Yves Briantais of Colgate-Palmolive
How do your people know you’re here for them?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 237: Yves Briantais
Here’s a question. How do your people know you’re here for them?
I’m Charles Day. I work with creative and innovative companies. I’m asked to coach and advise their leaders and their leadership teams. To help them succeed where leadership has its greatest impact. The intersection of strategy and humanity.
This week’s guest is Yves Briantais. He’s the VP of Marketing Asia-Pacific for Colgate-Palmolive.
We recorded this interview at the end of a long week at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.
There are a number of areas that I could have focused on for this introduction.
But the one I want to highlight is an issue that I hear about from so many leaders today.
Where they lead from.
“I lead too much from the front and I'm trying right now to learn how to lead from behind. I want my team to know that I'm here for them. So I'm always trying to protect them as much as I can so that they can take the risk they have to, to deliver. But leading from behind is really something I want to achieve and that I'm trying to achieve right now.”
For businesses that depend on unlocking creativity and innovation, the era of top down leadership is ending. And faster than many companies - most companies - realize.
Servant leadership is the popular replacement. Popular in that many people talk about it, very few have fully understood it, and almost no one actually practices it. Quarterly financial targets have a habit of getting in the way of good intentions.
Leading from behind is a thoughtful and honorable desire to get away from command and control leadership, and instead create a different kind of relationship with your team. One in which they know you’re there for them, while giving them room to grow.
But it doesn’t quite go far enough - in my opinion.
The challenge for leaders is that today, leadership requires so many different styles of relationship with your teams, depending on the situation. Collaboration. Subordination. Integration. Provocation. Expectation. And, when the heat is on, Protection.
A friend and I are working on a new leadership paradigm, one designed from vast experience both inside and outside complex, highly creative and innovative businesses. One built for the reality of the world and society in which we live and for the people that we want to be.
We’ll have much more on this over the next few weeks.
In the meantime, this conversation is invaluable for Yves’ insights on empathy, intention, and co-creation.
Here’s Yves Briantais.
Charles (03:07):
Yves, welcome to Fearless. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Yves Briantais (03:10):
Good morning. Very happy to be here. The end of a long Cannes week.
Charles (03:12):
Yes, I very much appreciate that. When did creativity first show up in your life? When are you first conscious of creativity being a thing?
Yves Briantais (03:21):
When I was very young, actually, when I was four years old, my mom bought me an iron because she realized I loved ironing and I still love ironing just because I like to transform things. So, I'm mesmerized by the transformation of the laundry when it gets out of the washing machine and when you take the iron and suddenly it's flat and pure. So I like transforming things. I'm really, really obsessed by transformation. So when I was four years old, I was ironing with my mom, and I come from a background which was not very rich. And I remember when I was six telling my mom again, “One day I'm going to have paintings.” And she looked at me, like, “Ooh, that's a big ambition. Maybe it's not going to happen.” But I told her, no, I'm going to have paintings and if you come to my place today, I have paintings. So it's been a dream. I like beauty, I like colors, I like photography, so it's all around me. That's something that I live with.
Charles (04:24):
I love that idea of ironing, being connected to transformation. I was actually, for the only time this week, I have to say, last night before I went to bed, I ironed my shirt. And I know exactly what you mean. There is that magic of taking chaos and and turning it into something organized.
Yves Briantais (04:37):
There is real magic in it. So I really like it.
Charles (04:40):
Yeah, it's cathar—it really is cathartic. I hope my wife doesn't listen to this. I'm not ironing any of her stuff. Were you a risk taker as a kid?
Yves Briantais (04:46):
Yes, I was. Yes and no. Meaning that I like to be stretched. So there is, it's, I always go to places where I need to discover something and places that makes me uncomfortable, but not reckless. So I like to move forward to be the first one doing things. But I always, the rest takes me time before I move ahead. So I have to assess the risk before I go. But yes, I need to go to places that I don't know. I get bored very easy.
Charles (05:15):
How did that show up in your childhood?
