With every word he speaks and every move he makes, Lynn Gravley is aware that he’s setting an example for his employees.
Gravley, who founded NT Logistics Inc. in 1999, says that self-aware leaders recognize the qualities they want their employees to exhibit and then try to create followers throughout the company by exhibiting those qualities themselves.
“You just try to be straight up and communicate with everybody, exhibit excellence and demand it,” says Gravley, who serves as president and CEO at the $90 million company. “I sometimes lack in exhibiting that, because we all have our flaws. But you just try to be straight up, communicate and hope everybody else is, too.”
Smart Business spoke to Gravley about how to prove yourself to be a leader worth following.
Get everyone focused. You try to constantly communicate these visions and values. Not that we’re saints, we have our failures, but you just treat people how you want to be treated. That is hard to beat, just setting the example.
One of my favorite sayings is ‘clearly define the written fill-in-the-blank’ — goals and objectives or whatever. So many times I can sit in here and ramble on about something, but we fail to see that we’re trying to get to a certain mark. E-mail is tremendously important, but you have to stay after the relationships, because they’re huge.
A lot of my people will e-mail more than they’ll even call. It seems to be more convenient today. But I’m all the time telling my people to make time to call. Make time to talk. Business today is so much more than just our daily tasks. Take time to talk to our customers, our carriers, ask them about their families, because those things do matter.
You don’t have in-depth conversations with e-mail. You do it to your people, and tell them that you want them to do that with your customers. Show the value of it and tell them that you want them to have that same relationship with your customers.
I make rounds. I try to do it at least three times a week, go out and spend time with my operations people, ask them how they’re doing and how their families are. I ask them what their issues are, what hills they’re trying to climb today. In addition, every time we get a new employee, I always tell them that we’re going to play straight up, because that’s the way we built this business.
