Claudio Toyama is committed to raising the awareness of people around the world, so they live full and fulfilled lives at work and home. He is an international bestselling author, an award-winning speaker, and the CEO of Toyama and Company; an international leadership consultancy specializing in small shifts that produce big results. Claudio has delivered projects in over 113 countries and has lived in five countries on four continents. He is also a Forbes contributor and is a featured guest on NBC and FOX; where he shares his unique experience on leadership and company culture.

In this episode, Claudio and I discuss the main message he’s putting out into the world, why his message is so important, why he chooses to help people at the core of who they really are in addition to helping with their mindset or teaching a skill, why he believes most leadership programs fail, how to balance who are with small changes that can improve your impact on those around you, and so much more!

Take a listen to the episode below!

Mentioned in this episode:

• Claudio Toyama’s Website
• Claudio Toyama’s Book | The Samurai Samba Vinci Way: How to Improve Your Executive Presence, Increase Trust and Lead Your Team at a World-Class Level
• Connect with Claudio Toyama on Twitter
• Connect with Claudio Toyama on Facebook
• Connect with Claudio Toyama on Instagram
• Connect with Claudio Toyama on LinkedIn
• Email Claudio Toyama: claudio@toyamaco.com

 

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Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!

Today, I have with me Claudio Toyama who is a committed to raising awareness of people around the world so that they live full and fulfilled lives at work and at home.  He’s an international best-selling author and award-winning speaker and the CEO of Toyoma & Co., an international leadership consultancy specializing in the small shifts that produce big results.

He has delivered projects in over 113 countries and has lived in five countries on four continents.  He is a Forbes contributor, a sought after international speaker and a featured guest on TV, including NBC and FOX, where Claudio shares his unique experience on leadership and company culture.  He lives with his daughter outside Washington, DC (USA).

Andrea:  Claudio, I’m so happy to have you here today on the Voice of Influence podcast!

Claudio Toyama:  Thank you so much for this invitation, Andrea.  Thank you very much.  I’m glad to be here.

Andrea:  And your bio didn’t mention it but you also have a book that you published, can you tell us a little bit?  The name of that book, The Samurai Samba and Vinci Way:  How to Improve Your Executive Presence, Increase Trust and Lead Your Team at a World-Class Level.  I really enjoyed reading this book and I’m excited to share and have you share more about it.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, yes excellent!  So yeah, this book was published last year and it’s going to be a year now in October first.  It was a great thing because in the first 24 hours.  It got sold in 12 countries and now there has been 16 countries that people picked up a copy of and it’s been an amazing journey, getting a lot of positive feedback and people were saying that the message that I have is very needed message right now.

Andrea:  Alright, tell us a little bit about this message of yours.  I mean, what would you say is the core of your message that you’re trying to get out there as a message driven yourself?

Claudio Toyama:  My main message is combining the three persona, you know the persona of the Samurai, the persona of the Samba, and the persona of the Vinci.  Basically with the samurai, what I’m talking about is knowing who you are, the core.  So focusing on your core and knowing truly who you are and going for mastery at everything that you do.

In this world, we see people getting lost.  Before social media, it was the advertisement on TV.  The advertisement said, “Oh if you don’t buy this car, you’re gonna be miserable but if you buy this car, you’ll gonna be loved and everything.  If you lose weight, you’ll gonna be loved, if you don’t, you’re not.  If you’re too skinny then you’re not loved.”  So it’s always an external validation.

And my message with the Samurai is know who you truly are.  Once you have that strong core, it doesn’t matter if you’re being bombarded with different messages and even sometimes they say, “Oh no, you should lose a lot of weight,” and then sometimes they say “No, you should put on weight.”  And I was like “Oh which one do I follow?”  But if you know who you are, the core, and you’re good with yourself then it doesn’t matter what’s going on around you and it doesn’t matter because you’re going to be very very centered.

And then the Samba is the fluidity, the flexibility.  It is about going with the flow.  That one for me was much more about the adapting to different cultures and then I started seeing that that message applies everywhere.  If you go to a different place, if you go and talk to different friends, you can also be malleable and adaptable.

