Course: Leadership and Organizational Behavior Code: MBA 512
Group Case study report 07, December, 2011
Leading Across Cultures at Michelin
Prepared for Dr. M ilan
By B ashaer ashaer N oor Saleh Latifa H ussain A l A li li M eera A hmed hmed A l N aqbi
Introduction:
In this report we will analyze Michelin case study that mainly discusses Olivier Chalon management style, and the problem that face him during work within American
culture,
we
also
gather
each
member
suggestion
and
recommendation to solve and deal with each problem by analyzing it to reach to a consensus revealing the challenge he has to face to achieve company·s goal and accomplish employees satisfaction. We do live in a very large world and no matter how much global you can go still a person has to pay attention for the different cultures that form and shape people's attitudes in different countries. When we talk about leaders and when we talk about managers, it is very important that they should be able to know how to react and approach their teams when these teams belong to different cultures. Every leader is aware of the value of a well-defined business strategy. Few, however, give thought to the leadership that will be required to implement strategies that call for changes in the direction or capabilities of the organization without proper leadership, even the best and boldest strategies die on the vine, their potential never realized.
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Discussion
Chalons Strategy:
What specific strategies should Chalon employ when he returns to his office in Greenville?
We have reached to various strategies that Chalon could employ when he returns to his office in Greenville but, we agreed on some of the justification and the general goal of each strategy.
Suggestions: Despite the fact Chalon·s style was working well with him in Europe, it is proven its failure in America and in order to be able to prove himself as a successful leader he needs to adapt to culture changes Even if Chalon choose to back to his office in Greenville it is important to him to know that one strategy will not work on all people. He has to employ best strategies that make others satisfied. One of the best strategy he has to use cross cultural strategy to achieve the goal and to be a successful leader in such Michelin company (which has American culture and he is coming from French culture where you can find the clash) is very important to build or to use cross cultural strategy Chalon should also apply Coaching strategy that focuses on goal achievement, supporting colleagues· and subordinates· socio-emotional needs.
Justification or recommendations: T he
strategy need to provide a series of recommendations to close the
gap between the current situation and desired future. Some elements of social contexts influence what will influence a given group.
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Understand
the complexity of interactions with others, the context,
culture of the place, community, and personal experiences both in and out of the work needs in order to be more supportive and motivating. Once the strategy is known, a development strategy can be formulated to produce the desired future state, and implications for talent management processes can be identified. When the strategy is implemented, business results will provide feedback on how well the strategy is working. T ake
into account growth needs and projected turnover ´quantityµ,
Collective
Capabilities,
Degree
of
dependence,
independence
or
interdependence among members, Key values that reinforced through the collective behavior and actions, his style (control-oriented). His practices is both important and shared across the enterprise (embracing focused,
opportunities
know
with
to
what
make skills,
individually and collectively to
improvements, and
behaving
being in
customer
what
fashion
implement the business strategy and
achieve the total success he seek . Emotional
intelligence
also
is
an
important
element
in
effective
leadership, and using feedback will help him understand the impact of his behaviors on others. So Chalon should adapt his strategy based on a thorough analysis of the current situation and an informed view of the future. A variety of methods can help. One way, called the ´future perfectµ method, involves ´projectingµ oneself into the future and imagining what the leadership culture would be like if the organization were fully implementing its business strategy and operating as effectively as possible. Make clear purpose, operating principles, and well defined goals help accomplishing firm·s objectives.
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So many previous examples have shown evidence for when the whole working environment is friendly, people will be able to work better and accomplish more. T he
needed changes are no critical ones, the result will for sure be for the
best of all, the company, the employees and Olivier at the same time and will get him better experience concerning working within America. Establish a personal relationship built on mutual trust with co-workers which help find solution for problems.
Consensus recommendations: Make others Satisfied, motivated and self-confidence would result in positive outcomes. Appreciate a positive for each criticism and reward achievement of the team·s members to motivate them for future assignments, work harder and to do their best, also to build self-esteem. Develop a team spirit which has an important role in team performance and mingle with his team members more to have strong communication and relation.
Chalons Style: Would it be best for him to adapt his style in order to be more American in the way he manages? Or would it be better for him to remain consistent and authentic in the way that he manages and hope that his staff can learn to adapt to his style?
Consensus suggestion: Here there were many reasons and justifications but the result is the same, our team member agreed on the fact that Chalon should adapt his style and, so no one can say or advice Olivier to continue with his style.
