ADVANCED MANAGEMENT KIM Woojin / Class 13 / Year 2014-15

Professor ZHAO Yue

Essay on experience of working in teams:

Long Way to Synergy

This essay is linked to my previous essay on a female leadership

<The Power of Leading by Example> written in April, 2013.

In this essay, I will only contain the time period as a leader after go-

ing through internship.

In order to understand the context until I became a president of an

association in Paris, I cordially invite you to read my previous essay.

Thank you so much.

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mafr7rivveovpga/The%20Pow-

er%20of%20Leading%20by%20Example.pdf?dl=0

16th of March, 2015

Woojin Kim

Transition from Command group to Cross-functional team After becoming a head of the association, I wanted to get rid of the concept of “traditional leader”, aiming for more “democratic” leadership style. Why not let every my employee become brands-within-a-brand to maximise their abilities? However, I soon realised that Rome cannot be built in a day.

After a long consideration, finally I made up my mind to take the helm of the association. Of course, I knew that working at top of the team would be a big challenge, full of whole different tasks compared to those as an intern. Yet, I asked myself, when could I, without a university degree at that time, ever have this kind of opportuni-ty to handle even a small association which only has 3-4 employees in the center of Paris? I believed it was one of the once-in-a-life opportunities and if it works well, it could be a game changer in my twenties. Hence, I became a head of the association called ALFJ (Association Lodgment France Japon) in Sep-tember, 2012, at the age of 22. It happened ex-actly two years after I’d first come to France to study film directing.

The first goal that I set was simple, and linked to my everlasting question to the former leader: “Why cannot every

single employee take more responsibil-ity to take care of his/her own job?” Under the control of my former leader, our group was more likely to be a command group. Simply speaking, every decision taken in our organisa-tion was completely dependent upon the leader. However, I dreamed of cross-functional team, which I found it to be more effective to motivate all of my team members.

As the association was already solid in

terms of the structure since its foun-dation 7 years ago, I did not to start from scratch - forming or storming stage -. Yet, I focused on redistributing each one’s position and role in the norming stage right after I took office. I will talk about the outcome of my

ambitious transition policy later on once again, but it later turned out to be a little reckless, too much idealistic plan considering my ability at that time. I have to admit that our team could not even enter the proper per-forming stage in the end with my lack of managing skills.

To talk about some external condi-tions imposed on our association, we were suffering from increasing inter-ference by one of the members of our

association, who finan-cially supported our association. This un-comfortable relationship provoked many con-flicts including mainly process conflict and also task conflict. At last, even relationship

conflicts occurred with him, which led our team totally disruptive and chaotic. Unfortunately, I only experienced dys-functional conflicts, not functional conflicts which can be helpful to im-prove the performance.

One of the biggest regrets still remains is that I’ve been too passive to solve conflicts from external conditions.

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Managing Diversity and Benefits Depite a small size, we have high diversity: each team member came from different countries including me - Chinese, Korean, Japanese, French and Filipino. Needless to mention that everyone has different culture, skills and personal traits. Yet, most of our team members have something in common that we are all from Asian countries and living in France. Therefore, I could understand their cultural characteristics without a problem. Neither dislike nor mistrust of members, stereotyping has existed. With our common language, French, we could capitalise on the diversity of ideas. I am still glad that I could dddddddddddd have such good colleagues in my first working dddddddddd experience.

“It’s better to have enough ideas for

some of them to be wrong, than to be al-ways right by having

no ideas at all.” - Edword de Bono

“Great things in busi-ness are never done

by one person. They’re done by a

team of people.” - Steve Jobs

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What made us stop… Come to think of it, those days working my team members were truly wonderful time. We respected each other and did our best. However, I, as a leader, could not put a marshmallow on top of the tower. It was not the organisation that could stand alone. We had clear goals, relevant skills, mutual trust, unified commitment and even communication but not appropriate leadership and external support.

Simply speaking, I found the biggest reason of the failure in me, - my leadership. Yes, as a young entrepreneur, I sort of did my best. For example, I started to turn on nice classical music for my employees and clients to give them more relaxing at-mosphere. I really wanted my employees to “enjoy” their work, not only to earn money. In addition, I adopted a system to re-ward my employees on a monthly basis to whom had the highest perfor-mance record with my personal budget. I cannot list all bunch of changes that I brought at that time. And my team members, thankfully, knew very well my efforts. In terms of the internal relation with our members, I never had a problem so that I might have been not a bad leader in that sense. But it led to square one: then what did I wrong?

I was an extremely hard worker who worked approximately 80 hours a week on average. You might find the problem in my using this word “extreme”. Yes, I was just a young eager beaver who lacked practical managing skills. That’s not all. What was worse is that I actually was a two-faced leader who

pretended to be a democ-ratic style leader. In ret-rospect, I was indeed an autocratic leader. Of course, that does not nec-essarily mean a bad leader. But I only insisted on my decisions which I found it brilliant. I’ve held meet-ings but it was just a su-

perficial thing. In the end, everyone had to agree with me. That might have put my team members to very stressful situations. I have an anecdote about it. As I mentioned, I changed quiet radically a number of policies as soon as I became the respon-sible person. A few of my colleagues were against these changes but I was totally stuck with my idealistic ideas.

I actually was a two-faced leader who presented to be democratic,

indeed, I was very autocratic.

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At last, one day, one Japanese col-league burnt out. At that time, I was even aware of that she had hard time dealing with her personal problems. But I did not take those into account at all! Too many changes at the same time came as pressures and she could not handle her work anymore. She literally burst into tears in front of me saying “it’s too difficult to apply all those changes”. I required her to learn how to use Excel Spread Sheet out of the sud-den, who had not been familiar with using a computer.

