What if you were doing something that drove your Japanese colleagues crazy, but you didn't realize it? Conducting seminars for Japanese businesspeople who work with people from other countries, I found a common theme that comes up every time I ask what behaviors of their foreign colleagues are hard for them to deal with.

Comments like "They don't take responsibility for their mistakes," "They try to blame others for things that are their fault," "They make excuses" and "They don't apologize when they have done something wrong" have come up consistently. This was puzzling to me, as I didn't personally feel that I or any other non-Japanese person would be particularly likely to go overboard on excuses or blame others for things they did.

I spent some time looking into why these Japanese workers felt this way about their foreign colleagues and discovered an expectation I wasn't familiar with, and that you might not be either — hansei. Because non-Japanese employees tend to skip this one thing that the Japanese feel is essential, negative perceptions tend to arise. By learning how to do hansei whenever you have made a mistake or there is a problem, I believe you'll be able to avoid generating negative feelings and get yourself back in the good books much more quickly.