"My career, I like to say, is about saving the world one word at a time."
"I love team building. I love creating something from nothing or growing it further."
"Creating connection and engagement with people" is one of the hardest parts of leading remotely.
"You need to show the vision, where you're going, and why that matters."
"Leadership is really about unlocking the potential and power of those who report to you."
Meghan Barstow is President of Edelman Japan, bringing a career defined by language, communications, adaptability and cross-cultural leadership. Her Japan story began thirty years earlier when she studied Japanese at Kansai Gaidai in Osaka after intensive language training in the United States. With an academic background in English literature and Japanese, she describes herself as "a woman who loves words," a phrase that neatly captures her professional journey.
After university, Barstow returned to Japan through the JET Program, spending three years in rural Kagoshima as an ALT and CIR. That immersive experience deepened both her Japanese language capability and her understanding of regional Japan. She later worked for Hyogo Prefecture's business and cultural centre in Seattle, taught Japanese at a public high school, and returned to Tokyo to create business English textbooks before entering PR and communications through Adcom Group's Tri Media.
Her career with Edelman began in Japan on the healthcare team when the office was still relatively small. She later moved to the United States, took time to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada, and rejoined Edelman in Washington, D.C., where she developed her leadership capabilities across client leadership, sector leadership and employee experience. Her long-held ambition was to return to Japan and lead an office. She eventually came back as President of Edelman Japan, taking on the challenge of leading more than seventy people during the COVID era, much of it remotely.
Barstow's leadership context is shaped by global communications, Japanese cultural fluency, remote transformation, employee engagement, trust-building and organisational change. Her adaptability in Japan comes not from a single posting, but from repeated immersion, reinvention and a deep belief that words, trust and human connection sit at the centre of effective leadership.
Meghan Barstow's leadership story is a study in language, mobility, resilience and change. As President of Edelman Japan, she leads an organisation at the intersection of communications, marketing, trust, earned attention and cultural transformation. Her path to Japan did not begin with the usual clichés of pop culture or food. Instead, it began with a love of travel, a willingness to take on difficult languages and a desire to build a career through communication.
Her first deep experience of Japan came as a student at Kansai Gaidai in Osaka. Later, through the JET Program, she spent three years in rural Kagoshima, an experience that gave her more than language ability. It gave her the kind of cultural immersion that helps a foreign leader understand Japan beyond Tokyo boardrooms. She went on to work in cultural exchange, education, publishing and eventually PR, where she discovered that communications felt like her "calling."
Barstow's return to Japan as Edelman's country leader came after significant leadership experience in the United States, particularly in Washington, D.C. Yet the move back was not simply a geographic transfer. She returned to a Japan office undergoing transformation, in an industry where the boundaries between PR, marketing, advertising, digital and corporate communications had become increasingly blurred. Edelman's value proposition, as she explains it, lies in being independent, family-owned, grounded in earned attention and differentiated by decades of research into trust through the Edelman Trust Barometer.
Her biggest challenge was not only strategy. It was connection. She took on the role during COVID and had not met most of her employees face to face. Leading a team of more than seventy people remotely required deliberate communication, listening and repetition. She used all-staff business updates, weekly written roundups, one-on-one meetings, roundtables, strategy workshops and "strategy spotlight" sessions to make the direction tangible. In Japan, where uncertainty avoidance, consensus and nemawashi matter, remote transformation made alignment even harder.
Barstow's approach to change management is grounded in clarity, role modelling and personal experience. She believes leaders must show the vision, explain why it matters, gain manager buy-in and give employees direct experiences of the new strategy. This is especially important in Japan, where change can feel risky because it moves people from competence into uncertainty. The challenge is not simply to announce direction, but to help people understand it emotionally and practically.
Her leadership style is also shaped by trust. She recognises that trust in Japan is hard-won, takes time and becomes even more difficult in a remote environment. She sees consistency, integrity, care and communication as central to building it. Employee engagement surveys, business performance metrics and informal feedback help her understand whether the organisation is moving, but she also recognises that Japanese survey responses can be culturally restrained. For her, improvement over time matters more than absolute scores.
Her view of leadership is ultimately humble and enabling. She sees the leader's role not as personal heroics, but as unlocking the potential of others. Sometimes the leader stands in front, showing the way. Sometimes beside people, supporting them step by step. Sometimes behind them, cheering them forward. For foreign executives in Japan, her lesson is clear: the fundamentals of leadership may be universal, but the path to alignment, buy-in and trust requires patience, listening, nemawashi and respect for how decisions are actually made.
Q&A Summary
What makes leadership in Japan unique?
Leadership in Japan requires a careful balance between hierarchy and bottom-up consensus. Meghan Barstow observes that people may defer to the leader and expect direction, while also expecting decisions to emerge through wider involvement and alignment. This creates a leadership paradox for foreign executives. They must provide vision and direction without bypassing the consensus-building process that helps people feel ownership.
Japan's business culture places high value on listening, patience, nemawashi and relationship-based trust. Leaders need to spend more time preparing the ground before pushing major initiatives forward. This is not simply politeness. It is a practical requirement for gaining commitment and avoiding resistance. In Barstow's experience, one-on-one listening, roundtables and repeated communication are essential to helping people understand both the logic and emotional meaning of change.
