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BRYANT FUKUTOMI / BFUKUTOMI@STARBULLETIN.COM

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How to sabotage yourself

Many of us speak to ourselves in ways
we would never tolerate from a friend

Imagine for a moment a significant other in your life, a spouse or best friend, who regularly chastised you with comments like the following:

In reaction to this kind of verbal treatment (or perhaps we should say "mistreatment") we can easily imagine a range of responses and reactions we might have.

Silent entries begin being made in that place in all of our minds and hearts where we keep track of emotional hurts. We begin to look for opportunities to get even, to balance the emotional books -- to lash out, directly or with cutting humor -- by responding in (un)kind.

Resentment builds, increasing the likelihood of blowing our cool.

When the verbal mistreatment gets to be more than we can handle, we will find a way to leave the relationship, to divorce ourselves from it. We might just up and quit. If, however, we can't do that, we can remain physically, but disassociate ourselves psychologically.

In other words, if we had a friend or significant other who treated us that way, we would tell them to "cut it out" or to change their tune.

If these efforts failed, we'd cut them out. We'd disassociate ourselves from them. We'd stop considering them to be our best friend, a dear colleague. We'd stop living with them. We'd stop listening to them.

"Interesting psycho-babble," you may think. "But what has it got to do with leadership and creating excellence?"

Embedded in the first few paragraphs may be the most powerful tool we have available to ourselves for the development of our leadership potential and personal excellence.

Need more proof? You can refer to a massive body of empirical research on cognitive emotive therapy, beginning with the landmark research by Albert Ellis.

Or you can more simply prove it to yourself. Make one small change in the statements above, and you will have a mere sampling of the kinds of dialogues many of us entertain in our minds regularly:

In other words, many of us speak to ourselves in ways we would never tolerate from our best friend or a significant other.

If we send ourselves negative messages like these with enough regularity, we will come to believe them. And, when we believe them, we will act in ways that make them come true.

Believing is the precursor to seeing.

As I have worked in intensive coaching relationships with senior executives, I have increasingly seen this self-unfulfilling prophecy in operation.

The scenario goes something like the following: The person calling me in describes my new potential coaching client as accomplished, well educated, experienced and successful. But a "certain something" -- hard to put a finger on -- seems to be missing.

My initial discussions with coaching candidates uncover a comparable picture. They are competent at what they do. But they seem to be having a hard time embracing, with humility and grace, the fact that they are competent. For lurking just under the surface, their self-talk continues to undermine their confidence in who they are and what they do.

I stress this distinction for a very specific reason. Take a good look at the word confidence and you'll see that, in order to "get it," we have to be willing to "confide."

Consequently, coaching whose primary challenge is increasing confidence walks a very thin line between doing therapy, which is not the role of a coach, and creating an environment and a process that has the potential for the person being coached to experience "therapeutic learnings."

When we decide it's time to change the way we talk to our selves, we have to be prepared to confide to ourselves, and to our coach, a level and type of information not normally voiced aloud -- and particularly not by "successful, competent senior executives who have been rewarded for their ability to suck it up and not let touchy-feely stuff get in their way."

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Addiction to cell phones
presents challenges
for Japanese

In Japan, cell phones are small, powerful and stylish. In addition to allowing you to speak to someone else, the typical cell phone provides Web-surfing capabilities, a built-in digital camera and the ability to send e-mail.

The latest models let you shoot motion video or watch TV. No wonder the average Japanese consumer considers the cell phone about as important as oxygen.

Unfortunately, most cell phones from Japan do not work here in Hawaii. This simple fact has created a great business opportunity for a variety of companies. Multiple vendors now provide rental phones to Japanese visitors. It has reached the point where it is difficult for visitors to step off the plane without being offered some sort of cell phone plan.

After visitors from Japan arrive in Hawaii, they typically receive multiple offers to rent a cell phone, either from their tour operator, a hotel or even the rental car company offering free phones when you rent a car.

Sensing a business opportunity, the major carriers in Japan have each offered new cell phone models that will work in the United States. Offering what it calls its WorldWalker service, industry leader NTT DoCoMo now lets customers use certain types of cell phones in the United States. One advantage is that you can keep your existing phone number.

This advantage comes at a cost. One minute of airtime on the WorldWalker service is about $1.32 for outbound calls inside the United States. It is about $1.85 for inbound calls.

"The costs are prohibitive," says Sanjay Arora. "Imagine bringing two of these phones to Hawaii and trying to talk to each other." Arora is the general manager of a local company called G-Call (www.g-call.com) that offers phones for rent to Japanese visitors. G-Call gets the phones into the hands of consumers by takuhaibin (courier) in Japan. The phone comes with a return envelope. When visitors return from Hawaii, they simply send the phone back to G-Call. Customers can also opt for airport pick-up in Narita or Osaka. G-Call offers its service for a flat daily fee of $5 and a per minute charge of about 50 cents. Phones are provided by a local cell phone carrier and have an 808 phone number.

Interestingly, G-Call has also started offering long-term rental as well. Designed to appeal to the growing number of frequent travelers that may spend a month or two in Hawaii two or three times a year, the service allows customers to rent the same phone -- and keep the same number -- for up to a year.

"We've worked closely with our provider to work out a low basic monthly charge with no free minutes, and a reasonable pay-as-you-go schedule," says Arora.

Renting isn't the only option.

"I come so often, I decided to buy a phone here," says Mari, a Narita-based flight attendant who flies to Hawaii several times a month. Mari recently bought a Sprint cell phone for use here in the US.

Having a phone doesn't mean better communication with friends, though.

"When I was calling from the layover hotel I would talk for hours with my friends here," Mari says. "Now that they know they can reach me any time we don't talk as much."

In addition to communicating with friends, one trend to watch for local companies is the use of the cell phone in commerce in Japan. New technology called FeliCa, developed by Sony Corp., allows cell phones to store money and be used in transactions.

"Enjoy life with your wallet in your cell phone," encourages the NTT DoCoMo Web site.

As Japanese consumers acclimate to this method of payment the demand for such services Hawaii may increase.

For the entrepreneurial or the technically curious, Sony offers an English software development kit for FeliCa through its Web site at www.sony.net/Products/felica/index.html.

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