Philippe Delpal, President of BNP Paribas Vostok Bank, CEO of CETELEM Russia, is telling us about his qualities he thinks every leader should have: the willingness to communicate with people and the most important - the capacity to listen to them. He explains why it is important to ask right questions and brings examples from his work in Russia. He also compares business environments in France and in Russia where when you wake up Monday morning you never know your agenda for a week.
1. What is your strongest competency?
Openness and capacity to listen to others. You have to have a willingness to communicate with other people. Conversation is a game you can play with one, two, three or four people but it is not a monologue. Together people can find some clever ideas or be more efficient.
2. Did you always have this quality or you developed it in yourself with time?
I'm trying to develop such competence every day. By essence I'm not the one who likes to push himself to the front line. But developing business, especially in Russia you need to be a driver or a pilot. You need to be on a front line and say to your management team: come with me. For that you need to be already one step ahead.
3. And the ability to listen, did you also develop it?
I've been 5 years in Russia. And starting business in Russia in the beginning of 2004, I knew that I am coming in a new country having plenty of things to discover. I tried especially in the beginning (and even now) to be open, try to understand different culture, different way of functioning.
4. Why is it so important?
One thing that is very important for me is a management team that I'm trying to build. It should be at least 50% Russian. Being in Russia and having only French or European managers will be a very bad mistake. I don't want to make it.
For me it is also important to listen because I believe that when you are in the situation when everybody is thinking black and you think white, may be there is something wrong with you. Or you are genius like Warren Buffet for example.
5. How do you do it?
Listening means that you have to search, to look for new contacts. Even if I have a very tough agenda, I am always trying to go out to participate to external meetings so-called after-hours cocktails to feel the beat of the market. I'm also always trying to have different personalities who will bring additional values, additional way of thinking.
6. How do you make people express their opinion?
In face-to-face discussion you need to ask key questions not like general concept "how are you today, how is business, etc.".
You need to provoke a discussion, to give a part of yourself because the best way to talk to people is to put your emotion on the table. Each time you have an external meeting, you are learning something, therefore you are not loosing time even if at the end of the discussion you have not concluded business.
7. Can you recall some time when this ability helped you to resolve some issue?
In the banking industry the first raw material is money, the second is human resources, and it is all about playing with people, skills, and emotions. Spending enough time in communicating with people is a way to solve conflicts and motivate the team. I can spend four hours from 8 PM till midnight with one of my managers just because I feel that he/she has questions and we need to discuss working issues we hadn't time to discuss them during the day. And there are no silly questions by the way.
8. Do you have another example?
I invest a significant part of my time in business associations. I try to spend time with business owners or middle managers in the companies that are running business in Russia. Russia is a very interesting market because when you wake up Monday morning you never know your agenda for the week. Even after five years every day I face something I have never anticipated before. It's a fine part of the job and of being a manager in Russia.
9. Is Russia a lot different from France?
In Russia spending one year is what I call a "cat year". Cats live 10 years roughly, so one cat year equals to 7 or 8 human years. Spending one year in Russia is equal to spending seven years in France. You need every day and every week to adapt to the changes, try to anticipate what will be the market, the country, human resources in one-year time in order to have some vision of the business that you are running.
Prepared by Liza Barzova, Good2Work Intern, on October 28, 2008
