Keep communication consistent. To be an effective communicator, one thing you need to
have is consistency. When
you communicate, you have
to be consistent with all the
groups you talk to — make
sure your message is consistent. The communication
needs to be looking toward
the vision and strategy and
not get too caught up in the
details. You really hope that
your people and your teams
can take that vision and
adapt it their own way. I try
not to be too directive in
that.
When we’re taking on an initiative or talking about a strategy, I try not to give them a
complete cookbook of all the details and action steps. You
have to give them good boundaries and the same general
guidelines so they all understand the vision, but they need
to have the flexibility to implement and be able to adapt as
they work through a project or
initiative.
The other thing is to be open
to feedback. In business today,
and particularly with all the
young people in our firm, they
like to feel like they’re part of
the process. They want to give
feedback, so you have to be
very open to feedback. It’s
important for a leader in
today’s business environment
to have that capability.
Recognize your employees’ brain-power. Your people are your
assets. They’ve got a lot of great ideas, and there is
always a lot of good diversity
of thought, and it’s important
to draw upon that.
When you get this input from
groups, you end up with a better solution in the end than
just one or two people who
are trying to come up with a
solution to something. We do
everything with teams. We
serve clients with a team of
people, so we all kind of brainstorm together and come out
with better answers.
When you do that, you tend
to think of all the different
options and pitfalls that may
arise in a solution if you
have different people
involved who have different
perspectives.
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