Ted Kolp backs up his
desire to develop leaders at RACO Industries Inc. with cash.
Each quarter, the president
and co-owner of the company — which posted 2007 revenue of about $35 million —
gives each of his 13 supervisors $50 per employee in
their department for a quarterly team-building activity.
The practice not only
empowers supervisors at the
company — a reseller of
wireless data capture equipment, application software
and integration — but also
results in a stronger corporate culture.
“It’s just a way to get the people to fellowship and interact a
little bit more,” Kolp says.
Smart Business spoke
with Kolp about how to use
encouragement and appreciation to develop leaders.
Q. What is the process to
developing leaders?
It’s recognizing that part of
your business plan has to be
leadership, leadership
growth — formalizing that in
your business plan so you
have a road map — and
breaking it down into tactics.
‘I want to be able to accomplish this. I want to develop
good leaders. I want to be a
good leader. I want to continue to strive to be a good
leader, so I need to do this,
this, this and this as examples, on a daily basis.’
We’re a company of 85
employees, of which 72 to
75 are located right here in
the headquarters here in
Cincinnati. I go around every
single morning that I’m here and tell everybody, ‘Good
morning. Did you have a nice
evening? How are things
going? Also, did you get this
big job done? Hey, I know
that you guys really stepped
it up yesterday in order to
get this through, and you
took care of this customer.
Thank you very much for
that. What do you need?’
That type of thing. Just
showing appreciation is
something that I make
myself do every day. It can
take up to an hour to do
that, but it’s an investment in my time that I
think is well worth it
because you build
trust, you build candor, you gather ideas,
(employees) take ownership.
Q. What advice would
you give on how to
develop leaders?
To me, this is very
elementary. You have
got to like people.
When I interview a
prospective new salesperson, I’ve got to pull
out of them, I’ve got to
understand, I’ve got to
get an understanding
that they like to sell — they
get a charge out of it.
My wife is a schoolteacher,
and we talk about, ironically,
teachers out there that really
don’t like children. Come on.
So, first of all, to be a good
leader and to recognize the
potential of a good leader,
that leader has to like people
and to be able to understand
that people have strengths
and weaknesses. You maximize those strengths, you
play on those strengths, you
minimize the weaknesses.