But why am I talking about the samurai and the samba together because if you are too rigid, you know because the samurai can have that rigidity to them.  If you’re too rigid, you’re not going to go with the flow.  But if you’re too flowy and too adaptable, you’re also going to lose yourself and you don’t know who you are any longer.

And then there’s the third element which is the Vinci, which is actually amalgamating everything that you are.  If you remember the renaissance period in Italy where they had in Florence and different parts of Italy, you have that renaissance person like Leonardo da Vinci, you know that’s where the king comes from.  He was very good at anatomy.  He was very good at painting.  He was very good at all sorts of different things and it was not just one thing.  So he was bringing his whole self to everything that he was doing and that’s why he was so successful.  That’s what I’m bringing back again is this renaissance person.  So I’m bringing it altogether.

So if you combine the Samurai, Samba, and Vinci, you have knowing who you are, the core; being very flexible and being adaptive to different cultures and different environments and at the same time amalgamating everything that you are and thinking about the future and bring the future to yourself.  So that’s the message in a not so much of a nutshell.  It’s a little bit bigger than a nutshell.

Andrea:  Oh yeah.  No, that’s alright.  It’s a big message.  It’s a worthy of some discussions.  OK, so why this message?  Where did this come from for you and how it’s personal to you?

Claudio Toyama:  As you mentioned, I have lived in many countries, so five countries so far.  I’m now living close to DC and I was one that got lost.  I was very flexible, so flexible that I wanted to become the stereotype of each one of the country that I lived in.

So I grew up in Brazil but when I went to live in Japan, I wanted to become the stereotype of the Japanese person.  And then I went to Italy and started to become the stereotype of the Italian and I went to the UK and becoming the stereotype and I was like “Who am I?  I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

There’s always change, there’s that pendulum.  So if you’re too flexible then you’re going to go all the way to the other side of the pendulum and become very rigid.  So I became very rigid and like “OK, my ideas are mine,” and like you know “Oh, this is who I am, take it or leave it.”  And I was like “It doesn’t work either.”

Andrea:  Right.

Claudio Toyama:  Also, because when you have that kind of mentality, a lot of it is because you’re getting triggered because of your past and it’s not really who you are.  You need to excavate who you really are and find yourself back again.  We know that from coaching and we know your true self needs to be excavated from all of these layers that were imposed in society, you know societal expectations and all of that.

So I went in this quest to find out who I was truly and then I was always bringing beauty into life, which is also another part of Vinci.  It’s amalgamating yourself and bringing your whole self to the equation but also it is about bringing beauty to everything that you bring to life.

That was one thing that when I moved to the US coming from European lifestyle where it’s much more about the joy of life and being in the moment.  You know these kinds of things about _____ coffee that doesn’t exist in many parts of Europe.  Coffee is meant to be a conduit for enjoying the presence of another human being with you and having the conversation.

That’s why it is so important to me because I was living that.  I became that samba.  That was too much of a samba then I became too much of a samurai and then I didn’t know how to amalgamate everything into the Vinci side of it.  So that’s where I came from kind of my personal life.

And when I was thinking about what are the characteristics of leaders in the world that are the most successful leaders, they have elements of these three.  So it’s not one or the other or another one.

Andrea:  Yeah.  When you start to talk about this with leaders, are they open to growing in this way?  Because one of the things that you pointed out in your book is that subject matter experts tend to want to go deeper in their expertise where, quite frankly, they’re just more comfortable and they had success instead of learning something new.  How do I apply this or how do I convince others or lead a team or whatever other kinds of things involved with leadership, how do people respond to this idea of going deeper and excavating their true selves and things like these?

Claudio Toyama:  Mixed reactions.  So I have people that are ready to embrace it and ready go to through this journey because it’s a journey.  It is not something that’s one and done session and “OK, you’re gonna be transformed.”  No, it’s a journey.  When you start opening that up, it is a journey that sometimes it takes years to, not necessarily working with me but sometimes this journey once you open that can of worms, it’s going to take some years for you to really find yourself and especially if I work with a number of _____ executives and they have been doing that for their whole lives.

