Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/734166
46 SMT Magazine • October 2016 by Stephen Las Marias I-CONNECT007 In an interview with SMT Magazine during the recent NEPCON South China trade show in Shenzhen, Jean-Marc Peallat, vice president of global sales at Vi TECHNOLOGY, shared his thoughts on the role of a leader and how it dif- fers from that of a manager; how management has evolved over the past decade; and why in- spiration is the key to leadership. He also dis- cussed how to lead the younger generation, and what the office or shop floor will look like 10– 20 years from now. Stephen Las Marias: Jean-Marc, please briefly de- scribe your role at Vi Technology. Jean-Marc Peallat: My role at Vi Technology, as global sales VP, is to manage the cross-cultur- al Sales and Applications teams across Europe, Asia and Americas. Of course, the obvious key metric on that position is to generate the reve- nues of the companies but the key metric is to grow company's customer base by creating long term relationship with our customer. This is possible only if you offer solutions that match customers' expectations, if you provide state of the art service and if you associate customers in new product development. Las Marias: How do you know if you are an effec- tive leader? Peallat: It's a tough question. And it would be very pretentious to state myself as an effective leader! But, I would say that an effective leader is able to achieve his goals while sharing his ob- jectives and vision with his team. Las Marias: So a leader inspires them. Peallat: Yes. There are two ways. You can achieve your goals with a team puzzled, segregated by functions or department with no chemis- try when execution of the plan is key. If you are lucky, it works! But when time gets harder, when competition gets stronger, you won't be able to succeed as you may consume too much energy within the teams. With leadership, de- spite differences due to their activities, teams share the same vision and same global objec- tives, they understand each other and support each other. They are open to change to enable success. The leader is the one who creates this INSPIRING OTHERS: The Key to Leadership FEATURE INTERVIEW