Are You Still Managing the Reiwa Generation with a Showa-Era Mindset?21st-Century Managers Must Cultivate "Managerial Insight"

"Reasonable demands are training; unreasonable demands are character-building. Whether you think it's reasonable or not, when a manager assigns a task, you just have to swallow it."

"Back in my day, I worked 12 hours a day, took half a day off a week, treated the office like home, and that's how I persevered."

"It's for your own good. Young people need to be tempered through hardship; that's the only way resilience and professional competence develop."

"As a manager, I work until 11:00 PM every night—is it really unreasonable to expect a reply when I text them on LINE at 9:00 PM?"

I am certain many business managers have heard these statements—or even said them themselves.

High-risk workplace bullying behaviors do not necessarily stem from malice. More often, managers simply fail to realize that the management practices they have long taken for granted may be dangerously approaching the legal red line of workplace bullying under today’s statutory framework and workplace environment.

I refer to this capacity to recognize generational and legal shifts as a manager’s "managerial insight" (病識感, insight into one's own outdated practices).

Having managerial insight does not mean managers should abandon supervision altogether. Rather, it means being aware that your management style may be obsolete, and actively asking yourself: Am I evolving with the times?

Especially following the implementation of the new workplace bullying legal regime in 2026, what organizations truly need to teach managers is not merely "don't yell at people," but rather how to understand the modern boundaries of managerial prerogative.

For labor compliance training, delineating reasonable management vs. workplace bullying, grievance handling & investigation simulation workshops, board member continuing education certification, external committee members for workplace bullying and sexual harassment, PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) case simulation workshops, and litigation/mediation representation, please contact: Yesin Law Firm (Tel: +886-2-2515-6822 | Official Website: https://www.yesinlaw.com).

1. Unreasonable Demands Are Not "Character-Building"—They May Border on "Bullying"

The most common management rationale among leaders shaped by Showa-era work culture is:

"I was trained this exact same way."

The mindset resembles the traditional adage of the long-suffering daughter-in-law who finally becomes the mother-in-law: now that I have climbed the ladder, I can subject my subordinates to the same harsh treatment I once endured.

However, the legal standard is completely different. Just because something was acceptable in the past does not mean it can lawfully continue today. The law evaluates whether a demand exceeds what is "necessary and reasonable for business operations."

Article 2 of the Regulations Governing Workplace Bullying Prevention Measures explicitly states that legitimate and reasonable operational guidance or administrative supervision generally does not constitute workplace bullying. However, setting unachievable targets or ordering employees to complete impossible tasks within an unreasonable timeframe constitutes crucial evidentiary grounds for establishing workplace bullying.

Managers are entitled to demand performance, but the methods used must satisfy the tests of operational necessity and reasonableness.

• Ordering an engineer to deliver a project in 3 days that normally requires 3 weeks, and claiming: "This is training your stress resilience."

  
  

• Expecting new hires to respond to messages in the early hours of the morning under the pretext: "Youth means hustling."

  
  

• Arbitrarily ratcheting up KPIs despite knowing the team is understaffed, and then publicly singling out lagging employees.

  
  

Rebranding "deliberate harassment" as "character-building" crosses the red line into bullying. The foundational management principle corporate leaders must internalize is: High standards are permissible, but they must serve a legitimate business purpose, employ reasonable methods, and remain strictly necessary in degree.

2. "Just Because I Can Do It" Does Not Mean You Can Demand Others Do the Same

An even more difficult profile to manage is the leader who is exceptionally disciplined, deeply dedicated, and leads by personal sacrifice.

This manager arrives at 7:00 AM, leaves at 11:00 PM, answers emails on weekends, and responds to midnight client inquiries within five minutes.

In the eyes of executive leadership, such a person is rarely viewed as a bad manager—in fact, they are often celebrated as a star performer.

Yet precisely because of this, they readily develop a dangerous management blind spot:

"I hold myself to the strictest standards and lead by example without double standards. Why shouldn't I hold my subordinates to the same standard?"

This is why developing "managerial insight" is so vital.

Holding yourself to rigorous standards is commendable; it does not, however, confer a legal license to impose those same personal standards on others. While an executive's willingness to sacrifice their personal life may not be a healthy working model, it remains their personal prerogative. But when that choice is converted through hierarchical power dynamics into mandatory directives that subordinates feel powerless to refuse, it must be re-evaluated and subjected to legal scrutiny.

When supervisory conduct degenerates into public humiliation, chronic berating, deliberate withholding of information, deprivation of resources, unreasonable workloads, systemic isolation, or using promotions, performance appraisals, and PIPs to compel subservience, it ceases to be a mere "personal management style." It crosses into persistent improper words or conduct that directly endangers an employee's physical and mental health.

Managers must catch themselves before uttering: "If I can do it, why can't you?"

You are you, and they are them. Every individual holds distinct career aspirations and work-life values. The law does not protect an executive's idealized vision of the perfect worker; it protects the fundamental human dignity of every single worker.

3. What HR Must Truly Do Is Build "Managerial Insight" in Leaders

I strongly discourage organizations from reducing workplace bullying training to merely "telling managers to speak more politely."

That approach is far too superficial.

Truly effective labor compliance trains leaders to ask themselves three questions before issuing any directive:

1. Legitimate Purpose: Does this demand genuinely serve a demonstrable business objective?

   
   

   If the underlying motive is simply "I need to show them who's boss" or "I had to endure this in my day," the risk of workplace bullying escalates immediately.

   
   

2. Least Intrusive Alternative: Is there an alternative method that achieves the same operational goal with less adverse impact on the employee?

   
   

   To improve performance, you can establish clear KPIs, allocate resources, and provide structured coaching. You do not need public shaming, 2:00 AM progress tracking, or kicking team members out of work chats.

   
   

3. External Scrutiny: If this complete trail of LINE messages, emails, and meeting recordings were handed to external investigation committee members today, could I confidently defend it as necessary and reasonable supervision?

   
   

   If a manager hesitates on this third question, that hesitation serves as an indispensable early warning alarm.

   
   

The law does not dictate that a manager commits workplace bullying simply by delivering stern feedback or assigning challenging assignments. Under the statutory framework, establishing bullying requires a holistic evaluation of several factors: the workplace setting, the execution of job duties, the exploitation of position or authority, actions exceeding necessary and reasonable bounds, persistent inappropriate conduct or language, and demonstrable harm to the employee's physical or mental health.

However, an enterprise's HR department must prioritize proactive prevention, rather than waiting until all statutory criteria are met before taking action.

Attorney Chen Yeh-hsin's Key Takeaway

The new workplace bullying legal regime does not target demanding managers; it targets managers who lack self-awareness.

Effective management can still demand high performance, enforce discipline, and hold employees accountable. However, phrases like "I endured this too," "It's for your own good," and "I can do it myself" will never substitute for the legal tests of operational necessity and reasonableness.

The most admirable traits inherited from the Showa era are dedication, accountability, and leading from the front. What should be left behind in the Showa era is treating unconditional obedience as loyalty, unreserved humiliation as motivation, and unreasonable demands as character-building.

HR teams should introduce an additional module into their leadership development programs: do not merely teach managers "how to avoid formal grievances," but guide every leader in cultivating their own managerial insight.

A mature leader is capable not only of holding others accountable, but also of pausing before issuing a directive to ask:

"With a quarter of the 21st century already behind us, am I still operating under the illusion that 'unreasonable demands build character'?"