Keep in touch. Just the simple act of communicating with people and giving them honest and frequent communication on where we are as a company [makes them] feel like they have a better sense of control over something that they may not have control over. It was important for us to hold a lot of companywide meetings and provide them the facts as we knew it. That gave insight into how we were going to handle it.
Sometimes the facts were not what they wanted to hear, but at least they knew that we were authentic, not giving them just the good facts and holding back the bad facts. The only thing that you can do when you don’t know what’s going to happen is speak honestly and openly and not promise anything that you can’t deliver.
We relayed to them where we stood revenuewise, where we stood on our relationships with our core clients, the information that we were receiving out of them. Every organization has a different balance depending on what their employees are used to hearing. If our employees were never used to hearing information or financial results or where we stood with respect to our clients, if this was the first time, it would be overwhelming.
When you communicate with people as much as we do on a one-on-one basis, you get the feeling when people are stressed out and they’re in need of some sort of [activity.] We have our critical numbers that we run our business on. Everyone is attuned to those critical numbers; they’re published on a weekly basis. So when those successes are slow to happen, we notice that people get tight. The banter also quiets down. When you don’t hear the banter, either they’re working really, really hard or maybe they’re pressing too tight or they’re too stressed out.
Keep your stress in check. Our executive team consistently utilizes one another to evaluate our strengths and our weaknesses. We put a personal priority plan together on a quarterly basis for each other, in which we focus on one of the areas that we would like to strengthen. It acts as a support group in making sure that we’re focused on those things that we want to get better on.
As a leader, I did not want to let my weaknesses become the company’s weaknesses. And so I promised myself that I would listen 10 times more than I did the previous year. I thought that if I truly listened, I would really understand where people stood and where the market stood. That is an opportunity for you to learn but also, probably more importantly, for the people to feel comfortable in their own decisions and their own opinions.
And I also quit golf. For most type-A people, golf is the perfect hobby to flex your desire to conquer something. I have never conquered the game of golf. Every time I got on the golf course, it was not relaxing at all. In fact, it created more anxiety that I couldn’t relax. So I hung up my clubs, and I spent my free time with activities that I could actually start and finish and that provided me a sense of accomplishment.
Weaknesses are accentuated when you put pressure on a person. Don’t let your weaknesses lead the organization, especially in bad times.
How to reach: Resource Technologies Corp., (800) 521-2478 or www.smartworkforce.com