When staff members join
Arora Engineers Inc.,
one of their first orders of business is to have lunch
with President and CEO
Manik Arora.
At that lunch, Arora tells
them that he doesn’t want
them to do something just
because he said so. Instead,
he wants his approximately
50 employees to learn why
the task needs to be done, or
if they have a different idea,
show him another way to finish the task.
“I think that’s the best leadership style because it almost
puts you on the same playing
field as the individual,” says
the head of the engineering
firm, which specializes in
secure environments.
Smart Business spoke with
Arora about how to balance
friendship with business.
Q. How would you advise
another CEO to better lead by
example?
Hold to the ethics of what
you believe in, and make sure
they are strong ethics. If you
are going to lead by example
and you have a tendency to lay
down and maybe cut some
corners or do things just in the
interest of the almighty dollar,
it might come across as you’re
not a good judge of character
sometimes.
I always believe that if you
are going to teach someone, it
should be by the book, yet it
should be creative enough to
inspire them.
Q. What are pitfalls in
leading by example?
The folks get such a comfort level with me that sometimes
the lines get a little blurry. It’s
good, I’m inspiring, I’m cheerleading, I’m rah-rahing.
But, on the flip side, and you
are leading by example, there’s
some separation needed at
times. We go out, we promote
social events, but what happens is the younger folks don’t
know how to separate those
lines sometimes. They think
it’s all fun, but we’re trying to
teach them the business.
So, I have to play sometimes
a Jekyll and Hyde just to keep
everyone honest that I still
have a deeper responsibility in
this firm than just this
project, and it’s your job
to function on this project a certain way and
respect authority. I think
authority can be compromised if you’re not
careful.
I don’t think anyone
here abuses that. It’s just
sometimes they forget.
Having an open-door
policy is another pitfall.
Some people think you
should be in your ivory
tower and go through
protocol. My thing is,
‘Hey, if you have an
issue, come to me.’
Sometimes people forget that they have direct
supervisors. When they
come to me around
their supervisor and they are
having an issue, the first thing
I say is, ‘Did you talk to your
supervisor about it?’ Again,
that’s that line. Do you have an
open-door policy? How open
is it?
