Global leadership training for the Japan side of your business
We train the behavior behind the English, on the work your team in Japan is running right now. And when the Japanese organization around them is what is stopping it, we go inside and change that too.
THE GOAL
Here is what the Japan side could look like
TODAY
And this is where you are now
What we see inside Japanese workplaces, and what the people responsible for development tell us.
Japanese multinationals
- Another country always shapes the discussion English training runs year after year, and still nobody comes out of it delivering business results.
- Assignees come home worn down, never having won the local team over A management record built in Japan does not carry abroad, and results do not follow after arrival.
- Overseas sites stall, waiting for a decision from Tokyo The authority was handed over, but nobody local has grown into deciding with it.
Global companies in Japan
- Japan never makes the agenda in the first place People can speak English now, and still nobody takes the lead in a meeting.
- Everything stops at “I will check with Global HQ” Nobody in the Japan operation has grown into closing a decision on their own.
- Proposals for the Japanese market do not land The Japan side does not carry enough weight to push a proposal through Global HQ.
THE GAP
That gap breaks down into three causes
Lead with the answer. Come back on the spot. Cut in without waiting for a pause. People who reason clearly in Japanese cannot do it in English, in the moment.
Setting the agenda. Being in the room where decisions get made. Bringing people with you to build agreement. Nobody in Japan is trained to work this way — and when they give ground to keep the peace, you read it as having no opinion.
The mindset changes, and then acting on it gets someone read as the person who breaks the harmony. Treated that way for long enough, the mindset goes back.
Getting English to be understood at all belongs to a language school. What we handle is what comes after. This is also why an MBA is too heavy for the problem, and why e-learning in English shows no visible effect.
| What each one covers | Language school | Training firm | Consulting firm | LeadGL |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Moving a discussion in English | — | — | — | ○ |
| 2. The behavior that moves people | — | ○ | — | ○ |
| 3. A setting where that behavior is allowed | — | — | ○ | ○ |
Build the first two and leave the third in place, and the behavior is gone within months. That is why we take the first two in training and the third by going into the organization itself.
WHITE PAPER
You can see it. Where do you start?
The difference between the behavior Japan rewards and what a global setting asks for, with the research behind it, and what has to be trained, set out as four patterns.
Read Why Your Japan Team Underperforms 16 pagesWHITE PAPER
Why the training you have run so far changed nothing
Is the training there for its own sake? Five reasons training fails, and the six conditions it has to meet to deliver results.
Read English Training That Delivers Results 35 pagesORGANIZATION
No individual can solve the third cause.We build an organization that works globally
We do not stop at “the culture would have to change first.” This is the part you cannot reach from Global HQ. We go in and change it.
We go into the workplace and find what makes people unable to act on a mindset they already have, and what sends a changed mindset back. The method is grounded in anthropological ethnography. From there we work through the action and the evidence alongside your executives and HR in Japan. What you get is not a report. That work is delivered in Japanese, by people who have run Japanese organizations themselves.
The work is to build an organization where people say what they think without holding back — to you, and to each other. It is what competing globally requires, and what a more mixed workforce in Japan will require too.
WHITE PAPER
Well managed. Not well led.
Across 20 countries and more than 9,000 companies, the best-managed firms were in the United States, Japan and Germany. What is missing is not management but the work of setting a direction and moving people. We show what can change without dismantling the hierarchy, from survey data in Japan and abroad.
Not Well Led. 14 pages
WHAT WE DO
What LeadGL does
Establish the problem and the situation
We find where the cause sits. Is it the English, or the mindset that keeps someone silent in a meeting? Sometimes the answer is that no training will help, because nobody has any real occasion to use English at work. We offer the assessment as a standalone service.
Design the support that is needed
We set the participants and the schedule, and design the program around them. Sometimes that is support for the people alone; sometimes it comes with work on the organization. The assessment decides which, not a sales conversation.
Global leadership training and 1-on-1 coaching, working from what your people are actually facing: a meeting, a negotiation, a management problem. Everything runs in English.
An organization where the new behavior simply works. From finding the cause through running the changes and verifying they hold, alongside your executives and HR. Delivered in Japanese.
One cycle every two weeks
We use teaching material where the fundamentals need checking, but what sits at the center is the work your Japan team is running right now.
Run in English. Argue on the spot, come back, cut in. People meet the pressure of the real thing here first, where failing costs nothing.
People bring back what happened when they tried it at work, and we review it. On what to do next, we stay with their thinking until they find it themselves.
Step 03 is how the support for your people runs. Support for the organization can run alongside it or start later. In practice, what is stopping the behavior usually becomes visible while the training is under way, and that is when we propose it. That is why it sits at step 05 in the sequence below.
WHO WE ARE
Coaches who have been the Japanese person in the global meeting
Every one of them has held a management role in a global company and got over this wall themselves. That is why they can tell one of your people that a sentence is correct English and still will not carry — and why they can be straight with your executives about what is really going on.
