Success Stories

Management Exchange Stories

In the IMPM, participants spend four days on an exchange at the office of another participant in another country and observe their fellow manager at work.

Getting to know you, getting to know me

A Japanese manager with an engineering background exchanged with a female English manager with a non-technical background who managed a distributed technical team of over 500 people.  From observing her during the first two modules, he thought she would be a confident, sometimes arrogant and directive manager. The Japanese manager reflected that, in Japan, it would be very unusual for a non-technical, female manager to be respected by a predominantly male, technical team.  During the exchange, he was surprised to see that she had a frank, open, fair and objective managerial style. Her team respected her fully. Watching her manage, he envied her team for the care and commitment she showed them. By the end of the exchange, he instinctively felt that he could really trust her. Reflecting on this, on his own management style and a new and difficult challenge he was facing at work, he concluded; “These two weeks were the most precious weeks in my life”.

What’s that you said?

“I believed I was a very logical and rational leader with a relatively soft and generous character. Conversely, according to my partner’s feedback after the managerial exchange visit, I realized that I had a very tough and demanding leadership style that could suppress debate on issues and limit the range of solutions. In addition, I exercised such a detail-oriented leadership that my subordinates did not have any room to build their own competence. It was shocking to me. However, it was a valuable report because now I can see my leadership style from the view point of a third party and his feedback was helpful in reflecting on my leadership style in handling cultural issues.”