Laurent Choain describes himself on LinkedIn as a talent Impresario and holds the post of Head of Culture and Partnership at the Forvis Mazars Group. NEOMA invited him to give a Keynote Address in early September in the auditorium of our Rouen campus. The audience consisted of first year students on the Master in Management, who were totally captivated.

1/ Cultivate professional friendship 

“Do you know the art of emotional power? That’s something the Army could teach us. In the Army, there are physical confrontations. Now, the first instinctive reflex of a human being in a physical confrontation is to flee. So how do you keep people fighting? The French Army realised that it’s not by forcing them or talking about the cause. Nobody is prepared to die for a cause. People are, on the other hand, prepared to die with a friend. 

That is the concept of command by obedience to friendship. It means I choose to obey you, I choose to put my life on the line because you’re a friend and you are counting on me. 

What is a friend? A friend is somebody who helps me to grow, develop and progress. That is the French Army’s definition of a friend. This notion of professional friendship, though not much found in business, is essential. What you are going to acquire at this School is your ability to become friends.”

2/ Develop your emotional power 

“When you go to a restaurant, you have no choice over whether to pay the bill or not. Now think of the bill as management. Good management is not an option. However, you do have a choice of whether to leave a tip or not. In leadership, the tip is art of activating what it is not possible to pay for. To put it another way, it’s your ability to give the person some emotional power.

For example, tomorrow you might be going to see a professor who has given you a low mark, and you say to him, “I didn’t get a good mark, but your lesson really opened my eyes, I learned loads of things.” There’s nothing forcing you to do that, but that is emotional power. Learn the art of emotional power in everyday life. And you’ll see, you’ll become excellent leaders. As long as you do it in an authentic and sincere way. But you’re going to learn how to do that here.”

3/ Think of training like a treasure hunt

“Approach your learning like a personal quest, not like a competition, that way you can transform pressure into motivation. It’s all about becoming very good at what you’ve chosen to do, striving for your own excellence rather than trying to beat other people.

90% of you are what are known in English as insecure overachievers. People like that are top of the class, but they say to themselves, ‘One day, people will find out that I’m a fraud, an impostor, and as I don’t want to be found out, I work harder, I work like crazy.’ From a managerial point of view, you are like pearls, you create your own motivation all by yourselves. At Forvis Mazars, we mainly recruit insecure overachievers.

That becomes a problem when you become a manager. Then it causes a lot of damage. So we have to take away that toxicity related to your own demons, because you’ll project them onto other people.

Transform what could be a life of competition into a life of treasure-hunting. Your own treasure is what you want to go after.”