Build relationships with employees
Earlier in his career, if someone walked into Price’s office or he walked into his or hers, he didn’t waste time with small talk.
“If someone walked into my office, boom we’re talking business,” he says. “But what I learned is we’re all humans with the same issues and frailties that we’re working through. And it’s amazing the connection you make with people when you open up and share.”
Since that realization, Price strives to build relationships with his employees and to really know them.
“That’s a challenge, no doubt about it,” he says. “And it’s an ongoing challenge — you don’t do it once and check the box and you’re done.”
While it’s difficult to know 1,300 people, he focuses primarily on the partners.
“First and foremost, starting with those other 99 partners, was really spending quality time with each of them and reaching out to them,” he says. “It was me reaching out to them and not saying, ‘Come to my office and let’s have a meeting.’ Meeting them on their turf and their terms and really doing it without an agenda.”
Getting some quality time with 99 people can be tough, so he uses a combination of informal and formal methods. First, map out an informal plan for making connections.
“The informal ways are you try to find opportunities where there are intersections between work and personal and social, whether it’s having dinner with a partner or inviting a small group of partners into your home for dinner on the weekend or playing golf with a partner or going to a play or something. Or you bring a small group of partners together with a small group of clients and you have social time,” Price says. “There’s a lot of ways informally to do it.”
He also drops in their offices and asks open-ended questions to just get to know them better.
“It’s just simple questions — ‘What’s going on, how’s the family, how’s the golf game, how was your vacation?’” he says. “You get to know what makes your partners tick.”
Beyond the informal, you have to also find the formal ways to connect with them and get to know them better. Price works with his assistant to rotate through those 99 people throughout the year.
“You start at the top of the list and work your way down, and it doesn’t always work that way if there are certain partners you want to get to immediately, but hypothetically, you start at the top and work your way down, and you say, ‘In the next two months, let’s make sure I get some good quality interaction with these eight or 10 partners,” he says. “Then the next month, pick the next eight or 10, and work through formally.”
While he may be focusing on spending quality time with eight to 10 people each month, he has other ways to make sure he doesn’t lose contact with everyone else when it’s not their “turn.” Monthly he has an all-partners meeting over a lunch hour, and the agenda is to build relationships and trust with one another so they can turn to each other when business opportunities come up.
He also has a small group of six people that he meets with for two hours every two weeks. It’s typically the leaders of each line of business and three key enablers — his human capital leader, marketing and sales leader, and administrative leader.
Combining these efforts, it gives him far more insight into his partners than he would get staying in his office.
“It’s really understanding their personal agendas and really understanding what makes them tick,” he says. “If you think about it, it’s about making them successful … because if you can enable success in the team around you, there’s a lot more leverage and a lot greater chance you’ll personally be successful in that approach and model than going and doing it yourself.”
By taking these steps, it helps people buy in to what that high-up, powers-that-be person originally thought — that Price is a smart guy.
“What that did was start to break down some of the, ‘Who’s this person; what are his motives?’ and enabled us to connect on a more human level,” he says.
And it’s the same approach as the commercial.
“It really gets back to that simple message from the commercial — you have to demonstrate a real genuine care for the person, the whole person, and that’s both professional and personal,” Price says. “When you do that, that engenders trust and loyalty. Strategy is 10 percent of the battle, and everyone has a great strategy, and everyone has smart people. Whatever your strategy is, if they trust you, they will follow it and execute against it, and they will perform well and be successful. That same person could be a very bright person, but without that trust and without that loyalty, that person won’t be as successful, and you won’t get the same productivity out of that person as you otherwise would.”
How to reach: PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, (678) 419-1000 or www.pwc.com
