Mark Lefanowicz doesn’t want to stay stagnant; so the Michigan native has been all over the country with the hope of gaining
one thing: perspective. Lefanowicz, president of E-LOAN Inc., has seen many leaders succeed in one position, at one place, and
become unwilling to adapt to new trends or new ideas. Instead of staying immobile, Lefanowicz takes time to listen to his 850
employees at E-LOAN to try to understand where they are coming from. With that attitude helping push his vision, the $130
million online mortgage Web site has been named the top mortgage Web site by Keynote WebExcellence for three straight years.
Smart Business spoke with Lefanowicz about how to give employees the right kind of attention and why you have to roll up your
sleeves from time to time.
Give employees the attention they want. I focus
on making sure that I stay involved with my
people. I have a regular schedule of one-onone meetings, and it’s not just putting those
on the calendar just to do it, it’s how you
act during the meetings. The most important thing to me is to listen to make sure
people know that I care.
There are a couple of things you have to
think about when you’re listening. You
should never make an immediate decision.
There’s no possible way that if you meet
with someone for 45 minutes, and they
bring up something substantial, you can
resolve it. One of the things I’ve learned to
do is say, ‘You’ve got eight things you
brought up, and six of them are really easy,
but two of them are really complicated, so
we need to set up something else, and we
need to involve other people. Here’s who I
think we need to involve to resolve this;
what do you think?’
And I’ll work to get the meeting set up
sooner rather than later. They don’t get the
instant gratification that it gets resolved,
but they definitely get the gratification that
you are paying attention to it.
Roll up your sleeves. I feel I have to lead by
doing. I can’t ask somebody to do something that I wouldn’t do or that I couldn’t
offer to help with. People are busy and they
have a lot to do, so if I have to roll up my
sleeves and help, I have no problem with
that. If people here are successful, that
means I’ll be successful, so I like to be as
involved as possible.
If I can impart that on my direct reports,
and then they can impart that on the people under them, then it can quickly get to a
point where everyone in the company can
say, ‘Jeez, the guy that leads the company
understands what we’re doing, which is
great because he can help us, and he’s really concerned about this company, which
makes it a great place to work.’ When the
leader is concerned about making sure the
company will succeed and is willing to do
whatever it takes to push that to his closest
people — who are the future leaders —
others are willing to do the same.
Share the vision. I make sure I have one-on-ones with my key direct reports, and I’m
going to make sure that those people have
one-on-ones with their direct reports. I get
10 to 12 people in that meeting, and I give
everyone a chance to talk about the last
two weeks and then tell us about what
they’re focusing on in the next two weeks.
And, in that, I can get a really good flavor as
to if people understand what we’re trying
to accomplish.
It helps because people have to understand, people are more excited about their
work if they know what’s going on at the
top — at least people you want to have
work for you are more excited about doing
things if they understand the vision at the
top. You want people that are excited
about coming to work every day, and if you
can get them to do that, they’re going to
work harder, and they’re going to work
smarter, and they’re going to work better.
Keep your head up. One of the things that I
believe has made me successful is perseverance. The attitude is, ‘Yes, I can do it.’
You have to do it smart, but you have to believe that you can do it.
That’s something you can develop. You
have to stay focused on the fact that you’re
committed to those responsibilities that
nobody else has.
You agreed to effectively say, ‘I’m going to
try to make this company as good as it’s
going to be.’ Being at the top, at any company, it can be quite lonely at times, but you
have to stay loyal to those commitments
you made to the people under you, and you
have to maintain the positive attitude, and
you have to persevere.
You get a lot of good, but you get a lot of
bad, too. You have to remember when
you’re in those bads that you’re not in the
goods right now, but if you persevere, the
goods are going to come back even better.
Cut the cord gracefully. The hardest thing is
making the tough decision about people
themselves. I have eight to 10 people working under me at any time. I can almost guarantee that one of those is just doing an OK
job and will move from that to doing a not
OK job. That’s the hardest thing is saying,
‘You did a good job in this position for two,
three years, but you’re not the right person
for this job anymore, and it’s time for you to
move on.’
You want to try to do it so they can move
on gracefully. To me, it’s important that if
people leave, that you show them dignity
and respect.
It’s important because the basic ways you
can motivate people, generally, are around
reward and fear, and fear never works as
well. If everybody thinks they can just get
fired on a whim, and it won’t be dignified,
that’s not a good thing.
If everybody feels that the company itself
treats everyone fairly, effectively you are
rewarding and motivating them with that
culture. Reward isn’t just money, it’s also a
good feeling where they can say, ‘Yeah, I
enjoy going to work every day and the people around me. We’re working toward the
same goal and successes.’
HOW TO REACH: E-LOAN Inc., (925) 847-6200 or
www.eloan.com