Complex task without enough communication

Now I regret much that I should not have done so. She was much older than me, married, had take care of her family whereas I was only 20 year-old guy who was only obsessed with the work.

Group Cohesiveness My lack of understanding other peo-ple’s situation certainly might have led weaker group cohesiveness. In order to make our team more cohesive, I had made a logo and slogan, rules. Never-theless, I learned that it is useless when I do not really understand what my team members think, how they feel, etc.

Conflict ManagementTo be honest, it was the most difficult part dealing with. As a leader who had no previous work experience, I was totally lost as a couple of conflicts oc-cured. After all this experience, now, I came to have an interactionist view of conflict. Even when working in teams for a group project at school, I never panic when there is a sign of conflict. Instead, I start to think how we can better handle this difficulty to go to the next step. This derives from my changed mindset on conflict. Now I think some conflicts are necessary to

perfume more effectively and also in-evitable.

Avoiding ConflictsHowever, I had a traditional view of conflict while I was working at the association. In my case, most of con-flicts came from outside, especially with one person who was very influen-tial to our association. He constantly asked me to cut off budget including a number of employees. I was so much stressed out by his intervention all the time. But I just kept avoiding from it. I was not assertive on my ideas. Plus, I didn’t even try to coordinate or cooper-ate with him. The result, as you imag-ine, was horrible. Now I can say that my indecisive attitude played the big-gest factor which made our association collapse.

The importance of conflict man-

agement

In the end, I came to be burnt out too after a course of conflicts. 6 month after starting working as a leader, I was no more eager to work. I think, conflict management is somewhat related to stress management in the long-run. So I not only failed conflict management but also stress management. And now, after 3 years of time has passed, I can recall the suffering faces of my emply-ees. When the leader seemed lost, team members suffer 2-3 times worse than the leader. The failure gave me a huge lesson in my life. Since the big failure, Even when I am lost sometimes, I try not to show my embarrassment to my team members when I’m in a leader position. Conflicts are unavoidable by all means. If something is not in-

evitable, we are better-off enjoying it, don’t we?

If I knew Six Thinking Hats at that time…

Being Emotional as a LeaderA week ago, in a Management class at school with Ms. ZHAO, I happened to know the concept of “Six Thinking Hats” invented by Edward de Bono, In deed, Edward de Bono was a familiar name to me because I'd read one of his books, <Lateral Thinking> last year, which was thought provoking. In fact, I found this thinking tool very useful when it comes to management. To an-

alyse my wake in the as-sociation, in the begin-ning, I only wore a blue hat and often a green hat. I did not consider any facts, feeling of me and others or potential dan-gers. Later on, when I became exhausted, I only

wore a black hat or a red hat. Human being is not perfect, we’re not a com-pletely rational being. However, at least if I was aware of this imperfection and try to see other sides of things with totally different perspectives (different coloured hats), the outcome must have been different.

Social NetworkSpeaking of social network, I have a lot to say but it all boils down to this final question: “Were our relationship help-ful to our team effectiveness?”

My answer is “yes”. Although my team members had a bad leader (me), this cohesiveness and good relaionships support our association to exist. Not were their efforts, our association could not even last for a month, I’m sure.

Conflict management was the hardest part I’ve gone through. I just kept avoiding with passive attitude.

Interview with myself to be a better leader I decided not to repeat the same mistakes again when I get another opportunity in my life. So I organised an interview between Woojin from the past and Woojin in the present. How much have I changed?

Hello Woojin, I’m from the year 2013, and I’m so glad to interview myself in the future. Let’s cut to the chase. Did the failure from which I’m suffering now really make your grow even a bit? First, nice to see you. Yeah, as you see, my face’s got older because of you. Haha, I’m kidding. Of course, the failure, I still vividly remember, was obviously bitter, Yet, without failure, I’m so afraid that I would still remain the same as you in 2013 to this moment. It really nourished me in many aspects. Indeed, now I almost thank to those failures.

Good to hear that! In your opinion, what did you learn most while running an association at relatively young age? Well, many things. One of them is “managing” is not easy as said. As you know, This failure led me to business school where I belong to now, not a cinema school. For example, when learning accounting at school, the precious experience of running the asso-

ciation facilities understanding. If I have never worked before, all the things I learn could sound not too practical. Bur since I was a manager, before be-coming a college student, I feel definitely more pleased learning all those things.

Ok, you mush have gone through a va-riety of group projects for the last 2 years at ESG MS. How was it different from your previous experience? It was a completely different things. First, I was not an “official” leader. In the association, I had coercive power to some extent. But at school, everyone is equal. Of course, we can divide our roles and sepa-rate tasks and even nominate a leader sometimes but basically, it is not a hierarchical structure. Under these circumstances, it’s not your position which counts but your real ability. Unless you are able to convince others, there is no chance for your ideas to be chosen. It is absolutely more challenging working in a flat structure but it’s undeniable that it truly en-hances your abilities.

As you know, one of the most difficult parts for me is to deal with conflicts. So I’m eager to know how myself has changes in the future. Yeah, as you know, after a storm comes a clam. Fortu-nately, I’ve never had serious conflicts for the last 2 years. Of course, there were sometimes signs of poten-tial conflicts. In the regard, I think I improved much negotiating skills. That being said, now I think I be-came not only a better leader but also a better TEAM MEMBER as well. I learned that the true leader is the one who can be also a good team member.

Then what about the leadership? Com-pared to my two-faced autocratic leader-ship, what’s yours now? I’ve become a better listener. As mentioned above, its is also due to the environment. But still, I’ve been intend-ing to make the efforts to be a better listener. And the result? So far, so good. I’ve been getting satisfying grades for the last 2 years. To conclude, my decision to change the leadership style turned out to be wise.

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