Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

Awareness of linguistic differences

・ The Japanese language has a significantly different structure from most Western languages especially about the fact that the most important part comes usually at the end of the sentence. In English, the most important part comes at the beginning of the sentence with the subject and the verb. Due to this linguistic difference, the Japanese tend to listen till the end and then start thinking about how to respond. Westerners can already start thinking about how to respond after the first part of the sentence while still listening to the remainder of the sentence uttered by the other person. So they can respond more quickly. As a result, when a Japanese and a westerner discuss, there are often some pauses in the conversation, which is necessary for the Japanese as a thinking time while it appears awkward for westerners.

・ Also, the Japanese language can be spoken only with little lip movements while English speaking requires a wider range of month motions and a more amount of air pushed out of the gut. As a result, when a Japanese and a westerner discuss, the Japanese person often sounds much quieter with unclear pronunciations while Western people sound very loud most of the time.

・ Another big difference is that the Japanese language is suited to describe the context and subtle situations with a variety of vague yet nuanced vocabularies. On the other hand, English is suited to describe the summary and the bottom line with a variety of direct and clear expressions. Therefore, when a Japanese and a westerner speak in English, sometimes the Japanese try to describe a lot of context in a flowing order while the westerner wants to hear a short summary upfront.

Lack of Spontaneity overcome by assigned roles?

・ If asked for opinions or ideas in a meeting, it is very rare for junior people to speak up spontaneously. Due to hesitation, worries and the lack of psychological safety and confidence etc, they do not speak up. This lack of spontaneity could be overcome by assigning them a clear role to express their opinions and ideas at the beginning of the meeting. The Japanese are always good at fulfilling their roles and striving to do so perfectly. If it is given as their role to speak up their ideas and opinions starting with the most junior people in a reverse-hierarchical order at a meeting, it may work well as we are forcing people to speak up. It is kind of sad that we can not expect any proactiveness and spontaneity from them and need to force them to speak up. It may also stress them out. But if we really want to get input from everybody, the forced speaking-up assignment could be a possible option.

・ Ideally, we should not have to come to that. Instead we should have a leader/a boss who could function as a good facilitator who always seeks input from every participants at a meeting by stating “I need your input.” and recognizes every comment with praise and gratitude. If such a leader continues to run every meeting in this way, the environment and people’s attitude toward speaking up will change. But it takes some time for the environment to change. The constant encouragement from the leader is necessary. When people are terrified under a totalitarian regime for a long time and could not speak up for hundreds of years, even if an enlightened and progressive minded leader suddenly takes over the regime, people’s behaviors do not change over a night. Constant encouragement from the leader is the key to change people’s long-cemented attitude.

Ability to have constructive arguments without severing relationships

・ The Japanese are well-known as one of the most conflict-averse peoples on earth for the love of social harmony. As a result, many people are not used to arguments and disagreements as they rarely happen in Japan. When an argument does happen, people tend to take it personally and get offended easily because they are not used to it. Since people do not want to upset others, they would rather agree or stay quiet even if they have a different opinion. This tendency is depriving Japanese companies of many possibly great innovative ideas and much better decisions. Somehow the Japanese need to develop their ability to have constructive arguments without severing relationships so that they can freely discuss without worrying about being dubbed as harmony destroyers.

In conclusion…

・ Many of the above issues could be tremendously improved fairly quickly if there is a great facilitator in every meeting. We believe that one of the fastest and most effective ways to help Japanese companies to get more input from their employees is to give them some effective tips on how to become a great facilitator. That’s why we will focus on facilitation for our first solution proposal.

・ The facilitator could set up a better environment in which everybody can feel safer and more encouraged to speak up. But also individual employees have to make more efforts to change their passive mindset and improve their speaking up skills. That also needs to be addressed separately.