Encourage feedback
Just as it’s natural for a leader to want to express his or her opinion as quickly as possible, employees often come into a meeting
expecting to hear their leader making proclamations about what
they need to do.
“It can be a little frustrating for your direct reports, but I try to
make sure I understand their opinion before I give mine,” Bolen
says. “Pay attention to the notion that the first thing you’re doing
is you’re soliciting and listening actively to the opinion of those
around you and then you weigh in later. That makes some folks
uncomfortable. But once they get used to it, they find it very effective.”
It’s all about getting your people to feel comfortable taking a
chance and expressing what they really feel, rather than just telling
you what you want to hear.
“Once they realize it’s not only OK, but that it’s encouraged and the
way it’s designed to work, you get a much more free, open and honest flow of opinion,” he says.
It can take a little while to get to this point if your people aren’t
used to it or if you have new employees who are trying too hard to
impress you with their loyalty.
“Their goal is to mine or try to figure out what I think as quickly
as possible and then adapt their position to that,” Bolen says.
“When they are not able to do that, that can be a little frustrating.
Once they understand how that works, it becomes a much more
comfortable exchange.”
To get to that comfort level, your employees need to feel like
they can approach you and give their opinion without fear of retribution. You need to make yourself accessible.
“Try to end up in situations as often as possible that are just like
normal life,” Bolen says. “Do that frequently and at every level of
the organization. Make sure you’re just as accessible down at the
absolute entry level with the newest, youngest and most impressionable folks as you are in the boardroom. Be able and willing to
navigate that and put in the time to do that. That’s how you’re going
to set the culture.”
Bolen says it’s not as hard as you think. You just need to make
the effort to put yourself in situations where you can get to know
your people.
“It’s amazing how much they talk,” Bolen says. “You’re going to
have a very specific reputation one way or the other. If you’re walking the talk, people will get that and they will talk about it. The next
time you are in a situation where a young person might or might not
want to walk up and engage you in a conversation, they more likely will because they have heard it’s OK to do.”
McCarthy is a 100 percent employee-owned company. But the core of any open
corporate culture is that people need to
feel valued if they are going to feel comfortable expressing themselves.
“They need to believe they are valued and
they need to believe — and they do — that
they have the freedom to poke their nose in
and learn what’s going on,” Bolen says. “Not
only do they get a chance to weigh in with
their input into a situation, but they can feel
free to go gather information and go figure
out what’s going on in a particular situation.
The culture says not only is that OK to do,
but it’s an imperative. If you are honest and
genuine about it, they figure it out and that
becomes the culture of the company.”