They’re now on their 50s or they’re in their late 40s or even on their 60s, can you imagine trying to change and trying to find themselves back again at that age?  They’re very used to that, so very mixed reactions.  But if they’re ready to go on this journey, it is amazing what they see and all the patterns that they see in their lives “Oh this is why this kept happening!  Oh this is why I kept having this reaction to these things and it had nothing to do with the people that I was talking to.”

So they start seeing the pattern in their lives and then that journey becomes so interesting.  So yes, mixed reactions but if they’re willing to go through that, it’s an amazing journey.  There are bumps on the road but it’s an amazing journey.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I know how hard it can be to be the one, sometimes to even help somebody open up that can of worms.  Not that you’re wanting to put them in a where they’re uncomfortable but at the same time when people aren’t comfortable and experiencing pain, sometimes that’s when they are able to best grow and they’re most open to learning something new.  But that’s kind of hard.

I know you’ve been doing it for a very long time but when you come up against that resistance and you know that somebody is about ready to experience something difficult or remember something difficult, how do you help them or being with them and guiding them through that part of the journey, that difficult bump on the road?

Claudio Toyama:  I think it depends on who was the person engaging my services, was it that person or was it their boss because they felt that there was something missing in them.  So these are two completely different types of clients or people that I work with.  If it is that later and if it is their bosses that wanted this person to change, sometimes you cannot go that deep, sometimes they are not willing to go that deep.

They say, “Well, you know, I’ve done this my whole life.  I’ve done it this way, I’m not gonna change now.  There’s nothing in it for me right now.”  Even though there is because then it’s not just about their work, it’s about their whole self.

A lot of times, I see a pattern how they’re behaving with their children and how they’re behaving with their employees.  And it’s the same problems and they cannot see it and I go “OK, if you shift just one degree here,” you know the small shifts.  “It’s just one degree, it’s gonna be so much easier for you.”  But they’re like “Nope, this is how I’m doing and this is how it’s gonna be done.”

So it depends, yeah.  If they are the ones engaging with me then I can actually open more and I can actually talk to them and say “This is one of those moments that I said.  It was going to be a little bit difficult or it’s going to be a little bit challenging and let’s go through it.”  And the other side of me that a lot of people don’t know which is the spiritual side, so I work with a lot of energies.

A lot of times I can scan the person and see if there are some blockages on their energies and I can actually help them to release those energies.  I work on the cerebral _____ on the mind but I also work on those energy levels that a lot of times people are not even aware of but that is also influencing them.  There are certain blockages there that they are not even aware of but they are contributing to them not moving forward.  So that’s another layer that I work on as well with my clients.

Andrea:  So many, so many layers that could be addressed.  You take everything really deep.  You’re a deep person and you bring people into this conversation in your book in a real deep way and you’re inviting them to this deep transformation.  Why do you go so deep?  Is it always been something that you have done?

Have you just always kind of been really that reflective person or you know there’s other people who choose to focus on skills or to learn something new.  You just kind of knew in your mind or mindset, but you’re kind of working at it in a deeper level at that core of somebody’s being, really.  So tell me about why you do that and how that kind of started for you?

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah.  I was always this very introspective guy and I think it was a mixed of learning that and also being like that.  So I grew up in this family where we had different languages being spoken, you know it’s a different parties.  My father was Japanese.  He grew up in Japan.  My mom, you know, half Italian, half Austrian.  My daughter is blonde and people look at me and is like “You look Asian and you have this blonde daughter, how did that happen?”  You know because my mom is blonde and my ex-wife is blonde.

From an early age, I was always very introspective and always wanting to know more, because of that that mix of different cultures that we had, I was always very curious to go very deep into things.  It’s fascinating because I was always the one noticing, let’s say, the person in the corner at school, the person who’s not being paid attention to.  I was always the one going to that person and saying, “Are you OK?  Are you fine?”

So I was always that person that wanted to know more about people and wanting to get to know people.  I don’t know how to answer that question, but yes, it is innate in me.  So I’ve always have that.

