. Confidence sells and to sound confident you must be clear and consistent in your delivery. Look for tell taLe body language tics that have a negative connotation. You might be swaying around in a distracting way that competes with what you are saying. Or you maybe be fidgeting, or striding around the stage showing off to everyone how nervous you are. All of these habits weaken your message with your audience.

Are you engaging the audience with your eye contact? My Japanese history professor at university would deliver every lecture staring at the very top of the back wall and never engage in any eye contact with the students. Don't be like that. Use every second of the presentation to lock eyes with members of your audience for about six seconds, one at a time and in random order. Are you using congruent gestures during you explanation or no gestures or too many gestures or permanent gestures? Gestures are there to be points of emphasis, so hold for a maximum of fifteen seconds and then turn them off.

Video is also excellent for considering what you might have done, looking for things you could have added to the presentation. Maybe there was a chance to use a prop or introduce a slide to support a point or call for more audience participation by getting them to raise their hands in response to a question. I was giving a talk recently on "AI in the Workplace" and I showed two paintings labelled A and B and asked the audience which one was painted by AI. They had to raise their hands to vote. This was more interesting than just showing them a slide with a painting done by AI. Roughly half of the audience went for either A or B. In fact they were both done by A1 so it was a bit of ruse, but very effective to drive home the point I was making.

If you cannot organise a video or if the hosts are not cooperative, then have someone you trust give you feedback. Don't ask them a broad question such as "how was it?'. We need to be more specific. "Did my opening grab the attention of the audience?", "Were my main points clear and supported with credible evidence", "Was I engaging my audience with good quality eye contact throughout?", etc. Give them a checklist before you start so you can guide them in what to look for. Unless they are a public speaking expert themselves, they won't know how to help you best.

In a year, most people don't get that much opportunity to speak in public, so it very hard to get the right frequency to enable improvement. If you could do the same presentation five times in a row, by the last one you would be on fire, but that hardly ever happens. This is why the video or expert feedback becomes so useful. You can review the presentation at your leisure and improve on your professional public speaking capabilities for the next outing

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 always a number of alternative ways of doing things, but the leader says, "my way is correct, so get behind it". Leaders start small with this idea and over the course of their career they keep adding more and more certainty to what they say is important, correct, valuable and needed to produce the best return on investment.

With a constant army of sycophants in the workforce, the leader can begin to believe their own press. There is also the generational imperative of "this is correct because this was my experience", even when the world has well and truly moved on beyond that experience. If you came back from World War Two as an officer, you saw a certain type of leadership being employed and the chances are that was why there were so many "command and control" leaders in the 1950s and 1960s. The Woodstock generation questioned what had been accepted logic and wanted a different boss-employee relationship, where those below had more input into the direction of the company. Technology breakthroughs and the internet made hard skill warriors the gurus of leadership. Steve Jobs abusing and belittling his engineers was accepted, because he was so prescient and smart.

Technology has however also democratized the workplace. Thanks to search engines and now AI, the boss is no longer the only one with access to key information. Being really smart and even mildly abusive isn't acceptable anymore. The boss-employee relationship has changed. It is going to keep changing too, especially here in Japan where there are 1.3 jobs for every person working.

Recruiting and retaining people becomes a key boss skill. The degree of engagement of the team makes a big difference in maintaining existing customer loyalty and the needed brand building to attract new customers. Social media will kill any organisation providing sub-standard service, because the damage travels far, fast and wide. The role of the boss has changed, but have the bosses been able to keep up?

Recent Dale Carnegie research on leaders found four blind spots, which were hindering leaders from fully engaging their teams. None of these were hard skill deficiencies. All four focused on people skills.

1. Leaders must give their employees sincere praise and appreciation

We just aren't doing it enough. With the stripping out of layers in organisations, leaders are doing much bigger jobs with fewer resources. Time is short and coaching has been replaced by barking out commands. Work must get done fast because there is so much more coming behind it. We are all hurtling along at a rapid clip. The boss can forget that the team are people, emotional beings, not consistent

revenue producing machines. Interestingly, 76% of the research respondents said they would work harder if they received praise and appreciation from their boss. Take a reality check on yourself. How often to do you recognise your people and give them sincere praise?

1. Leaders do well to admit when they are wrong

The scramble up the greasy pole requires enormous self-belief and image building. Mistakes hinder rapid career climbs and have to be avoided. Often this is done by shifting the blame down to underlings. The credit for work well done, of course, flows up to the genius boss who hogs all the limelight. The team are not stupid. They see the selfishness and respond by being only partially engaged in their work. In 81% of the cases, the research found that bosses who can admit they made mistakes are more inspirational to their team members.

1. Effective leaders truly listen, respect and value their employees' opinions

Who knows the most? Often the boss assumes that is them, because they have been anointed "boss". They have more experience, better insights and a greater awareness of where the big picture is taking the firm. So why listen to subordinate's mediocre and half baked ideas? Well, engaging people means helping them feel they are being listened to by their boss. Sadly, 51% of the survey respondents said their boss doesn't really listen to them. Ask yourself, am I really focusing 100% of my attention on what my team are telling me or am I mentally multi-tasking and thinking about other things at the same time, especially what I am goi g to say?