Yves Briantais (05:18):
I was playing with my friends in the suburb of Paris, when I was a little boy, there was a forest, so we're exploring the forest with my friends. I was trained to play with animals, animal that I didn't know. So just to charm them and try to keep them. So I was bringing a few at home and the painting as well, I was drawing. So it's again, starting from something that is in a certain shape and bring it to another one. So, an animal that is wild. We used to go on vacation every year to the Alps mountains and every year when we were arriving, you had kittens that were wild. So I would spend the first week trying to get the ticket kittens to a house and to adopt them. And that was really the first week mission that I had. So I really liked it.
Charles (06:17):
That's a fabulous story. I'm on the board of an animal rescue group and I totally understand that kind of focus and dedication. Did you get them adopted every, so that was annually you did that?
Yves Briantais (06:25):
Yeah, annually it was, yes, every year. So we were always going to the same place. So the owners of the house knew that there was a farm and that would come and take care of the kittens and then when I will leave, they will be gone.
Charles (06:38):
That's good. Great. So rewarding. Did you always want to lead?
Yves Briantais (06:43):
Ah, I don't want to lead. I lead. So it's not that I want to lead, I want to transform things. So I want to have an impact on what I'm doing. And I love excellence. So, my leaders, my managers always struggle with me because I push people to get to excellence. So am I a natural leader? Yes. I will say. Is it something I absolutely want to achieve? No. I go to places that I like and naturally I get there. So I do what I love doing. I don't do marketing because I get the high salary. I do marketing because I love it and I want to do the best marketing ever. So we are, we're in Cannes right now. We want to be marketers of the year in three, four years from now. So we will push, I push to get there. So if you call that leading, yes, it is leading.
Charles (07:37):
So if you put aside the ambition that you've just clearly defined, how would you define success on a personal basis?
Yves Briantais (07:44):
When I do, it's a good question. When I do something that nobody has done, something that seems to be impossible, I love what is impossible. So, I'm always going to places or my company's always give me a task mission that seems to be very difficult and I like it. I think life is far easier and simple than people, what people think. So once you know there is an issue, you understand the issue. Usually finding a solution is just a matter of resources. So I'm, I'm not afraid of complex issues. I like them.
Charles (08:24):
Why do you think people complicate stuff?
Yves Briantais (08:30):
Because they are scared of failing, I guess. I don’t know if you realize when you ask a question to people, especially in the professional area, it's very rare when you get a simple answer. When the creative come to a company presenting ideas, how many people are able to say, I love it. Only a few. So I think people are scared of engaging themselves, they're scared of failing and they prefer to go around the issue, blah, blah, blah. And rather than trying to solve it and fail. So I really think it's the people are scared of failing.
Charles (09:08):
I think that's such a great point. And to that point, there are so many organizations that are set up to encourage mediocrity and failure in many ways, right? Absolutely. I mean, I remember working on a client back in the day when I was an agency producer and we would take work in, in every stage of the process and there'd be a room full of sometimes as many as 25 people. And every one of them had the ability to critique the work, but only one person in the room could say yes to the work. And so they started at the bottom, everybody said something and of course if somebody, the first person is not going to say, well, it's just perfect because if the next person says it's not exactly right, and so therefore suddenly you end up with 25 negative comments when really maybe they all really love the work, but we're too scared to say so.
Yves Briantais (09:46):
Absolutely, absolutely. And I remember as well, I remember an event with one of my managers who asked me, I was an innovation at that time, and he liked the innovation we wanted to launch, but we wanted to launch it in one year. And look at me, he say, can you launch it in two months? I said, no, it's impossible. He said, okay, I going to change the question. If you don't launch this innovation in two months, the company will disappear. Can you launch it? And I look at him, I say, yes, of course. He says, see, it's possible. It was so impactful. But that's very often the issue with people. It's all a matter of resources. At the end of the day, you can go to the moon if you put beyond on the table and you'll build a rocket. So if your life depends on doing something, achieving something, you will find a solution. But if you don't put that pressure on your shoulders, you're going to take your time, you're going to go around the issue, you're going to be talking about it forever and it'll take forever. So this question of can I do it if I have the resources, very often the answer is yes. So it's just a matter of finding the right resources to do what you want to do.