Andrea:  You mentioned in your book too that there’s a lot of reasons why just focusing on leadership programs that kind of focus on those leadership skills that there’s a high failure rate in actually making the changes that they want to see happen in a person.  And the fact that there’s not a deeper connection to the material seems to be a really important piece of that.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes and it’s interesting because when you said you go very deep, thank you for acknowledging that.  And also what I like to do whenever I’m working with clients or whenever I’m having conversation is how can this person have a quick win and at the same time be on that journey, on that long journey, because I know as human beings, we love quick wins as well.

In the Japanese tradition, it can take you 30-40 years for you to be able to _____ at the ceremony because you’re going to go for mastery.  If you remember Karate Kid, you know like _____.  I was like “OK, it’s gonna take you years to perfect something.”  But for me, it’s “OK, so how can we have quick wins end go for the deep stuff as well?”

But your question about and the initial development and all that, what I always like to do is focus on who are you being when you’re doing anything.  I don’t know if you got to that part of when I was delivering an advanced negotiation skills workshop for high powered lawyers at a new World Trade Center in New York and these guys came from different parts of the world and they were all there.  Some of them have been negotiating for over 20 years these multimillion dollar contracts and I was there to deliver it in three days, three-day event negotiation skills workshop.

Andrea:  And you’re laughing because?

Claudio Toyama:  I’m laughing because I’m like “Oh my God, these guys are gonna eat me alive here, all these sharks.”  I’m going to be _____ at the end of the first half hour, let alone three days.  So I was like “OK, what kind I do?”  So what we did was to focus on who are they being when they’re negotiating and pointing out different things that they were not even aware of because they have so unconscious behaviors that they were not aware of.

So even though they had all the techniques really mastered, they were very very different when they were negotiating.  That’s why I talked about small shifts that create big results, when we did those small shifts and how they were being perceived, oh gosh that was an amazing shift, really amazing.

I just got some feedback recently from this guy that the small shifts was just putting his head down by half an inch when talking to people.  And I said, “Do you notice that it looks like you’re talking down to people?”  He was like “Huh thank you for that feedback, Claudio.  I have this _____ and in order to see you clearly and it _____.”

So it felt like he was really snobbish and just like looking down on you.  Once you start looking squared eye to the other person, people started commenting on him and everything.  It was just a half an inch of a shift, really a physical shift.  That gaze was a physical shift and how are you being perceived, who are you being when you’re doing anything.

Andrea:  Yes, yes!  I really appreciate the thoughtful way that you bring balance.  Though you are talking about deep transformational kinds of things, on one level there’s the small shifts that you’re talking about and you also brought in the idea of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  And this is something that I was recently talking with a client about as well but when you are a subject matter expert, you’re really at the top level of the Maslow’s hierarchy.  But then if you’re not addressing those deeper human means then it can easily topple over, so do you want to expand on that a little bit?

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, it’s interesting that you say that.  I would make a very similar comparison which is we are beginners.  So coming from being the expert in a subject matter and when dealing with people, we are beginners all over again.  That’s why it is so difficult for a lot of subject matter expert or for anyone for that matter to actually focus on the people side of the equation because in that realm, they don’t know anything or they know very little about it.  So they are beginners.  We are beginners in that.

To be able to say, oh I’m a beginner, for someone that gets paid to have the answers.  Can you imagine if you’re an expert in a field and you’re getting paid to know the answers and not to ask questions or to be like “Oh I don’t know anything about this, can you explain it to me.”  They have been trained to always have the answers.  So being a beginner say it again who’s like “Oh this is scary.  I don’t know if I can make it.”

Andrea:  Yeah!

Claudio Toyama:  You know, there was this guy you know, VP in an IT company.  He was the vice president of the company and was still coding with his hands.  He was still being involved in not just managing the people, he had a 100 people under him and he was still kind wasting time coding because that was what he was comfortable with.  You see that very, very often in a lot of conferences because that’s their comfort zone and just like “Oh I’m not gonna go there, people, huh scary stuff.”

As you learn your profession, as you learn to become an expert at your profession, let’s say a biochemist or whatever it is, you got to learn how to deal with people.  It’s all learned and that’s one thing that people don’t realize that it’s all learned.  You can learn about that.

