LEADERSHIP CORNER
Everybody should be a leader, consultant says
Interviewed by David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer
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Title: President
Company: Leadership Works does corporate consulting and leadership workshops. Clients include the Honolulu Police Department, Honolulu Fire Department, Hawaii Dental Service, American Savings Bank and Kahala Mandarin Oriental.
Age: 54
High school: Hilo
College: B.A. and M.A. in education from University of Hawai'i
Breakthrough job: Started working for Tony Taniguchi at KTA Super Stores in Hilo at age 15, bagging groceries. Furuya returned to KTA Super Stores part time after getting his M.A.
He also worked full time as a teacher in special education. Tony Taniguchi, the late uncle of the current president, Barry Taniguchi, asked Furuya to apply his teaching skills to training workers at the stores.
Little-known fact: As a child, Furuya worked on his grandparents' farm planting, picking and husking macadamia nuts. "It was slave labor. My father and mother would drag us there on weekends. But it teaches you hard work."
Major challenge: Getting the people of Hawai'i to realize that they have in them the characteristics that make for great leaders.
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Q. You say everybody can be a leader. But what about people who say, "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians."
A. My theory is we should have everybody being a chief. You lead from where you stand. Warren Bennis, the No. 1 author on leadership, said leadership is the full and free expression of oneself.
If I am a courtesy clerk, I can be a leader. I can freely and fully express my compassion, my kindness, my sense of contribution. Leaders make a difference. A courtesy clerk can make a difference — actually, he can make more difference than a manager can.
He touches almost every customer. He is the last impression.
Q. How do you motivate hourly wage workers who are punching time cards, watching the clock and waiting for their shift to end?
A. Two things. First, motivation is a function of job fit. When a person loves their job and you've got them fit properly, the motivation is automatic. Let's say I'm a clerk at Subway and I just like people. Now I'm working with people all day long, so the job becomes pleasurable. You are putting round pegs in round holes. You want the heart singing.
No. 2 is there are many, many jobs that are monotonous. If it is the same old, same old thing, it gets very boring. So the good leaders will try to break the monotony the best they can. Put some training in, cross-functionalize them, play a game, have some contests.
Q. What tends to hold people back most at work or in their private life?
A. People don't look inward. Many times they are looking for external things. They are looking for 25 cents more an hour. You got to look for what really makes your heart sing.
Q. We have a large union workforce here. Unions tend to reward everyone equally. Does that destroy one's motivation to excel?
A. I'm not sure if it destroys motivation. Dr. (W. Edward) Deming, who I studied, always said a good company doesn't have stars and doesn't have sinkers. Everybody is a winner. So you don't have to do a segmentation of your reward system.
If you have a good system, everybody wins. Put them in a bad system, you have too much variation in the response and you have to vary your feedback, but the variation comes from a system that doesn't work.
Q. What if you have one salesman who is selling beyond expectations and another not making quotas. What's wrong there?
A. There are a lot of people who are just not wired for sales.
Let's assume they have the potential, then the leader has to build skill level and will level — competence and commitment. It's going to require a lot of direction to build the competence and a lot of support to build the commitment. That's the key to leadership, building those two things.
What I've found in leadership and sales, you want people with high empathy balanced with high drive. The typical local guy has high empathy, but low drive. They cannot close. "If you want to buy, you can buy, but if you don't, that's OK." No pressure.
Too friendly.
That's the negative side of the ... local culture. It's too amiable. They just don't want to impose themselves on others.
Then you've got the other guy, who is high drive. But, he doesn't give a rip about you. He just wants to sell. He wants his commission.
Q. Have you had any success with getting the amiable people of Hawai'i to be more aggressive?
A. That's a big challenge. I nudge them. We teach them how to talk. How you confront somebody. I tell them, "You guys are strong. You are not wimps. We are all immigrant stock here. Tell me immigrant stock isn't tough stock." I tell them the whole story of the 442nd (Regimental Combat Team) and the 100th Battalion. ... Don't tell us that we don't have will and strength and drive.
I try to kick that confidence level up.
Q. What are the metaphors or lessons people will repeat back to you years after they have taken the course?
A. The three most important words in leadership are: Talk to me. (Furuya says "talk to me" in slow motion, which makes listeners strain to understand him.) I do things really weird, but it sticks.
Q. When you taught in special education in Hilo, did you use the techniques you now teach at workshops?
A. I like practical. When I was a special ed teacher, I set up a business. We had a car polish business. Right outside my room were all the teachers' cars. I saw it as an opportunity. As they polish the cars, I would teach them how to have fun working. We made money and had parties. We had steak.
I had regular ed kids come to me and say, "How do you get into special ed? I think I want to come to special ed."
They learned how to do good work, quality work, customer service and have fun. They would rather polish cars than read a book. But they had to read a book to go polish cars. That was the reward. You can work in the business if you do your schoolwork.
