When Rebecca Smith
founded construction company The A.D. Morgan
Corp. in 1989 at the age of 29,
she knew she was in for a challenge.
As a young woman leading a
group of older men, Smith had
to work extra hard for respect.
But instead of making her presence felt by pounding her fist
and reminding everyone that
she was the boss, Smith took
the opposite route.
“This ominous power that
comes from an ivory tower
doesn’t work,” the company’s
president says. “I needed to be
very tactile, real and in touch
with those folks because they
needed to find strengths, security and safety, and they needed
to feel good about me. Therefore,
they needed to know who I was,
and showing strength at the
same time that you maintain
restraint is key.”
Smith followed that philosophy in growing the company —
which employs about 50 people
— to 2007 revenue of about
$75 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Smith about how to communicate with employees to stay in
touch with them and stay out of
the ivory tower.
Be part of the team, but be in
charge. You need to be in
touch. You need to be very
real. You need to lead by
example. You need to not be
afraid to be constructively
critical and leave it in a positive, lesson-oriented message.
You go in, bite with the bad
news, step back and leave it
on a level of, ‘I know this is
not your normal behavior
because you are generally
such a capable manager,’ or,
‘You are such a capable
superintendent, but let’s
agree that this particular circumstance can’t continue.
So, let’s get back to where
you were.’
So, I come in with a message, and I am very clear and
very specific and very honest
and very direct, but the
friendship part is, I’m not
going to leave you wounded.
I’m going to leave you with
the sense that I believe this
is a hiccup and not a trend.
Look at an employee’s full body of
work. If I see a general
malaise in their attitude or a
little bit of a flip, cavalier
sense, I jump them pretty
hard. If they are generally
tasking and working and just
have made an error or overlooked something, the message is still direct, and it’s
very honest. I just don’t keep
harping on it.
That’s part of that being in
touch. You can’t lead from an
ivory tower. You have to
know what is going on with
people. Let’s just say that
there was something going
on in their personal life that I
had been made aware of. If
they were not on their game
and not necessarily working
at their level, I wouldn’t go
and lambaste somebody that
I knew was struggling personally. I would deal with it a
little more sensitively.
But again, look at the overall performance in their job.
‘What’s going on with you?
Are you feeling like you’ve
got the world licked and you
are in charge of you, and
that’s the end of the story?’
Then we’re probably going
to clip those wings a little bit
more to bring it back down
to a sense of real. ‘You are a
part of this team. You are not
the team. You are responsible to perform, although not
to perfection. We all accept
errors, but this is X, Y, Z
unacceptable.’
You have to know where
you are going, but then you
have to look around you and
say, ‘These are people that I
am trying to motivate, manage and direct. How do I get
them to enjoy my mission?
How do I get them to understand?’ Well, in order to do it
the very best way, you have to
understand each individual.
