Be sincere
You need to show employees that a problem matters to you just as much as it matters to them.
“The most successful leaders are the people who have the ability to connect to the people they serve,” Ransdell says. “The person who can walk into the room and it doesn’t matter if it’s the janitor or the head of that particular market, everybody gets treated like they are special. You’re never more important than the people you serve. You have to remember that you’re here to serve people. If they don’t trust you, you’re never going to get anything done. If they don’t trust you, they don’t like you and they don’t know you, it’s going to be very difficult to move the needle.”
Ransdell and Rubin sought to earn this trust by acknowledging upfront the difficulties that the company was experiencing.
“Barry started off his presentation by going back and reviewing what we had all gone through and what our clients had gone through,” Ransdell says. “It was very emotional. It connected to everybody what we were trying to accomplish. I never gave him any critique or any feedback on things I wanted him to change because it was real. In times when they are really ugly, you have to be real. You have to speak the language and you have to be a human being and that’s what we did.”
After both Ransdell and Rubin had spoken, they opened the floor for questions. While they did as much research as they could, there were some questions they didn’t have answers to.
“We wanted to eliminate the uncertainty so that there was no more make believe and we could get people focused on the opportunity and move past everything that had happened,” Ransdell says.
If a question was raised that Ransdell didn’t have an answer for, he made a note of it and a commitment to respond within 24 hours.
“Not only back to that person, but then e-mail that answer to the entire population of people that were in that room,” Ransdell says.
If it ever seems too easy to get up and give a presentation to your people about an important topic, it could be that you’re not giving all your energy to it.
“If I go to the last office, for me, it’s showtime,” Ransdell says of his office tour. “Those individuals deserve the same energy and passion as the very first office I hit. If I crash in the car after that meeting, it’s OK. But when I’m in front of those ladies and gentlemen, they are going to get the best that Jeff Ransdell has to offer. If I can’t do that, I shouldn’t be in this role.”
Overall, Merrill Lynch as a company took in $23.3 billion in revenue for 2009. In his region, Ransdell said his tour of meeting with employees did exactly what he wanted it to.
“From an attitude perspective, almost immediately. From an, ‘I’m going to get focused’ perspective, almost immediately,” Ransdell says when asked how long it took to see results from his meetings. “When people started feeling good about the new organization, they started sitting down with clients and sharing that story and vision with them. Our business picked up significantly.”
Ransdell gives credit to the message, but he says the delivery is just as important in terms of making it sure your people get it.
“You have to take care of yourself and you have to be physically fit,” Ransdell says. “You have to take the time to recover when it’s time to recover. If you can’t physically do it, you’re not going to have that energy level you need and you’re not going to have that passion you need to get people to see that which they cannot see. That’s our job at the end of the day.”
HOW TO REACH: Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., (305) 442-1122 or www.ml.com
