{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"280 Mika Matsuo - Former CHRO, AIG Japan","description":"\u201cI listen and I also am always very transparent.\u201d \u201cWho cares about what people think about me?\u201d \u201cIf my boss, my future boss, thinks that I\u2019m capable, I must be.\u201d \u201cLeadership is really defining where we\u2019re going, whether it\u2019s the end state or whether it\u2019s a goal.\u201d Mika Matsuo is a Japan-based executive and former AIG Japan CHRO known for repeatedly stepping into unfamiliar roles and delivering change. Born and raised in Japan but educated in an international school environment in Yokohama, she took an early decision to build a global career, studying at Tufts University in Boston and completing an MBA at the University of San Francisco. She began her career at Citibank Japan during the build-out of its retail business, where exposure to strong, international leaders shaped her standards for integrity, preparedness, and opportunity-taking. After earning Six Sigma Master Black Belt credentials, she moved into an internal consulting role at JPMorgan Chase during the post-merger integration period, then joined Tokyo Star Bank as Head of HR without prior HR experience\u2014learning labour law, restructures, and culture change in real time. She later expanded her scope as Head of HR for Asia Pacific at Moody\u2019s and returned to Tokyo Star Bank to lead the retail business, navigating crisis leadership after the March 2011 earthquake. She joined AIG to help integrate AIU and Fuji Fire & Marine, later serving nearly a decade and attributing successful integration to clear leadership direction and a \u201cbuild a new company\u201d mindset. Today, she contributes through board and advisory work, drawing on a career defined by adaptability in Japan\u2019s complex corporate environment. Mika Matsuo\u2019s career arc reads like a deliberate challenge to the usual Japanese corporate script: international education, overseas degrees, and then a sequence of high-stakes roles where she often began as an outsider to the function, the business line, or both. Rather than treating those gaps as liabilities, she used them as leverage\u2014asking questions early, leaning on strong teams, and creating trust through transparency. The result is a leadership style that is calm under uncertainty, candid about limitations, and built around listening as a strategic discipline rather than a soft skill. Her formative years in global finance gave her two lasting advantages. First, mentors who rewarded capability over status helped her internalise a belief that many professionals\u2014especially women\u2014struggle to adopt: if the organisation has decided she can do it, she can. Second, she saw how quickly culture shifts when leaders normalise openness, practical delegation, and continuous learning. Those lessons mattered most when she moved into Japan\u2019s banking transformation era, where legacy norms around hierarchy, gender expectations, and \u201cwe\u2019ve always done it this way\u201d thinking still dominated. At Tokyo Star Bank, she helped introduce practices that would be routine in many gaishikei firms but were disruptive inside a traditional Japanese bank context\u2014removing women\u2019s uniforms, supporting spousal transfers to preserve women\u2019s careers, and encouraging leave for study and volunteering. The aim wasn\u2019t cosmetic modernisation; it was building a more transparent, sustainable system that could attract and retain talent. That commitment to sustainability becomes a recurring theme in her advice: organisations that still depend on extreme overtime, weekend obligations, and performative busyness are not structurally built for the future workforce Japan needs. A defining moment of her leadership development came during the March 2011 earthquake response, when she saw high-performing teamwork replace individual heroics. With a Sendai branch that had to reopen under Ministry of Finance expectations, her role shifted to decision-making, prioritisation, and supporting a team that was independently executing critical actions. That experience reinforced her belief that leadership is not doing everything\u2014it is creating clarity, building trust, and letting capable people run. Across roles\u2014from HR transformation to business leadership to post-merger integration\u2014she returns to the same core: authenticity paired with respect, vulnerability as a trust-builder, and an open mind that actively checks bias. In Japan, where consensus-building (nemawashi) and formal approval flows (ringi-sho) often shape outcomes, her approach offers a practical bridge: respect the process, accelerate it through clarity, and build followership by being transparent about goals, trade-offs, and constraints. Q&A Summary What makes leadership in Japan unique? Leadership in Japan is uniquely shaped by the need for trust, respect, and collective alignment. Decision-making often relies on consensus-building through nemawashi and formal pathways such as ringi-sho, meaning leaders must manage time, stakeholders, and expectations while maintaining harmony. Matsuo\u2019s emphasis is that respect for Japanese ways of doing business is non-negotiable, but understanding the process helps leaders make it faster and more effective once they know how the pieces fit together. Why do global executives struggle? Global executives often struggle because they misread capability through the lens of English fluency and underestimate how much \u201cinvisible coordination\u201d is happening beneath the surface. They may also push for rapid decisions before alignment has formed, mistaking slower Japanese pacing for resistance. Matsuo\u2019s warning is blunt: don\u2019t be deceived by language skill, and don\u2019t accept \u201cnot possible in Japan\u201d as a default answer\u2014often it means someone simply doesn\u2019t know how to do it legally, respectfully, and in an organised way. Is Japan truly risk-averse? Japan is frequently labelled risk-averse, but a more accurate framing is uncertainty avoidance. Leaders may appear cautious because they are working to reduce ambiguity and prevent downstream disruption. Once a decision is made, execution can move quickly\u2014especially if the leader has done the groundwork to secure buy-in. What leadership style actually works? The leadership style that works is clarity plus trust. Matsuo\u2019s playbook is listening deeply, being transparent (including about personal constraints), and staying respectful regardless of personal affinity. She also models vulnerability\u2014admitting what she doesn\u2019t know, asking teams to teach her, and reframing \u201cnot knowing\u201d as a normal condition in modern complex work. How can technology help? In environments overloaded with information and stakeholder constraints, technology can support better leadership decisions by improving visibility and scenario planning. Approaches such as decision intelligence can help leaders prioritise key risks and opportunities, while tools like digital twins can model operational impacts before changes are rolled out\u2014reducing uncertainty and supporting consensus-building without relying on endless meetings. Does language proficiency matter? Language helps, but it is not decisive. Making the effort can signal commitment, and language learning can accelerate cultural understanding, but many successful leaders in Japan remain effective without high Japanese proficiency. The critical requirement is respect for culture, discipline in stakeholder management, and the ability to avoid confusing language ability with professional capability. What\u2019s the ultimate leadership lesson? Leadership is defining the destination clearly and moving the whole team along a believable path. Whether leading from the front or supporting from behind, the leader\u2019s job is to simplify the goal, align the top team, and create the conditions for the organisation to move together\u2014especially in times of uncertainty. Author Credentials Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie \u201cOne Carnegie Award\u201d (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results. He has written several books, including three best-sellers \u2014 Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery \u2014 along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigy\u014d (\u30b6\u55b6\u696d), Purezen no Tatsujin (\u30d7\u30ec\u30bc\u30f3\u306e\u9054\u4eba), Tor\u0113ningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemash\u014d (\u30c8\u30ec\u30fc\u30cb\u30f3\u30b0\u3067\u304a\u91d1\u3092\u7121\u99c4\u306b\u3059\u308b\u306e\u306f\u3084\u3081\u307e\u3057\u3087\u3046), and Gendaiban \u201cHito o Ugokasu\u201d R\u012bd\u0101 (\u73fe\u4ee3\u7248\u300c\u4eba\u3092\u52d5\u304b\u3059\u300d\u30ea\u30fc\u30c0\u30fc). In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan\u2019s Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows \u2014 The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan\u2019s Top Business Interviews \u2014 which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan. ","author_name":"Japan's Top Business Interviews Podcast By Dale Carnegie Training Tokyo Japan","author_url":"http:\/\/japanstopbusinessinterviews.libsyn.com\/website","html":"