Charles (10:59):
And I think within that is an aspect of what you talked about earlier, which is that if you don't really understand how you define success, and it's actually, it's interesting how many leaders I come across that have never really thought about the answer to that question. I mean, they look at financial performance typically, and they might look at creative awards - we’re sitting in Cannes, but they don't tend to sit back and say from an overall perspective, yes, what's my definition of success? Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned earlier that you really have a high expectation of the people around you and you drive towards excellence. Where do you think that drive came from?
Yves Briantais (11:30):
I have five siblings and I'm the little one. So my, I'm 49 today, my brother is 73.
Charles (11:38):
Happy birthday.
Yves Briantais (11:39):
Yeah, no, not today, sorry. So I am right now, I'm 49. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. So my brother is 73, so he was twenty three, twenty four when I was born, and my younger sister is nine years older than me. So when you are five, six years old and you at the dinner table and you are surrounded with people who are between let's say 16 and 30, you have to prove yourself. You really have to prove yourself. So you have to speak up, you want to be heard. So you have to do things that sometimes can be extraordinary because you want to. I have this need to prove my siblings and now other people that I can do it. So I'm pushing, pushing, pushing.
Charles (12:27):
What's your relationship like with your siblings?
Yves Briantais (12:30):
Very good. I'm 49, but I'm still the little brother and I will be the little brother forever. So when I go home, don't ask for my opinion because I'm too young.
Charles (12:40):
When you have that kind of age range, I mean, your eldest brother could have been your father, right?
Yves Briantais (12:45):
Absolutely. I mean, I'm 49, my nephew is 48. I have a niece who is 47, and so they're older than my wife and my wife's parents are of the age of my brothers and sisters. So absolutely.
Charles (12:59):
What's it like growing up in that environment? What's it like having a brother who could be your father? I mean, were they protective of you? Did they have high expectations of you?
Yves Briantais (13:07):
No protection. I told you we came from, I came from a background that was quite poor, so they wanted me to enjoy life a bit better than they did. So it was really no jealousy. They protected me, they protected me. I was the first one in my family to enter good school, let's say. But there was no jealousy. It was a celebration of the success.
Charles (13:29):
Wow. What an extraordinary environment to grow up in. Yes. Must been very, must have been very loving. Trust is one of the most essential attributes for any company for whom unlocking creativity is critical. When you set the kind of standards that you do, that can be a trick, there can be a balancing act involved in doing that. How do you go about engendering trust in the people that work for you?
Yves Briantais (13:51):
I'm with them, so I'm always measured to be with them and to be part of the development process and to take the risk with them. So I don't hire myself. I don't show up at the end to say yes or no. So I try to accompany them along any project and I'm always trained to show them that I'm here to help. So if I can find a moment where I can be courageous so that they see that I'm here to build them up, I do it. And I always tell my team, if I disagree with you, if I told you one day I really like you and that you are, you're performing well, it's not because the other day you're going to do something bad that suddenly would change my mind. So I'm always trained to establish this mental safety, safety in the team so that the team can push and be free to challenge me and to take risks.
Charles (14:51):
When do you find that becomes a problem? What are the circumstances in which you suddenly go—
Yves Briantais (14:56):
When others, like senior managers suddenly decide to be part of the process. So people who don't are not creating the same mental safety? The challenge in the company is, as you said, we talk about it. It's people, especially sometimes at the top of the house, are scared of failure. So taking risk is not something that everybody will do. So our job is to de-risk and sometimes as well to innovate a little bit off the radar and take the risk and show what you're doing to people when things are good and if things are not good on you. So take the ownership of a failure.
Charles (15:43):
Are you looking for a certain kind of person, a certain kind of personality and character?
Yves Briantais (15:48):
Yeah, I like trust strong personalities. I'm not a huge fan of people who have a personal agenda. So I really like people who love what they're doing. I need passion. I need passion in my life, my relationship with my wife, with my kids. I need passion. So I'm looking for passionate people who really want to change the world and who are working hard to get there. So people who are passionate about the task more than their next step.
