Convey confidence
To lead in any industry, you must have experience and be knowledgeable about the company you plan to guide. That’s understandable. But Yund’s reasoning behind the obvious is that it is linked to an essential trait that good leaders must possess: confidence.
“That’s necessary in order that the leader can have the confidence to know what to do,” Yund says about being an expert on your company. “If you don’t have the confidence to know what to do, nobody else is going to have confidence that you know what you’re doing. To lead others, you have to inspire confidence, and to inspire confidence, you have to be confident, and to be confident, you have to have that experience and knowledge of the business.”
Confidence can be a chain reaction. If you’re the first domino to fall, you can’t expect others around you to stand strong.
Having confidence in your own abilities and your own decisions to lead a company starts with understanding your business. And understanding really comes down to being a better listener than a talker, Yund says. Separate yourself from anything that can be a distraction — your BlackBerry, your e-mail — and take the time to really be in the moment, ask questions, and listen to what your employees and clients are saying about the business.
“You have to commit yourself to spend the time necessary to get to know the people, the product, the company,” Yund says.
Yund had been with Frost Brown Todd for 32 years before being named as the managing member, so the learning curve wasn’t quite as steep when he was named to his current position a year and a half ago. However, that doesn’t keep him from continually learning about what is happening within the firm. Even after three decades with Frost Brown Todd, do you think Yund knows it all?
“The answer is no,” he says. “I do think that’s necessary to keep (a commitment to understanding the company). Just because you have to have confidence that the path you’re taking is the right one, you also have to be flexible and adjust where necessary.”
Case in point, when Yund took over as managing member, the country was in the thick of the recession. So he worked with Frost Brown Todd Chairman John R. Crockett III to develop a plan that would guide the firm through the economic downturn. The goal was to make sure that the economy and its continual uncertainty didn’t negatively affect the firm in a way that it lost key people.
Yund wanted input from his partners and clients. Receiving input — listening to your employees’ ideas — can’t simply come from walking around the hallways and having meetings with your senior executives. Frost Brown Todd surveyed both employees and customers. Questions were sent to the firm’s 100 largest clients. In addition to an online employee survey, Yund and Crockett personally interviewed 40 partners asking questions such as what they needed, what could management do better, and where they saw opportunities for the firm to improve and prosper.
You have to put in the effort that will allow you and your employees to have confidence in your decisions and your ultimate plan for the company. And that effort means constantly keeping the pulse of the organization.
Taking the second step of inspiring confidence in employees comes from how you present yourself and your decisions. You need to not only be communicative but open and honest.
“Make sure you never appear to be hiding the ball,” Yund says. “Make sure you don’t do anything that makes people doubt that they can trust you. That’s probably the biggest thing, so that they not only have confidence in you but confidence in their own ability to push the agenda of the company forward and the confidence to make mistakes.”
As Yund communicates the plan and the firm’s message to his department heads and practice group leaders, he asks them to use the same confidence and to lead their people in a direction that is consistent with what has been laid out for them. You do that by sending a clear message but also by consistent communication and consistent expectations. You should expect the same standards of your managers that you want them to expect of others.
“Why is consistency important?” Yund says. “Because people get confused if they get mixed messages.”
