Deal with resistance
McEwan was pleased with the progress that the firm was making in calming fears and getting people to buy in to the effort to delight customers with great service. But very few leaders are able to sell a plan to their employees without at least some resistance.
The key to keeping resistance from completely derailing your plan is to deal with it head on. It’s not that you’re looking to stamp it out and censor employees who don’t agree with you. Rather, you want to talk about their issues and do what you can to get everyone back on the same page.
“You have to call it out,” McEwan says. “One of the worst things you can do is you don’t address it right there and then. You need to be able to call it out, deal with it and address it.”
You also need to make it safe for your people to express concerns when they have them.
“You can’t cut their knees out from under them if they do disagree,” McEwan says. “I’ve seen this in instances where the leader gets very defensive immediately and shoots them down. You have to embrace it. You have to listen. You have to maybe even make it a separate meeting or separate interaction to go back to them and take it offline versus calling them out in front of everybody. You need to address it.”
If you’re in a group setting and you feel like there are other people in the room who will back you up, it can be quicker and simpler to just have a conversation there and hopefully come to a speedy resolution.
“Sometimes you can elicit the assistance of others in the group so it’s not just you as the leader,” McEwan says.
The important thing is that you show yourself to be open to hearing the honest feedback that you’ve said you want to hear.
“The rest of the team has to see you being true to the message,” McEwan says. “Every once in a while, it’s good to reinforce, ‘We really do mean this. This really is the type of behavior and action we want.’”
If it seems like a longer discussion is warranted or if the discussion is likely to become more heated, it’s probably best to keep it out of the meeting.
“We don’t want to spend the next 15 minutes of the management meeting dealing with this one issue when everyone else then becomes disengaged,” McEwan says. “Some people will understand there are going to be some areas of conflict or disagreement that are going to be taken offline.”
The thing to remember is just because you’re not in an open meeting, that doesn’t mean other people won’t hear about your reaction. So be aware of how you handle it.
“Will that person go back out to the other partners and say, ‘Holy cow, that was a bad idea,’” McEwan says. “He just gave me a piece of his mind and he’s pretty much got his mind made up. That was a waste of my time.’ But if it is handled the right way, the person would say, ‘No, we sat down and went through it. He heard me out, understood my points and we concluded this.’ I’m guessing that’s what makes me more approachable as time goes by. People realize they’re not going to be taken out to the woodshed.”
You may even find in one of these disagreements that you learn something you didn’t know before.
“Sometimes they are like, ‘Hey, there is something you didn’t know,’” McEwan says. “And they didn’t want to call it out in front of the group. It’s been beneficial.”
Thanks to McEwan’s calm, yet spirited approach to his job, Deloitte has been able to ride out the storm and maintain its presence as a key accounting and consulting firm in Central Ohio, serving about 70 percent of the largest 100 public and private companies in the region.
He says his biggest challenge will continue to be staying in touch with his people and understanding what is important to them.
“Information goes so fast through the organization now,” McEwan says. “If somebody says something in a meeting or e-mails it or instant messages it, that is so quick. But you can also use that to your advantage to help pull ideas along. It’s not all about the leader. It’s about empowering the people around you and about how they can pull the organization in a direction, as well.”
How to reach: Deloitte LLP, (614) 221-1000 or www.deloitte.com
