Given the choice, Javier San Juan would like to look you in the eye. The president and CEO of L'Oréal Canada, the Canadian operations of the Paris-based beauty and cosmetics manufacturing giant L'Oréal Group, prefers face-to-face interaction over any other mode of communication. It's not only his personal style, but a matter of culture.
"The capacity to read people well is something that I got from my mother," says Mr. San Juan, a Spaniard who holds master's degrees in law and in economy from the University ICADE in Spain, as well as a master's degree from HEC (École des Hautes Études Commerciales) in Paris. "It's easier to do that one-to-one or in a group when you can see how people move their hands and look at you. Eye contact is important. When people are talking [in person] they may be more open."
With 1,200 employees across Canada, he admits that personal interaction with the people who work for him is a challenge, but tries to do his best. Every month, he sits down to breakfast with about 15 to 20 people chosen from the company - but never from top management - to talk about anything they want.
"It's a very open conversation," says Mr. San Juan. "I learn a lot about what's happening in the company, the real things, and I'm able to explain my beliefs and my worries to them."
Before taking the top spot at L'Oréal Canada in 2006, he headed their operations in Argentina and Romania. And before that, the multilingual Mr. San Juan (he speaks four languages) was director of finance and operations for L'Oréal in Russia from 1994 to 1998.
"One of the most important things for a manager is to know what is really going on," says Mr. San Juan. "I also love to walk around the office. When you are the CEO, you're surrounded by people who sometimes think it's their job to protect you from knowing the truth, just because they want your well being. So I think that having personal interaction with people is an important thing."
When personal communication isn't possible, he turns to new technologies, using the internet and social media to share with people. Mr. San Juan does webcasts and tweets as much as twice a day, although "only when he has something to say".
One of the things he's tried to do in the past year is to break silos by making sure that information flows very quickly throughout the company and that everybody has access to the information.
A lot of how the company communicates is on their corporate intranet site, which allows people to share what's going on in the company, as well as updates about the competition and consumers. Onsite plasma televisions located in gathering areas and a company newsletter also help employees stay current.
"I believe that information is power," says Mr. San Juan. "And it's the kind of power that you should definitely share. I think the time where you use information just to have power over people is over."
Another challenge Mr. San Juan has tackled inside the company is bridging the gap between generations on staff, a HR program that's been very successful.
"In any human situation, understanding is part of the key to communication," says Mr. San Juan. "When we explain the values of Generation Y to the baby boomers, and vice versa, they're able to interact and understand each other better. Our job is to make our people grow, and in order to grow, we have to interact with people."
Sometimes his best insights come from the company's mistakes.
When one of L'Oréal's brands was giving something away, it was so successful that they didn't have enough products in time to provide all the gifts.
"People started criticizing the company on Facebook and Twitter, saying 'You promised something and you didn't deliver' - which was right," explains Javier San Juan. "What was a surprise was that some of our fans came to the rescue saying, 'Don't be tough on them, they told us that they would have a limited number, they're doing their best.' Then suddenly, the people doing the criticizing were saying, 'You're right.' That's what is wonderful about social media."
Now Mr. San Juan feels that we've had social media all wrong. He figures that customers aren't interested in him telling them something or in interacting with him. What they want is to talk to each other.
"That's the big change," says Mr. San Juan. "We thought that having a conversation was the key to social media but it's not. They want to talk about themselves. The only thing that we should do is to try to build a house for them to interact. I think that's one of the best things and we didn't do it. Our fans did it for us."