43: Paul Goldsmith, Country Manager, Aquent Japan

Paul Goldsmith, Country Manager of Aquent Japan, shared his
extensive leadership experience in the recruitment, automobile
and IT industry across multiple countries including Japan,
Australia, Singapore, the US, Kuwait and the UK. He first arrived
in Japan in 1985 at 28 years old to help set up the staffing
agency Adia, currently Adecco, in Japan. In 1993 he founded
Panache, a recruitment agency focused on hiring bilingual IT
engineers, which ran for 13 years. He then moved on to the luxury
automobile industry by turning his love of cars into business.
Mr. Goldsmith was involved in hosting global-scale car shows in
Kuwait and the UK and also became involved in the British
automobile manufacturing industry. Mr. Goldsmith returned to
Japan in 2017 and worked in a software marketing company as well
being part of projects working with Maserati Japan, the Italian
luxury automobile company. In 2019, Mr. Goldsmith took on his
current role after being approached via LinkedIn. Mr. Goldsmith
found it challenging and exciting to be able to use his previous
leadership skills and experience he had gained from his
recruitment background in order to make Aquent Japan grow.


 


Having worked in leadership roles in multiple countries, Mr.
Goldsmith emphasizes the importance of communicating with clarity
and consistency and explaining the reasoning behind it. He
further explains: “I learned that having a vision is very
important and…having a strategy and presenting that strategy to
your staff clearly and sticking to it.” He also noticed that in
meetings, compared to the West, it is vital for foreign managers
to be able to draw opinions out of people even if they do not
speak up. Mr. Goldsmith also adds that COVID has reinforced the
importance of managing through others, and he is very careful to
continuously relay messages, ideas, instructions, innovation
through his management team. In order to create a culture of open
communication and innovation, Mr. Goldsmith is a proponent of
giving everybody equal opportunities to succeed in their role.
Through monthly company meetings Mr. Goldsmith reinforces the
company values to ensure all levels of his employees understand
what is expected of them. He has found that such communication
and words of encouragement to take risks, has made his employees
more flexible and innovative. One innovative aspect of Aquent is
their use of technology, which has made the transition from
office to remote work quite seamless.


 


While maximizing the use of technology, Mr. Goldsmith is also
mindful of delivering customized service to each job or
employee-seeking client. He says this can be done through
training and providing incentives. Additionally, Mr. Goldsmith
maintains a balanced mindset between being results-oriented
organization and making sure his staff genuinely care for the
clients. Mr. Goldsmith also explains that he shows a degree of
tolerance regarding employee performance instead of purely
evaluating them on numbers. He claims: “We have these [all-staff]
meetings and each office relays to the rest of the company, their
successes during the month, but also failures…And the lessons
learned from both. And as we both know, you learn more from
failure than you do success.”


 


To newcomers in Japan, Mr. Goldsmith advises to have cultural
sensitivity and to take the time to understand Japanese culture,
instead of trying to implement drastic changes right away. He
explains: “things are not the same in Japan as they might be from
your home country, but Japan is open to new ideas and you can
apply new ideas, but maybe there's a way of localizing some of
those ideas. And maybe in some ways, some of those Japanese ideas
are better than they are outside.” Secondly, Mr. Goldsmith
advises to understand the importance of going the extra mile for
clients and paying attention to detail in order to build
long-lasting, trusting relationships as he believes that “trust
is an accumulation of positive experiences.” Thirdly, he advises
newcomers to develop strong ties with the foreign community to
share ideas and expand one’s perspective. He claims: “I think
there are often viewpoints and sometimes there are rules that
initially as a foreigner that you think are quite illogical, but
then when you start to think through it from a different
viewpoint you kind of see where it comes from.”