Charles (16:18):
One of the aspects of leadership that I think has long been underestimated or under recognized, and one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast is the human side of leadership. Yes. There was a quite well-known photograph from about four years ago of the CEO of BMW collapsing at his own car launch. It's a very, very vivid image. We forget that we are vulnerable human beings. You mentioned before we started that you suffer from epilepsy and that at one point or one occasion you had a seizure in front of your team. How has that affected their view of you and your relationship with them?
Yves Briantais (16:58):
It made me more human. I'm a human being and I want them to be human beings and you can talk to them. I'm always pushing people to take vacations and not to stay in the office late because I think we're running a marathon and when I'm going to be on my deathbed, I'm not going to say, oh, I should have worked more. And on top, we need to get out there. So we need time to have a normal life to experience things and to show empathy for people. So I had a coach once who told me that he felt that I had some tension between my professional life and my personal life. And yes, I had, and he gave me the best advice ever.
He told me, “You take your calendar, you put in your calendar the time you need for yourself, and then you're going to put the time you need for your wife, and then you're going to put the time you need for your friends. And that's it.” And I look at him, I say, “But there will be no time for work.” He says, “Yeah, that's the point. You will reach a good work-life balance. You will be better at prioritizing, you'll be better at empowering your team and you will know if you have the right resources or not.” That's a powerful, very powerful advice I got. So I'm doing it. So I'm always trained to find the time I need for myself every day.
Charles (18:22):
Where do you struggle with that? Why does that become problematic?
Yves Briantais (18:25):
I'm not really struggling with it. Because it's about enjoying that. I do a lot of sport first. So I'm always making sure that I have the time for sport in my calendar. And so as well it’s about enjoying the return moments. Again, the first flight I took was when I was 22. Each time I take a plane, it's like a new adventure to me and on top when I can fly business. So simply flying, having those great seats, a glass of champagne we get on board. It's a moment that I enjoy, I already enjoy. So all those little pleasure that you have in your life, being present in the moment, being with your kids, I like it. I have a life today that I never expected I would when I was a child. I'm going to places that I didn't even know existed. I'm living in an apartment that is a dream apartment, so I cannot complain. So I enjoy every little moment of life.
Charles (19:27):
I just want to go back to the emotional dynamic between your epilepsy and your team. When you had the seizure in front of them, have you felt them be more protective of you?
Yves Briantais (19:36):
Yes. And it's what I told you, it made me human. To them because I'm always struggling. I don't really care about my title, but others do and that which I don't always realize. So it made me human. Suddenly I was a human being like them. And the relationship totally changed. Not that people were scared of me, but let's say the fear was gone and it was talking to our friends. So somehow it was good.
Charles (20:12):
Do they challenge you more now?
Yves Briantais (20:13):
They always challenge me because I challenge them and I'm trained to be, I'm never in my office, so I always going around the office, talking to people and trying to stay real and not to live in an ivory tower. So very quickly people challenged me. Yeah.
Charles (20:36):
How did you bring that management style to bear during the pandemic when obviously you couldn't have physical contact?
Yves Briantais (20:41):
It was difficult.
Charles (20:42):
How did you do it?
Yves Briantais (20:44):
I will give you an example. When I was in Hong Kong, so we spent three years in Hong Kong in lockdown, and I had a team in Shanghai, so I'm sure you heard about the terrible lockdown that in Shanghai. When I realized how tough it was, I called each of them one on one and I spent time talking to them to stay connected. And I bought bottle of champagne as well at some point for the team just to celebrate. So I talk a lot. So I call people every day to stay in touch and I even use my place to bring people in and start having meetings. And that was it. You can look at my phone. We have a group, which is called an Entire Loneliness, and we are still using it and we stay on it. So we have our entire loneliness group.
Charles (21:40):
As you look at your leadership today, compared to how it was before the pandemic started, what do you see has shifted?
Yves Briantais (21:48):
Even more empathy, I would say. And I'm more and more aware of the need to co-create and to put people in a room and to listen to what they have to say before running with an idea. That was a weakness I had. I still have to be careful, but this idea of co-creation, being together in a room, this idea of thinking together, it changed during covid. I think we all realized during COVID that our life is short. And that having fights every day for, I don't want to say my job is stupid, but small things, stupid things sometimes, is ridiculous. So more empathy and more fun. Far more fun. I always love fun, but I think I love fun even more today.
