Blogs and Articles from Third Way Forum Membrs

・ It seems there are at least five mental blocks that prevent the Japanese from speaking up.

・ 1. Lack of Authority: They think they do not have authority to speak up. They think they are still junior or inexperienced or their opinion is not worth sharing etc.

・ 2. Fear: They don’t speak up because they are afraid of being wrong, perceived as rude, embarrassed or criticized in public. Also, they are afraid that their voice may encounter some uncomfortable silence of the audience.

・ 3. Lack of Skill: They are not confident of their ability to speak up constructively and persuasively enough. They struggle to organize their thoughts and express them in right words. So they would rather keep quiet.

・ 4. Lack of Experience: They do not have enough experience of being praised and appreciated by speaking up. So they don’t see any merit in speaking up. Also, they do not have so much experience of encountering a variety of responses from the audience after expressing their opinions. So even if they speak up, when someone disagrees or has a different viewpoint, they don’t know how to handle it and get discouraged. So they would rather keep quiet.

・ 5. Lack of Consequences: At many Japanese companies, people are not praised by speaking up, and they are not punished by not speaking up either. So why do they bother to speak up?

・ In order to overcome these 5 mental blocks above, it is important to build awareness in the Japanese that there is another standard of professional communications which the Japanese people could also adapt instead to just sticking to their own company’s standard of communications. We need to increase the number of the Japanese who have the curiosity and open-mindedness to adapt a different standard of communications for their own effectiveness and productivity.

・ We need such Japanese professionals who could bridge the gap between the conventional Japanese styles and the global styles with their bridge personality. We need to develop such Japanese people in a large number to be a critical mass in a company. Then the mentality barrier will gradually dissolve.