293 Doru Tasca - President and Representative Director, ZF Group Japan

"The very first thing that you have to do as a leader in Japan is to make yourself a team member." "You have to show them that you're here because you want to lead Japan, not because you want to lead." "Don't ask anyone to do anything you wouldn't do yourself." "You have to get to a level where you can show both knowledge and humility." "Once you show your people a path... they will follow you."   Doru Tasca is President and Representative Director of ZF Group in Japan, combining more than three decades of life in Japan with extensive leadership experience in the automotive industry. Born and raised in Romania, Tasca came to Japan at eighteen after winning a Japanese government Monbusho scholarship. He spent his first year studying Japanese at Osaka University of Foreign Studies before completing his university education in Japan. That early immersion gave him not only fluency in Japanese but also a deep familiarity with the cultural assumptions underpinning Japanese business. After initially teaching English, Tasca entered the automotive industry in 2005 with Japanese company Witech in Hiroshima, beginning in R&D before moving into sales and programme management. He subsequently joined Visteon and later Continental, where he worked extensively in automated and assisted driving technologies including cameras, radar and lidar. Tasca joined ZF in 2020 as Key Account Executive for Toyota. His responsibilities expanded until he became Head of Sales for ZF Japan at the beginning of 2025 and subsequently President and Representative Director, while retaining his sales leadership responsibilities. His career has been shaped by his ability to operate comfortably between Japanese and Western business cultures. Rather than treating Japan as a temporary overseas assignment, Tasca describes Japan as his home and believes effective foreign leadership requires understanding the language, culture, customers and people from the inside. Narrative Summary Leading successfully in Japan requires much more than importing global management practices and expecting local employees to adapt. For Doru Tasca, President and Representative Director of ZF Group Japan, effective leadership begins with becoming part of the team. Tasca's perspective comes from an unusual career. Arriving from Romania at eighteen on a Japanese government scholarship, he learned Japanese, studied in Japan and eventually built his entire professional career there. His first automotive role was inside a traditional Japanese company, where he experienced Japanese corporate life from the bottom upwards before moving into multinational organisations including Visteon, Continental and ZF. That background taught him an important lesson: Western leadership habits cannot simply be transplanted into Japan. Consensus building and nemawashi matter. Leaders must understand how decisions are developed and gain acceptance rather than relying solely on positional authority. Credibility also comes from being willing to do the work. Tasca believes leaders initially need to get their hands dirty so they understand what their teams actually do. Delegation should come later and must be explained carefully. Employees need to understand that work is being delegated because the leader trusts them and wants them to grow, not because the boss simply wants to unload unwanted tasks. This philosophy extends to decision-making. Tasca asks his management team to investigate problems, consult their teams, develop alternatives and return with a recommendation. If he accepts their recommendation, responsibility is shared. If he overrides it, he takes responsibility himself. This creates psychological safety around decisions while still encouraging ownership. Trust is another recurring theme. Tasca sees reputation as one of the most valuable assets anyone possesses in Japanese business. Trust takes considerable time to build and can be destroyed remarkably quickly. Leaders therefore need to demonstrate reliability through behaviour. Tasca attends meetings alongside his people, joins them when customer problems occur and makes himself visible throughout the organisation. Employees must see that their leader works with them rather than merely issuing instructions. He also emphasises accessibility. As president, he deliberately walks around the office and speaks with employees, even when the interaction lasts only thirty seconds. Japanese employees can be reluctant to approach senior leaders with pro