How can top leaders learn? Part 2

We were talking about how Inamori shared his tips with business leaders.

In the early eighties, the business leaders of small to middle size companies in Kyoto asked Inamori* to share his experiences and tips of business administration through a couple of workshops. Inamori wanted to contribute to Kyoto’s economic growth and voluntarily started a small group workshop, which has expanded to Seiwajuku, which has 15,000 members all over the world. The members who started this study group shared some insightful episodes on how Inamori impressed and inspired them.

From their words, I would like to highlight how top leaders can learn from others. In other words, those are the attitudes that leaders demonstrate to expand their business through the learning experiences.

Tips are as follows.

We will explain 4-7.

4 Learn how to leave your obsessions

A president among the workshop starting up members asked Inamori a question : as we work hard, business grows but inheritance tax gets higher as the corporate value increases. How should we manage this? Inamori said, “Spin-out and start your own business, as long as you stick with what your parents made up, you would never get out of the trouble.”

Most leaders have been obsessed, more or less, with the so-called common sense. As long as we hold everything and generate more cash flow from the main business while trying to minimize the inheritance tax, we never get out of the trap as those two objectives are completely opposite directions. What we should do is leave everything and get out of such obsessions.

5 Treasure time of yours and others

Under the universal rule, when we take others’ time, our time would sooner or later get taken. We eventually waste our time as we wasted others’ time in the past. Thus, if you think of why he/she wastes my time, you should look back at what you did to him/her. I feel you should have taken some time from him/her.

By attending such a very intensive and fruitful workshop, we gradually understand how to spend our time, what does it mean by treasuring others’ time.

In Aikido, the master Yamaguchi says, “We should feel for others. What they really want, you should feel that. For us to feel others, we should keep ourselves vacant. This means we should not fill ourselves with a lot of thoughts: insistence, obsession, concerns, anxieties, and egoism. Those feelings prevent you from having a clear mindset and sensitive nerves. “

Learning is an attitude to treasure others’ time by always keeping our minds clean and clear.

6 Share what you learn

During the networking session following the presentation in a Seiwajuku workshop, many presidents come to Inamori to discuss the issues of their own companies. During the conversation, Inamori used to suddenly stand up and said, “Hey guys, pay your attention! Now I ‘ve got a very good question so I would like to answer all of you. The issue is…”

Leaders can learn how to raise the attention of their staff and employees as well as learn attitudes to share information with others. Once leaders have listened to Inamori, it is useful for them to just share the contents with staff. By explaining what they learned, they can sort out and digest the contents again, and those leaders can comprehend them at much deeper levels.

Attending Seiwajuku workshop is not only studying but also learning how to share and to have others listen to the leaders.

7 Use your desire and subliminal mind

Seiwajuku starting up members said, “Inamori has been the one who holds strong desire under his subliminal mind and realized what he desired.”

In Inamori’s early stage as the business leader, he listened to words by Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic. For the top leaders to realize what he envisages in his mind, first of all, “ You should desire to realize what you have in your mind. Desires drive all the business outcomes”, Matsushita said. Inamori was very much shocked with those words, and spontaneously understood how important our subliminal mind is.

Many leaders think that only Inamori could achieve such amazing success, so they would never be able to do the same thing. Such an attitude would definitely disappoint Inamori very much as the listeners are refusing to receive all the energies that Inamori is trying to pour into them. Even such a great entrepreneur like Inamori has been holding a strong desire to achieve Kyocera’s goal. Therefore, we just open our mind and receive energies that Inamori was trying to transmit to us.

So, the points of the learning attitudes of top leaders are as follows:

I myself am not the one who fully understands the above points quite well however, I would really like to remain humble and to demonstrate a good attitude as a student.

Further queries or doubts, please email to ytomizuka@abrilsjp.com

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