33 years in global technical leadership at P&G, Sumitomo Dow and BASF. Has given guest lectures at the National University of Singapore.
2 years in the US, 9 in Singapore
25 years in R&D at P&G, 8 at Coca-Cola. End-to-end project management. Project leader for Global Communication & Influence.
2 years in the US, 6 in Singapore
Over 30 years in management and leadership at Beiersdorf, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and Unilever. ICF ACC certified professional coach.
Executive coaching
Vice President and division Director at the US subsidiary of an apparel materials manufacturer, running operations hands-on.
13 years in the US, 4 in Germany, 2 in Thailand and elsewhere
Microsoft, BlackBerry, Skype, Fujitsu and a Sumitomo Corporation subsidiary. Over 40 years in internet and software.
Fluent in both business and technology
CHANGE
What you will see change
We measure how behavior changed between before and after, in a form you can put straight in front of your board or your regional leadership.
COURSES
All 14 courses
Three tiers: foundational, mid-level and specialty. Every course stands alone, so you can take only what you need and combine them.
Understand cultural difference, and build the thinking and behavior to exert influence across cultures
Listen critically, build an argument in English, and persuade concisely
Make email, chat, reports and proposals concise and persuasive
Start from the resources at hand and bring people with you without relying on a title
Metacognition, induction and deduction, the traps of assumption, and persuading with the pyramid structure
The principles behind the language leaders use
How to influence effectively, calibrated to the other party’s situation and culture
Negotiating across cultures, and up, down and across the organization
The principles and practice of being an effective coach and mentor
How leaders act and think — know the styles, and find the leadership that is yours
Solve business, organizational and technical problems scientifically, and facilitate ideas out of a team
Solve the right problem — and avoid solving the wrong one excellently
Change how people behave, so the organization can develop talent that competes globally
Build the ownership mindset a global leader cannot do without
Common situations, and the course combinations we suggest by function
Outmuscled on price by overseas customers
Discounts conceded on the spot. No case made in English for their own company’s value. The phone avoided in favor of email.
Proposals to Global HQ and overseas sites do not land
What makes the Japanese market different never quite gets across. The argument does not carry, and they are overruled in the approval meeting.
Strong presentation, lost in the Q&A
They can prepare a presentation. They cannot come back under questioning, so they concede the argument, and the expertise never converts into standing.
Talks with overseas sites and suppliers go nowhere
When something breaks, the whole call goes on establishing facts. They go passive the moment responsibility comes up. The local team does not move.
Japan has no voice in global meetings
They cannot steer a discussion or carry weight where decisions get made. Head office and the other sites say they never hear what Japan actually thinks.
Ready before they land, not a year after
Booking conversation lessons once the posting date is set is too late. We get people ready so the first year is not spent entirely on introductions.
CATALOG
The course catalog sets out the structure, group size and duration of every course
Objective, learning outcomes, standard structure and group size, course by course, plus the order we recommend for each function — ready to circulate internally as it is.
course catalog 14 courses
DETAILS
Who it is for, how it runs, what it costs
Which group to start with is something we propose based on the assessment.
The people in Japan who move the relationship with Global HQ and the overseas sites, and who have the authority to change how the organization works.
The people who set the agenda in global meetings and negotiate with their counterparts abroad. A change in their behavior shows up in the numbers fastest.
Whether the posting succeeds is decided by whether they earn the local team’s trust in the first weeks.
The people you want running an overseas site or an international project within a few years. The earlier the patterns go in, the faster they hold.
How it runs
Courses capped at five are capped so that everyone gets enough airtime; courses of twenty are built so that people learn from how the others think. Participants need roughly CEFR B1 (around TOEIC 550) or above, plus some occasion to use English at work.
On cost
We quote individually, around the number of participants, the duration, the content and the format. There is no fixed price list. Start by talking to us.
PROCESS
How we start
We ask about your business in Japan, who you have in mind, and what is not working. An online conversation is enough to begin.
We establish where the cause sits, on the side of the people and on the side of the system.
Designed around the participants and the objective, and presented with the schedule, the team and the cost.
Delivered in two-week cycles. We measure how behavior changed between before and after, and report it.
We report the structural reasons the behavior is not holding — the ones the program itself brought to light — and propose what to change.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is global leadership training?
How is this different from ordinary English training?
So it is not a language-learning program?
Why work on the organization as well?
What language is this delivered in?
Is the consulting for executives and HR compulsory?
Can we buy the assessment on its own?
Will TOEIC scores go up?
What level of English do participants need?
We already use another English training provider. Can we run both?
How do we know it worked?
How many people, how long, and what does it cost?
Start with a conversation
Tell us what has actually stopped moving between Japan and the rest of your organization. We work out what the real question is, then set the participants, the schedule and the work themes, and design the program around them — and we will tell you if it is not a problem training can fix. A question about one of our papers is reason enough to get in touch.