An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Candy: Leadership is to help and guide people to a common goal.
Chris: A leader only exists in the presence of followers. The leader-follower relationship is an expression of influence. Leadership is your ability to influence those around you, to shape their thoughts and their behavior. Being a leader enables you to multiply your impact and achieve with others.
As a part of our series about lessons from Thriving Power Couples, I had the pleasure of interviewing Candy Tsiao, Ph.D., and Chris Madden. For the last three decades this husband-and-wife duo have worked for Michelin across Asia, Europe, and the U.S., all while raising their four children (including twins!). Candy is a chemist who has spent most of her career in material design and development, and Chris is an engineer working in tire design. He now leads global strategic projects on R&D efficiency and design for sustainability.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Chris: When we married, Candy was already in R&D and I was in manufacturing. We both wanted an expatriation, but it seemed hard to arrange since we were in such different sectors of the company. I was interested in R&D, but I made the transfer in large part to make it easier for us to go abroad. And that was successful. We’ve spent more than 8 years in international assignments in France, Thailand, and China. I’ve been in R&D ever since.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you two got married?
Candy and Chris: While we were living in Shanghai another American couple invited us to a dinner party. One guest, Frank, was a great conversationalist and almost annoyingly well-informed. No matter the subject, he seemed to already know the key facts and figures. And he asked very perceptive questions about Michelin in China. It was only at the end of the evening we learned he was Frank Langfitt, NPR’s correspondent in China at the time and author of the book, The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Candy: My first project at Michelin was to survey ways to make a very rigid material. We make our lab material in an internal mixer and my material did not drop out of the mixer because it was too tacky. My lab technician had to use a putty knife to get the material out. The reason is one of the materials had a melting point that was close to the temperature of my mixer. I learned that I need to check the properties of raw material and assess what risks they could bring before doing my studies.
Chris: As a young Industrial Engineer, I had the chance to brief the North American Industrial Director on the need for a major investment project at our factory. My short presentation was a home run and the Industrial Director asked me “to sit next to him and advise him” for the remainder of the meeting. I felt fully empowered, to the point where I was comfortable disagreeing on some points with the Plant Manager, my boss’ boss. Trouble was, the Industrial Director left after the meeting, and I was still there working for the Plant Manager. I learned a great lesson about the importance of remaining humble even when we are empowered by an extraordinary leader.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Candy: Respect for people. It’s one of Michelin’s five values. Especially when managing sensitive topics, the company always makes sure people are treated with compassion and empathy.
Chris: On May 7, 1995 a tornado severely damaged our factory in Ardmore, Oklahoma. Michelin had acquired the Uniroyal Goodrich tire company just 5 years before, and at that time, this factory produced Uniroyal and BF Goodrich tires, not Michelin brand tires. The factory was a major employer in Ardmore, and I think many people were worried about what the damage would mean for the community. It only took a few days for our CEO to announce that Michelin would re-build and strengthen its role in the community. I believe that decision was made mainly on the basis of our core value of respect for people.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
Candy: As a materials designer, I’m working on new ways to increase the amount of sustainable materials in our tires, such as recycled materials and materials derived from plants. Our ambition is to make our products out of 100% sustainable materials by 2050.
Chris: I feel lucky to be working on Michelin’s effort to eliminate the environmental footprint of our factories. Tire manufacturing uses organic solvents called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that cause smog when the chemicals evaporate. At Michelin, we’ve dropped our VOC emissions by about 48% in the last 10 years. Our goal is to cut what remains in half by 2030, positioning us to achieve our target of zero by 2050. This is just one of several areas of environmental leadership for Michelin.
What advice would you give to other leaders to help their employees to thrive?
Candy: Be aware of your biases — both conscious and unconscious. We need to let people demonstrate their strengths.
Chris: Pay attention! And adapt your actions and your style to what each person needs. Sometimes there is a hidden issue you have to find and solve. Sometimes there is a blind spot you have to help them see. Sometimes you just need to get out of their way.
How do you define “Leadership”?
Candy: Leadership is to help and guide people to a common goal.
Chris: A leader only exists in the presence of followers. The leader-follower relationship is an expression of influence. Leadership is your ability to influence those around you, to shape their thoughts and their behavior. Being a leader enables you to multiply your impact and achieve with others.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Candy: Not to sound cliché, but my parents. They immigrated from Taiwan to the U.S. and built a better life for us. They never made my brother and me feel there was something we couldn’t achieve. I had the freedom to choose what I wanted to do, and they worked very hard to provide for us.
