The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show

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 …

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…

 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…

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 w…

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 …

 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 ha…

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-…

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…

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, …

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.  Produc…

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.  Howe…

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…

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 th…

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 ou…

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…

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. …

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 o…

This is a tricky part of designing and delivering our presentations.  Think back to the last few presentations you have attended and can you remember anything from the close of their speech?  Can you…

As the leader we have to work on the presumption that people know what they are doing. It is impossible to micro manage every single person, every moment of the day. By the way, who would want to do …