Today, business demands a dynamic leader who is not just visionary but also decisive and self-aware. However, the leader must be versatile enough to curve his roles and responsibilities as the business demands. Each individual can create their version of leadership style and its difficult to categorise these individuals into specific type of leadership. One such leader creating her own definition of entrepreneurship is Yumi Kimura
At the age of 18, Yumi Kimura, CEO and Co-Founder of Lead Tech, Inc, founded her own translation business in Shanghai for Japanese and Chinese customers. Soon after the establishment, she tried her hands in real estate business and sold a house for $4 million dollars in 2008. In 2013, she attended an Ivy League school in Japan.
Fascinated by her adventurous journey, the team of Mirror Review interviewed Yumi Kimura acknowledging all her achievements. Here are some of the questions asked by us.
Discovering Corporate Truths
Can you please tell us about your experience while you worked for the corporate companies?
I would like to start from my college days, during my senior year of college, I joined an HR consulting firm. There I came across a shocking truth, I found that there was a lot of discrimination in many companies at the time of hiring and promotion. I wanted a completely different environment, so in 2013, I came to the US.
After a span of 3 years, I joined Meitu Technologies and was promoted to their first Japan country manager. The company wanted to start its Japan business, Meitu Japan from scratch. There, we were able to acquire 1/3 Japanese females to become our users within about 1 year, and the company had a $4.5 billion IPO at the end of 2016.
Utilizing the Experiences
Please brief us about your experience at Meitu Technologies and how it led to start your company?
It is good that you brought up this question, while I was working at Meitu technologies, I had the opportunities to test out my ideal hiring and management thesis. Soon, in 2017, I wanted to utilize the experiences to help companies with better employee development and retention, so, I came back to the states and started LEAD keeping that mission in mind.
Making of A Better Leader
Today, leadership requirements are different. According to you, what are the three must-have characteristics?Â
I would like to use your introduction to answer this question. People have different leadership style and it is hard to say one style is obviously better than the other. Personally, I don’t believe there is a must-have characteristic a leader needs to possess. According to me, there are two good practices that can make one a better leader.
Number one is a good leader does not just check in with his or her team but is also keen to introduce them to other member mentors or friends when they are in need of something, they are not specialized in. This type of leader can leverage the human resources inside the organization, engage teams and foster collaboration. Second would be to check in with the team often, and not only talk about work, but also be mindful of their private life balance. While a leader should not invade his/her teammates’ private life, it is ok to be a friend within certain boundaries.
Making Meaningful Connections
How will you define your roles and responsibilities at LEAD?
I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of LEAD. The company comes into existence because of my passion and career experience. LEAD makes meaningful connections among employees, so companies can increase peer to peer interactions such as increasing friendship, mentorship, social learning and collaboration activities within the company, foster innovation and break down business silos. It is managed by HR and powered by AI. LEAD is a cross-platform software product that can be embedded in Slack, Microsoft Teams and email. We currently offer a free software product called LEAD.bot that makes unlimited pairings between users. You can download it from the Slack App Store or our website at www.lead.app.
Importance Of Feedback
What are the different challenges you and the company came across?
I think one of the biggest challenges is to be able to adapt to a new environment and to be able to pitch my company to investor and companies. It is hard to start correctly while people only pay a few seconds of attention. To overcome this problem, I talked to a lot of people and find the most important things they care about, their value propositions. As the company grows, things can change, so it is important to keep hearing the feedback, believe in ourselves, and follow the flow.
Lessons from Failure
How you tackle failure and how did it change you?
One lesson of earlier lessons I learned is to not use my common-sense to judge another person. I grew up in China and Japan, and people in these two countries have common moral standards in education. Because there is less variety in terms of value in a sense, compared to the US, where people come from all over the world, when I applied my old common sense that worked in Japan or China to people in hiring in the US, I found a lot of things weren’t working well. This led me to talk to experienced recruiting professionals and leadership coaches, so I can learn to judge less based on the culture I grew up with.