1. Employees want leaders they can trust to be honest with themselves and others

There are two elements to this – external and internal reliability.

External reliability is the boss does what the boss says they will do. They "walk the talk". In the survey, 70% said their boss couldn't be depended upon to be honest and trustworthy when dealing with others. That is a pretty shocking and damning result. The internal reliability focused on being consistent with your own core beliefs. Again, 70% said their boss fails in this regard – another total shocker!

Obviously, bosses are not employing their full self-awareness about how they are being perceived. You get back the 360 degree survey and there is your blood everywhere and we can argue people have it wrong, but perception is reality. We need to pay more attention to each of these leadership blind spots if we want to engage our team members. Only engaged team members can deliver the highest levels of service to clients and that must be our aim. To achieve that, we have to take a cold hard look at ourselves and lift our game, no matter how painful that might prove.

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 know all that, but let the hellfire rain down on my head, I am just sick of some of this lousy service here in Tokyo.

It is a mystery to me how the service in some Chinese restaurants here can be so oblivious to Japanese standards of omotenashi. Omotenashi is that sublime combination of anticipating and exceeding client's expectations, that has made Japanese service so famous. I love Chinese cuisine and I enjoy the high quality standard of Chinese food in Japan. They have the best, most expensive quality, very safe ingredients and really great Chinese chefs here. When I go to places in Tokyo like Akasaka Shisen Hanten in Hirakawacho the service is very, very good. My observation is that is probably the case because the serving staff are Japanese or Chinese who have grown up here.

Whenever I go to some "all Chinese" affairs, with only Chinese staff, I find the service is disappointing. I had this experience again recently in the Azabu Juban. It was a first and last time to go to this particular restaurant. The food taste wasn't the issue, in fact some dishes were delicious. It was the total disinterest on the part of the serving staff and their manager. You don't feel any particular need to go back there, when there are a hundred other restaurants within a two-minute walk.

This makes no sense to me, because when I am Singapore, Hong Kong or Taiwan, the restaurant service is usually very good. Obviously, the more expensive the restaurant, the better the service of course. So, there is nothing inherently missing in the service mentality and capability, that couldn't be applied in Japan. Why then is it so lacking in omotenashi?

I remember reading a purported Chinese saying that, "A man who cannot smile, should not open a shop". Obviously, some of the Chinese staff working in these establishments I am complaining about, have never heard of that piece of ancient Chinese wisdom. Smiling, making you feel welcome, treating you well are a big fat zero in my experience. The way of serving is very perfunctory, even rough, in some cases. Japanese style restaurant table service is generally very much more refined. What is driving this difference and what does it mean for the rest of us in the service business?

Perhaps some of the Chinese staff we are seeing serving in Japan are students. According to the media reports, many are actually working almost full time. They are not professionally trained service staff, in the sense that this is their career. Coming from certain parts of China and from different socio-economic backgrounds, they may have had no exposure to what good levels of service looks like.

I went to China for the first time in January 1976 and have been back a number of times over the years. I studied Chinese language, history and politics at Griffith University's Modern Asian studies faculty. I like many aspects of Chinese culture and studied Tai Qi Quan for about ten years with my excellent teacher, Cordia Chu in Brisbane, before I moved back to Japan. I haven't been back to China for a while, but I don't recall the service being particularly bad when I was there last. Perhaps some of these local serving staff living here in Japan only ever eat Chinese food, so they are never exposed to how Japanese restaurants serve their clients. I find that hard to believe though.

The thing that puzzles me most is that despite the fact these Chinese staff are working in Japan and are floating in a deep ocean of omotenashi, some don't seem to picking up any ideas on how to treat their clients. Why would that be? The managers are also Chinese, so they are responsible for leading their staff in the restaurants. Are they oblivious to the service market in Japan and how it functions? Are they just poor managers, who cannot place their operation in a broader context of local service standards. Are they inflexible and incapable of understanding the lifetime value of a repeater client?

This is a very competitive restaurant scene here, has more Michelin starred restaurants than Paris, so you would expect that everyone, including some of these Chinese run establishments, would be doing everything they can to build a loyal, repeater client base.

This challenges me to consider what we are doing in our own case, with our customer facing service. If I am going to bag some of the Chinese restaurant's service here in Tokyo, then I had better consider our own standards at the same time.

We are a gaishikei or foreign run establishment here. I am not Japanese, but I am the boss. Am I operating the company service provision in terms of what I am used to in Australia, my home country? Am I doing an Australian version of what some of these Chinese restaurants are doing here in Tokyo in their service business? Are we in fact, providing enough omotenashi service to our own clients? Could we do better in this regard?