Andrea:  So when you brought up the person, you mentioned to him in your book as well I think that was coding by hand as a vice president, is there any point in time that you ever recommend to somebody just don’t think the promotion?  You know, because they’re really enjoying who they are and what they’re doing or maybe you don’t recommend anything?  Do you ever think to yourself, you know, “I don’t think that they’re gonna enjoy moving on into a new position where there’s gonna be so much more required of them.”  You know, basically making them start over again with people when they really are so good with the subject matter.  What’s your take on that?

Claudio Toyama:  I ask a lot of questions on that.  You know, I have worked for some companies that now they have two different tracks.  One track is the track of managing people and dealing with people.  So they have that track of OK, so you’re going to become a manager, you’re going to become a director.  You’re going to become a vice president.  And the other track is you’re going to be an expert even more of an expert and you’re going to be a thought leader for the company and that’s the track they’re going to.

So if they have those two tracks, I ask “OK, so which one would you like to choose if you’re offered a promotion?”  And then I ask “Why is that?”  If it is out of fear of managing people then I ask if they’re willing to learn how to manage people.  If it’s out of passion about what they do that’s a different story.  Because if it’s passion then they can just go and they’re given deeper into what they’re doing.

And the other thing is for companies that don’t have those two tracks, so they have to take the promotion, otherwise, they will be you know.  Then I ask them, “Ok let’s say that you don’t want to take the promotion, what would happen in your life?  Are you gonna be ostracized?  Are you gonna be fired after a couple of years?  What is gonna happen to you?  Is the company accepting of your decision not to move onwards?”

Sometimes you see the person is not going to go anywhere because they didn’t get the promotion.  Sometimes there’s no option of not getting the promotion.  If you don’t get it then you’re going to be booted out.  So what are the consequences of not doing that?  And again, I ask the same question you know, “Are you not wanting to do it because of fear or because of any other things?”

So I ask a lot of questions to really understand where that is coming from because sometimes it’s just that they don’t know how to start knowing how to deal with people.  If that’s the case, they say “OK, we have a path and I can help you with that, or it’s not me there are other leadership coaches and leadership development people that can work with you.”  But I always ask a lot of questions to see where they are, where they’re coming from, what is really getting in the way and all of those things.  They’re so important you know.

Andrea:  It sounds like, as long as somebody is open and interested, that they can grow.

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah, it is.  If they are open, there’s so much to be done.  If they’re open there so much and that’s why when I go into different assessments to know what are their styles and to actually understand a little bit more, what can we focus on.  Again, you know the small shifts and the quick wins, what are some of the small shifts so that they can see the changes and then they get inspired to continue on the journey.

Like this guy that I was working with, an Indian guy who has been living here in the US for almost 30 years now or even over years and working with his team.  And because he would get so passionate about his subject matter, he would be like talking loud and everything and then people would get really scared and he didn’t know.

So one of the shifts was, I said “OK this is happening you know.  This is the perception of people around you.  They get really scared because you start talking really loud.”  He was like “Oh, because I’m passionate.”  I’m like “OK, but that’s not coming through.  It’s coming through that you’re either too angry or whatever it is, but there’s too much emotion.  So can you dial down a little bit more?”

He started doing that in different meetings and the feedback was immediate.  The people were like “Oh my God, you have changed!  Wow, this is really great!”  He was still being really passionate but dialing down the volume and just one small shift that was just like a big, big change.  So he was willing to go through the other changes that were needed also but he saw some positive feedback.  So that was really great.

Andrea:  I have to ask, you know, the next question then.

Claudio Toyama:  OK!

Andrea:  I love everything that you’re talking about and I think about this stuff too.  So it’s just always fun to get into a conversation with somebody else that just thought about this as much as you have.  OK, so let’s say this gentleman is too loud.  He’s very emotional when he speaks, but in what sense, and how do you know and how do you balance that with “well, this is who I am” kind of a comment or not just a comment but owning who I am and I am a passionate person?

So if somebody says “I’m a passionate person,” how do I be me but turn the volume down and when is that OK and when it’s not?  Tells us, what are your thoughts?

