Positive mindset & leadership that I learned from Carrefour Taiwan.
I met great leaders in Carrefour Taiwan. I admire them very much.
I worked in Carrefour Taiwan supermarket division for almost 4 years.
It’s my pleasure to work with the wonderful supermarket team starting from 10 and expanding to 64 supermarket stores now and continuing to open more in Taiwan. The index of customer preference in choosing Carrefour supermarket store is growing every year. It reflects our continuing sales growth for four years in a row too.
I also had the honor to be chosen as one of Carrefour Young Talents in 2018. It’s a great journey to work and learn from talented peers.
I am grateful that I had opportunity to work with such a great team and learned positive leadership mindset. Below are Carrefour attitudes that influenced me a lot.
Mistake is human, correction is good leadership.
I joined Carrefour Taiwan in September 2015. I had my first annual performance review with my Carrefour manager, Marco, in April 2016. One of those self-evaluation questions was what I considered I could improve. Along with the question, the evaluation provides several Carrefour core value phrases for me to choose. I chose “right to make mistakes.”
My manager, Marco said: “That’s the one I want to tell you too. Remember you always have right to make mistakes. We can always try to get better solutions but if we try and fail, it’s okay. That’s why I am here as your manager to assist you to find better solutions. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. We grow from mistakes.”
I feel encouraged to pursue the best benefits for our business since then, because we have right to make mistakes, to try out what’s best solutions, to improve every day.
Victory is for the team; experience is for the leader.
We have a record of opening five supermarket stores in six weeks. With a relatively small team of 6, it was considered a very tight schedule. We all felt it was a mission impossible. I remember our department director, Patrick, said: “no worries. That’s why I am here with you to provide any help that you need. We are a team.”
We did it. Patrick didn’t take the credit for it. He gave it to everyone in the team. We had a “bravo meeting” where he thanked every team member for the hard work in the past months. Of course, Patrick and our team manager, Sophie, contributed a lot. However, they gave all credits to the team.
Don’t trouble troubles until the troubles trouble you.
In 2018, I won Carrefour young talent award. In the program, all the young talents were asked to develop projects related to global strategies and present in front of the top management group. My team chose “city organization”, which was how to make omnichannel practical in Carrefour Taiwan. We were a team of 3 from different departments, including supermarket, merchandise, and shopping mall management.
At first, we quite limited the discussion based on what we were good at in our specialties. Soon came out with a frustrated conclusion that it’s hard to achieve omnichannel practice with current facilities. When we discussed our concerns with our project mentors, Patrick and Lawrence, they reminded us: “You are young talents. We expect you to be creative and looking for possible resources you could get to present us how to make better future. If you think out of the box, out of daily routine, we encourage you not to be limited by current situation. You should give us the vision and tell us how to achieve it, step by step.”
Our problem at first was that we already assumed that the possible troubles may be caused by the current situation. What our mentors told us to stop worrying about possible difficulties, we would never improve if we never step out to seek for solutions.
Therefore, we began to plan for the big visions and discussed with other parties, such as the digital team, to see what difficulties we could possibly solve. We spent over 3 months to finish the project and present our vision to top management. Fantastic, isn’t it?
Passion about what we do from bottom of our hearts.
Last, I would like to thank managers, Patrick, Sophie and Marco, for being supportive and inspiring leaders that I learned a lot from them.
When I told Marco that I left Carrefour, he gave the most touching words to me: “Do not forget, do what you believe and not what you are good at. Because every job you want to wake up for is from heart and not from rational things… Be proud of it, be the same as you were when I met you the first time. And more importantly, share this positive mindset with your new team.”
I will.
Thank you all for passing on positive mindset and bringing great leadership to our daily lives.
