129: Brendan Delahunty, President and Representative Director, SPORTS TRAVEL & HOSPITALITY JAPAN

Brendan Delahunty, who is the President of SPORTS TRAVEL &
HOSPITALITY JAPAN (STH JAPAN) , first arrived in Japan for the
JET Program in 1993 and has been living in the country since
then, for over 30 years. His teaching experience through the JET
Program led him into working at Pearson, the world's largest
education company. At Pearson, Mr. Delahunty ended up working as
the Sales and Marketing Manager for about four years in Tokyo and
Osaka. While working at Pearson, Mr. Delahunty moved back to
London to work in the global project management office there. In
London, he and his team members looked after all the
international projects. Based on these experiences, Pearson asked
him to come back to Japan in 2007. Shortly thereafter, Mr.
Delahunty became the President of Pearson Japan and led the
company for seven years until stepping into his current role at
STH JAPAN.


 


While working in various countries such as Japan and the United
Kingdom, Mr. Delahunty learned about leadership and how it works
in different countries. Mr. Delahunty defined that leadership is
the person in the team who ultimately takes responsibility and
makes decisions but involves the whole team in the
decision-making process, trying to make the team feel comfortable
with the leader and team. Also, he mentions the key to managing
other Japanese salespeople is to be a “longman” – someone who
gives advice and leads – especially since salespeople are
concerned about the ability of their managers to lead with
confidence.


 


The age factor is quite important in Japan and Mr. Delahunty also
knew that. Because of this culture, he got into conflict with his
team members during his first years of leadership. In order to
resolve this issue and build better relationships with his team,
Mr. Delahunty looked for people who were not satisfied in their
current working environment at Pearson. He then set up a
“voluntary redundancy scheme” to better evaluate employee
performance and promote those who had the ability and integrity.
And what he found was that by giving skilled, younger managers
opportunities that they were not expecting to receive for another
10 years, they became increasingly engaged. As a leader, he
established a new young and passionate organizational culture by
adjusting the old Japanese workplace structure and promoting
young talent throughout this process.


 


Mr. Delahunty gave some advice for newcomers to Japan. Mr.
Delahunty says, the most important thing for them is “to be open
when you come here…[because] the ways of working here, the
meetings that you do, and the sorts of things that go on in
meetings, the relationships that you have, they're all very
different to working in Western cultures.” Therefore, sometimes
silence is the best way to treat some actions from Japanese
coworker when adopting Japanese workplace culture. Mr. Delahunty
also says, “after you get used to this culture, start learning
Japanese.” Because, at least a little bit of Japanese is always
useful, enough to be able to go out and have a few beers and have
a small conversation. Due to Japan having a drinking culture
after work, it can serve as a bonding opportunity for coworkers
in Japanese.