Why do global executives struggle?
Global executives often struggle in Japan because they underestimate how much time alignment takes. In faster-moving Western environments, a leader may announce a strategy and expect the organisation to move. In Japan, the message may need to be repeated, discussed, localised and validated through multiple channels before people fully commit.
Barstow's own challenge was intensified by remote work. She was leading more than seventy people, yet had not met most of them face to face. That made trust-building, employee engagement and emotional connection much harder. Global executives may also misread employee engagement data, because Japanese respondents often score more conservatively than employees in other markets. Barstow therefore focuses less on comparing Japan with global averages and more on whether the organisation is improving over time.
Is Japan truly risk-averse?
Japan is often described as risk-averse, but Barstow's experience suggests the issue is more nuanced. The deeper challenge is uncertainty avoidance. People may hesitate when change pushes them out of a known area of competence into a new environment where they may make mistakes or lose face. This is particularly important in Japan's quality-conscious, defect-sensitive culture.
For leaders, the answer is not to criticise caution. It is to reduce uncertainty through explanation, involvement, repetition and evidence of progress. Barstow emphasises the importance of showing the vision, explaining why it matters and giving people personal experiences of the change. When employees see that a new way of working succeeds with clients or improves outcomes, the change becomes real rather than abstract.
What leadership style actually works?
Barstow's leadership style combines strategic clarity, listening, humility and persistence. She began her tenure by preserving existing communication rhythms, then spent her first months listening through one-on-ones and roundtables. After understanding what employees wanted and needed, she built a communication and engagement plan around strategy, business updates and practical learning.
She also recognises the importance of the "frozen middle" — the layer of managers who can either accelerate or block transformation. In Japan, leaders need managers to champion the change, role model new behaviours and translate strategy into daily practice. A leadership style that works is therefore not only top-down. It is distributed, repeated and reinforced through many small touchpoints.
How can technology help?
Technology can support leadership, but it cannot replace human trust. Barstow used remote platforms, written updates, engagement dashboards, survey tools and virtual roundtables to maintain communication during COVID. These tools created visibility when informal office interactions disappeared. Written communication also helped employees absorb messages at their own pace, especially in a multilingual environment.
Technology can also improve decision intelligence by giving leaders more data about employee engagement, business performance and organisational change. In the future, tools such as digital twins of organisational workflows could help leaders model bottlenecks, workload pressures or collaboration patterns. However, Barstow's experience shows that technology only helps when paired with listening, empathy and human interpretation.
Does language proficiency matter?
Language proficiency matters, but cultural fluency matters even more. Barstow's Japanese study, rural JET Program experience and repeated periods living and working in Japan gave her a deeper foundation than a short-term expatriate assignment would have provided. Her language background helped her connect with Japan, but her leadership effectiveness also comes from understanding context, patience and communication style.
She also recognises that English can be challenging in remote settings, even for capable bilingual professionals. Written updates, clear repetition and structured communication help ensure people can process complex information. For foreign leaders, language ability is valuable, but the bigger issue is whether employees feel understood, respected and included.
What's the ultimate leadership lesson?
The ultimate leadership lesson from Barstow's experience is that leadership is about unlocking the potential and power of others. She does not see leadership as being centred on the leader's ego. Rather, it is about helping people grow, strengthening organisational capability and creating conditions where others can succeed.
Her definition of leadership is flexible. Sometimes leaders must lead from the front, showing the way. Sometimes they stand side by side, supporting people closely. Sometimes they lead from behind, encouraging and cheering others forward. In Japan, the most effective leaders combine vision with patience, courage with humility and strategy with the deep human work of trust-building.
Author Credentials
Dr. Greg Story, Ph.D. in Japanese Decision-Making, is President of Dale Carnegie Tokyo Training and Adjunct Professor at Griffith University. He is a two-time winner of the Dale Carnegie "One Carnegie Award" (2018, 2021) and recipient of the Griffith University Business School Outstanding Alumnus Award (2012). As a Dale Carnegie Master Trainer, Greg is certified to deliver globally across all leadership, communication, sales, and presentation programs, including Leadership Training for Results.
He has written several books, including three best-sellers — Japan Business Mastery, Japan Sales Mastery, and Japan Presentations Mastery — along with Japan Leadership Mastery and How to Stop Wasting Money on Training. His works have also been translated into Japanese, including Za Eigyō (ザ営業), Purezen no Tatsujin (プレゼンの達人), Torēningu de Okane o Muda ni Suru no wa Yamemashō (トレーニングでお金を無駄にするのはやめましょう), and Gendaiban "Hito o Ugokasu" Rīdā (現代版「人を動かす」リーダー).
In addition to his books, Greg publishes daily blogs on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, offering practical insights on leadership, communication, and Japanese business culture. He is also the host of six weekly podcasts, including The Leadership Japan Series, The Sales Japan Series, The Presentations Japan Series, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews. On YouTube, he produces three weekly shows — The Cutting Edge Japan Business Show, Japan Business Mastery, and Japan's Top Business Interviews — which have become leading resources for executives seeking strategies for success in Japan.
