Denise Reading has reinvented her leadership style as she evolved into her position as president of Corporate College, a division of Cuyahoga
Community College that offers employers continual training for their employees. She’s constantly looking at her skill set and challenging
herself to find strong people in her weak areas, and that re-examination process has allowed her to give her 65 employees the support and
tools they need to succeed. Smart Business spoke with Reading about how she has to eat the lima beans even though she doesn’t like them.
Strive to learn. You have to be willing to reinvent yourself and make
things that were not your core strength and force them onto your
plate. I don’t like lima beans, but I’ve got to eat them.
If you come to a point of leadership where you think you hold all
the answers, then you’re probably ready to retire because if you
have all the answers, then you’re not growing, because the world
is changing so quickly. There are things that each of us address
daily in business that a year ago weren’t even part of the agenda.
Hire the best. ‘A’ leaders surround themselves with ‘A’ players, and ‘B’
leaders surround themselves with ‘C’ players. A leader has to decide
that they’re not afraid to have people that are smarter than them or
have talent or skills that are different than them. Get the best talent,
and augment your own skills.
If I’m a visionary, intuition leader, I need to have someone standing next to me who has more sense of procedure or is data-driven
because then our team is stronger because you get my instinct and
vision and their data-driven process that allows us to have the
most solid decision.
Put together a team that complements one another and has a lot
of diversity. Diversity includes all the things that we think about in
diversity — race, religion, gender and sexual orientation — but
also diversity in style and performance and the way you come to a
job.
Hire performers. You know when an employee is coming to a job,
and you know when an employee is coming to something that they
feel purposefully driven to do, and it’s a part of what they want to
be about. You see that in their performance.
The real difference between ‘A’ players and ‘B’ players may not
be a difference of talent, smarts or intelligence, it may be a difference of, ‘Am I in a job that I have passion about? Am I in a job that
I have bought in to the vision?’
Look for performance. Look for that little bit more than what was on
the job description.
Ask better interview questions. It’s asking really good behavioral-based questions — not what would you do or what do you think,
but what have you done? Can you show me? Can you demonstrate?
Even if they don’t have a lot of work experience, they have life
experience that they should be able to draw on to answer behavioral-based questions.
Hire achievers. I have to have a sense of excellence — that they are
committed to a personal sense of performance excellence. Being
average is not part of their vocabulary; they want to achieve. That
is important in the team that they have a sense of urgency of we
need to get our work done — this has to happen.
They’re committed to doing the best job possible, and they’re
committed to doing that best job today, not tomorrow. Those are
the things you can’t teach people necessarily. They come to the
table with that, and then they have a sense of openness to learning. If they have a sense of openness to learning, then we can do
anything.
Let underachievers go. Make sure that people who are not able to perform to the standards of your organization are not part of your
organization ongoing. It damages your entire team for them to have
to carry people because of a manager’s inability to deal with that difficult task of letting someone go.
A good manager is someone who’s addressed issues often
enough that there are no surprises. Somebody shouldn’t be surprised that they’re losing their job. Work with people to help coach
them to help them find that this isn’t the right fit for them and help
them find the right thing. I regularly say, ‘It’s OK with me if this isn’t
a right fit for you, or you don’t like it. Please come to me and let
me help you find a new job before you fail.’
It’s easier to help them with a recommendation when you’re both
working on getting a job for them somewhere else than it is after
you have said to them, ‘You have to go.’ Once you’ve fired them,
you’re not a good reference.
Create buy-in. If you’ve hired people that have great talent, it’s your
job to get out of the way. I think of my job as the person who
removes barriers and brings resources to their initiative that helps
us fulfill the mission.
I’m here as a resource as opposed to a micromanager. Empower
people by making sure they all have clear expectations of the outcomes you’re seeking.
Communicate it regularly and often. They need to see it in print.
It has to be visual. It has to be something that they hear and see. It
has to be something that you show in demonstration.
Support your human capital. Companies die because of a lack of innovation and productivity. They die because their human capital has
a lack of ability to meet whatever those strategic initiatives are.
Companies die by the actions of people. If you give your human
capital the resources that they need to learn and grow, they will be
more productive and innovative. Productivity and innovation are
the lifeblood of economic growth. None of that happens without a
human being.
Ask questions regularly, especially if you’re a fast-growing business. Are these the people for the business today, and do they have
the talent? If these are my right people — they’re loyal, they have the
values and the work ethic — how do I help them get that extra skill
that will push them to the top?
Make the financial investment to get folks up to speed — close
the talent gap. Make sure they have the tools, and invest in your
work force to help them reach those goals.
HOW TO REACH: Corporate College, (216) 987-5875 or www.corporatecollege.com