Claudio Toyama:  I thought a lot of about that as well because I get a lot of people that people talk really loud and they say “Because this is me take it or leave it.”  Again, going back to the samurai, “OK, so are you being adaptable?  How are you being perceived by others?  Is that the kind of perception that you want about yourself or not?”  Sometimes you want to have a big impact but you’re rubbing people off in a wrong way and the message is not going across because you’re a little too much of something.

Then also the other thing is, in this case with the guy was cultural and I also look at that but I also look at their background, what is the background of the person because sometimes they are being loud because they didn’t have a voice when they were little.  Remember that I talked about the pendulum?

Andrea:  Uh-huh.

Claudio Toyama:  They are that at that phase where they now feel that they have to be loud because that’s who I am.  If you go back to their history is because maybe they were the third child or whatever, the middle child that never got to listen to and now they feel “Oh I now have to be over the top loud because people then will hear me.”  And I was like, “Are they really hearing you or they just turning you off?”

So I ask those questions of “OK, what is the impact that you want to have and where is that coming from?”  Where is that desire of, “Oh this is who I am?”  Remember when I was talking about the different layers of societal layers, “Is that coming from you really or is that coming societal expectation or different things in your past that made you be this way?”

Andrea:  Hmmm that you’re reacting then.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, I see that all the time.  I see that all the time and sometimes with some women as well.  Like that they have been in a very difficult marriage where the guy was just taking over and he was in command in everything.  When they get out of that marriage, they get really loud and bold but it’s not who they are.  They’re just over the other side of the pendulum and they will come back to a near ground.  I’m not saying that loud voice is a reflection of something that happened in the past but a lot of it can be.

Andrea:  Sure or a soft voice, yeah.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, exactly.  Or soft voice like “Yes, I cannot do this.  I cannot do that,” or you know, “Who are you really.  Is it because you cannot or is it really who you are?”

Andrea:  I don’t know.  I’ve been able to handle it myself by saying you can be real without bearing all.  So it can be authentic without being completely a 100% transparent, whether that’d be the message that you’re speaking or the way that you’re presenting it.  I think you can be real without necessarily having to be the fullest version or tell the fullest version of your story.

Claudio Toyama:  Yes, I agree totally.  And for me for instance the spiritual side, a lot of times and very recently as I started talking about in professional environment because I was also feeling that “Oh my God, I’m gonna talk about being spiritual.  They’ll gonna say that I’m gonna be doing Kumbayah every single meeting.”  And it’s like “Oh we don’t want that guy in here.”

No, but the spirituality informs me and also these thing about depths because I always see, like it’s not only in this lifetime, it is also in this lifetime.  So that’s the spirituality in me as well.  What are some of the universal truth that applies to every single situation so that’s where it informs me, but I’m not going to be like bring an incense to your office you know.

Andrea:  I know exactly what you’re talking about.  OK, so I feel like we could keep talking for a long time and there are still some questions that I would love to ask about your book but I think time is kind of up.  So Claudio, what point would you like the listeners to take from this interview, just talk to them right now?  What do you want to say to them?

Claudio Toyama:  Well, I think is what I would say is life is short.  So find yourself and be yourself.  That’s the journey that I have been on and it has been an amazing journey with a lot of bumps on the road but it has been an amazing journey of finding myself and knowing who I truly am and everything.  So what I would say is yes, find voice.  Yeah, that would be the message.

Andrea:  How can the listeners find and connect with you or find your book, where would you want to point them?

Claudio Toyama:  So yes, you can connect with me, if you’re on Twitter, it’s ClaudioGT or claudiotoyama on Instagram.  If you send me a message or even on Facebook, Claudio Toyama and my website is toyamaco.com, toyama&co.  You can reach out and that would be great to hear from you.  My email address is claudio@toyamaco.com.  I look forward to hearing from your fellows.

Andrea:  I will put all those links in the show notes to make sure that people can find you on voiceofinfluence.net.  So that’s where that will be.

Claudio, thank you so much for the work that you’re doing in the world with your voice in helping others to find theirs.  I really appreciate it.

Claudio Toyama:  Yeah, thank you.  Thank you so much, Andrea!