Talk about
best practices
Michael Neal
president and co-owner, Coscan Construction LLC
Michael Neal likens it to creating a religion. What he’s really doing is reinforcing
the corporate culture of cooperation and
collaboration at every level of Coscan
Construction LLC.
Toward that end, at least quarterly, the
president and co-owner of the construction firm takes a few of his project executives out to dinner at a local restaurant.
“Everybody has to come prepared to
participate in a discussion,” says Neal,
who appeared in the May issue. “What are
you doing that lights your guys up? What
are your leadership challenges? What’s
pissing you off? What have you seen lately that really just inspires you to want to
be better at something? You just go
around the table and you talk, and, at
first, it goes kind of slow. But after 30
minutes, people just can’t wait to chip in
and throw something into the conversation that’s really good.”
Just as you expect your employees to
learn from what you say and do, leaders
should be able to learn from each other.
“If I can’t help you solve your problem,
maybe one of your peers can,” Neal says.
“It just gets networking done at a peer
level so these leaders know I’m not the
only guy who is suffering. I’m not the only
guy who is having issues with employees.
It’s just a way to share the burden, support each other and be better as a collective team.”
As the CEO, you need to always be asking questions and talking about your business.
“If you’re not going out and asking questions about what can I do better, you’re
never going to have the data to tell you
what you’re doing good and what you’re
doing bad,” Neal says. “It’s very important
for businesses and principals of those
businesses to be very introspective. Look
at your own house and find out where
things are not working properly. That’s a
never-ending process. You just have to be
relentless at getting better and improving.
… If you can’t figure that out for yourself,
it would suggest to me that you are either
not spending enough time at work or perhaps you are not in touch with your business well enough.”
