Team-building at breakfast

Denise Christy, president, Humana Michigan

Denise Christy has a special formula
for building a sense of teamwork
among her senior managers. It’s centered on two main ingredients that
form the backbone of her weekly interaction with her direct reports: eggs and
coffee.

Each Friday morning, Christy and her
seven-member managerial team at
Humana Michigan meet at an area
restaurant for breakfast. The team talks
about in-house items of business, customer matters and trends in the local
economy that might affect the $332 million Michigan branch of nationwide
health insurer Humana Inc.

Christy, the president of Humana
Michigan since 2003, says the breakfasts started as an attempt to stop a
growing negative trend in her business.
Her managers were becoming so
wrapped up in running the business,
they weren’t finding opportunities to
connect with one another.

“I found I wasn’t getting enough
downtime to speak with my direct
reports, so we started to have breakfast
with each other every Friday morning
at 7:30,” Christy says. “We go to a little
café, and it’s not a staff meeting, it’s
just a cup of coffee and some eggs. We’ll
tell each other what is going on in the
marketplace; what are you hearing on
the streets, what is going on with your
customers? It’s an opportunity for the
whole team to have a chance to dialogue about the business.”

Those breakfasts, she says, have done
more for developing unity and camaraderie than any formal meeting she
could ever hold.

There is still a time and place for formal meetings with an agenda, but
Christy says any good business leader
will never underestimate the power of
casual banter over coffee and food. It is
one of the most effective ways to not
only allow employees to share ideas
with each other but to also strengthen
the personal relationships that will
allow them to comfortably work together.

At Humana Michigan, Christy tries to
make everyone feel like a contributing
member of the team. She says a team-oriented environment isn’t something
you can control from the head office.
You must cultivate teamwork by getting
out among your employees and setting
the example.