Senior leaders and middle management professionals are faced with many corporate-level issues to be solved, while navigating managerial problems with our team members and multinational stakeholders. Yet we are also expected to grow as leaders to stay apace with this rapidly changing world. Faced with these omnidirectional pressures under limited time, we sometimes get the urge to blame the social system and corporate culture when things don’t go well, although the problem usually exits in our mind.
As an expatriate in the US for over seven years, I’ve been a liaison, guiding joint Japanese and US corporate decision processes. I continuously try to improve rules and policies by involving elements of each of these two different company cultures, but sometimes, when confronted with obstacles, I lose confidence. For those times, I need to add a new aspect to my mindset, to change my way of thinking to avoid getting bogged down in the same place in my mind.
Masae identified my situation immediately and, through her questions, enabled me to see some aspects of it that had remained hidden. She also focused on my history, in only a short time leading me to recall the strength that I used to have but lost. She is now helping me to retrieve this strength from a deeper mind layer so that I will be able to draw on it whenever it is most needed. Although Masae’s questions are polite and tender during the session, she is able to use them to cause me to confront the root causes of difficult problems. Our mind and behavior are always inadequate, so it is difficult to expose them as a leader. Recognizing my current position is the first step and Masae is helping me to do that. I am thankful that she has provided me a chance to rethink the baggage that I have accumulated.
Y.T.