Chris: I’m grateful to Duke University Professor Alan Biermann for sponsoring me when I wanted to make a special major in Artificial Intelligence. He had a grant from the Army to study voice recognition systems for helicopter pilots. While the software was working well in the quiet Computer Science lab, I was curious how that would translate to a noisy helicopter. Professor Biermann encouraged me to pursue the question, and the Army gave me a recording of a real helicopter sound and measurements of the sound pressure levels so I could test the software in a realistic setting.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
Chris: I believe your manager can have an enormous influence on your happiness, whether positive or negative. I hope that each person whom I have served as manager would say that I had a positive impact on their lives and careers. I’ve had the opportunity before to help an employee on their growth and development path, even when they were feeling very down about their career and it was unclear to them and others what their next step would be. Years later, after their retirement, the person came up to me and thanked me, saying that turning point made a huge difference in their personal life as well.
What are the “5 Things You Need To Thrive As A Couple”? Please share a story or example for each.
Candy: Don’t let issues fester. Chris and I come from very different family dynamics. My family will express our feelings quickly where his is more reserved. One day early in our marriage, he kind of blew up on me and it was over something very trivial. Then he went on about all of the things that were bothering him from before. I told him that he needed to tell me when I do things that bothered him and not let them fester.
Chris: Financial intimacy. When we were first married, we decided that our money was OUR money, not his or hers. Since then, our paychecks have always been deposited into the same account and we decide together on all major purchases. Candy helped me learn to become a more careful spender. And around fifteen years ago I started taking our financial planning much more seriously. As a result, money issues are a strength and a source of stability, rather than a strain on our relationship. Remember to find the balance between the relationship and the careers. We both pour a ton of energy and passion into our jobs, but it is clear that our relationship, and more broadly our roles within our family, are categorically more important. Thanks to Michelin we haven’t faced big potential conflicts, but, if we did, I’m sure we’d both choose family over career. To quote a Chinese colleague: “Keep it hot!” 😉 We celebrate our 28th anniversary this month. In our nearly three decades married and with all the distractions raising children, it is easy to fall into routines, take each other for granted, and fail to continue to invest in the relationship. You have to keep dating. How long has it been since you brought flowers home? Or gave your partner a foot massage?
If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger!
Candy: Respect for others. I feel that over time we as a society have been hyper focused on doing whatever we want to do and have lost the notion of respect for others. We are becoming more selfish.
Chris: I’d like to inspire a movement of finding common ground on constructive topics — focusing on things that unite and inspire us and encourage us to live up to the values we share. We spend too much time creating dissatisfaction and division and blaming others instead of taking positive action within our own sphere of influence.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Candy: Don’t sweat the small stuff. With a fulltime job and 4 kids, I can’t be worrying about everything. I have to decide what’s important and what’s not. The world will still be standing, my kids will still be happy, and work will still be there if I don’t sweat the small stuff.
Chris: A favorite of mine is this poem by A. E. Housman from A Shropshire Lad, 1896
FROM far, from eve and morning
And yon twelve-winded sky,
The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither: here am I.
Now — for a breath I tarry
Nor yet disperse apart —
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart.
Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind’s twelve quarters
I take my endless way.
It reminds me of the temporary nature of this life and that our emphasis should be on helping each other. It isn’t our net worth or our prized possessions or our business title that will matter in a few short years when we’re gone. What will matter is how we treated others and whether we left the world a better place than we found it.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them
Candy: I would love to cook a lunch or breakfast meal with José Andrés, of two MICHELIN Starred, minibar, to learn some new recipes and techniques.
Chris: I’d love to meet Frank Langfitt again. He’s NPR’s London correspondent now and recently reported on British reactions to Ted Lasso. Maybe we could catch up over a pint in the pub featured on the show? It would also be great fun to meet Mayim Bialik. I grew up watching Jeopardy! and I’d love to know how the show works behind the scenes. And of course, she was stellar in The Big Bang Theory, too.
How can our readers follow your work online?
Candy: Any time you see a single, extra-wide tire replacing two tires on a large truck, you’re following my work. I helped develop what we call the X One, and it’s designed to help fleets manage fuel efficiency and weight savings.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Lessons from a Thriving Power Couple, With Chris Madden and Candy Tsiao of Michelin North America was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.