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Justification or recommendations: Ability to adapt is one of the main characteristics of a real leader. It would be easier for Chalon to change his style and adapt to the American culture than trying to impose the status quo on 4000 employees which would results in complaints, dissatisfaction and therefore, negative outcomes. If he forces to change the employee·s style, it will result poor their outcomes and cause negative impacts on employees as well as the company. It doesn·t mean that Chalon way in managing is unethical, but due to cultural differences things that are accepted by one culture might be unaccepted or difficult to fine-tune with by another. T he
motivation and appraisal policy should be changed. American
employees need to be motivated through positive comments, and the needed change will come as an additional comment He is working as a leader in an American environment. Another
important
issue
is
to
strengthen
the
relationship
with
subordinates and team members, this made the team describe Olivier as an arrogant leader who is cold and distant and overcome those complaints concerning his leadership style. got into attention that American does not counter argue especially not directly in front of their manager Olivier should know his team in a better way, create stronger bonds with them and knowing what they like and what they prefer. Ask about their families and making sure that they have no problems that could affect their work. Meetings should be less tense, he should involve them more in discussions and check if they have any ideas concerning the business turnaround they were working on
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Since they are Americans live within the country and know the different customers backgrounds and culture they will be able to provide great advice for him when it comes to working with customers. He has been pushing team very hard and asking for 110% effort from them without any praise for the hard work and the effort but rather bring out the small mistakes and enlarging them in order to reach perfection. Change style to save his job and satisfy his team members that will increase their outputs, improve their productivities and lead them to success.
Would he even be able to do this without losing his strength as a leader?
Consensus suggestions: Ability to adapt is one of the main characteristics of a real leader. Adaption will not lead Chalon to losing his strength as a leader. Justification & recommendations: First of all he will be creating cross cultural environment understanding and trust in the company. Have the idea of how to deal with his team in such a way without any complaint or resistance from their side. T hey
will always respect his decisions and follow his order as in
American culture people don·t present counter-arguments in regard with anything with their leader. American people always seek for the self-esteem, so
Using
emotional
intelligence with his staffs by giving positive feedback for every negative one, show appreciation when they perform something, and instead of tough criticizing regard performance, try to explain things in a certain way that help them to improve and show them how they can do it better. Chalon can still maintain his strictness and demands for high standards.
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In the end, we will have a supporting leader respected by his employees, satisfied staff, a successfully implemented strategy; improve the financial situation, and achievement to the company. Go outside his comfort zone but, change his thinking way of motivating, leading, and behavior. It will open a door for changing staffs behaviors, and work on his blind spots which he got known from his team member. Open the door to give opinions and solve the big issues or problems.
Consensus justification & recommendations: Develop a personal connection with his employees. It will build a strong relationship between the leader and the employees know their strengths and weakness and understand the behavior of the people. All this would increase the Appreciation when they get something done, increase self-esteem and self-confidence, cooperation, and encourage the staffs to work more closely as a team, also raise commitment and loyalty toward their work, Create transparency in culture, and boost the ties and respect for the leader resulting in enthused employees presenting and performing their best. Build more relationship oriented workplace that will develop the employee·s skills, abilities and competencies and ultimately improving organizational outcomes through increased loyalty, commitment and engagement. He will be able to inspire others with his behaviors or leadership style. Understand
individualize
the needs and desires of his employees so that they can their
jobs,
rewards,
and
training
to
fit
the
needs,
experiences and desires of those employees. Without building some feeling of responsibilities and loyalty to the group the employees is unlikely to commit fully to tasks.
T he
feedback system
will provide employees recognize to the importance of individuals contribution to the success of the team.
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Contradictory justifications: In order for Chalon to fill the gap between his staffs and him he needs to share his personal information and interact more. It is not necessary for Chalon to strictly implement every single aspect of the American culture, or he has to let go all his principles and believes to achieve that. He doesn·t have to share his personal life with his employees just to have their approval or to be considered as an open person but,
T ry
to find a common point that would enable him to
increase the bond with his employees, listen to them, and keep a good relation.
