January 05, 2025 2025 New Year’s Greetings from Japan Intercultural Consulting
2024 was a busy year for us at Japan Intercultural Consulting, working with clients across the globe on a wide variety of projects. In 2025 we are looking forward to continuing to serve our customers with high quality training, teambuilding, coaching and consulting services.
Our clients realize the importance of equipping their employees with the cross-cultural and leadership skills needed for success in today’s competitive environment, and have been looking to us for support in achieving this. In particular, this year we have seen an increased interest in customized programs for specific needs. Building on our long organizational experience (Japan Intercultural Consulting has just celebrated our 30th anniversary!) and our large team of experts with a broad range of skills and experience, we design tailored sessions that meet highly specialized goals and go beyond “standard” or “generic” content. We emphasize detailed needs assessment to understand our clients’ unique situations and craft highly targeted and impactful seminars and teambuilding sessions.
Going to where our clients are active, we continue to expand our geographic reach, and launched new Branches in Canada (headed by Eric De Groot) and India (headed by Mohita Modgill) this year. We are now well-positioned to support Japanese companies operating in these two important countries with deep local knowledge and capabilities. We’ll be sharing more details soon about both of these new Branches and their offerings. Also, in the coming year we will be adding new exciting team members in several other locations in North America and Asia, so please stay tuned for more information on those coming soon!
Another new development is that I have partnered with Fumie Hanazono of the Tokyo-based Human Resource Accreditation Institute to create a networking and learning group for Global HR professionals, the GHR Connection, which is launching this February. As Japanese companies increasingly realize the importance of human resource management to effective global operations, and are establishing Global HR functions, this new organization will be an important resource for people working in this area. Also I will be the lead instructor for the bilingual course for the new Global Human Resources Education Program (GHR-P) certification offered by Fumie’s organization.
After a few year’s hiatus, in 2024 I published a new book – this one in Japanese on Servant Leadership for Digital Transformation. Many Japanese managers have told me that they are looking for a new model for effective leadership. This book aims to offer that, with detailed advice for progressive approaches for managing team members, including positive and negative feedback, coaching conversations, creating an inclusive and psychologically safe environment, and performance management.
One last piece of news, we are offering New Year special 25% discounts on our online Working Effectively with Japanese seminars in the U.S. East coast and West coast time zones (more information here), and on our Japanese Business Culture Toolkit e-learning (details here). We are also offering special 25% discounts on many of our Japanese language e-learning sessions (on effective global communication, leadership, productivity, American culture, and success in global assignments) – more information here (in Japanese).
Thanks much to our clients, partners and friends for all of your support in 2024. Wishing you a peaceful and successful 2025, and we look forward to working with you again this year.
