Integrity is more than just a business buzzword to Evans Nwankwo. It is an essential pillar of his business philosophy that has
allowed him to grow Megen Construction Co. from a start-up nearly 15 years ago to a growing $41 million company today.
Nwankwo, a native of Nigeria who emigrated to the U.S. to attend college, founded Megen in 1993 after more than 10 years in
the construction business. His journey from international college student to president and CEO of his own company has shown
Nwankwo the importance of integrity and a straightforward approach when leading people. Smart Business spoke with Nwankwo
about the importance of integrity, vulnerability, and other traits and skills of effective leaders.
Set a good example. Integrity is something
you cannot preach. There is a saying that,
‘What you’re doing speaks so loud I can’t
hear what you’re saying.’
It comes down really to demonstrating
that type of character. That, to me, means
communicating, not just through e-mail but
through speaking in person. Most of the
time, if people see decisions made with
integrity and see it across the company,
they’ll see that you stood by your company’s values and think things through before
making a decision.
Show that you’re human. Trust is not something that develops overnight. Trust is
something that comes with time.
My direct reports see me be the same person year after year. A larger part of a successful business relationship is constantly
being who you are and not changing. That’s
how you build that trust.
I also am not afraid to show that I don’t
have all the answers. I try to be vulnerable
with that so somebody sees that I am not
invincible and that I don’t have all the
answers.
It does more for my direct reports than
for me. If a leader puts himself up on a
pedestal, it seems like he is way up there
and untouchable. But with vulnerability,
people start to see that, ‘Hey, this guy is just
like me, someone who needs to take a
break every now and then, or someone
who needs to leave early to take his kids to
soccer practice. He’s human.’ Having a
level of vulnerability as a leader allows people to realize that I am just like them.
Maintain your culture. Promoting the culture can be very difficult to put into practice
all the time. It’s like saying you’re going to be
able to go out there and lose 25 to 30 pounds.
That’s not really the hard part. The more
difficult part is to keep weight off.
This culture is our DNA. With our people,
it has to be a constant. So I have to promote the same culture to everyone, and
that’s reflected in the way we do things on
a daily basis. That’s the most important way to keep a culture long term.
You need to be very careful when it comes
to hiring the people that will carry on the
culture. You might have heard the saying
that, ‘You have to hire slowly and fire quickly.’ I try to take a great deal of time to hire,
but that hasn’t always been the case.
A project pops up, and sometimes we
picked the first person who came through
the door. Usually, we spend a great deal of
time over the course of several interviews
to really get to know someone and check
out references.
Communicate face to face. Building a
detailed communication culture is great,
but the better way to communicate is
through example. The things that you want
to see in others, you need to show the same
character yourself.
It takes more than words to communicate. Having said that, there are some fundamental ways to communicate. Here, we
have what we call ‘Megen University,’
where we teach and communicate the
technical aspects of what we do. We communicate our culture and share examples
from experiences we’ve had on different
projects, how we handled a situation, how
we learned by example.
Making time for communication depends
on the size of the company. As you grow, it becomes more difficult to touch everyone
in the company on a daily basis. Now that
our company is a fairly large size, it is difficult for me as a leader to touch everyone.
I try to counteract that by making sure
that my executives get in touch with everyone constantly, so that the cultural pipeline
stays constant and that is communicated
all the way through the company. However,
I do still walk around as much as I can. It is
very critical, and it’s how you stay close to
the ground level.
If you don’t have time, make time. There is
no secret to making time for one-to-one
communication. Many people make time
for what they think is important.
Because I believe it is the best form of
communication and of great importance, I
place it high on the priority scale. I work
with my assistant to schedule meetings
many months ahead over the span of a year.
And during the meetings, it’s a very
relaxed environment. We try not to make it
very formal. I want to make it informal in a
sense so I can learn about my employees’
personal lives. If they are comfortable
enough that they are able to share with me
what is happening outside of work, it helps
me to be able to relate to them and better
manage them.
Different people have different ways that
they respond to communication, but oneto-one is the most effective. That’s why I
have one-to-one meetings with every person who reports directly to me. You want a
communication situation where you are
able to get feedback.
When I am across the table from an individual, face to face, I can get a sense of all
aspects of communication, be that the
voice tone, the body language, in a sense,
feeling the heartbeat of what is going on
with my colleagues. To have one-to-one
relationships, one-to-one meetings, has
been important for us. I’ve seen how good
it has been at creating dialogue.
HOW TO REACH: Megen Construction Co., (513) 742-9191 or
www.megenconstruction.com