Carlos Ghosn Case Study

Nature, Nurture & Situation: This paper is an attempt to throw some light into the leadership qualities displayed by Carlos Ghosn. A businessman with his roots in Brazil, Lebanon and France is currently the incumbent Chairman and CEO of Renault, Chairman of Nissan and Chairman of Mitsubishi Motors. He is widely known as Turnaround specialist- a person who could turn around business from losses to profitability and he had done the same with Renault and Nissan during his business career. Born to Lebanese-Brazilian parents, Carlos Ghosn completed his education between Lebanon and France. Throughout his career he has worked for companies like Michelin, Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi Motors. He is widely regarded as one of the most successful
Carlos Ghosn is an expert when it comes to “change leadership”. It has been one of his key strengths. The transformation of Nissan from its years of negative growth into one of the most profitable and well managed organizations is a proof for that. The importance of having a purpose for any activity was of utmost importance to Carlos Ghosn. In that regard he always emphasized the need to work towards a common goal. To that extent he separated the functional units within the organization and encouraged collaboration among them to work towards the common goal. He always laid extra emphasis on the need for identifying the problems within the company. He would ask cross functional teams to come up with such problems, discuss about then and finally formulate a strategy to solve
His ability to engage with people is yet another significant area of strength. He was always able to connect with the people around him and his engagement with the Nissan employees during the Nissan Revival Plan is an example of that. Simultaneously he was also able to motivate his employees and more importantly he had the ability to “empathize” with them. As a result his employees would always listen to him since the emotional connect he had with them was very impactful. His multicultural upbringing helped him to get acclimatized with different cultures pretty early in his life. He was able to carry those lessons into his professional life when he had to deal with people from different regions. He was the epitome of transcultural leadership and had tremendous levels of cultural sensitivity. Carlos Ghosn always had the curiosity to learn, understand and act according to changing industry trends. The level of industry intelligence he had was really admirable. It is that level of knowledge which reflected in his performance. He was also very hard working which is evident from his earlier days in Japan where he had to work extra hard to gain the trust of his employees and establish a connect with them. He is obviously good at multi-tasking which is quite evident from the fact that he serves as the chairman of 3 different automotive companies in the form of Renault, Nissan and Mitsubishi. The