Charles (22:45):
And how do you bring that into the workplace?
Yves Briantais (22:48):
It's like this week in Cannes. So I spend the entire week with the team partying every night. It's taking a one hour break to go for lunch, and try to do it regularly. Despite the fact that we have a travel ban, sometimes say no, we go, you come and we spend two days together in Thailand. We were in Bangkok last week and we have two days together and we have fun together. It totally changed the way you work with your team and the performance is so much better. When people have fun, they feel free, they feel safe, and they start expressing ideas that they would not express otherwise.
Charles (23:27):
It really speaks to the point you made earlier, which is the importance of using your time in ways that are really meaningful and being conscious and intentioned about that. I see. I'm sure you've seen this too, but I see so many leaders who are victims of their calendar. And what you were describing earlier.
Yves Briantais (23:41):
Yes, absolutely. And I remember when I started my career, two, three years to my career, I had a colleague, she was working hard, really working hard. So she would arrive at 8:30 in the morning, leave every night at 8:00 PM, 9:00 PM, she got pregnant, and she got a baby, and she came back. And when she came back and she would start at nine, finish at six. And I went to her, I said, “How are you doing? I mean, are you struggling with the workload?” She said, “No, it's even better.” Once you put the limit to the time you spend in the office, if you stick to it, you are more efficient. You take decisions, you prioritize, you go straight to the point and you're more efficient. So spending hours in the office, working over the weekend, I don't do it. I don't, I'd never work over the weekend, never. Right now I'm in Singapore, so sometimes I have to take some night calls with New York, but if it was not for the night calls with New York, I don't work at night, I go home and I enjoy.
Charles (24:42):
So it's a question of being intentioned and specific about making sure that you're spending your time doing the things that matter to you.
Yves Briantais (24:49):
Yes. I don't know about you, but I need to rest my brain. And when I think about something else, things seems easier. I go to bed with issue, I wake up with solutions.
Charles (25:07):
What's your relationship with fear?
Yves Briantais (25:08):
Fear, it's difficult to scare me. It is one thing that scares me a lot, sharks. So you will never see me swim in any kind of sea, even lakes, which is ridiculous. So I watched Jaws when I was six years old, which was a mistake, but I'm not easily scared. I told you I like to be in places which I don't know. I always tell my team, ask me question that makes me uncomfortable. Please make me uncomfortable. So I'm looking for those zones of discomfort.
Charles (25:49):
How well do they do that?
Yves Briantais (25:51):
[Inaudible], really. They're struggling. They're struggling because again, there aren't that many things that will make me feel discomfort, but I'm pushing. I'm really pushing them to take me there. I was working on design once and one of the designers told me, being uncomfortable is good. It means that you are experiencing something new. If you launch an innovation, if you have a copy or a campaign, when you look at it first time you're like, oh yes, let's do it. Not good, not good. You should have this moment of, oh my God, if we do that, we're going to be in trouble. Can I do that? And you need to look for those places. We had a crazy night yesterday with all the creative and they scared me. They had some ideas. And one idea, I cannot tell you what, but one idea was like, oh, if we do that, it's going to be crazy. But the very moment on, you feel that if you're aware of it, you're like, oh, maybe we're up to something big. Maybe we're up to something big. Too many people are not comfortable with discomfort. That's bad.
Charles (27:00):
I think that's so right. I am consistently reminded in my work and in this podcast of how many people who have achieved enormous amounts of success, especially in these industries, use fear as essentially a temperature gauge, as an indicator, if you will, to say, if I don't have that feeling of anxiousness and anxiety about an idea or a possibility, it probably isn't interesting enough and we probably need to push it further. And that has really be, I've really become aware of the fact more and more actually that that's a kind of an indicator for a lot of leaders, who, I think, are successful.
Yves Briantais (27:34):
It's like innovation. Many marketers made the mistake to ask people what they want. People want what they know. If you put them in front of something that doesn't exist as a shape, that is totally new, they will reject it systematically.