I find a lot of Japanese service very polite, but also rather impersonal and almost robotic sometimes. Compared to the poorer versions of some of these Chinese restaurant service offerings however, I will take the Japanese polite, impersonal, robotic option every time. How can we see our service businesses in a different light? How can we make sure we are not only providing omotenashi levels of service, but are going beyond that, to offer a more personalised experience? Maybe we need to audit what we are doing, to see if we are missing some vital areas for improvement.

I really like Elios Locanda Italian restaurant in Hanzomon, because I am treated like one of the family. This is the feeling transmitted through their Japanese staff. Elio himself, is not always there, all the time, but that authentic Italian family style service is there. He is setting the service standard and the Japanese staff are following it. I see this example and I think to myself, "it is possible to have a more personal level of service here, transmitted through your Japanese staff". My family and I have been regulars at Elios since we returned to Tokyo from Osaka in 2001. Talk about the repeater, life time value of the customer. They have seen my son grow from a baby, to a young man in that time. We are part of the family and this is the key - we were made to feel like that from Day One.

How about your service provision standards? Are you making your clients feel like part of the family? What is your repeater rate? How many people continue to buy from you, year after year? Are you tracking this? Do you know what the average buying continuity rate is with your customers? When we see bad service, it is always a good reminder to make sure that what we are doing ourselves is at the required omotenashi level.

If you are not sure what I am talking about with this omotenashi thing, here is my recommendation. Go to a very upscale Japanese kaiseki restaurant preferably in Kyoto or a Toraiya traditional sweets shop and remind yourself what excellent service looks like. Then reflect on what you are offering in service terms. Break down your every touch point with your customers and clients and see if there isn't a lot more omotenashi that can be introduced in each case. We can always learn from our own mistakes and from the mistakes of others when it comes to providing better service. The point is to observe carefully, change quickly and commit to massive improvement.

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 of the speech is usually around ten minutes, which though it seems shortish, can feel quite long and challenging to design. Being an inspirational speech, it adds that extra degree of difficulty. It comes up though. The organisers ask you to deliver the closing, rousing call to action to fire the troops up for another year. Are you ready to meet the challenge?

There are some key components we must assemble. There must be one clear and compelling message. In a speech like this, we can't rattle off the twenty things everyone should be doing. They can never remember them all and the whole effort becomes too diffused. It is a single call to action, so what is the action or idea we want to propose. We might use slides or we may not, it will really depend on what we want to say. Often in these cases, we can use images very effectively without any words and we supply the narrative during our comments. Photos and images are powerful for capturing attention and people's emotions.

A call to action is an emotional commitment that goes beyond logic. We need to hit the bullseye of what grabs people's hearts. This is delivered through stories. We take people on a journey of our construction. We plan it such that it leads them to feel what we want them to feel and to think what we want them to think. This planning creates a funnel effect where we keep pulling people back to our central message.

Storytelling technique is a terrific vehicle for the speaker to lead people's hearts and minds. We populate the story with people who are familiar to the audience. Ideally, they can see these people in their mind's eye. They might be people they have actually met or have heard of. They may be historical events, legendary figures, VIPS, celebrities or people of note who are familiar to our audience.

In Ho Chi Minh for my closing speech at Convention, the timing was such that we had previously suffered from the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and triple nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan. I spoke with emotion about that event. About having a nuclear cloud pass over your head polluting all the drinking water. Of having massive aftershocks every day for weeks, of the relentless black churning oily water engulfing coastal communities, of the chaos and destruction. I brought that experience alive to drive home my central point.

We flesh out the surroundings of the story to make it real. We are all used to watching visual storytelling on television or in movies, so we are easily transported to a scene of the author's creation, if the words create pictures. We describe the room or location in some detail in order to transfer minds to that place.

We place the event into a time sequence with a peg for the audience to grab hold of, to make the story come alive. We might do this by nominating the date or we might specify the season or the time of day or night. This type of context is important because it takes the listener down more layers of the story to make it more relevant. They can draw on their memory of similar occasions to approximate this story.

The delivery is where all of this comes together. It is a call to action so the speaker needs to get into high gear to make that happen. There will be an element of theatrics involved for effect. This is not some dubious, dodgy trick or variant on a parlour game to distract the punters. No, it is taking the key message and driving it hard through controlled exaggeration. Our speaker in Phuket, toward the end of his talk, dropped down to the push up position and pumped out twenty rapid fire pushups on his fingertips. I don't know if you have ever tried this fingertip version, but it was pretty impressive for a man of his age group and was totally congruent with his key point about stress equals strength. It was dramatic, it was daring, but it also added that X factor to his talk.

There must be vocal modulation too, from conspiratorial whispers to hitting key words or phrases with tremendous intensity. Gestures will be larger than normal and more dramatic. The speaker will be eyeing the audience with great intensity, with a fire burning in their pupils of complete certainty of the veracity of the key message. There will be a level of super engagement with the audience, to the point they are cheering and responding throughout the talk rather than consolidated clapping only at the end.

Crafting a key message, a powerful call to action for an end worth pursuing and then wrapping it up in storytelling, delivered with energy and flair, is the formula for success when delivering the closing inspirational speech at your conference. Make it memorable and don't hesitate about going BIG.