As president of Initial Tropical Plants Inc., Sally Briese can relate to the challenges faced by her staff — in her 27 years at the company,
she has held every position there. After taking a front-line job as a service technician directly out of college, Briese was promoted to branch
manager, then to regional manager and then to executive vice president, all the while filing away leadership ideas for if she were ever
named president — which happened earlier this year. As the leader of the nation’s largest interior landscape contractor, Briese stresses
the importance of staying close to the front lines and allowing each of the company’s 1,500 employees the opportunity to make meaningful contributions.
Smart Business spoke with Briese — who oversees 40 branch offices with $110 million in annual revenue — about
building trust and the difference between being a leader and being a victim.
Focus on what is truly important. I try to keep
my focus on the co-workers and the customers, versus thinking about what I might
be doing or how something might affect
me. As I have grown through the organization in different leadership roles, I always
have kept my focus on the vision of where
we might be going rather than on myself.
It highlights what is most important,
which, again, is co-workers and customers,
and trying to keep those things in hand.
Almost everything that we do, we try to
sense check what we are doing as it plays
over the co-workers and over the customers. It can be any strategy that we have.
Any strategic objective that we put in
place, we ask, ‘How does that relate to the
co-workers, and how does that relate to the
customers?’
We had a time that there was a lot of self-interest in the leadership role, and the message to the co-workers and ultimately, the
customers, was that they were not important. It keeps you focused on the right
things.
Make your employees leaders, not victims. You
have to try to put a leadership culture on
the forefront for everybody and talk about
it a lot. Set that example by being yourself.
I try to remind everybody that they have
choices, and these are everyday choices;
they are not necessarily monumental
things. Every day, you have a choice of
whether you want to be a leader or a victim. I try to keep that at the forefront of
everybody’s mind, and strongly encourage
(people) to be the leaders of their own
lives, their own jobs and take a lot of personal responsibility.
A lot of times, people at first will say, ‘I
don’t want to be a leader.’ But when they
realize that the choice of not being a leader
is being a victim, then they say, ‘Oh, OK,
well then yes, I would rather have control over my destiny and my own life.’ And how
really important that is.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have
to lead other people but that you have to
know yourself and lead your own program.
It is exciting to people once they realize
what they can do and be.
Don’t place blame; instead, look inward. Being
a victim is a terrible place to be, and we had
that for a while in our culture, where people just did not have any hope. They just
gave up, and they didn’t believe that we
could accomplish anything as a group.
There was a lot of mistrust in the community of the company, and that all comes
from that victim culture.
You have to set the example of knowing
yourself, and you have to look inward for
all the answers. It’s very easy to look outside to blame things and others, but really,
you look inward first. From there, you
know yourself and you find your own
voice.
That leads to building trust with all your
co-workers and your customers. The thing
is for people to be more conscious of their own choices and look inward and then be
clear.
The more you communicate that out to
your co-workers and your customers and
your entire community, your culture
becomes very strong because people know
very well what it means to work here.
Build trust with honest communication. The
best way to communicate, first and foremost, is by setting the example. That’s honest communication. You have to build that
trust because, like in any relationship, the
trust is important.
You have to be consistent in the example
that you set. It’s being consistent and really
walking the talk. Those are the trust-builders. The best way to do it is to just be
it, and set that example. Anything else,
eventually people see through that.
We’re trying to engage the hearts and
minds of the people now. I’ve worked in
this company for a long time, and there
was definitely a time, 20 years ago, when
we were trying to improve productivity by
driving people, incentivizing people and
that kind of thing. Now there’s a real shift
to engagement. They have to want to bring
their hearts and minds to the program, and
that’s how we get productivity now.
Breaking the trust of the people takes so
long to build back up again. Communication is so important for you to be consistent and to set the right example and communicate it over and over again by being it.
If you fail there, building the trust back, just
like in any relationship, takes a long time.
You’re working hard to get the hearts and
minds of people, and that is a big responsibility. If you break the trust, you are breaking somebody’s heart there. That is a terrible thing to have to overcome and get back.
HOW TO REACH: Initial Tropical Plants Inc., (847) 634-4250 or
www.initialplants.com