Group recommendations in comparison with the real-life outcome
Group suggestion: Go outside his comfort zone and work on his blind spot, change his thinking way of motivation and appraisal policy. American employees need to be motivated through positive comments, and the needed change will come as an additional comment thus it would reflect positively on the outcomes. Change his style to more emotional way Attaining cross cultural consultant session and creating cross cultural environment understanding and trust in the company. It doesn·t mean that Chalon way in managing is unethical, Chalon start to increase the awareness due to cultural differences things that are accepted by one culture might be unaccepted or difficult to fine-tune with by another. Understand
the needs and desires of his employees and build more
relationship oriented workplace that develop the employee·s skills,
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abilities and competencies and ultimately improving organizational outcomes through increased loyalty, commitment and engagement. Chalon fill the gap between his staffs and him and explain things in a certain way that help team to improve and show them how they can do things betel and
Use
cross cultural strategy to achieve the goal and to be
a successful leader in such Michelin company (which has American culture and he is coming from French culture where you can find the clash) is very important to build or to use cross cultural strategy. Open the door to give opinions to solve the big issues or problems. American people always seek for the self-esteem, so
Using
emotional
intelligence with his staffs by giving positive feedback for every negative one, show appreciation when they perform something, and instead of tough criticizing regard performance, try to explain things in a certain way that help them to improve and show them how they can do it better. Adapting his style result in a supporting leader respected by his employees, satisfied staff, a successfully implemented strategy; improve the financial situation, and achievement to the company. Chalon still maintain his strictness and demands for high standards T he
feedback system will provide employees recognize to the importance
of individuals contribution to the success of the team. All this would increase the Appreciation when they get something done, increase self-esteem and self-confidence, cooperation, and encourage the staffs to work more closely as a team, also raise commitment and loyalty toward their work, Create transparency in culture, and boost the ties and respect for the leader resulting in enthused employees presenting and performing their best. Develop a personal connection with his employees. It will build a strong relationship between the leader and the employees know their strengths and weakness and understand the behavior of the people.
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Real-life outcomes:
During the annual meeting in Monteral for 500 managers of the business unit, Chalon reported thanks, proud for hard work and dedication over the past four years and lucky for being part of this impressive team, he also announced breaking a new record in revenue and profitability for the third year, boasting an increasing in sales. Chalon was chocked up with emotion and pride but, he didn·t hold back from giving the praise his colleagues deserved. He had not forgotten the lessons he had learned in Greenville, he realized the cultural gulf between him and his colleagues, mutual misreading, and the differences of way of relate to each other and way of motivation, realizing that developing an awareness of cultural differences was half the battle. Raising his awareness was the most important step towards improving his ability to manage successfully He used to believe about the key success in leading cross cultural teams is humility now he believe a successful global manager is one humble enough to recognize one doesn·t and can·t be a master in each environment he leads in but he needs to be curious to learn and adapt to that environment. After first meeting with the consultant, Chalon was aware of the differences in management style, develop cultural awareness of his direct reports T alk
with each director both in group and individually, help them to
decode his message in the way he manage, for example when he say good thank you they should hear great job, they should also know with him there is almost no good news, and giving explicit positive feedback does not come naturally to him. Invite the consultant he had worked with to run a short session on differences in cultural style for his team which help to give a common
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language and diffuse the frustration and confusion that built over months. Recognized individuals in his team from French-speaking Canada could build a cultural bridge between the American and the French culture that he took their help Make concerted effort to give genuine praise where it was deserved with 15 individuals reporting to him he asked understanding and compromise For the nearly 4000 employees they appreciate the way he change his style, they were more motivated but he was still a tough manager continued to push for complete accountability Michelin started initiative feedback for all senior manager the good evaluation for teamwork, team building, vision, and leadership were direct result of him recognizing cultural differences and adapting his leadership style Attain party and amused his colleagues, make concerted effort to ask people about their family and begin to talk about his wife and children he even did something unusual for a French executives and decorated his office with photos of his family as American do he also introduce his wife to people in the office, the managers thought that cross cultural training was useful and demanded for a similar training course to help them address issues in Mexico T eam
end up coming together once they understood each other better
and enable them to implement the turnaround and achieve record sales and profits in the division, they worked well together and achieve very good result analysis entitled the division as theµ success storyµ
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Discuss
how the French and American leadership and followership styles
compare to those in the United Arab Emirates.
Describe
the similarities and
the differences and explain them in term of the culture.
French leadership and followership Style: T he
French leadership styles are more results-driven, disciplined, demanded
complete accountability from the team.
