Once a year, you’ll find Brenda Harris on the beach somewhere like Cancun or Puerto Vallarta with some of her 270 employees.
The getaway is a chance for the president and chief operating officer of Talent Tree to reward employees at one of the 65 branches
who have met yearly goals. Offering this type of reward and others, Harris says, motivates employees to work harder to reach
their goals and lets them know that their work is appreciated at the full-service staffing and placement services company that
estimates its revenue to reach $200 million in 2007. Smart Business spoke with Harris about how getting to know your
employees from the bottom up can make a company successful from the top down.
Start with the little things. I send out e-mails
daily to recognize individuals or branches
or regions. Sometimes it might be small
things; sometimes it’s a big deal. It’s just all
about letting them know you saw it, and
you know about it, and it’s great.
Try it with the small things. It doesn’t
have to be very costly. You have to be listening to what’s happening in your business to know where those successes are or
where someone has done something that is
special or that they should get a hurrah for.
Make sure you’re hearing those things so
that you can send that special note or that
special e-mail or pick up the phone and call
them. You can give rewards, like employee
of the month or employee of the quarter,
but most of it comes down to that individual attention.
Let others lead. You’re always listening to
the problems and the issues, but when
you’re listening, ask the people for what
their recommendation is to fix those. I
don’t feel like you personally have to
always come up with the solution — most
of the time the employee knows the solution if they’re the one having the problem.
Try to help them help you resolve the problem, and let them be part of the fix.
Make the time. No matter what their
issue or problem is, sit down with them, try
to resolve it, listen through it, make the
decision, and empower them to go out and
resolve it.
If they are part of the solution, they’re
going to put it out there, and they’re going
to make it happen. People want to be a part
of something that they feel like they can be
a big piece of and they can be a big contributor to. If you can paint that vision to
them, and they’re on board, they want to be
part of that success.
Live your culture and vision. A culture is not
announced. It is created by a constant
focus on values. Do what you say you are
going to do.
You can recognize a healthy culture by its
employees. Do they embrace and live the values? Are they excited about what they
do? A culture is the foundation of the company, and the leaders must embody the values and live it daily. Culture is how you
treat one another.
The decisions that you make for the company have to constantly tie back into that
vision. If you go out there making random
decisions that are not tied to that, you can
get off on a different path.
It’s just constant reinforcement of what
that vision is. It has to be specific for each
individual in the company about what part
they play in it. Using flowery words, people
don’t really embrace that. Articulate the
vision in the language that makes sense to
them. Communicate it constantly.
Be involved. If you’re involved and you’re
out sitting with employees and being a part
of whatever’s going on in your company
and not putting yourself above them,
employees will understand that they have
that openness with you. Sitting in training
classes, sitting in meetings, going out and bringing in lunch, and sitting down with
employees and talking about issues creates
that openness.
Don’t take the easy way out. The hardest part
of being a leader is that you have a lot of
issues coming at you all at the same time
and learning to prioritize those issues of
which one will give the company the greatest impact. Sometimes it’s easier to take
the ones that are easy to fix first or those
that are making the most noise versus
looking at them all and going with the one
that will make the most impact on everyone if it’s resolved first.
That’s always a juggling act. You have to
look at all of them on a regular basis to figure out what that is, make the decision and
go after that one first.
Learn to lead. I have worked in all the jobs at
Talent Tree, moving up from the field level
to here. If someone else has not had that
opportunity, they need to go out and learn
as much as they can.
Spend some time with employees. You
don’t always have to be the one telling
everyone how to do and what to do; you
can be there as a partner and try to understand what’s going on. Then you can come
back and lead the company.
Realize that you don’t have to know everything. When I came into the corporate environment, all of a sudden I was faced with IT,
accounting, billing and collections.
I thought I had to learn all of that, but I
learned pretty quickly that you don’t have
to know about every detail, about every
department. Just know enough to know
how it affects your internal and external
customers, and then you can ask the right
questions. Once you know the right questions to ask, you’ve got to make sure you
bring in the experts that can mirror your
culture and can get the job done. You don’t
have to know all of that yourself.
HOW TO REACH: Talent Tree, www.talenttree.com or (713) 789-1818