Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

Nominate the Facilitator

・ Often Japanese companies do not have any facilitator clearly appointed in meetings. They may have an emcee who just goes through the agenda with a few words. In Japan, often the chairperson of the meeting does not chair the meeting. He/she just gives some opening and/or closing comments.

・ Therefore, companies should make it a rule that every meeting should have a facilitator and the role should be rotated among participants so that as many people as possible could develop the facilitation skills.

Secure a separate time/forum for idea generation and problem solving

・ It is very difficult for many people to speak up openly to share their ideas and candidate opinions in formal meetings and regular status update meetings in Japan. Even if encouraged for free brainstorming discussions in a spare time in the formal meetings, the Japanese will be anxious as they are not clear about the expectations and they do not want to say something that may be inappropriate. They will stick to the proverb “Silence is gold.”

・ Therefore, discussions for innovative ideas and problem solving should be done in a separate forum. Don’t mix it with the regular status update formal meetings. People do not want to talk about problems when they are to give a status update. They naturally want to paint a good picture that everything is ok. But if there is a forum specifically dedicated to discuss problems, they will be more comfortable to put their problems on the table because that is the expectation.

Give chance to organize thoughts beforehand and to express them without hesitation

・ For idea generations, pre-assign the meeting participants to think about the topic and write down their ideas prior to the meeting. They can share what they wrote either by positing the Post-it on the wall or texts on the chat box so that everybody can review them. Instead of brainstorming by speaking in public, let them do the brain-writing.

・ If you want people to verbally share their thoughts on the pre-assigned topic in the meeting, the facilitator should always ask the most junior people to talk first and do the sharing session in the reverse-hierarchical order.

・ Another method is to separate them into smaller groups in the breakout rooms as it is easier to talk among a small number of people.

Create and share a guideline

・ Creating a simple and clear meeting guideline may be useful to clarify the expected behaviors in meetings. The facilitator should always remind the participants of the guideline at the beginning of the meeting.

・ Also it would be very helpful if there is a guideline or a manual for good facilitation so that a person assigned as the facilitator can follow it and conduct good facilitation.

Invite, encourage, recognize and praise until spontaneity develops

・ Senior leaders of the company must invite the participants to speak up through constant encouragement, recognition and praise at every meeting. Many Japanese are simply not used to speaking up spontaneously. It’s not in their modes operandi. Especially until their spontaneity develops, it is critical that corporate leaders make efforts to create the speaking up culture at every meeting they attend.

・ Also, the facilitator needs to ask silent individuals to share their thought in a non-threatening way. Usually they do have some ideas but they don’t proactively share them as they think their ideas are not great enough so not worthy of sharing. Until the speaking-up culture and spontaneity are developed, the facilitator should appoint silent ones to speak up and ensure well-balanced exposure and attention are given on participants without creating any dominate character. Once they all know that everybody has to share their ideas one way or the other, they will start speaking up spontaneously.

Don’t try to achieve a lot in one meeting quickly

・ The facilitator and the leader should not be over-ambitious about achieving a lot in one meeting. The first step in Japan should be to encourage as many people as possible to speak up. So the facilitator should be careful not to create a feeling of rush. Of course, the facilitator should be conscious of time and finish the meeting on time. But the more rushed it feels, the less likely for the Japanese to speak up. Because their humble nature often tells them “don’t bother busy people with my mediocre opinion.”

・ So if the topic requires people’s input to innovate something or solve some big problems, conduct several meetings on the same topic. For instance, at the first meeting, people put all their problems on the table and try to agree on the root causes. At the 2nd meeting, they could lay out all the ideas about possible solutions. And at the 3rd meeting, they could finalize their action plans etc.