Charles (27:52):
Yeah. Henry Ford famously said, “If I ask my customers what they want, they say a faster horse.”
Yves Briantais (27:58):
I had a fantastic discussion this week, this week with Sir John Hegarty, and he was telling me, I mean, lots of his great campaigns didn't test well. He was telling me, Levi's 501 as a product. When they tested it didn't taste well. People wanted zippers, not buttons. So lots of great innovations. You talk about Ford, about the car, she ask people what they want. They want faster horses, not a car. Lots of the great innovations starting in places that were unknown. Somebody say, great ideas don't come, never come from comfort zone. And I agree. So it's a mental discipline to go to places that stretch you. It's like it's a human bias. You will talk in the room to people who are like you. So you should go to the people you don't want to talk to because must probably mean that they are different, and that's where you're going to learn.
Charles (29:00):
Yeah. So true. You have a really serious job. Most people won't have a job of this kind of significance. What's it like? What's doing this job really like?
Yves Briantais (29:10):
I don't think it's serious. I see it as a challenge. So I moved to APAC, to Hong Kong because we had been losing in China for 20 years. And my brief was fix it. And I did. And I don't take it seriously. I don't the job. I told you I love marketing. I don't do marketing again because I need a paycheck. I do marketing because I love it. It is the science of transformation. It's the science of making people's life better. And when I wake up every day, I'm happy to go to work. What I don't like about my job is when we have to present things, when we have to do budget, when I don't like that much. But when anytime I do marketing, I really love it.
Charles (30:00):
How does the responsibility of what you have to do sit on you? How do you wake up in the morning with, what is the feeling that you wake up with It?
Yves Briantais (30:07):
It's the only moment when I have bad feelings is at night. So when I go home, the stress is big. Usually I spend 20 minutes with my wife and she's my psychologist and she knows it. So I arrive, I talk, I talk, I talk, I talk. And then I feel better. And then I go to bed and I wake up in the morning and I'm quite excited because I have a day ahead of me where I know I have to achieve a few tasks to achieve a few results and to cope with challenges. And I like it. So I'm always looking forward to the day. So it's always I start high and the energy goes down, goes down, I go home, and then I recover.
Charles (30:49):
Last two questions for you. How do you lead?
Yves Briantais (30:54):
That's a very good question. I lead too much from the front and I'm trying right now to learn how to lead from behind. I think you like football or you like a good referee is the one you don't see, the one who's directed or leading the game with such a leadership that players will forget about him and that the fans in the stands will not see. I think a good leader is like that as well. So leading from behind, but as well, leading with courage. I want my team to know that I'm here for them. So I'm always trying to protect them as much as I can so that they can take the risk they have to, to deliver. But leading from behind is really something I want to achieve and that I'm trying to achieve right now.
Charles (31:56):
And last question for you. As you look at the future, what are you afraid of?
Yves Briantais (32:00):
Not to have enough time to do all what I want to do. So I'm 49. I feel like I'm 16, but I'm 49. So it's maybe you call it middle age crisis, but to me it's time I will accelerate on a few things. So I want to leave a legacy, most probably. So I want to be on stage in Cannes with advertising that will be so good that people will be talking about it in 10, 20 years from now. It's time.
Charles (32:38):
I want to thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate the intention that you bring to the way you lead. And I think it's one of those attributes that is not really fully recognized and not fully valued. And it's very clear to me that you bring a ton of intention to what you do. Thank you.
Yves Briantais (32:54):
I will tell you a last story. I grew up, as I told you, in quite a poor background. So when I entered my business school, which was very good school, my dad told to me and told me, don't be a boss. And it means a lot. So stay staying your, I'm still emotional about it. It's about don't change, don't, don't be bossy. I keep telling my team, when you see so many young folks being successful, being promoted and suddenly being bossy, why don't be a boss? Means stay human being. Show empathy for people. It was the best advice I got. And he came from somebody who was a truck driver, somebody who had no diploma, but he was right. And I'm, when I'm starting to be bossy, I think about my father.
Charles (33:47):
I can't wrap it up better than that. Thank you so much for being here today.
Yves Briantais (33:50):
You're welcome. Thank you.
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