T he
French leaders they being
demanding and setting very high standards is the best way to mobilize a team to attain the desired results. T he
French leadership view is in order to succeed one must always strive for
improvement, even if real excellence is rarely achieved, they think this is the best approach to motivate the teams, so they provide very little or no positive feedback, less rewarded and asked for more improvement in every achieved task. In France culture people always have a counter argument for everything, it is the Cartesian ´ these ²antitheses-synthesesµ approach. T his approach was trained from the very start level in the France schools, and the French people value discussion with counter ²arguments. In the French culture people don·t like to share their personal information among the staffs, they don·t mix their personal lives with their professional lives.
American leadership and followership Style: T he
leadership style of American managers are:
T hey
trained to manage in a
very different way from French managers and how they are taught to use a considerable amount of positive feedback to build self-esteem, encourage initiative taking, and motivate employees.
T hey
use the term ´constructive
criticismµ that encourages the employee to feel proud and appreciated for what they done well, while recognizing changes that could be made to bring about improvement. In America context it is important to be aware that if the leaders want to get from the team 110% achievable, the leaders have to understand the teams· expectation for explicit appreciation.
T he
positive feedback is deeply Page | 13
rooted in the American education system and starts with a strong emphasis on building children·s confidence and self-esteem.
T his
means the followers style
in Americans that to receive praise at all stages of their lives and they expect their managers to explicitly recognize all work done well. Americans doesn·t use counter-arguments, which mean that followers don·t argue with their leaders, they listen, give attention or act to leaders· instructions.
Americans leaders
they build interpersonal relationship among the team, they share each other·s personal information, so they know each other very well and their behaviors wire they can solve each other·s personal and professional problems.
UAE leadership and followership Style: In generally the leadership style in the
UAE
will be more directive and
paternalistic. Leaders are expected to give clear and direct instructions to their subordinates and the subordinates will be expected to carry out the instructions to the note.
T he UAE
societies are more likely to follow a caste
system that does not allow significant upward mobility of its citizens.
T hey
are
also highly rule-oriented with laws, rules, regulations, and controls in order to reduce the amount of uncertainty, while inequalities of power and wealth have been allowed to grow within the society. When these two Dimensions are combined, it creates a situation where leaders have virtually ultimate power and authority, and the rules, laws and regulations developed by those in power reinforce their own leadership and control. It is not unusual for new leadership to arise from armed insurrection ² the ultimate power, rather than from diplomatic or democratic change.
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French & American leadership and followership Style compare to those in the UAE: In our point of view,
UAE
leadership and followership styles are more similar to
French style. As here in
UAE,
the leaders will not be having a very close
relationship with their subordinates they don·t share their personal lives with their co-workers and colleagues but the
UAE
has a group-oriented culture,
leaders often try to determine their family·s background with their colleagues and subordinates without going in deep details. In
UAE
culture leaders push
their subordinates to work hard and do an excellent job but in return there will not be any appreciation or praise for the an excellent job. Leaders in
UAE
culture always provide more negative feedbacks to their employees and ignore the positive one, as they believe it·s not necessary to do so. Leaders in
UAE
culture has a high power distance as the leaders have the full authority and they openly demonstrate their positions or status.
T he
subordinates are not
given important work and expect clear guidance from the leaders, as the leaders believes that subordinates are entrusted with important assignments. And also the subordinates are expected to take the blame for things going wrong. T he relationship between the leaders and the followers are rarely close or personal. followers in
T he UAE
class divisions within
UAE
society are accepted. Leaders and
culture have a sense of fatalism about life, this leads to the
assumption that success is not always the result of good planning or hard work they are more likely to believe it is the result of fate.
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Conclusion: In conclusion we can say that leaders should be able to know the culture of the place they are working within. Regardless of how successful they are, different cultures needs different leadership styles and this means going around your abilities as a leader will make of you a multicultural leader. Olivier is an example of how a successful leader could fail if he didn't adapt to new cultures. In this case Olivier was able to know what was going wrong and he still have the time to change his style and adapt to this new culture he is living in. this for sure will add for his experience and it will help him inspire and motivate his team in the best possible way in order to get the job done in time and in the best and most successful way. A leadership strategy makes explicit how many leaders we need, of what kind, where, with what skills, and behaving in what fashion individually and collectively to achieve the total success we seek. In creating a leadership strategy, failing to be as detailed as possible in describing the leadership culture that is required to implement the business strategy will lead to oversights later in the process.
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