Collaboration, freedom and creativity to create authentic and human environments

Nicolas Cartier (CEO) was recently interviewed by Alma Campos for “Mueve y Emprende”, primarily regarding his vision of leadership and collaboration. The interview was conducted in Spanish but here is a summary of the interview transcript in English. The full interview as well as the podcast are available below (in Spanish)

Imagine an environment where leaders encourage employees and their teams to be transparent, demonstrate their values and act accordingly, in a setting that allows them to be themselves and not have to “wear masks”.

But… How can we make this possible?

Nicolas Cartier, Chief Executive Officer of Mérieux NutriSciences, our guest on “Mueve y Emprende”, believes that leaders and entrepreneurs have a great responsibility to build positive work environments for a better future, where their actions play a fundamental role in creating this impact on their employees, their families and society – focusing on the human side.

This mindset will result in achieving the goals that organizations seek, creating the ideal environment to achieve them.

As Nicolas mentions:

Business is not only about gaining market share, generating profits or growing the business, but also about having a positive impact on the community.

To achieve this, he shares that we must start with ourselves; we cannot promote humanism or seek the well-being of our teams and collaborators without having this starting point.

We need to do a reflection exercise to recognize and ground ourselves: What is the impact of what I do on the people around me? Where are we and why do we do what we do? Or simply, what is our purpose? These questions are the basis for activating ourselves and achieving what we want.

He has been on this learning path since the beginning of his career, and he realized it from his first steps as a professional, at a time when he had only one dream: “to know the world”. He didn’t know exactly how he was going to do it, but he was fortunate enough to receive a job offer from an organization that invited him to work in Asia, where he spent several years of his life.  

Although he found this opportunity by chance, it allowed him to participate in a company that sought a balance between the social and the economic.

Throughout his years of professional life, he was able to learn from both positive and negative leaders, which left a mark on him and had great relevance, recognizing that it helped him grow with a more human vision. This allowed him to focus on people, creating real and genuine connections, which today is a fundamental part of his professional and personal performance.

Positive leaders, as he defines them, are those who inspire us, who have a strategic vision and the ability to make tough decisions and, on the other hand, the ability to connect and build relationships with people; a real relationship.

This type of leader challenges you, confronts you with your own mistakes, your personal contradictions, and helps you improve by telling you the truth – even if sometimes you don’t like to listen to what they tell you, as long as what they tell you is in a good spirit, with the idea of growing you and not pulling you down.

Many of us, at some point, have been affected by a negative leader, whose treatment of his or her teams we did not appreciate. When you are around a leader who hurts his or her team, you realize the responsibility you have as a leader, since you can do more harm than good.

When he experienced a similar situation, he shared with us that he overcame it thanks to his team “The energy that comes from your team is the most important and is the key to achieving your goals”. The energy you don’t have from your leader can be generated by your own team, which is much more important and stronger than the energy which comes “from above”.

One of the hardest challenges for him was understanding that even though some people on his team are delivering the business results, if their values and behaviors don’t match the mindset we’re looking for and aren’t focused on the human side, then it’s very important to make the decision to separate them from our teams.  Even though it is difficult to do, we must understand that, in the end, those who have good fundamentals and values in line with what we are looking for will achieve the goals through their actions.

To conclude, he recommends:

• To find and develop a true taste for our work and for collaborating with our teams – this generates positive energy and a desire to work. 
• In teamwork and collaboration, we need to find the “WHY” of what we do in order to enjoy it. 

Develop true and solid bonds with our colleagues and team members that allow us to grow together.

If you are a leader and want to develop a strategy to promote well-being in your organization, where people do not need masks to hide their true selves and put the human being at the center, it is essential to start with transforming yourself.