Winning tips

Alan Levine
president and CEO, Broward Health

Calvin J. Miller
CEO, Associated Grocers of Florida Inc.

Keep your eyes open

Alan Levine is not afraid to admit that
he makes mistakes. Just because you’re
the CEO, that doesn’t mean you’re
immune from slipping up once in awhile.
The important thing is that you acknowledge it when it happens.

“Just a few weeks ago, I made a mistake,” says Levine, who was on the cover
in January. “It was a management issue. I
made a decision to do something and the
outcome wasn’t what I had hoped for. I
remember the doctor pointing out to me
the net result of my mistake. I looked at
him, and I said, ‘Yeah, I pretty much
screwed that up. How do I get out of it?
Help me get out of it.’

“The discussion was no longer about the
mistake, it was, ‘OK, now what do we do
to get out of it?’ At that point, I engaged
him in the dialogue. People know you’re
going to make mistakes. The best management lesson I’ve learned is recovery
from the mistake is the most important
part. If you dwell on it and get defensive
about it, people don’t trust you. They are
just going to lose their confidence.

“It really is disarming when somebody
comes to you and they are ready to
pounce on you because you screwed up,
and you say, ‘Yeah, I really screwed up, didn’t I?’ All of a sudden it’s like, ‘You’re not
supposed to admit it. You’re supposed to
defend yourself.’ If I made a mistake, I’m
going to defend myself and I’m going to
admit it. It’s quite liberating personally to
not feel like you have to carry that burden.

Show you care

Sharing company business with employees is vital to gaining their acceptance.
But you also need to show yourself to be
a real person who does not just view your
employees as a means to financial gain, says
Calvin J. Miller, president and CEO at
Associated Grocers of Florida Inc.

Miller, who was the subject of our cover
story in February, likes to take a walk
around his company at least once a day.

During one of his walks last year, Miller
came across a vehicle in the company parking lot that had a tire that was nearly flat. It
turned out the car belonged to an employee
who was having a tough time at home with
her family and couldn’t afford new tires.

“I just said, ‘You can’t drive a car like that.
I want you to go get four new tires, and you
don’t have to pay me back. I just want you
to be safe,’” Miller says.

It is those kinds of acts as a leader that
will encourage your employees to buy in to
your plan and bring their support to your
leadership.

“If you’re not sincere in what you’re doing,
people read that,” Miller says. “You might
get away with it for six months, but you’ve
got to be real about everything you do. Let
people know that you are real and that you
really care about the company, them and
their families. Treat people like you want to
be treated. If they don’t accept it, maybe it’s
not the company they should be with.”