Even though Japan has been influenced by the West (especially the United States) since the early twentieth century and, especially, after World War II, it still retains its deep cultural differences, even in the corporate world (actually, one of the great cultural influences of the United States.) These differences are seen in the way organizations operate. Very much the same way as the samurai clans during the time of Shoguns, employees seek to be faithful to their companies and work there all their lives, for instance.

Unlike what happens in the West, quitting a job that has given you so much knowledge and personal growth, even if they offer you better conditions in a different company, it is seen as a betrayal in the business world of Japan.

But another big difference with the West is related to a crucial aspect: how to motivate employees. For Western workers, it is very important to get positive feedback from their superiors all the time. In Japan, it is not the case. In fact, the general rule is: if you are doing things right, your boss does not have to say anything whatsoever.

It would mean a constant source of demotivation and frustration for Western workers (and indeed, it is, for those working in Japan).  This kind of cultural clashes produce much confusion but actually are related to the ancestral history of Japan. Japanese moral codes, for example, force Japanese workers to respect their superiors even if they are wrong. Thus, Western workers need to know Japanese customs first for not feeling slighted if they work in that country.

One of the reasons why Japanese leaders never congratulate their employees (either in public or private), it is because they do not understand why they should do it in the first place. For the Japanese, if a boss approaches you to ask you how you are, how is your work going, if you are feeling ok, it doesn’t mean that everything is all right. Indeed, if a boss approaches you to speak about these things, it means that something is wrong.

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Another reason, much simpler, it is because the term feedback did not exist in the Japanese vocabulary before the cultural influence of the American companies (simply because they never found it necessary to use that concept.) As it happened during the Meiji era, in which many Western words were unknown to the Japanese people of the time, employers in this country had to invent this term (“fīdobakku”) to communicate with Western businessmen and to understand each other. However, they don’t use to give positive “fīdobakku” to their employees and subordinates.

Image courtesy of tokyoform at Flickr.com

Image courtesy of tokyoform at Flickr.com

The concept of feedback belongs to the individual identity of the West. The competition of an employee over the other is a matter that goes against the collective consciousness of the Japanese corporate culture. In that country, it is more important to think as a group than as an individual. Of course, individualism and the attitudes derived have been introduced in Japanese culture since the Postwar, but it is not a priority over the collective subjects.

“If the company is well, I’ll be fine. That’s the Japanese mentality. A pat on the shoulder is not needed,” points Dr. Markus Ericsson, a Swedish cardiovascular surgeon at Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset, who has worked in Kyoto for two years. “However, what they do is to constantly inform their superiors about everything that happens during your workday. All employees of Kyoto University Hospital at the end of the day give their superiors reports about all sort of things, which for us Europeans are trivial details, but in Japan, they consider this attitude as a sign of respect. It is called hou-ren-sou,” says Dr. Ericsson.

They neither summon their employees to a meeting for discussing the current status of the company. If a leader does such thing this in Japan, employees usually freak out: something very bad must be happening if the boss interrupts their tasks for that purpose.

However, intrapersonal relationships between employees and bosses are always present, but in different scenarios. The best way to talk about work, the mood and the goals of employees is, by the way, going out to drink a couple of drinks with the boss. In Japanese companies, because the whole staff considers itself like a big family, it is very common that they all go to drink occasionally until late at night, even without their husbands and wives. It is perfectly normal to end quite drunk, and your boss will definitely not disapprove it; on the contrary, it is a sign of respect to accepting his hospitality, because it is usually the boss who pays for the drinks.

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Anyway, our way of being Western is not going to change. The positive feedback remains as an important element in the motivation of our employees, but it is important to learn from other cultures and to assimilate somehow the positive traits of their ways of working. Thinking collectively, focusing on the achievements of the group… it may be a more positive attitude in the long run, after all.