Leadership

Westerners tend to value a tough, individualistic and dominating leadership style including the ability to take independent decisions and have them successfully implemented. The higher a Japanese manager rises in a company the more pains he will take to hide his ambition and capability and not to be seen as a forceful leader. Westerners who look for a decisive and charismatic boss are likely to be disappointed.

A Japanese manager concentrates on getting his group to work together. He is expected to be accessible, to work as an integral part of the group and to share whatever information he has.

Because he has spent his whole career with the company, more often than not in the same type of function, he is expected to be fully knowledgeable about his subordinates' work as well as his own.

One of the problems Japanese managers often have with western subordinates is getting them to show initiative. They complain that Europeans need to be told what to do all the time. And when they have done it they need immediate assurance that they have done it right and a pat on the back. This would be embarrassing to the boss and personally offensive to a Japanese subordinate who expects no more than a vague indication of the job to be done. Japanese do not have personal job descriptions or performance appraisal systems. Japanese job definition is for the group and it is assumed that everyone will do their best to fulfil it.

Their western subordinates on the other hand complain that they are given only vague hints of what they are supposed to do. Without defined responsibility, clear direction, and realistic goals they may find their jobs boring and without scope. When individual descriptions are instituted in Japanese companies in Europe it is usually at the European's insistence.

Europeans who discover the ground rules find that they have more scope to make their own jobs than in a circumscribed western environment. The ground rules are never do anything that is above your status, never do anything that infringes on someone else's status and never cut across hierarchical boundaries.

The way to ensure you keep within the boundaries of your status is to keep your boss informed of the smallest detail. Among the sample of people I talked to it was those at the lower level of organisation who found this the most stimulating change from a European working environment where junior people are given comparatively little scope or responsibility.

Дата добавления: 2014-11-29